Nancy White - Competencies for Online Communication

My notes from the Nancy White Keynote in the Collaborative Learning Conference 2005 run by iCohere.

Nancy's presentation contained possibily more questions than answers - prompting some reflection on my part.
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In the online environment we have a merge between what we know and what we imagine - eg what we get from someone's introduction and what we imagine about them.

Online world is full of great possibilities and small annoyances

In online communication we are trying to rewire very established communication patterns. Written communication has sped up - email is quite different to writing a letter and the slow pace of return.

What are the competencies that people need to communicate online?

What was it that you found it familiar when you first went online? - Remember the lost feeling when first online. In the online world the traditional barriers have disappeared or moved, and continue to move.

"moving information faster does not always facilitate faster meaning making" - overload, not the skills to make meaning, misunderstandings, etc

Emergent practices = they are not in place, still evolving

7 competencies for Online Interaction:

2) Online communications - fast scanning and comprehension, pattern recognition, image and sound creating skills
daily writing helps with fluency, vary your diet - reading writing drawing mapping etc "through the looking glass"

3) Learning with others - tools tend to be designed for a group but used individually, network helps filter, amplify, conveners, facilitators, community builders and investors (Ben Ramalingan ODI UK) - talking about network in terms of loose connections between people. "reciprocity starting with me"

4) Facilitation - rather than telling people what to, we are facilitating people to do things. Flow is fragile in the internet world. Convening Conversations - interaction between local and global - often the action arising from online interaction are local in their situation.

5) Intercultural antennae - need to keep our eyes above and below the water. live and work and play with different people in different places, look inside and outside

6) Tolerance for ambiguity - OK with not being sure or in control, ok not knowing the answer, move forward without certainty, not closing on what has come before, but looking for what is to come.

7) Ability to switch contexts. 'Outsiderness' [further notes from discussion] * In distributed communities, it is easy to feel on the margin because we don't have enough of that informal negotiation of role and status (status not in a controlling sense, but in a membership sense)
* People who belong to many communities (multi-membership) find less time to develop their identity in any one community
* Human beings are insecure!

8) Living across Domains - need to be an engineer, economist and artist all at once. Need to have understanding other's roles and issues.

Finally 1) - Self Awareness - the grounding competency