almost 10 years ago, i co-founded e-mint. we’ve been discussing what we should do for our big birthday so i’ve been thinking about what sort of event to host & how to make it enjoyable, great, inclusive, memorable.

so i’m intrigued by smoozl. launched last month at the Game Developers Conference in SF, it combines elements of foursquare (awarding badges) & LinkedIn (recommendations). they call it a ‘real-time, organic, visual recommendation system to better identify potentially meaningful connections within a daunting crowd of 20,000+ game hounds.‘.

we won’t be anywhere near that big & won’t all be in the same location but it’s still an interesting idea. definitely a great ice breaker! anyone have first hand experience with shmoozl?

Virtual Communities OzCHI 2006 Workshop
Approaches to the Design of Social Software for Dis-Organisations : A One-Day Workshop in Association with OZCHI 2006

A fundamental challenge exists for distributed organisations seeking to
foster collaboration: understanding and capitalising on the
inter-relationships between collaborative tools and techniques to
support generation of ideas and innovation. Commercial imperatives
underpin research into these inter-relationships, in terms of how to
create a culture and environment in which ideation and innovation can
flourish.

This workshop will address the collaborative needs of organisations that
are distributed or otherwise informally structured. In particular we
will explore approaches to the design of tools that support increased
communication and social interaction within such groups. Traditionally,
support systems have been introduced from the top downwards but there is
increasing evidence to suggest that alternative approaches can be even
more effective. The increasing use of bottom-up, emergent technologies
such as wikis and weblogs, is a well-known phenomenon. This workshop
seeks to address approaches for the design of such tools.
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together people with an
interest in social software and those whose concerns relate to
user-centred design approaches. Social software as embodied in current
systems, such as wikis, is typically developed and introduced from the
bottom of an organisation and works its way upwards. Even when more
traditional design adopts a user-centred approach, instigation for the
introduction of new systems often comes from the top of an organisation.
The workshop will address this seeming dichotomy: how can this bottom-up
adoption be facilitated and encouraged by those at the top. More
specifically, we aim to address how approaches to the design of the
tools themselves can stimulate increased adoption. There are also
fundamental differences in the nature of the software itself which the
workshop will also cover. In comparison to traditional groupware like
Groove, social software tends to be more lightweight and at least in the
case of wikis and weblogs more extensible. One important question is how
these characteristics contribute to the apparent success of social
software. Many of these tools come from a technically minded background
and have not received any formal usability testing, let alone had any
form of user participation during the design process. How could such
testing or participation be of benefit?

We invite papers, which may describe approaches and work in progress as
well as finished research, length 3-5 pages. In keeping with the
workshop theme of bottom-up social software at work, topics of interest
include, but are not limited to:
* Design methods for social software
* Evaluation of social software impact
* Categorisation of social tools
* Social Software at Work
* Integrating social software and task oriented software
* Issues around self-image as represented through social software
usage
Important Dates :
* Submission of papers: 22nd September
* Notification to authors: 6th October 2006
* Camera Ready papers due: 12th October 2006

The Virtual Communities Project is funded by the Australasian CRC for
Interaction Design http://www.interactiondesign.com.au . Virtual
communities is researching how to improve work in distributed
organisations, looking at how to help these organisations translate
their ideas into actions. We develop models and business cases that
describe key principles, success stories and how-tos.

Programme Committee:
Jeremy Yuille (RMIT), Ralf Muhlberger (University of Queensland), Fiona
Peterson (RMIT), Laurene Vaughan (RMIT), Markus Rittenbruch (University
of Queensland), Alastair Weakley (University of Technology, Sydney)

IFIP Working Group 8.2 Working Conference on Virtuality and Virtualization
Location: Portland Marriott City Center, Downtown Portland, OR, USA
Date: 29-31 July 2007
Submissions due: 1 November 2006

The focus of the conference is on virtual work and virtualization (in their varieties of meanings) and their recursive influence on work practices, organizations and society. Possible topics include:
• defining virtuality
• personal experiences of virtual work
• theories to explain effects of virtuality
• teamwork in distributed teams
• the nature of distributed work practices
• virtuality and communication, coordination and collaboration
processes
• technologies contributing to virtualization
• mediation and disintermediation of work practices and organizations
• virtuality and team/organizational learning
• virtuality and changing organizational form and function
• impacts of virtuality on supply chains
• drivers, opportunities, and challenges of distributed production
• labour pools in countries contributing to distributed teams
• reinvention of place and time associated with virtualization

for those of you in AU, below are details on a presentation (and assuming networking evening) on CoPs and social learning. the real action is in sydney but they’re having venues in other cities too.

