Revision of Note from skype chat of the Hosting Online community from March 27, 2008 - 19:13

Hosting Online Conversations and Communities
Notes from the Skype chat of 26 March 2008

Participants: Erik Mathijs, George Pór, Helen Titchen Beeth, Michel Vandermeulen, Nora Ganescu, Vibeke Batting, and Ria Baeck

Notetaking: Helen and Ria
Editing: Ria


Setting the context and purpose of this conversation

George: It was a good time when we gathered at the AoH training and as a knowledge circle about the art of hosting online conversations and communities. Some of us in this call have also come to my Open Space session about connecting our conversations. All that led to this moment. We decided to have this call so that we can further explore what connects us and what can we do together.


Check in: Why did we show up here? What attracted us to be on this call?

Eric: I would like to be a better online host, linking conversations going on, especially in Belgium. How to organise a learning circle in a sustainable way? Online is the way forward.

Vibeke: I remember the circle in Brussels, I couldn't explain why I chose to show up. Now I think I know why: I have put in some comments on Nexus - there are pieces coming together about wishes I have had for things - creating a hub/cradle for things that can happen in outer space. What can a hub without a physical space do here? I am excited about the possibilities.

Michel: I did a training with Otto Laske, by teleconferences. I found it valuable to connect only by hearing voices. It was possible to have good contact. Now, I'm with people I know, and I want to sense what happens.

Nora: Conversation with George about E-Nexus and what we can do with it. My big challenge would be to create somewhere in a virtual space the AoH energy and feelings.
So that people - including myself - feel attracted, welcomed, ready to participate in an authentic way. I'm here to learn and learn by doing.

Ria: I have been building E-Nexus with George from the beginning a few years ago, and my main purpose has always been to build the foundation, to make it happen. We had a first version, now we have a better second version, but still a lot of bugs and things to settle with the programmers. My main focus these days around E-Nexus is to make it a space, which is beautiful and easy with a lot of meaning and content. I will do that for a couple of weeks and months until the place is good and beautiful and people can find their way easily. The big picture is about different communities beside the AoH community, and that these communities can learn from each other. I'm here to listen to what is needed to communicate with the programmers.

Helen: I am member of a number of communities, who can learn a lot from each other. I have been a member of AoH for 18 months: it has so much knowledge that they don't know they have. ENexus is the only way that the community can see what it knows, and be able to consult it. We need to catalogue the knowledge that is out there and encourage people to bring it to the unloading bay. Put it where it makes sense to everything else. This is not a job that can be done by one person, but by a community - to attend to the knowledge garden. To start: the community of AoH - what did we learn?

George: I believe that Nexus can be a fun playground and training ground for augmenting the collective intelligence and wisdom of communities, at increasing scale, which is to me the best game on Earth to be part of. A personal and rewarding learning opportunity for me is how to be present and supportive to the community from a "beginner's mind," forgeting everything that learned about online hosting in the past 25 years. I don't want to impose nay past knowledge but to be open to the learning that arises from the now. Not to be a on online hosting guru but a learning partner.


Online conversations (in the forums) as Open Space sessions

Michel: Ways to exchange, content, relationships in these contexts. I'm a net-worker and I see other ways that can bring people together in a natural environment. I'm not yet clear how you can bring people to a higher community level, but I know that I can bring people together in a natural way, in other ways than the AoH.

Helen: Could you write about this? That might be a way of starting a conversation on the forum - like opening an Open space session in the training.
How does that sound, using the metaphor of Open Space session, as describing the forums?

Michel - Yes! The value of the hosts: his/her attitude - the attention the host gives to the flow - and to get to the essence and inject it back into the community. It's the only way to keep attracting people. It won't always work.

George: We could create an online OS event with sessions set up for a certain week, where people could sign up in advance, with a beginning and an end, and the caller of every session would fill in its harvesting template, post the harvest in the knowledge garden, and add tags.

Nora: I like the idea of a session, with a time and a topic: even it defeats a bit the idea that the internet is available at any time. But for somebody like me, who feels easily isolated on a forum, "meeting online" is a great idea.

George: Signing up for different hosting opportunities - we could use that pattern also for the online Open Space sessions, as well as for larger patterns of the unfolding life online.

