This wiki will live and grow through your comments. If you don't feel like adding tools directly here, please post your additions in the conversation forum on harvesting tools http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/712. Suggestions for how this tools collection can be improved are warmly welcome!
The comments in the forum will be harvested and integrated into the table below on a regular basis.
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Picture a field in which someone has planted wheat.
We imagine the harvest from that field to look like a farmer using equipment to cut down the wheat, thresh it, and seperate the seeds from the stalks.
Now imagine a geologist a biologist and a painter harvesting from the same field. The geologist picks through the rocks and soil gathering data about the land itself. The biologist might collect insects and worms, bits of plants and organic matter. The painter sees the patterns in the landscape and chooses a pallete and a perspective for work of art.
They all harvest differently from the field, and the results of their work go to different places and are put to different uses. But they all have a few things in common; they have a purpose for being in the field and a set of questions about that purpose, they have a pre-determined place to use the results of the harvest, and they have specific tools to use in doing their work.
What’s useful to note is that, despite the field being the same, the tools and results are specific to the purpose and the inquiry.
It is like this when we meet. There is much we can do, but a well thought through inquiry helps us to sift all that we might learn in the meeting to that which serves our purpose. When we can design questions that open up our curiosity, think through how we might use the results of our work and use the tools appropriate to the task, we can go deeper into our tasks and acheive emergent, innovative and better quality results.
So just try this for the next meeting you are a part of. Give some time before hand to create a little inquiry: “What am I curious about in this meeting?” Think in advance how the results of that inquiry will help you work better, and decide on at least one way in which you will use what you have learned. See if that doesn’t create just a little more engagement and createa little more momentum for the results.
(from Chris Corrigan's blog)
Harvesting tools help us make the harvest happen! Recording, seeing patterns and feeding back the wisdom into the knowledge ecosystem so also others can benefit from it.
But also to make the harvest more exciting, more fun, to help people with different learn types (visual, auditive, kinesthetic etc.) and in different developmental stages to easily grasp the essence, for weeding harvest into other events and ecosystems etc.
Modern technology and the internet are offering us an incredibly rich variety of tools to record, visualise patterns and easily share our harvest, but there are lots of useful tools for recording without computer or other electronic devices.
The following is a matrix of tools and their purpose, which will hopefully be enriched and build on by many practitioners on an ongoing basis. Inspired by practitioners of the art of harvesting of the AoH community and beyond, but especially by Chris, George, Helen, Monica and Ria.
Please add all the harvesting tools and methods that you regard worth sharing.
| purpose | method/tool | description and examples |
| recording if clustering is needed later | Post it notes | are small sticky paper notes, available in various colors and sizes; can be easily moved around and e.g. sticked on a flip chart or brown paper example of how it can be used for harvesting here are also available as computer programme for PC, see reviews and download for free here |
| (group) brainstorming, recording and visualisation of patterns | Mind-mapping | is a technique, more than a tool; write core idea in the centre of horizontally put A3 or bigger paper, continue expanding or deepening the idea by adding branches and sub-branches; further resources here can be done alone or in a group, also with special softwares: Mind meister is a free collaborative mind mapping online application, you can buy or get a mind mapping software for free here (hint: freemind (free) or mind manager (to buy) are good programmes) |
| recording and feeding back in real time, co-creation of an updatable knowledge base | wiki | easy to create website (also for non IT specialists), collaborative editing tool, can be password restricted for editing and/or viewing, for more detailed description see here; wiki tools (e.g. how to start a wiki) here a comparison of wiki hosting services here |
| for journaling, recording and feeding back the evolution of an activity, organisation or individual | blog | online diary, also suitable for groups; further description see here Blog software comparison chart here additional hints for smart bloggers |
| recording and capturing ongoing conversations between multiple users | forums | online conversation or internet forums is a web application for hosting conversations and posting user generated content; they are normally part of collaborative online platforms. See also comparisons with other web applications. Major difference to email is that forums have a pull (vs. push) communication approach and the whole conversation thread is visible to the community. example: Evolutionary Nexus is based on drupal (an open source configurable content management platform) |
| feeding back visuals | sharing websites | Visuals are an essential part of any harvest, as they can transmit emotions and recall memories much more than plain text. Thanks to web 2.0 there are a variety of free services for videos: you tube (more services, comparison and more here) presentations: SlideShare |
| visual categorisation, pattern seeking | tag cloud | Taxonomy is the science and practice of classification. Tag clouds are primarily used for navigation and visualization on Web 2.0 sites that employ user-generated metadata (tags) as a categorization scheme. TagCrowd is a web application for visualising word frequencies in any user-supplied text by creating a tag cloud. Example: Flickr was the first to use tag cloud |
| recording | visual or graphic recording | Graphic recording (sometimes referred to as reflective graphics) involves capturing on large-sized paper—in words, images and color—people’s ideas and expressions as they are being spoken in the moment. More on visual practitioner |
Online colaboration Online meetings | Online shared witheboard | Can be used as a collaboration environment, a meeting room or a personal web-based whiteboard. Using this workspace, you can communicate by chatting, drawing, creating cards, and adding content from around the Internet. |
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