Learning questions of synergy

Rosa posed a few good questions here on the Team Synergy blog. I have been busy composing an answer (actually several answers) and I am about ready to reveal them.

Are you ready?

I hope so.

Rosa's first question:

How will our LEARNING STYLES and HABITS have to EVOLVE so that the web communications of our future serve to POWER partnerships, teams, groups and communities?

I think the key to this is our respect for the individual. The web communications are done with tools of technology: instant messaging (IM), voice over IP, email, blog, video blog, podcasting, wikis, etc. There are plenty of tools. But they are only tools. They still require people to operate and use them. We must be mindful that there is another person on the other end and they may not be as adept at the tool as we are. We must be mindful of the verbal communication studies that show 15% of the actual communication is in the words we use, another 20% in the tone of our voice, and 55% in our body language. When we do email or IM, it is only the text that is present. When video phones become common, then the body and facial expressions can come back into the picture to help convey the message.

Until then, be kind to one another.
Confirm what is being said/written, so you do not go off having half heard something.

There is more in common amongst us than there are differences. We need to be kind and patient to explore each other to let this come out into the open.

I heard (via Steve Garfield's field report on Rocketboom) Jeff Jarvis say that the battle between distribution and content was wrong, the conversation is the kingdom and trust is the king.

We need to get to a position of trust with one another in order to succeed together.

It won't be easy. But therein lies the challenge!



Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Question 5

Technorati Tags : learning, synergy, trust, conversation, content, distribution

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PodCamp Lunch Sunday

PodCamp Lunch 1
Originally uploaded by shersteve.

The "Power of We" was in full force at the first PodCamp here in Boston this weekend. The photo shows two key types of interactions that occured during lunch. Of course, more of these occured in the halls, before and after the sessions, and during the sessions themselves.

One - conversations generated a buzz. Whether one to one, or one to multiple, there were many going on all the time.

Two - one form the conversations took was in a recorded format. Here Christopher S. Penn, white shirt black sleeve, is capturing some video during an interview with PodCampers.

The energy and synergy created by the lunch room buzz will continue to play out over the next days, weeks, months...

Stay tuned to PodCamp. There will be another one in Boston in 2007. There is talk of bring this format to other major areas. It may come you something reachable from your neighborhood.

If it does, do stop stop anywhere, get thee there. It is worth it!

Technorati Tags : PodCamp+Boston, PodCamp, blog, vlog, synergy, collaboration, cooperation, environment

Synergy & Stigmergy

From Tim Milburn writing at StudentInc

I am a huge fan of synergy, which is the combined interaction of two agents (people) resulting in a larger result than their individual efforts could achieve. It's helpful to realize that each one of us is better together. Like the Ecclesiastes writer says..."two are better than one, a cord of three strands is not easily broken."

This is not new, Tim has commented here before. But he takes a turn and goes into Stigmergy which according to the wikipedia entry is:

Stigmergy is a method of communication in emergent systems in which the individual parts of the system communicate with one another by modifying their local environment. Stigmergy was first observed in nature - ants communicate to one another by laying down pheromones along their trails, so where ants go within and around their ant colony is a stigmergic system. Similar phenomena are easily seen in many (all?) eusocial creatures, such as termites, who use pheromones to build their very complex nests by following a simple decentralized rule set. Each insect scoops up a 'mudball' or similar material from its environment, invests the ball with pheromones, and deposits it on the ground. Termites are attracted to their nestmates' pheromones and are therefore more likely to drop their own mudballs near their neighbors'. Over time this leads to the construction of pillars, arches, tunnels and chambers.

Read Tim's full posting. I think there are parallels with what we are attempting to do here in the blog world and what the termites accomplish.

What do you think?


Technorati Tags : synergy, stigmergy, StudentInc, collaboration, cooperation, environment

Home Plate - Defined

From the late Bart Giamatti:

 "There is no great, long poem about baseball. It may be that baseball is itself its own great, long poem. This had occurred to me in the course of my wondering why home plate wasn't called fourth base. And then it came to me, ‘Why not? Meditate on the name, for a moment, ‘home.'' Home is an English word virtually impossible to translate into other tongues. No translation catches the associations, the mixture of memory and longing, the sense of security and autonomy and accessibility, the aroma of inclusiveness, of freedom from wariness that cling to the word ‘home' and are absent from ‘house' or even ‘my house.' Home is a concept, not a place; it's a state of mind where self-definition starts. It is origins, a mix of time and place and smell and weather wherein one first realizes one is an original; perhaps like others, especially those one loves; but discreet, distinct, not to be copied. Home is where one first learned to be separate, and it remains in the mind as the place where reunion, if it were ever to occur, would happen. All literary romance, all romance epic, derives from the Odyssey and it is about going home. It's about rejoining; rejoining a beloved, rejoining parent to child, rejoining a land to its rightful owner or rule. Romance is about putting things aright after some tragedy has put them asunder. It is about restoration of the right relations among things. And ‘going home' is where that restoration occurs, because that's where it matters most. Baseball is, of course, entirely about going home. It's the only game you ever heard of where you want to get back to where you started. All the other games are territorial – you want to get his or her territory – but not baseball. Baseball simply wants to get you from here, back around to here."

Read the full posting at this week's MondayMorningMemo by Roy Williams at the WizardofAds.

 

Home is where you want to be for a holiday.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Technorati Tags : MondayMorningMemo, WizardofAds, Bart+Giamatti, baseball, mental+images, pictures, words

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Penguin Paradox

Aiden writes at ?IC@TomorrowToday on the Penguin Paradox:

Penguins represent a paradox of innovation and narrative in organisations. Penguins are considered one of the most sociable species on the planet, and often live as a flock on an iceberg or cliff. Both fear and food reside in the same place - in the water. The fish as food and the sharks as fear. So now, how do you get the first of the flock into the water? The answer: the flock pushes the pengiun closest to the edge into the water to see if it is safe. This paradox is ironically labelled as “co-operation in a competitive envirnment”. It is the same paradox we find in organisation when they have to innovate i.e. “great idea Bob, you go ahead and try it!”

Read the remainder of this posting and let me know what you think. I am curious. The grey matter is stirring on this one.

 

PS - You can certainly leave a comment on Aiden's post but it is a bit more involved.

 

 

Technorati Tags : penuins, paradox, synergy, teamwork, co-operation

 

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