Nancy White

It might be fun to describe stories of when we have embodied Jenkin's competencies (my notes in purple just to throw in a few to start):

Performance -- the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

• • I have a bit of a question here about the need for "alternative identities" in order to improvise and discover. Maybe this is because at nearly 49 I'm comfortable doing that in my skin as it is!
    

Simulation -- the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes

• • I think about what Nick did in 2nd Life, what many of the learning games designers are doing, but also what I'm doing as I "play" with my friends on http://www.twitter.com to see what the tool might do. So for me, simulation and play often merge. Hm, also performance.
    

Appropriation -- the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

Multitasking -- the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Distributed Cognition -- the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

Collective Intelligence -- the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

Judgment -- the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

Transmedia Navigation -- the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

Networking -- the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation -- the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

I also see these as another way of expressing much of what I've come to describe as the 8 competencies of online facilitation (you can see variations on the slide deck here).

What I really notice is that we have to redefine facilitation, as Derek has intimated, as an act of participation of many, not just "the facilitator," when we are in a networked situation.

Sylvia, Nick and I have been tossing around a conversation thread and want to invite you in. Below is the background. We propose a synchronous voice interaction on Thursday,. 15 March at 7am PDT. (Time and date conversion here. ) We'll use a phone conferencing set up that allows you to call in or skype in. The sound quality is not perfect, but we'll make do!) I'll post the phone in information here and then remind as we get closer:

Skype:
You dial as if this is SkypeOut, but you will not be charged.
+9900827568794

Telephone:
Calling from the US call # 1-605-475-8500 (long distance costs apply).
In Europe, call:
    Belgium        070 35 9987
    France         0826 100 275
    Germany      01805 00 7646
    Ireland          0818 270 032
    Italy              0848 390 172
    Switzerland   0848 560 152
    UK                0870 738 0760
The conference is free but national rate charges will apply to these calls.
Our Conference Room Number (passcode for the telephone dial in) is : 5968794

In the meantime, we can start asynchronously here.

I have been facilitating an online workshop (I know, I need to update that page. I will do that this week!) on online facilitation since 1999, when I first joined forces with Michele Paradis (some of you may have known her as Mihaela Moussou) to lead a little workshop for a project called the Knowledge Ecology University. Little did I know I'd still be at it 8 years later.

The design evolved quite a bit until it "settled in" around 2002. It was three weeks spread over 5 with a week "off" every other week. It was a combination of starter materials which we then made sense and practiced with in conversations in a web based forum, augmented with weekly telephone calls and chats. One significant addition 18 months ago was the use of mentors from previous workshops, something I borrowed from the CPSquare Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop. I have to say, we've been borrowing from each other since the start, as both workshops were launched at the same time.

There were 3 main areas that people were interested in back then: big commercial sites (most of those died during the dot bomb), virtual teams and elearning.

Then there was a shift in the web where we no longer were just talking about groups, but networks. The types of tools commonly used expanded like crazy and I noticed that facilitating on wikis was different than on forums. Facilitating in networks was different than with groups. Online interaction also  became more pervasive and diverse.

So for the last 18 months I've been thinking that I really need to redesign the workshop. I've blogged about it a bit, but now that I've committed to a May 12th start, I have to get serious about finalizing this new design.  I've started and I invite you to join Sylvia, Nick and I to talk about the design. What do people want to learn these days? Where should our attention be placed with respect to facilitating online interactions?

In the olden days of late 2004 I wrote an obscure piece on the history of online facilitation for an even obscurer publication. I offer it not as a concise and clear answer, but some interesting bits that sit along side our personal histories with online facilitation.

Nick, I'm thrilled to see you leading this gathering!! YAY! I will try to be in the flow over the next few weeks with everyone.

Derek, I'm missing a universal there - chocolate, no? ;-)