Wednesday 2007-04-11 11:00~1:00 PM EST (3J7G)
- 11-12 noon - General Orientation (see agenda below) (3JFT)
- noon-1 PM - Mentor Hour - call-in any time during this hour with specific questions that we'll answer in the order received (3JFU)
- Remote dial-in details: (3J7H)
- Call-in Number: 1-866-756-8330 (3J7I)
- Note: Please send email RSVP to susan.turnbull at gsa.gov with correct spelling of your name for your namesake wiki page. (3J7K)
Agenda & Proceedings (3J7N)
- 1. Introduction to the Collaborative Work Environment and How it is used by GSA's Intergovernmental Solutions Division (ISD) to support communities - SusanTurnbull and PeterYim (3J7O)
- Collaborative Work Environment (CWE) is a suite of 4 work spaces for the trusted community: portal, wiki, discussion forum and file repository (3J7P)
- Purpose: The Intergovernmental Solutions Division (ISD) at GSA (http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate) provides an "incubator" organizing process and conducive learning environment for intergovernmental communities. How can barriers associated with distance and differences be overcome in order to build the trust needed for credible commitments and joint actions? (3J7U)
- New User Orientation to the four work spaces of the Collaborative Work Environment: (3J7V)
- a portal - to provide a convenient single point of entry to the environment and the work of the community - public facing facet (3J7W)
- a wiki - to help us collaboratively compose our work (3J7Y)
- a file repository - to hold documents, work and resources that we can share, and (3J85)
- like your file space, but remote. Requires one time set-up. Any content is accessible by a browser and the content can be referenced and you can point your audience directly to the link of interest (3J86)
- File-Sharing Workspace / Document Repository: (3J87)
- For example, at the Collaborative Expedition Workshops, presenters can post their own presentations to the file repository. (3J8D)
- Remote workshop participants (US and beyond) can view and give presentations. (3J8E)
- Anyone can also download the archived presentations. (3J8F)
- Finding current and archived presentations is easy using the Google search bar at the CWE main page: http://colab.cim3.net. (3J8G)
- a discussion forum (archived email forum) - to hold our conversations and discussions (virtually and asynchronously - not at the same time) (3J8H)
- enables you to focus on content of conversation and not administration (3J8I)
- every message becomes an html page that can be sorted by date or conversation thread (linked by replying to an earlier message) (3J8J)
- see Forum archives at - http://colab.cim3.net/forum/ (3J8K)
- example from the Geospatial Community of Practice (CoP). The Geospatial CoP and other CoPs use Discussion Forums to automatically archive all member conversations in a manner that is searchable by date, thread, and text. (3J8L)
- In addition, (3J8N)
- Full-text Search capability is available to all content within the collaborative work environment, and (3J8O)
- rather than just being able to point to the top of a page, Fine-Grained Accessibility through the use of PurpleNumbers is featured, allowing users to link to a particular paragraph or bullet point in a document. (3J8P)
- 2. Why do we need this? What is the CWE focus? (3J8Q)
- Mission of Intergovernmental Solutions Division: improve the delivery of government services to citizens by fostering a collaborative environment among federal, state, local and foreign governments and intergovernmental organizations. (3J8R)
- See: Wikis Changing Culture of Information Sharing at the CIA (3J8T)
- See: Spy agencies adapt social software, federated search tools (3J8U)
- See: Intelligence fixes floated at conference (3J8V)
- Mission of CIM3: improve the effectiveness of distributed collaboration for people (3J8W)
- Ref: DougEngelbart - his seminal work is an inspiration for this space - particularly, his concept on OHS (OpenHyperdocumentSystem) and DKR (DynamicKnowledgeRepository) (3J8X)
- Tools segmentation: (3J90)
- personal productivity vs. group productivity (3J91)
- transaction systems vs. groupware (3J92)
- thick client vs. thin client ('utility' software) (3J93)
- Community segmentation: (attributed to Soren Kaplan of iCohere) (3J94)
