Choconancy1 posted a photo:

Oh how happy I was to come upon this on Sandy Schuman’s blog. I have long struggled with the perspective that facilitation must/should be neutral. I struggle with the fact that it is HARD as a human being to be neutral. In fact, I can’t pin down the range of practices required to be and stay neutral, especially when facilitating. Neutrality has long been preached by the International Association of Facilitators. I came to the conclusion then, that I was either a bad or a renegade facilitator. For me, it was about being AWARE of my influence, power, position and opinions and not letting them distract me from serving the group. And at times, yes, using my opinion, with clarity and transparency (I call it "taking off my facilitator hat and putting on my citizen/subject matter expert/Nancy hat!) Take a look… And thanks, Sandy. I knew I have been right to admire and learn from you all these years! via IAFNA2012 Fast Talk Sandy Schuman Facilitators should not be Neutral.mov - YouTube.

This past weekend I’ve been hanging out at the National Coalition for Dialog and Deliberation‘s national confab, NCDD2012. Synopsis? Amazing people. Also it was great to connect with folks I’ve met/known online and demoralizing to NOT connect with others who were there in the flesh. Not enough time or energy. Thursday I took part in pre-conference workshop using the fabulous Group Works Deck to map out the elements of a variety of group methods and processes. (I wrote about the deck a while back here. ) As we did the exercise, I realized that I needed the narrative with the map, so took these off the cuff videos, now debuting as this week’s Monday Video. via GroupWorks Deck Method Mapping at NCDD2012 - YouTube. What I noticed about the mapping was the more we did it, the more discerning we became at identifying the essential "spine" of a method AND,through reflecting on the other possibilities offered by the patterns in the cards, observed new ways of "fleshing out" the method depending on context. In other words, the cards enabled us to have great learning conversations about the methods. Very cool. I plan to use the cards a lot in the coming weeks of crazy work and travel! I also deeply appreciated all the knowledge in the room. As I learned about Participatory Budgeting from John Kelly, I was getting all kinds of ideas about how to reapply the basic idea to Knowledge Sharing/Budgeting (in terms of time and attention — which seems to be a big problem in my world these days!) At the meeting, I also was part of a fabulous team of visual practitioners who volunteered to do a visual capture of the plenaries of all three days as a unified product. Tim Corey helped us envision a 24 x 8 foot image and then we all figured out a) how to work together to b) make a coherent capture. I’ll write more about this later after our debrief, including links to all the fab people I got to work with. But it was great fun and a lovely learning laboratory.   Other NCDD Materials: NCDD 2012 Tweets (I hope someone Storify’s them or harvests them before they are gone. It was not a huge tweeting crowd, but there are some good captures!) My photos, including some not-so-great images of the giant collaborative graphic capture 8 of us worked on (better images to come)

[Edited Nov10 to note that at the bottom of the post, I've uploaded a PDF of the Google Translated version of the web discussion. I so appreciated the spirit of this conversation, even though we were working across languages with machine translation.] This week there is what looks to be (using Google Translate) a great online conference called UBATIC+, a virtual gathering about ICTs and teaching in higher education hosted by the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was great to be asked to offer a short (14 minute) contribution which Silvia Andreoli has captioned in Spanish. I’m impressed — I’m not always so easy to follow! via NANCY WHITE - YouTube. I’m trying to follow along as best I can — my video and discussion launches Friday and I wanted to have some context for the conversation. And to get used to Google translate’s view of ICTs in higher ed! Language always presents such an interesting barrier. I don’t speak Spanish, but because of my Portuguese, I can decode some things. But I still find it incredibly tiring. It is important to remember this feeling — at a gut level — because so often I’m the one talking a mile a minute in English to people who are trying to think through two or three languages! Updated: Here is a quick PDF of the web conversation. UBATICDiscussions

