OST and training in "Facilitating Virtual Communities"

[Artur Ferreira da Silva]

Dear friends and colleagues:

1. I am coordinating an action research Project on the "Renewal of the
Portuguese Public Administration, namely through the use of Information
Systems/Information Technology". The Project is based at INA - the body
responsible for training the Portuguese Public Administration. Those of you
that can read Portuguese (and all the people that can read Spanish can also
understand written Portuguese - even if they don't know that yet) can see
the Web page of the Project at www.ina.pt/IRAP

The Project includes many activities, from global logical information
architectures (non agency based), similar to Canadian and USA "Federal
Enterprise Architectures", grass roots actions interconnecting people from
different agencies (and so allowing - or so I hope - for self-organization
out of the boundaries and constraints of each agency) and training that
combines classes with "real work" and with on-going discussions through
lists, forums, and other e-learning technologies.

2. One of the offers will be training in OST, scheduled to April and
October (but I doubt that we will have enough participants in April), for
which the logic is as follows. As prerequisites people should have already
read my small booklet (edited by INA) and the Guide (English version -
sorry Harrison, I have not yet been able to interest a Portuguese editor in
the translation - maybe these actions will help). In a two-day presential
session, people will work only in Open Space (no formal presentations).
After that and during a period of 2 months (1) each person or two must
"open some space", and (2) those experiences will be discussed in a mailing
list. I will ask for some help and report the results latter. All the
previous explanation is an introduction to the following point.

3. I have also prepared and will soon run a course on "Creation and
Facilitation of on-line forums". Again there are classes (2 days) to
discuss concepts (like organizational learning, communities of practice,
Open Space and such), and for each group of 2 to create a forum. After
that, and again during 2 months, those groups will facilitate the forum
they have created, with global discussions in a(nother) class mailing list.
Indeed the class mailing list is open one month before the presencial
sessions to allow participants to feel the difficulties of "beginning
on-line".

Now I would like my course to be as OST-like as possible and the philosophy
that is presented (taught?) to be also close to OST. But I assume I will
have some difficulties due to the fact that most people here are unused to
forums and the Portuguese culture is very "passive" (I am not a typical
example, btw).

Have you any comments or piece of advice? Has any of you experience of
e-learning or training on-line facilitators with OST principles? I will
return back to you with any conclusions and report of the experience.

Thank you

Artur

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