Nora:  What a good idea: to sign up for hosting little online sessions... for exercise.
See how can we maximise learning and participation...


Bumblebees

Eric: A lot of bumblebees and butterflies - how to get them to contribute?

George: I wouldn't worry too much about how to get people to contribute. It's about our own passion. If there is energy in the group for what we want to do, it will happen.

Vibeke: Bumblebees - how can we get everyone to experience this nice space we have here and how easy it is to navigate and get into dialogue with people. That will create the attention field...

Michel: The role of the bumblebees, they pollinate by traveling to other flowers - what is the quality a bumblebee must have to be useful in cross-pollination?

Helen: A bumblebee is one who goes from one conversation to the other, and shares in the next one what she/he brings from the previous one.

Ria: We have a tendency to look at the others: "How can we attract them to participate?" If we - the 5, 6, 7 that we are, if we do it with the very first beginnings that we can, and share it and invite people in, then something will happen.

Helen: whoever shows up are the right people!


What are we going to plant in this garden?

Helen: What are we going to plant in this garden? My first idea is - and please react - there where a number of things that happened in the AoH that people would be very happy to hear about.
One: the design of the new pattern - the matrix we had for signing up for the different hosting opportunities. It would be interesting to hear about these experiences, to share these personal learnings.
Two: the new pattern around the wicked question - and the fun we had all with that. Involving some of the people who were in the design of this process. Anyone here?
Third: The actual experience of being in the harvesting team; nice testimonial to share.

Nora: I was in the wicked question team, and I am writing up the design of our little session.

George: I was a host of the harvesting team in the training and offer to be again a caller or host of the online hosting/harvesting team.

Helen: One thing I forgot to mention: to put the whole journal online, so that the whole community can work on improving it.

Erik: What I bring from the AoH on AoH (June '07) is to gather stories that we as practitioners experience in the world - the whales. We want those stories from the field. I would like to contribute and read them.


What kind of garden do we have, what can we use it for?

Vibeke: I was part of the harvesting team - interesting experience. What kind of plants can we put in the garden? What kind of garden do we have? What is E-Nexus, and what can we use it for? What do we want to use it for? Do we need to have a dialogue in our community here?

George: These are important questions. Would you convene an online conversation about this?

Vibeke: Yes, I can do that.

Ria: George can speak about his ideas of what this garden could become.

George: I have written a lot about that in the last couple of years - maybe I could introduce some underlying principles, if we want to talk about it. I would post some snippets online. What the garden will really be, will grow out of what it is now, whoever is here with energy to make it happen.

Putting it simply, it's about creating a sustainable learning field that doesn't end when one event ends. That's the overarching metaphor: a learning field for collaboration, creating meaning, coordinating wise action, when we are not together physically. It's a playground, a training ground. It can be many other things. It's a place where projects can emerge depending on who has energy, inspiration and initiative for what. For example Chris Corrigan brought to Nexus the a pattern library for AoH - it's a skeleton now, but it will make a big difference for the work of all practitioners, for the whole field.

Michel: In my free time I'm also a gardener.  We have different kinds of soils, we can create them by fertilising, watering, drying, etc. Then you can grow different crops and different harvests. What is the soil of Nexus, applying different patters on the same crop/soil to get different intelligences?

George: We have many different soils (different communities) and different channels/modules: conversations through a community blog different than through a forum/wikis, etc. Soon we will add video/audio. There can be many kinds of nutrients and different community cultures. Right now, the most urgent question is what can we do to help the Art of Hosting practitioners recognise their collective genius within and across the various training events? Once we have made a significant difference to the AoH community, it will be easy to replicate our learnings to support other communities working with other social technologies of freedom, such as Presencing, World Café, or Appreciative Inquire.

Michel: The selection of the seeds is important.

Helen: A garden is a natural thing. Monica comes with the metaphor: what happens after the fire with the desert: the seeds who are first will influence the shape. The fun will come from what grows in our garden.

George: Fortunately, we have high quality seeds, for instance the AoH journal and rich content that is available already on Nexus.  I feel very inspired by the interest of Chris Corrigan to build the pattern language. We cam also care for the quality of seed by going online from a space of silence and being centered, embodying the quality of presence we had together in our physical space.

