The approach
When it comes to online collaboration my interest is in the “socio-tech” side of things, so I consider three aspects.
- The people who are collaborating (who are becoming in some sense an online community).
- Their overlapping interests (the information they want to share, the initiatives they want to collaborate on).
- Tthe technology they will use during their collaboration.
Many of my contacts come from a background of “ICT” in education or development., and this led me to use the letters “I”, ”C” and “T” as a memory jogger for my three categories. Normally (in ICT4Ed&D) the “ICT” is for “Information”, “Communication” and “Technology”–but I widen it out further. For me:
- I is for Information, Interest or Initiative.
- C is for Communication, Collaboration or Community (where the community is a group of people who are communicating with each other for some purpose, and the purpose is related to the shared Information, Interest or Initiative.)
- T is for Technology (everything related to the technology that will allow people in “the community” to communicate with each other - not just hardware and software, but cost, convenience, knowing how to use it, keeping it working, and so on).
The example - TOCI meets COTW
The story of a recent introduction will illustrate what I mean.
The "I"
On Friday, March 25 I met Ben, Ranjit and Jeremy for the first time at TOCI meetup (I refer to them later as "the TOCI trio") They seemed to be idealistic software developers, so I wondered if they'd be interested in the idealistic work that the Coalition of the Willing (CotW) people are doing.
I admire what people are doing in CotW. Given it is about people working together, and seeing that, at present, the emphasis is on work that the techies are doing, I thought it might be helpful to bring in newcomers who could contribute on the techie side of things. (I hope to bring in other people later, but for now the interest in CotW seems to mainly focus on setting up the technical systems and structures).
I pointed the TOCI trio to the Coalition of the Willing film, and they were interested. That meant that I had found some overlap on “I for Information, Interest or Initiative”.
Increasing the "C" with some "T"
The next thing to do was to focus on introducing the TOCI trio to the Coalition of the Willing community, to see if there was any interest in collaboration, on both sides. The TOCI trio were getting to know me, but I wanted them to get to know “their own kind of people” at CotW i.e. some techies. To do this we needed to make use of some communiation technology.
Typed Skype chats
There are a number of ongoing Skype chats in CotW. The best starting place for introducing people is an informal general chat called “The Breezy Tavern", where people from the various working groups drop by to catch up with each other. So we went on Skype, chose "The Breezy Tavern" chat, and dropped in to say "Hello". Fortunately Charley Quinton was there. He's one of the techies (and socio-techies) I know well, so I did some introductions.
Skype speech
At the Tavern we only use typed chat, and I thought the TOCI trio would appreciate speaking to Charley as well. To me, Skype voice chat is more like going into someone's home. I guess that's because of the background noises and you sometimes “meet” other people who happen to be around (especially with Charley, who seems to have permanent “open house”).
So from the Tavern we “went to Charley's place”. That was good. Charley and I knew we'd both be at a COTW group meeting on Sunday evening, which had outreach on the agenda. It was a useful opportunity to start getting to know the TOCI trio in advance of the Sunday meeting and finding out if they would like to join us (if the other CotW people thought it would be a good idea).
More preparation
Over the weekend I contacted Ben by text message and e-mail (communication channels we had used for the original MeetUp meeting) and we exchanged Skype details. I also spent some time in the Tavern discussing the approaching Sunday meeting with some regulars to check it would be okay to bring the newcomers.
About half an hour before the meeting started Ben and Jeremy arrived on Skype to meet me, and Charley joined us, and a couple of others who would be at the meeting (Paul and Tiberius).
Etherpad and group skype voice chat.
The meeting was held "in our usual way" . That is a group voice chat, combined with an etherpad which already has an agenda and whatever notes people have added before hand (the etherpad is edited throughout the meeting). Ben could only stay for the first part of the meeting, but long enough for introductions and a flavour of how we work. Jeremy stayed for the full meeting, and afterwards joined one of the techies in a more detailed chat.
Follow-up
Next day I checked back with Ben, who was planning a catchup session with Jermey and was looking forward to getting involved. Later, back in the Tavern, various regulars commented positively about the newcomers. I'll look out for Ben and Jeremy and if we don't meet I'll ask after them. I know Ben was chatting in the Tavern earlier in the week, because he had left just before I got there. I'm hoping to hear news of Ben and Jeremy taking an active part in one of the techie working groups before too long.
The social community building side of collaboration
Am I over- obseesive about the social, community-building side of collaboration? Perhaps, but that is my online background. My experience of online collaboration started with helping people to communicate between low-bandwidth rural Africa and high-bandwidth UK. That also means including people who don't speak English as their first language, and people, on both sides, who have very little knowledge of each others culture - plus there are all kinds of technical hurdles. Given that kind of challenging experience, it won't be surprising if, when I bring new people into a group, I do automatically try to tick all the boxes for an easy entry - and I know I'm not alone in recognising that Online collaboration doesn’t happen by magic.