I had the great pleasure of leading a webinar yesterday with The Nature Conservancy on Strategic Communities of Practice. We focused on gaining some shared sense of what we mean by "communities of practice," a framework fo looking at them strategically, some of the basic roles involved in communities and a quick peek at evaluation options. There was some lively interaction in the chat. Many of these folks work in parts of the world where web based online interaction is not so great, so a wonderful thread on mobile-device-supports for communities emerged. If you know of any great examples, please share. ( I just found this one with a quick search and also suggested looking at http://www.mobileactive.org. I think some of the Twitter chats could serve as a model for a mobile-based distributed conversation by a community as well! Here are some examples in education.) In addition, the good folks at TNC said I could share the webinar recording. I’m not sure if you can bear 90 minutes of recording, but just in case, here is the link. I’ve put the slides below as well, but as usual, they don’t make a ton of sense without the narrative. Thanks to Olivia, Nicole and Gillian at TNC for being such fabulous hosts and webinar facilitators! Strategic Communities of Practice from Nancy White via Strategic Communities of Practice.

I’ve had a long association with the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at the University of Davis and I get the opportunity to lend a hand here and there on projects. The latest in the MacArthur Foundation funded  Digital Portfolio/Badges project that Joanna Normoyle is working on for the new Sustainable Agriculture major. The problem is this: I don’t really know much about this sort of thing. I’ve been a long time skeptic about badges, but Joanna sucked me in by asking about how we can build more reflective practices into the system and that, my friends, excites me. So the next thing I thought was — I need to tap my network! I sent out a tweet and pretty soon some terrific people responded. Of course, this was also when I was crazy busy so I decided instead of tweeting back, I’d start this blog post with an offer. How about it @soletelee,  @openbadges, @lbraun2000, @emgollie @eknight , @kwerb, @pblhq, @dlnorman, @carlacasilli from Mozilla,  @donpresant,  @VennLibrarian and @dajbelshaw ("the badge guy for Mozilla Foundation.") Care to jump into a little peer assist? Joanna and I wonder if you’d like to find 30-60 minutes for a Google+ Hangout where Joanna can show you the thinking so far and just get some feedback. Are you game? If yes, leave a comment here. Joanna and I will try and find some time in the next ten days. Update: Meeting time fixed!  Hi Everyone, Thanks for filling out the doodle. It looks like tomorrow, 11/27, 11:30-12:15 PST will work well. Here’s the meeting link and talk soon! Joanna 1. Please join my meeting, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:30 AM PST. https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/357610317 2. Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a headset is recommended. Or, call in using your telephone. Dial +1 (805) 309-0027 Access Code: 357-610-317 Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting Meeting ID: 357-610-317  

Hyderabad December 2012, a set on Flickr. I was a bit shocked to notice I had not posted on my blog since mid October. Since then I have been to Vancouver, BC, Italy, Washington DC, India and now back to DC. So at the least I thought I’d wave to y’all and share some pictures!

In between trips last quarter I had the pleasure of being a virtual graphic recorder for the SAaTC Cyber Cafe. My work was commissioned for NSF through weDialogue at http://www.wedialogue.com The day long event was structured with plenary and World Cafe breakouts. I captured two rounds of the afternoon breakouts — the topics were heady, so I had to work pretty fast. You can see captures from the presentations http://www.satc-cybercafe.net/presenters/ and the Cafe sessions  http://www.satc-cybercafe.net/potential-research-topics/satc-cyber-cafe-research-topic-breakouts/ The three I did are below. I’m experimenting with a gallery. Let’s see how it works!  

If you haven’t explored Brainpickings, DO. Inspiration galore. Here is one I grabbed late last year to share… Andy Warhol meditates:I broke something and realized I should break something once a week to remind me how fragile life is. It was a good plastic ring from the twenties. via The Best History Books of 2012 | Brain Pickings. So what am I going to break this week? This month? This year? Here are a few ideas percolating. Break some social media habits (like Facebook!) Break out of my blogging slump and try some new approaches to loose up some ideas that are circling in my head. Avoid circling the drain… Break some bad eating/lifestyle habits — typical new years stuff. But I’ve been making progress. Break out of some of my consulting habits (hm, breaking habits seems to be showing up as I brainstorm…) So how will this remind me about life and its fragility? It’s power? I don’t think I’ve fully "gotten" Warhol yet. What about you? What will you pay attention to breaking?

