[OSList] technology mix no-no?

Lisa Heft lisaheft at openingspace.net
Thu Sep 12 16:48:32 PDT 2013


Magdalena - 
Thanks for your thoughts, reflections, ideas and experiences. Gadzooks!
Sounds like…
You are the one / they are the ones / this is the time.

They (and your community) are lucky to have you… and each other.

I look forward to hearing the stories,
Lisa


On Sep 12, 2013, at 4:33 PM, Magdalena Valderrama Hurwitz <magdalenavh at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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