[OSList] technology mix no-no?

Thu Sep 12 16:33:37 PDT 2013

Hi, everyone thanks for the quick and helpful replies!

I was not an early adopter, so while I can do GoogleDocs, chats, etc, I'm
still getting the hang of this listserve.

Lisa and Harrison, on the human end, , the group as a whole is feeling
pretty good about the facilitator--"Gadzooks!" is one reply I got to my
announcement. I figure that if we can make this happen with our smaller
group, that will be an indication of how well things could really work with
the "parent" group.  As with any community there will always be people who
are nursing a hurt somewhere and we're no different. I've used Processwork
in the past to help call these hurts out during a meeting when they might
be acting as a kind of zeitgeist, but I'm counting on the fact that Open
Space has been used for actual peace talks :-) and that for our event we've
done everything we can to make it inviting to be there in person and also
made it possible for them to show up in the way they feel the most
comfortable. Self-organizing in the 21st century for now, I guess.  I've
been working on the 1:1 invitations, and we'll see whether that discomfited
individual might change her mind about coming in person; she's definitely
calling in otherwise.  Thanks for the points of view you two presented--the
combination is what is so helpful to me.

After I wrote my original email, I sat in silence for a moment and came to
the conclusion that OST as a methodology was a gift/tool appearing in the
Open Space of All Existence, and that the technology coming into play now
is, as you say, Suzanne, part of a great adventure in that state of reality
altogether.  My purpose in applying OST to this small group is to take my
own tiny step forward towards a possible point where the entire world can
be engaged in an ongoing open discussion/consideration about all the great
issues plaguing the world that humans as a species have been trashing, and
address our world leaders as humanity taking responsibility. In that case,
all of human endeavor, OST participants taking pictures yes but including
this online approach, may be used in whatever creative way blossoms in
celebration. Maybe not in my lifetime, but I can "dream".

Paul, I'll certainly try out Trello--a quick look-see gave me a sense of
what you meant about using the boards and cards to set up the Marketplace.
On the first point, "Another important point is to find a solution for the
people in the room to be working in the same 'marketplace' screen than
people that are remote," I think you meant "as people that are remote,"
right? Before I saw Trello, I laid out an Excel sheet in Google Docs so
that participants could crowd over to a bank of laptops and fill in the
empty slots, getting close and talking to each other. I've attached a copy
to share. Just so there's no confusion over empty and filled slots and
knowing which day we're on, I color-coded and "grayed" a simple instruction
to "enter your topic".  For a larger crowd than ours, a spreadsheet might
still prove to be cumbersome, I guess.

A core group of us have used Google Hangouts, and find it more reliable
than Skype. But most of our folks are used to Skype and are also
technology-averse. Those of us doing the planning decided to stick with
Skype for now.  One of our participants was really excited about her
SmartMeeting account and wanted us to use it because it has virtual
breakout rooms. SmartMeeting uses a main screen online, but it turns out
only the main screen can be shared. There're no screens or chat boxes
available for the breakout rooms. We experimented with Skype as the visual
and SmartMeeting as the audio and chat, (had to mute Skype to prevent echo)
in the hope that the breakout rooms would correspond, but there was no
point then in having any visuals.

Another participant is offering Sococo.com. For those of us longing for the
clear boundaries of physical space, Sococo uses virtual floor plans so
meeting participants can see who's in what room and "walk" over--I'm hoping
it means people can bump into each other in the virtual corridors the way
people do IRL ("in real life", as I learned from a colleague's 19-yr-old).
Also, each breakout room has chat, video, voice, and screen sharing. Our
folks will have to learn GoogleDocs anyway, because we can't afford to buy
software like Sococo (yet), but now I'm weighing whether to use the
teaching time to show them the possibilities of Sococo via free trial or
just stick with GoogleDocs because there's more of a likelihood that we
would we would use this into the future.

The OST trial I attended once on Blackboard (using their Collaborate
platform--they have 6 or 7 others like Learn, Connect, and Engage) was
adequate but, as I mentioned in my first letter, clunky. One fun part was
that Collaborate lets you set up a text box (on the screen near the "map"
of who's in the room together) and this is where the notes get
recorded--the notetaker got started, but then the other participants just
started typing in what they were hearing as well. Like many meeting
platforms, you could turn on your videocam to show up, but that ate up
bandwidth and didn't work in the breakout rooms.

Good to be here, and thanks again everyone!

-- 

Magdalena Valderrama Hurwitz
E-mail: magdalenavh at gmail.com
Cell: 415-328-0731
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