Michel: The metaphor of the garden: Do we want a garden, or do we want nature? It makes a real difference. If we are talking about harvesting, we are talking about a garden. What are qualities of a gardener?

George: I wrote a lot about knowledge gardening and knowledge ecology, 10-15 years ago when I worked with another group. I can activate that knowledge as needed.

Helen: Also Mushin has written some stuff about this. CommunityGardening - he can help teach us in this if we invite him.


What do we intend to do in the next couple of weeks?

Ria: What do we intend to do in the next couple of weeks? Get a sense of what is needed in order to do this. Ria and George know their way around the garden, but not everybody does.

Vibeke: I will start a conversation about the garden - what kind of garden do we have, do we want, etc. Architecture, etc. Maybe also - with some of you - host an online chat on that.

* Working on projects
Erik: Can we do online what we did on the fourth day of AoH - working on projects (existing and calling for new ones) - can we do that on E-Nexus?

George: I wouldn't encourage it right away, firstly because we want to make the site more ready (a more enjoyable experience before extending the invitation to the wider audience), secondly because any kind of project of any complexity needs something else - skilled hosting and facilitation, without which the technology will be disappointing. In my dream a number of us would become those skilled facilitators, stewards, able to connect the very rich features of the platform with the varying and emerging needs of the projects. It will take time to develop the capacity to support projects the way they deserve to be supported.

Ria: Working on projects - I think it's a great idea, because on the AoH email list people often call for help - I think it can be very inspirational for a lot of people to have conversations on real projects. Let's wait for a few weeks before starting.

* Giving feedback on the site
Erik: I offer to become a very heavy user in the coming weeks - who do I give feedback to?

Ria: Either you first send it to me or we agree on where we put it on Nexus (forums or wiki).

* Stories
Erik: The stories are out there, it's a matter of compiling them.
Helen: I have a little offering on that aspect. A very living way to get the stories out of people is doing a skype interview with these people - Tim Merry for the story of The Shire, Silas about Kufunda - and then post the audio file and gradually call in the community to tell their own story. - for the rest of the community.

* Adding to the knowledge garden
Nora: I can post the design of the question session when it is ready. Also invite the team who worked on it, and everybody to talk about it.

Ria: I will send the most recent version of the AoH Journal to Helen for wikifying it.

* The chaordic path for this community
Vibeke: Nora and George were talking about the chaordic path for this community. How does this fit in the time to come?

George: I am holding space for the possibility that we do explore together the chaordic stepping stones for Nexus. I didn't want to start with this right now when there are so many practical things to engage with immediately that can be more energising for many of us than the work on the chaordic path. I prefer to hold back a little on that, because years ago I wrote a lot about the need and purpose, and other stepping stones of Nexus, and what I learned was that it's not useful to think about the chaordic path until there is a community interested in that. I would like us to engage in the actions that we've been discussing and when some of us  have appetite to explore the chaordic path, then I would love to contribute.

Vibeke: parallel - learning by doing. Maybe I would like to introduce some discussions around that.

Nora: I agree with George because of "personal" reasons: for me online collaboration is quite alien, and all I want is to warm to it.... so one small project for me will do to start with.

George: In the next couple of weeks, I will work with Ria and the programmers to improve the functionality of the site, and support Chris in using the site to develop the pattern language. I will probably also write a new blog - Jump Time - about Evolutionary Nexus in a broader context (once a month). Regarding the knowledge gardening conversation, I will review my notes and pull a few pieces in the conversation if and when they are relevant.


Next call

Should we have another call in 3-4 weeks?
Better to do in 3 weeks, and invite the new ones in who couldn't make it tonight.
And post the notes of this chat on ENexus. Louise asked for it.


Check-out:

Ria: I think we are ready to close the call. One line check-out.

Ria: I liked that we had practical, personal ideas, not conceptual. Getting our hands dirty
Erik: Spring is in the air, so let's start learning!
Vibeke: Bandwidth - it's a huge space to hold.
Michel: Spirit and flow - I liked to be here, I will be back!
George: My heart is singing and I'm sending a big hug to all of you
Nora: I enjoyed reading and hearing.
And Helen lost here smileys!!!