It’s easy to think of participation in virtual meetings or events as second cousins.

And often it is. Sound quality is poor and made worse by people not muting their mics. There are no informal spaces for serendipitous conversations. And worst of all – people transport poor meeting or event practices into an online space where they are amplified by unfamiliarity with the technology.

I would like to share when I like online participation.

Note that online participation can be synchronous (all in same time e.g. conference call) or asychronous (at different times e.g. a discussion group). For the most part, it is a mix of both.

Feeling connected with people I might otherwise not meet

• This happens in meetings where there are small group conversations – for example in breakout rooms, discussion forums, on Twitter…
• It takes place at events where there are spaces to find out more about other people beyond their work personna and discovering I have something in common with them e.g. online café, informal introductions e.g. in a google doc
• It’s more likely to happen with an agenda/program where a small group of us are solving a problem or preparing for an initiative together
• I feel it most when there is a place where there is cheeky banter and we can be playful

Learning from reflection and feedback

• I learn so much when there are regular moments and spaces for everyone to take notes in a shared document (e.g. google docs). There is time in the agenda to write down our key insights and ongoing questions from the previous session/conversation and read and comment on what others have said.
• I love asynchronous conversation more generally. I’m more of a ponderous person who finds quick quips and clever replies only after everyone has generally gone home (!) so having time to interact someone’s words in my own time helps me express myself better
• It’s easy to take the temperature in or at the end of an online meeting, through a chat channel, a tool (e.g. mentimeter). That’s great for making iterative adjustments to group dynamics, agenda design, and for future events.

A shared memory on the go

• It’s great having a record of the meeting/event: a recording of the whole thing or parts of it; the conversations, reflections, questions, and insights; analytics data of who was there, their device, and other info that helps you plan for the next meeting.

Distributed leadership

• There is a lot to do in an online event and it’s an opportunity to share out the leadership – taking care of the tech, looking out for people wanding into the wrong space, gathering the different issues and ideas into one shared space, reaching out to people who can’t get in. It’s really an opportunity to reach out and build a sense of community.

Am I the only one who enjoys these things? What else do people like, appreciate or even love about virtual meetings and events?

Yet again I have a client – of 5 years – who has made the technology a centre-piece of their strategy.

I cry.

It’s a technology that I suggested and helped to create. But I seem powerless to convince them that the proportion of resources they are investing in technology as opposed to building the learning network are a waste of everyone’s time.

Technology and community building are not the same thing. I get it. Funding can be easier for tech. Tech is sexy or mysterious – depending on your relationship with it. Organizations understand $$ for tech.

But it won’t build you a network. Building a network requires social artistry, persistence, understanding the community, knowledge of the domain, attention to practices, conversations, more conversations, and concern for creating value.

If your only qualifications are being a tech whizz, you are not cut out for the job.

If training people on how to use a simple technology takes up a hundred per cent of your attention, you are on the wrong track. If it takes up less than five percent of your time – in response to requests by network members – you are probably getting close.

It’s community building 101. And I have to watch as my.own.client repeats the same.old.mistake.

I cry.

Technology has always been relevant to communities to help members connect across time and space and share relevant resources. Web 2.0 technologies are often associated with new, more “horizontal” ways to connect and share information, networked thinking, and new forms of representation—all uses of technology that are very much aligned with the peer-to-peer learning typical of communities of practice. There are many different tools and for each tool, many different realizations; and there is also a great variety in the ways people and communities use these tools. Yet practically, it is useful to review briefly the potential that these new technologies hold for the learning of communities of practice.

However, the use of these technologies brings up all sorts of delicate community issues. Who has the right to read, edit, or administer a wiki? Who is an author on a blog? How do members keep track of where relevant events are happening and relevant things are stored? Will a collective resource become incomprehensible without some level of coordination? How do members manage the mix of private and public spaces? The new tools emphasize user control and self-organization, but their effective use by communities often entails more coordinating work and development of shared practices than one would expect. Finally, the number of offerings of new and different types of technologies grows so quickly that at least some community members need to act as “technology stewards” staying updated on behalf of the community to spot the best tools to support the community activities without overwhelming the members.

Avatar-based web worlds (e.g., Second Life). Some communities have meeting areas on avatar-based sites. It allows them to have more of a sense of shared space even when they cannot be together in physical space. For instance, the ability to see who is there, even as an avatar, can help members get a more concrete sense of community togetherness than in a teleconference call. The full potential of these types of sites has yet to be fully explored.

Some communities open accounts on media-sharing sites, such as Flickr for sharing photos, so that members can share photos, videos, and maps. This provides a simple way to document community events or to collect resources relevant to members. In other communities members use their own individual accounts and a common tag to share memories or resources. Sharing through a common tag means that individuals can share their photos, videos etc. across multiple communities.

Networking websites, such as Facebook, Linked-In, or Google+, offer quick, simple, and cheap ways for communities to open spaces for interaction. While the sites may not offer all the features that communities of practice need, they present the advantage of being located where people already have accounts, profiles, and personal networks.

Micro-blogging, using a tool such as Twitter or Yammer, has become a very popular way for some communities to stay connected. It is used in a variety of different ways, including to:

• Stay connected. Micro-blogging allows members of a community to be in very close contact on an ongoing basis as they subscribe to each other’s “tweet” feeds. It is way to follow what members are up to through the website or through a desktop or mobile application.
• Leverage the network. Community members can also use these “tweet” messages to get just-in-time help, instant responses to a request for information, or quick feedback on a thought or new idea.
• Filter multiple sources. “Following” people you trust who share information that interests you serves as a filter to the multiplicity of content that is now available on the web. There is no reason to follow everything, just the people in your community (and beyond) whose tweets you trust to be interesting or useful.
• Live tweeting of an event. Communities sometimes choose a “hashtag” (a tag with the # symbol before it) when they are holding an event. Participants and people interested in the event can report about or actively follow the event by including the hashtag in their tweets.

Analytics, such as Google Analytics, enable community leaders to collect, analyze, and act on data they receive about how people are connecting to their website. Data is easily collected and represented in many different ways. A community leader can see which pages are being read by whom, from where, and through which browser or media. As well as enabling community leader to observe which content is popular it helps them to know who to reach out to and provides information for making decisions about which tools to use for which members of the community.

Communities can use a set of tags as communal keywords, thus creating shared set of pointers to resources relevant to members. A “tag cloud” (the set of tags that a community uses sized according to frequency of use) can be a way to represent dynamically what a community is interested in and where its learning is focusing. It can be interesting for members to visualize their membership by comparing their own tag cloud that of their community.

A tag can also have its own “feed”. This means that members can stay subscribed to a tag, being notified when content tagged with a specific term is used.

Feeds, such as RSS feeds, are used in two ways. They enable communities to:

• Distribute content beyond the people who visit their website. Members and non-members can subscribe to feeds through an aggregator so they are automatically updated through a web portal, news reader or email whenever new content is published to a site.

 

• Combine content through bundling feeds into “widgets”, “gadgets” or mobile devises that make it possible to display blogs, videos, slideshows, news headlines etc. into another website. This means that communities can combine and integrate the content from different tools in different ways onto their website.

As the number of communities increases, feeds enable people to manage their participation across multiple communities – a challenge that is becoming central to the usefulness of communites.