Online Course: Intro to Community Informatics - and Dadamac Community (welcoming Laurie and planning) May 31, 2010

Hi Mike and Laurie

Welcome Laurie.

Laurie, I'm delighted you are interested in doing something with Dadamac as part of your Community Informatics course. You asked about ways to get started. If you go to www.dadamac.net and follow Nikki's blog you will get a good idea of what has been going on in our weekly UK-Nigeria meetings over the past few months. I have written more specific suggestions below, for you and Mike..

Next online opportunity

The next opportunity to link with Dadamac people online could be our next First Thursday - June 3rd. (These instructions for the First Thursday in April, tell you all you need to know about joining in).  Unfortunately as you are GMT -5 and First Thursdays are 12.00 GMT, lasting for about an hour, (ie 7.00 start for you) I don't imagine you will want to join us on June 3rd, but if you are interested in making an early start to be there then let me know and I will let Dadamac people know at our Wednesday UK-Nigeria team meeting (and see who can be at First Thursday to meet you). First Thursdays are something I have been doing for about three years now - originally they were for me and my general online network (especially Minciu Sodas people, mainly in Europe and East Africa), not particularly the Dadamac team. Recently John has been encouraging the Dadamac team to attend when particular people have said they will be there.

Mike's suggestions

Mike, you suggested an exchange of information/questions...  give the students a taste of what is going on... perhaps one or two might have a longer term interest as a result. You mentioned sometime during the second week (June 21 to 25), However,  you pointed out that this connection is part of a course which is, in itself, part of wide range of courses, so we are not expecting students to put much time into this. For reason I am keeping it simple.

Arranging something special - but keeping it simple.

The time zone issue suggests that we need to arrange something special for you. It may be that we are best to consider an online meeting with John and me (rather than the wider team) as we both have an existing interest in closer academic practitioner collaboration. If we can find a suitable time that will probably be the simplest solution.

Students in Canada should help us to shape the agenda before hand, so that best use is made of the online time. I suggest they do this by reading some of Nikki's blog posts. They can get a wider of view of our interests by digging deeper into dadamac.net. My blog (including its links to dadamac's posterous) gives a different slant on our present activity.

Preparing the agenda

Laurie, would you take responsibility for giving us the agenda for the meeting? It can be in the form of questions, or a few general headings that pinpoint areas where the students' interests overlap Dadamac's activities. You can do it with other students or simply on your own behalf. The objective is to make good use of the precious time online.

Our weekly agendas may serve as a rough guide for you Those meetings last one hour, but I don't know if we can offer so long to the students, we will need to check. Our meetings normally have six to ten items.

Meet and greet

The first agenda item is some "meet and greet" time. This is not idle chatter, but provides an important opportunity to pick up news. It is important to know something of "the mood "of the meeting - so we need to exchange news of any sickness or problems people are facing, visitors who maybe around at Fantsuam and likely to interrupt the meeting, or good news and celebrations that are foremost in people's minds. Nigeria is not an easy country. Sadly there is often news of road accidents, illness, funerals, storm damage and other challenges. But there is happy news as well, and fun and celebrations. Meet and greet time also helps us to check up on who is expected and if everyone has arrived. Sometimes it is little more than "How's things?" "Fine" and confirmation of who will chair the meeting - but other times it is very serious.

OAB

The meetings finish with Any Other Business. This provides another opportunity for information exchange that is not on the agenda. AOB sometimes leads to an impromptu mini meeting following the main one. It can also help raise items for inclusion the following week. It leads naturally into a more relaxed feeling and opportunity for people to agree they are ready to leave and say goodbye to each other. In a meeting from multiple locations asking everyone to respond to "AOB?" also picks up if anyone has been called away, or has had an interruption to their connection, and has not made it to the end of the meeting. You may not want AOB, but something similar to help people drop into informal farewells before pulling the plug on the meeting could be useful.

Discussion norms

We have established various normal ways of behaving during the our weekly meetings, which is why they are usually very productive.

For this proposed meeting it will probably be fine if everyone feels free to type at the same time - but according to the agenda and under the direction of whoever is chairing the meeting.

Simultaneous typing can lead to parallel conversations. People may already know this, but it is probably worth pointing out in case some people are newcomers to typed conferences. It is important to try and make each contribution clear in a stand alone way. A little discipline on this can save a lot of confusion. For instance it is a bad idea to write something general like "I agree" because by the time you press send for "I agree" someone else may have pressed send ahead of you on something you do not agree with. Better to take the extra time to write "I agree with ..." and give a reference .. it can probably be a tiny cut and paste from the conversation.

However, typing very long contributions can also cause difficulties because of the delay in giving your contribution. It is a matter of choice. Some people type the whole thing before sending.  Others break their contribution into smaller chunks, ending each with .... to show that more is on the way.

How am I doing Mike?

MIke, I noted your encouragement to Laurie to link with John and me, and also the warning which said "....be a bit cautious with Pam as her energy and enthusiasm is a bit infectious ;-) "

How am I doing on being very restrained and not coming up with any grand schemes and big vision?

Follow up

If anyone does want to do more follow up I suggest we do it through open letters. We could do that simply via dadamac's posterous and its comments, or I could set up a special blog for your students to use for open letters at Dadamac.net. Through the open letters option we could find out if there are sufficient overlapping interests to justify any further real-time online meetings.

I am happy to put time in to writing to Laurie (and/or other students) if we post the discussions at one of my usual online locations, because this would be win-win. Obviously the students would only take up this offer if it served their own needs - perhaps no-one will want to.

The win-win for me would be both short term and longer term. Short term it would help me to better understand the needs and interests of the academic community. It would also give me reference material to show to other academics about possible collaboration. In the longer term I want academics to use some of their knowledge budget to get information direct from Dadamac Limited - not just from published books and journals and expensive face to face meetings with other academics. You know, Mike, from years past, that I am genuinely interested in Community Informatics, but it is right that you should also know that I see this as part of my market research. The internet is a disruptive technology. It can help academics to be much more relevant - should they so wish.

Pamela