Subject: [Actkm] Tuesday August 15th: Communities of Practice & Social Learning

Registrations are now open for ElNet’s next industry evening on Tuesday, 15 August 2006.

Everyone is invited to a free professional development evening hosted by ElNet and the NSW Knowledge Management Forum. The event, presented in Sydney (Standards Australia, 286 Sussex St) can also be accessed simultaneously online, via sponsorship from Centra. Physical venues are being organised in central locations in Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra & Adelaide (details to follow).

Our presenters Mark Schenk, Anecdote & Kim Sbarcea, ASIC will speak on the topic:

Communities of Practice & Social Learning
Key items to be covered include
- How do we get knowledge to learners when they need it?
- How do we strengthen organisational relationships at the same time as upskilling individuals?
- What technologies & processes are involved?

Educators have traditionally used structured forms of training – first classrooms & textbooks and now eLearning & Virtual Meeting tools. However, there is a growing awareness that people learn as much “on the job” as they do in the classroom and as much from each other as from officially sanctioned sources. Practitioners who have been exploring Communities of Practice and Lessons Learned approaches are beginning to look to ways in which these techniques can work with instructional design. This event brings ElNet and the KM Forum together to investigate overlapping opportunities.

About our presenters
Mark Schenk is a Director of Anecdote Pty Ltd, specialising in narrative, complexity and knowledge management, and focusses on helping organisations with change management and learning. Mark has extensive experience in professional services including the role of Knowledge Manager for SMS Consulting Group. He was also manager of consulting services for a large engineering professional services firm.

Kim Sbarcea is an independent consultant/advisor. Kim consults to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), an Australian Federal Government agency, where she is Director, Knowledge Networks. Kim joined ASIC as a consultant in October 2002 and, prior to this role, was Chief Knowledge Officer for Ernst & Young, Australia.

Time, venue rego details
5.30 for 6pm Tuesday 15th August (to conclude around 7.15pm)
Sydney Presentation venue – Standards Australia, 286 Sussex Street, Sydney
Brisbane – (The Cyber Institute – Management House, Australian Institute of Management, Cnr Boundary and Rosa Sts, Spring Hill)
Melbourne – (Webex Aust, Level 50/101 Collins St)
Canberra and Adelaide – (TBA) **** (All venues subject to minimum booking numbers)
Free! Places are limited at some of our live sites so book early to avoid disappointment.

RSVP by email to info@elnet.com.au
**** please advise if you will be attending in person (include city), or if you would like to registered to go online with Centra
(online bookings close midday – Monday 13 Aug)
Elearning Network of Australasia
PO Box 1281
Bondi Junction NSW 1355
Ph: 02 9386 1595 or 1300 131 787
email info@elnet.com.au | www.elnet.com.au |

jason fried of 37 signals spoke at the collaboration loop conference in boston last week. you can watch the video. he addresses 4 items – team size, team location, meetings & decisions – in addition to the usual jason phrases like ‘software gets in the way’ and ‘less is more’ (if you can’t tell, i’ve heard him speak several times and while i agree on some things… others, like his seeming distaste of planning/functional spec/etc, i disagree with. but i won’t go into that now).

his team (well, the entire company) consists of 7 people. he said at one point they went across 9 time zones and even the folks who live in the same city typically see each other in the office about once a month due to different working hours or working from home. they would have been an amazing team for my thesis research!

he advises keeping your team small. small keeps the ‘noise’ down. it also decreases the chances of ending up playing telephone (the childhood game where the message gets distorted as it goes from person to person).

he advocates keeping your team away from each other. they found the more distant they were, the more work they got done b/c there wasn’t as many interruptions. this is an excellent point about virtual work IF your team works out of their homes. it’s not such a great tip if your team happens to work in different offices and there’s plenty of other people to interrupt them. i loved the bit when he says even in their offices they don’t all sit together but sit at opposite ends in order to keep the distance/no interruption thing.

jason feels meetings are toxic and symptoms of problems. he thinks the more meetings you have the more people don’t know what’s going on and that meetings should be used as a last resort. i tend to agree here (though again, not with every bit of this) especially considering a conversation i had during a job interview recently. during the interview i was told someone thought the team had communication issues and then proceeded to have like 4 meetings around how they were not communicating!! brilliant!

the last point is to make tiny decisions. decisions are progress so make them & move on. tiny decisions mean u can’t make big mistakes.

but i think my favourite take away from the speech was –

collaboration is about communication not control

excellent. this was just in passing concerning not looking for software to control or watch what your employees are doing but to faciliate communication but it’s such a great thought to end on.