I just received a request for some quick suggestions for picking a web meeting tool. I cobbled a few quick thoughts here (really ought to edit this properly, but maybe later.)  I’d love any additional opinions and suggestions. My Selection Criteria OK here are the criteria I use for evaluating web meeting systems, followed by a few quick brand comments. But you need to know, I am very focused on interactive engagements, so I’m biased away from tools that are broadcast-centric and hierarchically controlled! Purpose, Purpose, Purpose! What are you going to do? First be clear on the range of purposes you need the tool to support. There is a big difference between a "broadcast model" and a small group working session. Some tools can’t handle that range, particularly at the more interactive end. For broadcast to large groups, you need a host that can support that many connections, so consider size range. Consider what types of content you need to share/host and what kinds of activities you need to foster. Related to purpose is cost — if something is REALLY important, does it also have a budget line or do you need to use just free tools? Specifics (in no specific order!) 1. Audio Connection Technology: Can it accommodate Phone bridge AND VoIP - this may not be crucial for you, but when I’m working internationally, it is. 2. Recording: Can it record calls? Do you need just the audio or do you need the audio and video? Do you need them separate? Can those calls be saved in a non proprietary format? (I.e. Blackboard’s web meeting is a proprietary file that has to be replayed via their web platform. It can be export to a common .wav  or mp3 (for audio only ) files but you have ot know how to do that. ) Is file size an issue? 3. Diverse Participant Roles/Controls: It has a chat room where participants can chat peer to peer and not just mediated through a moderator. Webinars create a pretty significant power imbalance when only the moderator(s) can allow anyone to do anything. For a broadcast situation, this is fine. For engagement, you need more options for devolving control and agency to participants in an appropriate process and with appropriate technology. This means: a peer to peer chat room (I MUST HAVE THIS FEATURE!!!) ability to easily pass moderator roles to a person or more than one person. (For example, if you have to be the moderator to use the white board, then can you make EVERYONE a moderator. sometimes having a private chat option is important sometimes a controlled/moderated question queue is important. (I don’t tend to use those myself…) 4. White board. I can’t help myself, I’m visual. Particularly I like whiteboards where everyone can participate. I also like it when whiteboard tools can be used to annotate slides. 5. Applications/screen sharing: For web tours, showing things, etc. 6. Ability to share slides: Both in-app and via screen sharing. Sometimes one is better than the other. That said, please don’t bore me to death with your slides! 7. Do you need video? Some platforms support one camera at a time, others (like Adobe connect) support multiple cameras giving that sense fo F2F conversation. (Called multi-point video display) 8. Bandwidth tools: Does the platform have technology to ameliorate the impacts of diverse participant bandwidth? 9. Polling tools:  I like these — and ease of use of the polling tool is important to check. I like both planned and ad-hoc options. Advice: Don’t believe the hype — TRY IT! Don’t just believe the marketing materials! Try it and try it with the size group you plan to work with! Tools I’ve Tried:> Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate) - Great whiteboard, very stable, proprietary recording format, good adjustments for different bandwidths, higher on the cost end… @thatchmo also likes this tool! Adobe Connect - good for multi-camera video, decent white board, chat room, etc. WebEx - there are different webex products - make sure you trial the one you are looking for. Some are more broadcast oriented, some are more collaboration focused. LiveMeeting - Very higherarchically controlled. I would not recommend. GoToMeeting - recently changed and I have not evaluated the newer platform. I’ve read that there are some challenges in recording meetings. MeetingBurner - for smaller, team meetings, but not so great for large groups I’ve also used Google+, Skype, etc, but I suggest you avoid systems where people have to have a username/password. These are, however, great for ad hoc groups and G+ recording and autoposting to YouTube is slick! We used it this past fall for an online course. @BonnieZink likes G+ Resources: Robin Good is always noting the most recent info in the field http://collaborationtools.masternewmedia.org/ - he is my first go-to resource http://webconferencing-test.com/en/online-meeting-home http://web-conferencing-services.toptenreviews.com/ http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2012/102212-desktop-videoconferencing-test-263197.html http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9234680/7_low_cost_videoconferencing_services_Which_is_best_for_your_meeting_ And if you for some bizarre reason want more to read on webmeeting process: http://www.fullcirc.com/2007/01/25/what-are-your-most-useful-synchronous-online-facilitation-practices/ http://www.fullcirc.com/tag/videoconferences/ Now, what are you thoughts? Criteria? Recommendations?