Ted Tschopp's Blog

Protection of the Commons: The Purpose of Community

Recently I saw the movie Robin Hood staring Russell Crow. The movie itself isn’t great or grand, but it serves as a wonderful jumping off point for a point I’m trying to make. The movie itself is a story of how Robin Hood became an outlaw and what motivates him to do what he does. Upon returning from the crusades Robin finds himself in a community under attack on all sides. The rightful Lord of Nottingham is dead on the battle fields of France, and his father is a weak old blind man. His wife, now single, turns out to have married him right before he left for the crusades. The church is demanding its tithe and King John is demanding taxes to pay for an army to protect the realm from the French. The old, dying father of Lord of Nottingham asks Robin to protect His son’s community.

What is Robin to do? What is he to protect? It turns out that one of his first tasks to protect the community is to make sure the common fields are planted. Eventually at the end of the movie we find Robin living off the land, an outlaw, still protecting the people of Nottingham by defending the commons of that community. The story of Robin Hood centers on the question of the commons. What makes a member a member of a community? Who has the rights to defend the commons? Who has the rights to tax the commons?

What are the commons in your community? What has brought you together? What is worth defending? What is worth fighting for to protect it from corruption? If you have a hard time answering this question, you probably don’t have a community. Once you have identified this, you are on your first steps to defining your community. With most online communities the commons are a kind or class of information that is specific to your discipline, location, or passion. Spend some time thinking about what this is for your community.

Now that you have thought about this, you need to move to the next step, how will you defend this common ground you have with your fellows? How will you see it grow? How will you nurture it. Think about a garden. You tear up the ground, you fertilize the garden, you plant the garden, you pull weeds in the garden. At some point you enjoy the garden. You might even be the envy of your neighbors and friends about how wonderful your garden is. Remember at some point you harvest your garden and you prepare for next year.

Your Community is your fellow gardeners working on the garden. The commons is the garden itself, and the fruit from the garden is value you provide your larger community. Think about how the fruit, the garden, and the gardeners are not all the same. The fruit is very different than the people working in the garden. The work the gardeners do is till the soil, water, weed, etc… but the fruit and the flowers are very different than then digging in the ground, watering, and weeding. The enjoyment from the garden is very different than the flowers and fruit you get from the garden. But all of this is part of the commons for that community.

In growing your community remember these ideas. They may not make you successful, but they will make you more likely to be.

A Model for “Collaboration” Tools

Over the last year I have given a version of this article as a presentation to many different groups explaining the role of collaboration tools in a corporate environment.  I hope that this model makes sense to readers. 

Here is a link to a copy of the presentaiton as a PDF

Introduction

Good collaboration is easy to spot.  Words that describe it are “rich, face to face, accurate, and real”  These words imply a certain quality of communication with good collaboration.  So what gets in the way of good collaboration?  Noise and cultural differences are the major medium problems.  In addition to these problems we have  artifact problems.  After a collaboration has taken place the artifacts left are messy and  temporary if we are lucky.  Many times a group of people will get together to work on a given deliverable and have nothing except memories to take away from the time spent. 

It is the role of Information Technology to narrow the mediation gap and leave memorable, permanent, and findable artifacts.  Let me repeat it again.  It is the role of Information Technology to narrow the mediation gap and leave memorable, permanent, and findable artifacts. 

John Udell wrote in Infoworld that “People are the exception handlers in all automated workflows.”  This is another way of saying that all points of collaboration are exceptions to an automated workflow.  The reason you are getting a people together to work on developing an artifact is that you have not taken the time to automate the problem or it is an exception.  What this means is that you can look at collaboration as series of midpoints in workflow.  Workflow moves from one collaboration point to another, creating artifacts that can’t be generated automatically.

In today’s modern organizations, the role of the employee is to generate knowledge artifacts as the exception handlers in process flows.  When the process of knowledge generation breaks down, it breaks down for certain reasons.  These reasons are finite.  The first is that the tools are not adequate for the job.  You have a hammer and a screw.  The second option is that the individual performing the work is not adequately trained to use the tool.  The only other option is that the tool doesn’t talk to the next tool in the workflow and the artifact generated by one individual must be translated and transferred to the next point of collaboration.  This final option was what took place before we had knowledge management systems such as the modern computer.

The effects of this breakdown are also finite.  The artifacts are not created and the whole process breaks down.  The second option is that the artifacts don’t get stored.  Perhaps they are stored, but they can’t be found.  Finally, the fourth problem is one where the artifacts are found, but there is no way to audit them against the purposes they were created. 

