Had a very useful meeting in University of Bolton with colleagues intent on developing a community of research – the diagram illustrates our joint efforts to come to terms with this idea, but it does not clarify the concern I have, which is to be confident who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ – I believe to have a conversation that supports learning, you have to feel ‘safe’ with your audience to take risks with ideas. This is exacerbated when you are online, since the audience may be unclear or grow later to include people your are not so sure about!
Exactly… I expressed that in a worse and geekier way as “Is the privacy and permissions model well communicated?” … which was a key factor when judging tools for my Collaborative Tools Project at York.
http://www.theotherblog.com/Articles/2010/03/27/tools-and-more-requirements/
Everyone also needs to be sensitive to what “in” and “out” is… because people will naturally squirrel themselves away, in a private space (and beaver away on private stuff) and then there is no “us”… I just watched it happen on a trial we did… one where teams have spaces private to themselves and another where people have to ask to make spaces private… two very different outcomes.
“Rasing generic issues”? … Cool! 🙂