Conversation for identifying early uses

to design/configure the CIC site for

 

Product-orientation

When I originally considered what we could do with this brief (6 hour) event, given the diversity of people being invited and the complexity of their ideas and work, I decided that the only thing that made sense was to try to focus on the convergence statement that we were going to deliver to "the public" at the end (4pm Monday) -- the declaration of coherence, the announcement of the field as a field and what that meant.

Engaging the diversity of participants would not involve a sharing of everyone's specialties, but rather a calling on their viewpoints and creativity to help ensure that the final statement reflected a wide variety (ideally a full spectrum) of CI perspectives (since it is, after all, supposed to be inclusive; that's the whole point of this effort).

Consistent with this vision is my vision of what we do in the online workspaces before the event: Discuss the different aspects of that final statement in preparation for finalizing them at the event. The more committed people are to spending time online before the event, the more issues we can process and the deeper we can go together, but WHATEVER time people commit, by the time early January rolls around, we start to focus on convergence.

The metaphor I think of is all the work at the state dept and foreign service offices of various countries, and the diplomatic exchanges that happen prior to the big peace conference or disarmament conference or whatever. AT the conference, they iron out the final details, but the homework done beforehand is, ideally, so extensive, that they basically know what they're going to arrive at and are getting together to deal with the last thorny points.

We need to do that to get to our final agreement. That agreement can, if necessary, clearly state any differences that (we agree) exist, but it still needs to be an agreement, a statement we can all get behind. Then it will have resonant power throughout the CI networks that exist. If we can't achieve such a document I, for one, will be disatisfied even if everyone feels good at the end of the event.

Then AFTER the event comes the online work of REAL-izing the vision of our statement -- making it real in the real world.

Ways to link forum, blogs, and the f-t-f event

Nancy wrote:

(1) What I posted (which is long and contextual--read or skim it when
you can to help understand the rest of my points here) Anyhow, perhaps
it should be removed from the Forum and put in a "personal blog" and
some other things I want to post could go there as well. Other attendees
could do that as well, when the material relates to the upcoming
convergence as contextual, background, general, etc. (This in contrast
to a post I will do one of these days on defining CI etc. which is
directly responsive to Tom's original piece and clearly germane to the
F2F day--which SHOULD be on the Forum, I think.)


(2) We could pose a series of QUERIES for the Forum, and people could
propose new ones--queries CLOSELY RELATED to whatever it is we decide we
are doing during our F2F time. Responses to those queries would be what
was posted on the CIC forum site.


(3) Our development of the original set of queries would be directly
connected to our design of the F2F itself. That way everything written
on the Forum would be more or less focussed on something we are prepared
to process F2F.


(4) Any of us could spend as much time as we choose reading what others
have put on their personal blogs (on your or the CIC website once its
up) or go the websites of each other and read, but that getting to know
each other and each other's ideas in advance would be voluntary, as
people have time, and NOT viewed as something we must do in advance.


(5) The CIC Forum on the other hand would be a "must do". That is,
people would be expected to have read all those postings, in response
the queries--before they arrive, so we are that much ahead.


(6) If in posting in response to a query or to a response we want to
refer back to something in our own blogs or sites, as well as, of
course, to some other background piece, we'd add a link.


(7) We could decide to post on the Forum a link to a few key background
doc's we want everyone to read, in preparation, as well.