The following points accumulated during the most recent collaborative effort. They have been clustered in an arbitrary manner, grouped alphabetically.

3.1.1. Attitudes:

Ego-presentation-reduction -- Is this part of the product? Is this part of the problem?

Online problem solving and ideology? Is online collaboration just another way to make money? Is online collaboration a new public space that should be held free from economic influences (e. g. GPL vs. copyright).

3.1.2. Bandwidth:

low bandwidth communication, easy to misinterpret without tone, body language, etc. -- Perhaps in a hundred years we'll see this as an advantage, to be forced to plain talk and not rely on partial subconscious signals. Perhaps only a matter of habit.

High bandwidth communication. Can transmit audio, video, images, so everyone is working off the same page. Audio/video conferencing. High-tech, but is it efficient?

3.1.3. Missunderstandings:

Misunderstanding due to language differences.

Misunderstanding due to cultural differences. The relationship between the individual and the community - harmony - is totally different in western and asian communities. (see also: InterSubjectivity -- FogFox)

Misunderstanding due to organizational differences.

Are misunderstandings only negative? May spawn creative ideas. May show - as a kind of micro-conflict - our ability to listen, to remove misunderstandings and to realign arguments.

: * There can be positive aspects, as well as negative ones...

3.1.4. Objectives:

Problem solving and online collaboration -- "all life is problem-solving" K. Popper -- the NASA-game: a group can typically solve problems better than single individuals.

Explore the potential of online collaboration for problem solving. Explore processes. Perhaps find problem types and methods that fit with online collaboration.

3.1.5. Participation / Social:

Participation. How can be assured that solutions to problems are accepted? Problem of current democracy?

Problems to get certain people into online communication / collaboration. People that build on their real-world status.

online supports cross-cultural/cross-organization/cross-timezone collaboration. What new problems arise?

Technical vs. social vs. cultural topics. How is their relative importance?

Idea-sharing -- how willing are we to solve the connected social or legal problems. Differences in professions: developer vs. consultant.

3.1.6. Permissions:

Open vs. closed collaboration.

3.1.7. Scope:

With respect to Time:

Synchronization across timezones.

: * The apparent Style of Meatball is to work more thoroughly and deloiberately. I this context, the reality of time zones could be seen as a positive, rather than as a negative. If we can debvelopm a set of procedures that facilitiate working 'asynchronously', then we can make this a 'Feature' as opposed to wooriying about how to "Fix" it.

Can operate in asynchronous mode: I don't need to have the rest of the team around in order to do work that the team can see. Breaks down geographical/cultural/organizational barriers.

real time collaboration. What is the role of timing, rhythm of communication, resonance, reciprocity?

3.1.8. Tools:

What tools support online collaboration? What tools undermine it? What features support it? What features undermine it? What is the product of online collaboration meant to be? Content? Community? Problem solving potential? Ego-presentation? Debate on stage? A stream of articles?

Word Excel PowerPoint Access -- most business have them, or equivalents. Hardware dependent, proprietary formats. Support information-rich documents. Form over content? Content over form? Is a WORD document more than a wiki page or less?

Single tool, a tool-set? A wiki, a mailing-list and a chat? Or a forum, a CMS, a Blog and VoIP??

Email Wiki Weblog -- web-based, location independent, minimal dependence on particular hardware. Primarily text-oriented, though can incorporate other formats.

File-sharing -- can be location independent, security concerns solvable.

Can keep history/version control. What does this mean? Security - rest assured - nothing can be lost or destroyed? Control - we can track back individual contributions and relative merit of authorship?

All communications recorded. Can go back and fix misunderstandings, faulty assumptions, etc. Can take the ego out.

3.1.9. 'Types' of problems:

what problems does online collaboration present vs. offline? No obvious real-life collaboration framework (like class, village or football team).

How does online collaboration facilitate problem solving? All types of problems? Certain types of problems?

Finding new ideas (typical brainstorming problem: find a name for a product, a new slogan)

Conflict resolution (anyone can add his opinion, even anonimously)

Get feedback

3.2. Online Brainstorming compared to offline

Problems:

it is much slower (days or weeks instead of an hour maximum)

Advantages:

(obvious) contributors needn't be in a place
anonymous contributions are welcome (in real-life you can't brainstorm with your boss)
...

Optional rules:

Agree upon the end of brainstorming
- fixed duration (e. g. a week)
- have "Contributors active in brainstroming: ..." and "Contributors that finished brainstorming:"
Agree upon the rhythm of contributions (e. g. 3-5 in turn, dayly rhythm)
Agree that anyone may add, change or reorder anything without asking (be bold)
...

