Happening.
Yesterday we held the second Happening on the topic of Emergent Democracy formed by Joi Ito. There were 23 participants from Asia, Europe and the US in an 1 1/2 hour event. This post discusses the modes and means of the Happening, not the topic or content -- with an aim to discover productive patterns of use.
A Happening is an ad hoc multi-modal group event. Three modes were used actively during the event for different means:
- Mode 1: Conference Call
- 17 participants (some elected not to participate because of the cost of international calls)
- Mean: moderated turn-taking discussion
- Mode 2: Chat
- 23 participants
- Mean: moderating turn-taking for the call
- Mean: backchannel open discussion
- Mean: signalling and voting
- Mean: whispered one-to-one communication
- Mode 3: Wiki
- 23 participants
- Mean: open note-taking
- Mean: linking to resources
- Mean: forming creative network action groups
- Mean: a place for continuity
By using multiple modes of communication simultaneously to foster group collaboration the bandwidth of conversation is increased. As was the case with Clay Shirky's social software summit that used In-Room Chat as a Social Tool, similar patterns were observed with social software in distributed use. Clay's central observation, that "under certain conditions, groups can find value in participating in two simultaneous conversation spaces, one real and one virtual" was confirmed by a vote of participants. In this case, the real conversation space was the conference call and the virtual was chat and wiki.
The first Happening, which had 7 participants, used the conference call and the wiki as the modes of communication. This conversation bandwidth was sufficient to be productive and the wiki captured relevant notes and resources. It also provided continuity for the next Happening, including serving as a launching point for a Topic Exchange that aggregated disparate posts on the topic, and coordinating logistics.
The second Happening scaled out of the limits of a creative network (12) into a social network (12-150) {there is a big assumption here, that conversation patterns can be mapped to relationship patterns}. With 17 participants it would have been impossible to have an unmoderated call to regulate signal to noise. The addition of chat as a mode allowed the conversation space to scale. Joi to moderated turn-taking using "HAND" and "NEXT" signals. The use of green, yellow and red signal cards embedded in chat provided additional signals for the moderator. While the call was the primary conversation, chat also provided a useful backchannel that did not rely on moderation and turn-taking. The moderator would often turn to the content of the chat session to pick up on issues for discussion during the call, particularly when the chat diverged from the call in numbers of messages or topic.
The use of multiple modes takes some adjustment, in dealing with interruptions, multi-tasking and loci of attention. Dan pointed out that younger generations who grow up with IM may not have this problem. My suggestion is that for each participant they are going to have their own balance in how they observe and communicate and they budget their attention from mode 1 to 3 in descending order. The call is the primary mode and if you miss something in the chat or wiki during the session you can return to it later.
One of the weaknesses of a call or chat by themselves is that conversations are lost when they end. The use of a wiki lets the conversation continue and gives it focus. Chat sessions are logged as wiki pages. Wiki note pages record the points from the call as well as the wiki. Multiple wiki note pages provide different perspectives on what occured. And the ability to easily edit wiki pages allow corrections and additions.
Similarly, blog-based conversations have a tendency to end when they are "below the fold," or off the homepage of a weblog. This can be offset through categories or metablogs approaches like Topic Exchange that aggregate conversations. Wiki pages provide persistent focus for conversations. Often times ad hoc groups form around an issue and gather to communicate. Talk is cheap and transforming it into action is one of the greatest challenges. Transforming a social network conversation into a creative network action is best supported by a wiki pledge page for collaboration. Individuals can easily refactor and organize personal views of creative and social network resources for their own productivity.
Joi rightly determined that Happenings should be kept ad-hoc, when issues discussed by wiki and blog reached an "escape velocity" that required a high bandwidth conversation to advance. We are also delaying the explicit definition of the ends of this conversation to allow the modes and means to be further explored. As patterns emerge from this topic and the tools are formed, they could support goals consistent with the topic such as supporting New England style town hall meetings... but it begins with evolving the tools and testing uses. [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
8:31:53 AM 
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