In the end, if you have this going on in your organization you will see people reverting to people and paper processes.  You see this with too many meetings and reliance on the “Good ol’ boy “ network.  You will see silos develop and a lot of people will complain because they are not a part of the silo or the network, or they don’t have enough time to process the paper and the meetings. 

I should note that if you do have tools in your environment and people are complaining about people using them incorrectly or too much, you probably have a problem with inadequate tools.  Email is the perfect example of this.  It becomes the way to avoid a paper process while still being a paper process.

The Model for Collaboration

I am going to categorize collaboration using three separate properties.  The first is Audience.  With audience I’m looking at the direction of the communication.  I’m not talking about the people listening, I’m talking about the person uttering.  The second property I’m going to look at is the actual artifact.  What is it exactly that we are leaving for those who were absent?  This leads to the final property; time.  How long do we need to keep the artifacts of the collaboration?

We are going to say that the audience property has only four separate variables.  The first is the conversation.  This is a one on one conversation between two people.  The second type of audience is the announcement.  This type of audience is that it starts with one person and goes to many.  The third type of audience is the Brainstorm.  This is a group of many people interacting together to generate an artifact.  Finally we have the feedback look.  This audience is identified as many individuals giving feedback to one individual. 

Taking a look at Artifacts, we will divide this into three categories.  Written, Verbal, and Visual.  Each of these artifacts build on one another into the next artifact.  A visual artifact has a verbal component.  Each verbal component, has a written component.

The final property to look at is time.  I will break up time into 4 separate categories.  The first category is Real time.  This type of collaboration leaves very little in terms of artifacts, however it is where most collaboration takes place.  The second category is Queued.  This type of collaboration is unique in that the artifacts are generally consumed by the recipient.  Think email or voice mail, after you have heard a voice mail, you no longer need it.  The third category is Long Term.  These are artifacts that are needed longer than queued, however they are not static or permanent.  The fourth as I have already mentioned is Static or permanent. The difference between the third and the fourth is that the third category has a sense of draft or work in progress where the fourth has a sense of artifact of record.  

Now that we have all our attributes on the table.  Lets look at the model. 

In my next post I will detail out each of the boxes in the model, and start looking at how the model can be used. 

Four is the new Three

In the last post I spoke about the three different types of people there are in the world in regards to conversations; the creators, the commenters, and the consumers.  I spoke about how each of these groups scale on logarithmic rates of 1, 9, 90.  I also mentioned that you will need to fill each of those roles at different times.  So what’s next?  Lets look at how we move people from one category to another.  What are the tools available to us. 

I’m going to start out by being honest.  I lied to you.  There are not three separate categories of people, there are four.  This last category is the people who don’t know about your conversation.  Lets call them the clueless.  These are the people who were not invited to the party.  The best way to increase the size of your entire pyramid is to increase the number of people involved.  This is the invitation.  

However, there is a problem with sending an invitation out to a party if the venue for the party isn’t ready.  You will not get that many people to show up to an empty lot, and those that do show up, few will stay.  You need a way to turn those clueless people into consumers, and to do this you need something for them to consume.  You need content.

This isn’t all you need.  You also need a way for those consumers to turn into commenters.  Are there any tools associated with your content that allows them to leave comments?  Are you inviting them to leave comments?  What are the barriers you are putting in a consumers way to make them into commenters?

But this also isn’t all you need.  You need a way to turn commenters into creators.  What are the tools you are giving people to allow them to create their own conversations?  Again, are you inviting them to create their own conversations?  What are the barriers, technological or philosophical, are you putting in the way of consumers to create their own conversations?

This also isn’t all you need.  If you have all the above you will have a great party, but you will not have all the pieces in place you need for a complete package.  You need to put something in place that will allow your content creators to invite their own friends to the party.  Ask yourself what barriers are you putting in place that don’t let your content creators to invite others.  Are you even helping them, or are you thinking that this is their problem to deal with?

Next time we will talk about the tools in each of these areas and the strategy you can use to create each of these tools for different media types.

Dehydrated

I was asked to put together a short story describing someone in a world not unlike the one presented to us in X-Files or Fringe. This is the first draft after about 60 minutes of work. Perhaps I'll do more in the future. The story is titled Dehydrated.

---

I picked up the chart, briefly scanned it; another waste of time. The deputy who had brought this woman into the ward had left as quickly as he could, and from the report they had left it seemed like he wanted to wash his hands of the whole incident. “Walking in Traffic.” “No known address.”