- 3 modes of the CIM3 hosted CWE sites: 'open', 'community only' & 'secured' (3J99)
- it's NOT about technology, it's all about getting work done effectively, especially when we are not in the same place (3J9A)
- it takes People, Process and Tools to achieve that (emphasis: People heads the list; and this is definitely not just about technology) (3J9B)
- To be able to wrap the right processes around tools with the right people in place to implement (3J9C)
- It's a participatory workspace (3J9D)
- it's about: (3J9E)
- sharing (3J9F)
- distributing the work (3J9G)
- getting things done without being in the same place, at the same time (3J9H)
- capturing the memory and knowledge over the entire life-cycle of the community (3J9I)
- have minimal structure to do work; spur innovation and emergent behavior (3J9J)
- perhaps appears very basic, but that's key to its expressive power and flexibility (3J9K)
- example of a community to look at: http://ontolog.cim3.net (3J9L)
- testbed global community, in operation for over 4 yr., ~270 members from more than 20 countries - you're welcome to visit (join us too if you're interested in ontologies) (3J9M)
- 3. a mini wiki-tutorial: (3J9N)
- The top four things that make this wiki site different from an ordinary website are: (3J9O)
- (1) anyone who can read from the site, can also write to the site (so, it is a read-and-write web, not just read-only) (3J9P)
- (2) you get automatic hyperlinking, through the use of the WikiWord. (3J9Q)
- (3) the version history of any page is available, allowing people to see how the content has evolved, and to roll back to an earlier version with a few mouse clicks. (3J9R)
- (4) wiki's have traditionally been associated with 'openness' -- open content, open technology, open knowledge ... where community collaboration has been regarded as a core value. (3J9S)
- Before anything else (if you are new to this wiki), read the paragraph at: http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid35NZ (3JI9)
- "create account" / "login" (near upper-right corner of the page, right below the logo/icon, any page.) (3J9U)
- suggested using your name in WikiWord format as your UserName, and use some password (to avoid being spoofed too easily) (3J9V)
- pick a page (your namesake page or SandBox would be a good start) and click on "Edit text of this page" (near the lower-left corner of the page, any page.) (3J9W)
- write something onto your namesake page (3J9X)
- click "save" or "preview" - Preview enables you to see what your page will look like on the web after saving - while simultaneously showing the edit box. Its helpful to see how the text formatting rules are rendered on the web by looking at both windows. (3J9Y)
- Summary box - annotates the nature of the change you made (3J9Z)
- Text formatting rules can be found at the TextFormattingRules page. (3JA0)
- take a look at the page index (3JA1)
- Site map index - click on the "Page Index" at the top (upper left, next to RecentChanges") of each page. (3JA2)
- Select "Recent Changes" at the top of each page to see which pages are changing (3JA3)
- also, take a look at "View other revisions" at the bottom left (3JA4)
- intro to PurpleNumbers (3JA5)
- Best guide to learn and use the space: WikiHomePage, RecentChanges, Page Index and http://community.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CweUser (3JA6)
- Example: how to make comments in the wiki, including creating links (in-wiki: page & paragraph, from forum archives, from document repository, for the web) (3JA7)
- How to use "discussion forum" method for commenting (3JA8)
- How to use "in-line" method for commenting (3JAC)
- used to put annotated edits with name and date directly into the wiki document that is being developed within a small group (3JAD)
- edit by putting your suggested change in parentheses under the relevant section followed by your wiki name and date - e.g. (Suggest revising this definition...--SusanTurnbull / 2005.02.09 12:30pm EST) (3JAE)
- 4. Posting documents to the File Repository - setting up WebDAV Access (3JAF)
- File-Sharing Workspace / Document Repository: (3JAG)
- For the demo of posting documents, please go to the URL below for VNC (shared display) support: (3JAL)
- 5. Q & A and Discussion. (3JAP)
- 6. Observations, Insights & advanced features (3JAQ)
- 7. Additional Resources (3JB3)
