Report on the First Real Time Virtual Collaboration conference

[Holger Nauheimer (Change Facilitation)]

Harrison - good to remind us of Gabriela's outstanding work. I have been one
of the early adapters of OSOnline. I really think that we come to realize
now that Gabriela did break ground. When we all were still in our
non-digital caves, she was thinking of how to connect people from around the
world who haven't met physically. Remember of how long it took this
community here to realize the potential of OSOnline.

So, what we did is not a competition to Gabriela's. We even don't call what
we do "Open Space". I am still quite conservative when it comes to what is
OST, and refer to your simple list of what constitutes on OST (circle,
breath, market place, etc.). Therefore, Gabriela has been the only one who
translated the OST principles to the virtual world. 

We say that we used Open Space principles in what we did in our Real Time
Virtual Collaboration Workshop (RTVC). In fact, I am also not happy with
this name, as it is too close to RTSC. Maybe somebody can propose a better
name? But, it was interesting to see that we had bumblebees and butterflies. 

What we wanted to demonstrate is that there are a lot of virtual spaces out
there, most of them free of charge, which serve different learning and
collaborating preferences. Some people want to talk to each other, others
want to doodle, others again want to co-author a text, etc. Also, we believe
that with our approach we can reach out to the rest of the world while
having a virtual conference. We had this - people from outside getting
notice through Twitter during the event and "sneaking in".

We want to be humble with the small step we made. I know that in 1-2 years,
there will be many systems out there to host self-organized workshops on the
web, and hopefully, blended workshops, combining face-2-face and virtual
work. This will be really the breakthrough. Imagine a couple of thousands,
or tens of thousands working in focus groups but being connected with others
in real time through the web. I know a couple of groups which are currently
working on such integrative systems and I expect a lot of good news in the
coming 12 months.

One of the great "discoveries" of us as a Steering Group of the RTVC was
Teamspeak: http://www.teamspeak.com/, a voice-over-IP platform which comes
from the gaming world. This is a system where you can easily create
break-out rooms in which people can discuss with each other. You can record
the conversations. It is a very basic system but this is really the good
thing about it.

We have probably all bad experiences with Voice-over-IP systems. The
advantage of Teamspeak (beside being free) is that once you have managed to
adjust your settings, it works flawless. In our Steering Committee, we were
connected through a Teamspeak room throughout the entire conference.
However, I recommed that you host the Teamspeak software on a dedicated server. 

Another tool we like a lot is Etherpad (http://etherpad.com/) which is a
kind of a Wiki but people can work on a document simultaneously (and chat at
the side). I have used for co-authoring books. And everybody know meanwhile
my affection for Twitter, which is a great way to broadcast ideas and to
include the wider system (Twitter has been called as close to a "world
brain" as we can get in the moment). 

But there is much more out there... It is an exciting journey.

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