The whole file read like someone trying to pass the buck. I placed the clipboard back on the wall and motioned for my backup to follow me into the padded room.

Sitting in the corner was the thinnest girl I had seen in weeks. She rocked back and forth, black hair obscured her face. The stench of urine had already permeated the room. Janice was going to have to clean this one up and complete a rape kit. Poor Janice, I was going to ruin her day.

“Alice?” The chart had said that was her name.

She reached up with her hand and brushed her hair aside, and peered out from behind the curtains. It was as if she was experiencing sight for the first time. She opened her mouth, but no words came. Yup, no use in it now, get Janice to clean her up and then I could start the tests. Hopefully we would only need to keep her for 72 hours.

---

The door to my office opened and Janice walked in.

“’Alice’ has been cleaned up and given a gown. It looks like she had a couple bruises on her arms and legs. She also had a garland intertwined in her hair. I had to get the scissors to trim her hair to remove it. The kit proved negative.”

“Thanks Janice. Have George send her in.”

“Sure thing Nathaniel, you know the most interesting thing about that girl. My guess is that she is at least 20 pounds heavier after we washed her up.

---

The girl that entered looked like someone else. The eyes were no longer wide and grey, they had a ice blue spark to them, and her hair shown. Her cheek bones red with color. If Janice had not warned me, I would not have known.

“Alice, how are you this evening?”

“…”

I stood up and Alice watched me as I walked from behind my desk to sit in a chair opposite her.

“It seems that the shower Janice gave you agreed with you.”

“…”

“OK, well, I’m going to ask you some questions. Please answer to the best of your ability.”

The rest of the 30 minutes went the same way. Alice was there, and she followed me around the room as I moved back behind my desk. However she didn’t say anything. Not a single question was answered. As the interview started to come to a close, I made a note that perhaps I would try again the next morning.

“Alice, I am going to have to say Good bye now. Its been a good half hour, and you haven’t answered any of my questions. So we will being again tomorrow. What do you think about tomorrow?”

“…”

“George, can you come show Alice to her room. She will be staying with us for the evening.”

As George entered, I noticed it. Peeking up from behind her ears, a green garland, the buds of whatever flowering plant had been used to create garland were just forming.

“Alice that’s a lovely garland you have there. Did Janice make it for you?”

“…”

She turned, looked at me, and smiled the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. Our eyes met, and she quickly looked to the ground ashamed.

---

I got the call a few minutes after 5am. Alice was missing. I raced in. The bars outside her window had been pried open. The police found food prints in the planter under her window; a woman’s, 16 – 18 years old.

The officer who had brought her in said they had found her along the freeway, next to the nursery. She was walking along the access road. No one else was with her. They had already dispatched another patrol car to see if she had returned to that area.

Around Seven, my boss came in.

“Nathaniel, what’s wrong, you look like shit.”

“Stupid animals in the front yard again. Woke me up at three, then I got this call at five. Didn’t even get a chance to take a shower or shave, just came in.”

“Well, It’s just a missing girl. For Christ’s sake, go home and take a shower and shave. I don’t want to see you back before noon.”

I winched. I hated it when he cursed like that.

As I drove home, I kept replaying the events in my mind. Something was unusual about that girl. She had drank up the water, had she been dehydrated? And the garland; now that I think about it, it hadn’t been there when Janice had first brought her in.

I pulled up in front of the house and started to walk through the front yard. I was tired. So tired in fact that I almost missed the new tree growing in my front yard, a shredded hospital gown hanging from the branches.

---

The red of the flowers, the black branches…

I only found out many years later what Alice went through. But I remember that day like it was this morning. My eyes opened for the first time. I had seen something that wasn’t human and it wasn’t normal. It is growing in my front yard right now. But those eyes, whatever it was it had connected with me. In the end, Alice changed me. I now see the world as a very interesting and unusual place. In my line of work, I see many crazy and unusual things. The only thing that really scares me these days is the quacks and the crazies. The ones who ‘want’ to believe. There is no great conspiracy, no great meaning as these people see it.

But you didn’t come here looking for a lecture on Philosophy or Psychology. You came here to understand that bump in the night. I’m here to tell you that the bump you heard, it’s a little girl just as frightened as you, she trembles when you slam the doors and make loud noises. All she is looking for is for someone to call her beautiful.

What do you think about God?

What do you think about the following statements.  Are they true?  Do you believe them?  What would you add or subtract?  How would you change them?

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.