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Hosting coherent conversations in forum topics

Submitted by George Por on October 1, 2008 - 06:33.

This topic is about

exploring together

how to take advantage of Nexus' sophisticated dialogue-support options

for nurturing the ecology of emergent conversations

by hosting coherent inquiries

that may lead to coherent action.

 

Thank you, George!

Submitted by Helen Titchen Beeth on October 1, 2008 - 08:48.

I was wondering as I posted (in a hurry... always in a hurry) about how to really make sense of this conversation! It was so rich, and yet so all-over-the-place.

 

I feel there is a reason for posting the conversation also in its natural flow - can we have sub-threads on a thread, if we were to create a topic called nuggets from the AoH mailing list, to keep the story flow, that does provide some context and meaning. It would be a pity to chop up the nuggets and lose the context of the conversation altogether.

 

Secondly, I was madly frustrated at not being able to add tags to specific replies, that would have led to those nuggets wherever they were. Is there anything we can do about that?

 

In the mean time, I'll try to find time for more active gardening work and do what you suggest, George. The main difficulty is that I have half a book to translate by the end of November, which has to be placed squarely in the middle of my priorities.

Harvesting nuggets from email lists into forum topics

Submitted by George Por on October 1, 2008 - 07:27.

Helen Titchen Beeth opened a new forum topic about Theory U, with messages ported from the "Art of Hosting" mailing list, including a comment about  Otto Scharmer's new blog.


That opened the possibility to talk about how to harvest nuggets of meaning from email lists or exchanges into forum topics. The first idea that I'd like to share is about how to select a location on Nexus for posting what is now a set of replies in the Theory U topic but thematically not related to it.

 

If they were in the same thread on the mailing list, that's not because they belong in the same theme but simply, mailinglist software and how peoole use "threads" in it don't allow for a more refined approach that can focus conversations on the same topic.

 

So putting those diverse quotes from the mailing list in the same forum topic it risk to neutralize one of the forum structure’s advantage over the mailing list: it can facilitate more coherent, topic-structured inquiries.

Where would one put those replies? Some of them are related to other topics already set up in the forums and would be better placed there to support the potential of conversation in those topics. For example, the following replies may serve the ecology of our conversations better if they were moved to the intergenerational forum:


Multiple forms of maturity?
Age and maturity aren't the same thing
Reply from Chris Corrigan
We need intergenerational
Old thinking must die - bring in the 20-somethings!

Another set of replies, related to the looming “mother of economic crises” would allow more focused inquiry if they were posted a new forum related to it. If there was one ready to facilitate it, I’d be happy to set up such forum.

Yet another set of replies that relate neither to Theory U, nor the intergen or economic crisis themes, could go in one's blog, and if and when they gather interest, moved/copied from there into their own topic.  Alternatively, they could also go into a new topic in one of the AoH forums, called “Nuggets from the AoH mailing list" yet to be created. That would leave the "Theory U" topic more uncluttered and more supportive for those who may want to have a conversation about that.


Let me know whether these ideas are clear and useful.