CommunityLearning_CWE Conference Call (3VF2)
Wednesday 2008-02-12 11:30~12:30 PM ET (3VF3)
- Attendees: (3VF7)
- Expecting: (3VFB)
Background (3VFD)
1. Collaborative Work Environment: Why it is needed by GSA's USA Services - Intergovernmental Solutions Division (ISD) to support communities - SusanTurnbull and PeterYim (3VFE)
- Mission of USA Services - 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. (3VFF)
- The USA Services - Intergovernmental Solutions Division (ISD) at GSA (http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate) provides an "incubator" organizing process and conducive learning environment for intergovernmental communities. (3VFG)
- With the CWE we help communities build trust toward common understanding and joint action while overcoming the barriers associated with distance and differences. This in turn, leads to successful completion of distributed work in an open and transparent manner: Data Reference Model - wikipedia, - Data Reference Model Public Forum - our COLAB wiki, Geospatial Profile (3VFH)
- The USA Services - Intergovernmental Solutions Division (ISD) at GSA (http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate) provides an "incubator" organizing process and conducive learning environment for intergovernmental communities. (3VFG)
- Mission of CIM3: improve the effectiveness of distributed collaboration for people (3VFI)
- Ref: DougEngelbart - his seminal work is an inspiration for this space - particularly, his concept on OHS (OpenHyperdocumentSystem) and DKR (DynamicKnowledgeRepository). He invented the mouse and pioneered personal computing, hypertext, network computing, groupware, and many of his seminal ideas underpinning this collaborative community workspace - beginning ~40 years ago (3VFJ)
2. Collaborative Work Environment: It's NOT about technology, it's all about getting work done effectively, especially when we are not in the same place (3VFL)
- It takes People, Process, and Tools to achieve that (emphasis: People heads the list; and this is definitely not just about technology) (3VFM)
- To be able to wrap the right processes around tools with the right people in place to implement (3VFN)
- It's a participatory workspace and its all about: (3VFO)
- sharing (group productivity vs personal productivity) (3VFP)
- distributing the work (thin client vs. thick client) (3VFQ)
- Communities of Practice and Project Teams getting things done without being in the same place, at the same time (3VFR)
- capturing the memory and knowledge over the entire life-cycle of the community (3VFS)
- have minimal structure to do work; spur innovation and emergent behavior on (groupware vs. transaction systems) (3VFT)
- perhaps appears very basic, but that's key to its expressive power and flexibility (3VFU)
- example of a community to look at: http://ontolog.cim3.net (3VFV)
- testbed global community, in operation for over 5 yr., ~380 members from more than 23 countries - you're welcome to visit (join us too if you're interested in ontologies) (3VFW)
3. Collaborative Work Environment (CWE): a suite of 4 work spaces for trusted communities: portal, wiki, discussion forum and file repository. The CWE is platform-independent. (3VFX)
- In addition, (3VFY)
- full-text search capability is available to all content within the collaborative work environment (ref: http://colab.cim3.net), and rather than just being able to point to the top of a page, (3VFZ)
- fine-grained accessibility through the use of PurpleNumbers is featured, allowing users to link to a particular paragraph or bullet point in a document. (3VG0)
- Two most important pages for newcomers are (3VG1)
- WikiHomePage (3VG2)
- http://community.cim3.net/wiki/ - This is the Collaborative Work Environment (CWE) for members of different communities to add content and help everyone to learn to how to use the CWE faster (3VG3)
- New User Orientation to the four work spaces of the Collaborative Work Environment: (3VG4)
- a portal - to provide a convenient single point of entry to the environment and the work of the community - public facing facet (3VG5)
- first place people go to: http://colab.cim3.net (3VG6)
- a discussion forum (archived email forum) - to hold our conversations and discussions (virtually and asynchronously - not at the same time) (3VG7)
- enables you to focus on content of conversation and not administration (3VG8)
- every message becomes an html page that can be sorted by date or conversation thread (linked by replying to an earlier message) (3VG9)
- see Forum archives at - http://colab.cim3.net/forum/ (3VGA)
- a file repository - to hold documents, work and resources that we can share, and (3VGB)
- 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 (3VGC)
- File-Sharing Workspace / Document Repository: (3VGD)
- http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/ (3VGE)
- http://colab.cim3.net/file/community/ (community member password required to access) (3VGF)
- a wiki - to help us collaboratively compose our work (3VGG)
- a portal - to provide a convenient single point of entry to the environment and the work of the community - public facing facet (3VG5)
4. Collaborative Work Environment: a Wiki Tutorial (3VGJ)
- The top four things that make this wiki site different from an ordinary website are: (3VGK)
- (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) (3VGL)
- (2) you get automatic hyperlinking, through the use of the WikiWord. (3VGM)
- (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. (3VGN)
- (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. (3VGO)
- Before anything else (if you are new to this wiki), read the paragraph at: http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid35NZ (3VGP)
- 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.) (3VGS)
- write something onto your namesake page (3VGT)
- 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. (3VGU)
- Summary box - annotates the nature of the change you made (3VGV)
- Text formatting rules can be found at the TextFormattingRules page. (3VGW)
- take a look at the page index (3VGX)
- Site map index - click on the "Page Index" at the top (upper left, next to RecentChanges") of each page. (3VGY)
- Select "Recent Changes" at the top of each page to see which pages are changing (3VGZ)
- also, take a look at "View other revisions" at the bottom left (3VH0)
- intro to PurpleNumbers (3VH1)
- Best guide to learn and use the space: WikiHomePage, RecentChanges, Page Index (links to which one can find on the upper left corner of every wiki page), and the CWE-community page at: http://community.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CweUser (3VH2)
5. Collaborative Work Environment: a File Repository Tutorial (3VH3)
- File-Sharing Workspace / Document Repository - setting up WebDAV Access''' (3VH4)
- http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/ (3VH5)
- To access the File Workspace - refer to: http://community.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?FileWorkspaceAccess Download (Browser) -vs- Upload (WebDAV) URL Mapping (3VH6)
- example - setting up access from Windows XP - http://community.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?FileWorkspaceAccess#nidAHZ (3VH7)
- For the demo of posting documents, please go to the URL below for VNC (shared display) support: (3VH8)
- URL = http://vnc2.cim3.net:5800/ (3VH9)
- Password = "colab" (view-only) (3VHA)
- example: posting something to - http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/ (3VHB)
- http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/ (3VH5)
- 6. Q & A and Discussion. (3VHC)