[OSList] What would a harvest from a long OSList discussion look like?

[Harrison Owen]

Lucas – Don’t know where this fits, but several years ago Michael Herman and Chris Corrigan put together what they called a Non-User’s Guide which is essentially an annotated collection of a particularly rich set of discussions here on OSLIST. I haven’t checked, but I think it is still available on www.openspaceworld.org May turn out that human minds/fingers are still an essential part of the process no matter the technology. My thought would be Graduate Students. Good labor at a reasonable price with a possible dissertation or two.

 

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From: OSList [mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Lucas Cioffi
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2014 2:52 PM
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
Subject: Re: [OSList] What would a harvest from a long OSList discussion look like?

 

Hi All,

 

Someone reached out and suggested I try a word cloud of the conversation.  I took a few minutes to copy the 50 emails from the conversation entitled "Management and Organization" which has been running for the past month. I pasted it below, and if the word cloud doesn't come through as an attachment, you can also see it online here <ttps://barkbest.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/screen-shot-2014-08-08-at-2-34-55-pm.png> .

 

Word clouds are helpful, but I'm still left wanting more.  I can't put my finger on it.

 

I'm thinking that there must be some very creative harvesting methods used by facilitators in this group, using graphic facilitation and other methods.  Are your approaches to in-person harvesting applicable to harvesting one of our 50-email discussions?

 

I'm listening to see if I can create a software for harvesting & summarizing email threads to unlock some of the knowledge buried in the OSList archives and breath new life into some of our dormant yet valuable discussion threads from the past.

 

Lucas Cioffi
Co-Founder, Bark!Best
Charlottesville, VA
917-528-1831

 

 

 

Inline image 1

 

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Lucas Cioffi <lucas at barkbest.com> wrote:

Hi All,

 

So this week many of us are watching a lively discussion thread grow and grow and grow.  It's awesome that it has received nearly 50 email replies already from people all over the world, however 95% of the people on the list aren't active in it yet, and of course that's OK.

 

For me and probably others, digging into such a large conversation becomes a bit intimidating when the conversation is so large.  

Question: So, what would a harvest from such a long OSList email discussion look like if it was to be useful to you personally?

 

I'm asking the question above for two reasons:

*	For me: Aside from being a longtime OS enthusiast, I'm building a tool for large online conversations and looking for ideas about how to create meaningful harvests from them.
*	For all of us: Unrelated to my tool, maybe if there was an easy way to harvest/summarize these long and lively conversations on OSList, then it could give access to the conversation to those who do not have the time or courage to dive in directly.
*	New voices: The younger generations spend less time on email, so they largely miss out on the great knowledge that's shared on a list like this.  So harvests might be one way to bring new voices to our conversations on OSList.

To get the most value out of a conversation, someone certainly has to ride along and read most of it.  But the problem is that when someone chooses to read one conversation in-depth, they are choosing to not read another great conversation in-depth.  So I'm hoping that a harvest can help people when they decide which conversations they want to invest their time in.

 

I look forward to hearing any suggestions!

-- 

Lucas Cioffi

Co-Founder, Bark!Best

Charlottesville, VA

917-528-1831

 

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