3.3. Notes on the Process of this Page's formation

Above are just a few notes to get us started. It's a flat list for now to avoid narrowing the discussion prematurely. I'm leaving my contributions unattributed to encourage others to drop their ideas in wherever they fit. I'd suggest spending a few days on IdeaGeneration? before trying to collate and synthesize.

I'm using BrainstormMode and CategoryBrainstorming links to make this page and any that it spawns easier to clean up when done. -- KatherineDerbyshire

I've added a few thoughts but only few new entries. Without some ordering I've problems to see what's there and what's missing. I try to keep a brainstorming feeling but it isn't that easy for me. -- HelmutLeitner

I agree with Helmut that we are going to have to have a way of at least 'clustering' items such as the ones on this page if we are going to focus as well as I think I (at least) should. Since I'm still relatively new to useMod and its markup, I have taken a copy of this material with the intent of trying to cluster it in a way that makes sense to me. I'll post that for your consideration tomorrow. Feel free to keep posting in the mean time. After all, we will need a way to refactor 'on the fly' so I may as well consider that facet of the problem as I work at the clustering. -- HansWobbe

Hans, Katherine has pushed forward this topic without explicit consent and pushed in a lot of content. This created a large asymmetry which we must try to balance. I tried to add some ideas of mine and I would prefer you do the same. To anounce external clustering work creates the danger that contributors will just stop to wait and see. -- HelmutLeitner

Helmut: I understand your concern that '... announce external clustering work creates the danger that contributors will just stop...'. That is certainly not my intention, which is why I did suggest 'Feel free to keep posting' and also indicated that I would not spend more than a day trying to cluster the material. I am a bit unsure of how you would now prefer to proceed and since we are trying to develop a methodology for Collaboration, I would prefer to clarify, rather than just proceeding on what may be invalid assumptions. Specifically:

: Would you prefer I not post my very initial effort at clustering?
: Do you have a preferred approach of 'balancing the asymetry'?

: Regards -- HansWobbe

Brainstorming works best socially (OralCulture) and structured. Rather than have one person braindump, which excludes other voices since it a braindum is by definition not a conversation, it's best to pick one angle of a topic and have everyone focus on that before moving onto the next angle. Also, pass the baton a little so that dominant voices are forced to be quiet and quiet voices are forced to speak up, as in "Alice what is one aspect of the customer," "Bob, what is another aspect," and go around and around. That is hard to translate into a wiki, but you can spatially separate and limit the number of points each person can add each round, perhaps. I don't know. I'm just brainstorming, and I am completely oblivious to the context here, but that's just a couple notes tossed into the ring. -- SunirShah

: Sunir, for my part let me express my pleasure at seeing you join in. I've seen enough of your posts at Wards to appreciate that your contributions will undoubtedly be helpful. I certainly agree that the 'traditional' approach to brainstorming is Oral and that we should take care to adopt as many of the best practices as we can from that medium. I do, however, also respect Kathleen's statement that she can work very effectively off-line. In fact, I even share some of that preference. Furthermore, wiki based communication tends to be an asynchronous mode of communication by the very natue of its Posting technologies.

: It may be interesting to try a couple of different methods, if only to see what works best (which may be different for different combinations of the participating Individuals). I have certainly seen good results come from the 'baton' approach you suggested, as well as from the 'delphi conference' types of approaches or the Moderated approaches (especially when the Moderator is sufficiently skilled to be able to use various techniques at different times and in combinations so as to manage the pace and the participation to achieve an optimal result. Obviously, do do this, we would have to invest a bit of time in defining a set of methods that can be used to emulate the Oral media as best we can within the Wiki environment.

: That being said, I have frequently found that I can ponder such matters to the point of exhaustion, only to then 'throw out' my deliberations once I actually undertake the tasks. This is especially true for me when I have not done something before, such as trying to use a wiki to brainstorm. If we are concerned about this, it might be better to just jump into a particular problem relatively aggressively, at least for a defined, short period of time, then recess and see what was achieved.

: Regards -- HansWobbe

Hans, just be bold and walk ahead. Brainstorming initially needs a free flow of ideas, even weird, extraordinary, crazy or funny and that's more difficult online. At that point reflection and "meta-thinking" won't help. Off brainstorming: my experience is that it doesn't help to say "just ignore this and continue" because people won't. It feels better to act directly in the wiki than prepare actions outside. For me it was usually more effective in the past to do things than to talk about what I was about to do. -- HelmutLeitner

My instincts tell me that trying something and seeing what happens is better (at least for me) than trying to specify the process in advance. LearnByDoing?. That approach inherently involves a certain amount of ambiguity and chaos, of course. -- KatherineDerbyshire

(Sigh...) A radically differet markup convention than I expected, and no time to fix it now. I'll research usemod and try to fix that next chance I get, but I think my clustering suggestions are evident.

