I’m in the middle of taking a course on Virtual Learning Environments (syllabus here), and reading a few chapters from Adaptive Software Development by Highsmith. It approaches the team-building and collaboration process from the perspective of complex adaptive systems theory, and contains some interesting insights in evolutionary development and creating environments where emergence can occur. I’ve created a summary of a chapter that I’d like to share, as I think it can be valuable for many of us, and specifically for the community of practitioners around the junto concept.

Collaboration is an act of shared creation or discovery. (schrage89) Continue reading →

[This article is crossposted from Jorge Jaime‘s blog, in response to my video post a few weeks back about “The Conversation.” I recorded an hour long chat on skype with Scott Lewis (@jazzmann91), broken down into 5 minute clips, in which we discussed the concept behind Junto. Namely, it is a conversation platform we are inspiring to be built around the intention of creating a respectful space where people can engage in generative dialogue and come to a place of understanding and shared meaning. Scott and I discussed what that looks like, and what kind of core values people may embrace in order to have meaningful, productive conversations that lead to positive action. In the comments section of that post, Jorge suggested someone break down the content of the discussion so that others could learn from it. I suggested he do it. He did. And here it is below! Very thorough breakdown, thank you Jorge. Original post here.]

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A week ago Venessa Miemis shared a conversation where she spoke with @jazzmann91. In that conversation they talked about how to have The Conversation and some key points that we needed to take into consideration while participating in ‘The Conversation’. I suggested that it will be good to have all of the points treated there organized into a post so that we could go back and read when we were about to participate in ‘The Conversation.’

‘The Conversation’ is a debate where people discuss ideas around a topic, problem or area and try to make an impact and change the reality of that particular theme. Here’s the post that I hope will help us create a ecosystem for collaboration and will help us develop ideas a bit further.

The Internet is the ultimate human communication tool, yet communication needs certain guidelines to be really effective. In international business the cultural differences are studied in detail in the negotiation workshops. This is because communication is key to build open and honest relationships. In fact that is one of the core values of Zappos: “Build honest & open relationships with communication”.

The power of the web could be enhanced if communication could be made easy. The web is a way to accelerate serendipity, people from around the world will gather together and collaborate, something that was impossible some years go. This on-line social gatherings could help us form tribes of people willing to make a change. Take for example the myriad of collaboration tools created to help Haiti where people from different countries gathered and made projects work in days.

We’ve given a tool that can help us drive change faster. The Internet if used with the right purpose can help people gather and work towards a shared higher purpose. But for this awesomeness to happen we need to nurture and create long term trust relationships. The guidelines in this post were conceived so collaboration could flow.

These guidelines are often thought as obvious and you’ll probably think all of these points are, but it’s good to have it written down as a reference point in case we forget them. The human mind gets distracted or carried away easily and having guidelines could help reshape the way we think and in this case collaborate. Continue reading →

[This is a crosspost from Alpha Lo’s blog, Open Collaboration. Though he had a much catchier title for the post (“What I Learned From Venessa Miemis” – ha), I thought he did a great job listing some of the attitudes and behaviors helpful when trying to extend oneself, collaborate, and evolve. Alpha’s doing some amazing work in creating gift circles on the west coast. Check out the original post and comments here.]

I got on Twitter around November last year and started following the twitterings of a whole bunch of folk. I discovered a woman named Venessa Miemis and her blog www.emergentbydesign.com which was about systems theory, social media, networks, & community. They were very thoughtful posts in the blog that intrigued me quite a bit. And what was really interesting about this blog was that around that time at the end of 2009 there started being a huge amount of comments posted at the end of blog entries. Quite a number of the blog entries had an insane amount comments – well over the 100 mark. Reading through them took a lot longer than just reading the blog itself. And they were a wealth of material. Venessa had helped facilitate a whole community through her blog and tweets. Continue reading →