Yesterday was the seventh edition of Infonortics' Virtual Communities conference, in The Hague. I was only able to attend the first day, in which I was a speak myself (talking about how stories from the Oil and Gas industry have helped Rio Tinto in establishing their phase change towards successful communities). More about that later.
Approximately 60 people watched Dave Snowden talk about complexity and communities of practice. His 75 minute presentation looked a lot like the one from last year, but it is interesting how one picks up details every time. Something that made me wonder this time is how he described with his complexity 2x2 (yes - Dave also uses 2x2!) how communities flow from informal to formal to 'best practice' - and see this in the light of the conversation about language to bridge networks. Question: how does culture or language help to transcend from one phase (quadrant?) to the other?
With half of the audience puzzled from Dave's talk, Alisdair, Nancy and John "did" (I could hardly said "presented") a very original piece about improv(isation). I am very interested in the importance of improvisation in communities but - in my opinion - they were not really able to make their point because of the responsiveness of the audience to their improvisation (itself) and the many angles of improvisation we were keen on having talked about. Perhaps a setting with more trust-relationships and more time for reflection (..) would make improv come out.
Thirdly, I was up myself to talk about Rio Tinto. I have changed the focus of my presentation about the Rio Tinto success story because I felt that it would be more original and more interesting to talk about a phase in community conception that is not very often talked about: the phase right before the launch of the formal communities. I explained in approximately half an hour how Rio Tinto has used external stories to create a framework for communities - suffering the lack of understanding how the organization could or would respond to that - and in the mean time provide a credible basis for the initiative, supported by visionaries in the Energy Product Group. It seemed to have been received positively, and it fitted neatly with Dave's discourse on usage of repetition of best practice and improv.
Before lunch Nancy and John (with Etienne on video) discussed the ongoing research work on community-supporting technologies and the changes in way we use and work with technologies for (virtual and non-virtual) communities. An open call to participate or comment - my call was to include a part on how different technologies could assist communities throughout the different phases they go through. Contemplating on this matter I realize that the question on how certain technologies could facilitate phase changes in communities could also be interesting, combining two research projects in CP Square.
During lunch, a very nice discussion over italian pasta and rice with Beverly on the perception of happiness (keyword is appreciation). Thanks, Bev!
After lunch we seemed to have shifted our mental gears down as Konrad from Siemens started to present their way of working in Siemens to facilitate their Management Learning Systems. Though there were many questions to ask about their top-down approach and the seemingly easy adoption by the participants (interested in this!) a compelling element is the role of the Alumni community in the program. In my mind I went back to a case I presented on Philips Semiconductors where alumni would feed the community with expertise and facilitate the growth process ('mentoring') on an ongoing basis - therefore providing a more stable basis for the program in the periphery of the community but also giving strategic direction about 'the future'. Not sure how this is done at Siemens as there was no more time to discuss.
Further down the day there was a presentation from Ori from June Technologies about a study to mathematically analyze communities and scalability and moderation. I would like to see the slides to learn more about his exact approach. A little later Ultralab came with an overview of their landscape of communities and Ian and Sarah presented in a very relaxed yet exhaustive manner how their organization mapped the community landscape (technology, participants, participation (note the detail), learning etc.) - all supported by stories and anecdotes. Refreshing and well-done between the two of them; IMO better than the Ultralab session in Virtual Communities 2003.
After the event, we all went to have dinner on the beach (Scheveningen) with the whole gang (see photo above) enjoying great outdoor temperatures.
(links will follow)
This happened at 11:25:58 AM or
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