Well, for what its worth (??), I created did a totally arbitrary clustering.

The clusters are simply in alphabetical sequence. There is no real signifiance to their names or the number of them that I created. The entries within each cluster are in no particular arder. Entries posted in the original alphabetic sequence have simple been moved to fall under one of these headings. It is already obvious that some of the entries should co-exist under more than one heading, but it has not been possible to select an obviously appropriate way of doing this yet.

In retrospect, I fond that the process of clustering them made me think about them a bit differently than I did originally, so there may be some value in others going through a similar process and sharing it if they wish to.

-- HansWobbe

I've accepted the clustering and removed the redundancy introduced. I've removed non-usemod markup to make the layout more pleasing. -- HelmutLeitner

3.4. Status

At this moment, the accumulated material simply exists as it was captured. Feel free to interject new material or make any adjustments to the arrangement that you think may help.

3.4.1. Dialog's accumulated while this page was forming.

This material has bee taken out of the accumulation prior to 2004-10-02. It is being summarized by Topic, while attempting to keep the Topics themselves in chronolgical order.

3.4.1.1. Content history

3.4.1.1.1. 20040807 - Early days.

Started: Aug 7
Active (in brainstorming): KatherineDerbyshire HansWobbe HelmutLeitner (your welcome to add yourself to this list, you are just as welcome to contribute without or anonimously)
Finished (brainstorming): (please move your name from "Active" if you don't want to add more ideas and want to enter the next stages)
Ends: not decided (please add suggestions)
- (1) after a week, Aug 13 ?
- (2) when the "Active" list is empty ?
- (3) after a day with less than 5 new idea contributions ?

I like this initial segment since it serves as a bit of a Status report for the page. I think this might be an effective subTopic within the Introduction segment of a Page, especially if a TOC is included, but am reserving my judgement until I receive a bit nore feedback as to why the TOC feature is not used on more pages. -- HansWobbe

3.4.2. SPAM interruption

Helmut:

Does this WikiBadge? imply that this page should be deleted? Or should the badge be removed?

: If so, I will make the effort to scavenge some of the material first. -- HansWobbe

I'm pretty frustrated, because my refactoring of this page was lost because of a KeptPages error. Some hours of work lost. I don't think that this page should be marked for deletion, because this would be a failure of our ability to collaborate and a failure of WikiBrainstorming. It should be refactored, but I've currently not the energy to repeat the lost refactoring. I still hope that Sunir is able to restore the page magically from some backup. -- HelmutLeitner

: I absolutely agree that it is a 'keeper'. And I too have slowed down editing in the hope of a magic 'reversion', and am limiting changes to just this segment of the page. In the meantime, I am studying the KeptPages page in the hopes of learning enough to become at least a magician's helper. I would be pleased to work at the refactoring, if I could get at the missing text. -- HansWobbe.

: Since I have been unable to get at any prior copies, I am proposing to simply resuming working on this page.

3.4.3. Current plans

3.4.3.1. Test application of some of these ideas.

In spite of the fact that this page lost its momentum, either as a result of a SPAM attack or because it did not seem to be making sufficient progress, I am going to review its accumulated points, specifically within the context of an actual problem that I would like solved.

To that end, I will collect some of the stated aspects of the problem from various existing pages to see if I can create a 'view' that attracts some attention and some specific Problem Solving suggestions.

I seem to remember a mathematical mothodology called Proof By Induction. Perhaps if it is possible to show how these ideas apply in a singler case (n=1) ...

 -- HansWobbe.

3.4.3.2. Refine the current Findings.

Consider how to weight the importance of the Clusters and perhaps even their components.

Review the York University paper that Sunir found on BrainStorming, since its abstract implies it contains related content.

3.4.3.3. Draft Conclusions:

Draft some preliminary Conclusions that can then be reviewed, ideally achieving a consensus.

4. Current Conclusions

Feel free to add any that may come to mind.

CategoryBrainstorming

ProblemSolving

1. Summary

2. Introduction

2.1. Contributors

2.1.1. allAreWelcomeToContribute

3. Findings

3.1. Suggested Forces that affect ProblemSolving: