Re: [WDDM] Re: internet should be an ideal way of communicating

["Bernard Clayson" <bernard-clayson(at)shuartfarm.fsnet.co.uk>]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the interesting dialog, to a large extent it follows my line of thinking ..... with a few slight ammendments<grin>

I have inserted my comments in your text.

(RKM) Consider the role of a facilitator in a face-to-face session. Rosa Zubizarreta has described the primary role as being a 'designated listener' - 'holding the space' so that everyone is heard, maintaining a shared thread of dialog, a shared focus. Without such facilitation, we just have a 'normal' meeting,  where people 'react instead of consider'.

(BC) Agreed, I recently attended a Council Chairmans training day, what they should do is vastly different from what actually can be done.

They have to 'police' the meeting, thats the easy part, they should not permit contradiction to anyone else opinion, snag is no one knows whether it is until they have said it. They can voice their opinion in its own right, they can ask for clarification. The chairman should summarise all the factors/opinions in his/her summary before the vote.

That is where the internet should be easier, the 'chairman/facilitator' can read it to find out whether it is contradicting another point of view or presenting an alternative opinion. The offending individual can be told to reword the email and resubmit it.

(RKM) It seems to me that most Internet dialog is just that - a meeting without facilitation. If this observation makes sense, then it would be desirable to figure out how a facilitator might do their job in an online setting. For openers, such a facilitator would need to be someone that everyone trusted to be both sensitive and neutral.

(BC) I have described (partly) above, the next thing is the 'trusted' bit, before I go in to that I will raise another problem i.e. multi-topic dialog on a single plane.

If a new topic is introduced (like this one), a new list should be opened to discuss it and an invite sent to the central list for interested members to join it.

The new list owner would send periodic summerised reports to the central list so that everyone is aware of progress.

If that list owner failed to be 'sensitive and neutral', the list members could 'vote with their feet' and leave, they may even continue the debate under a new list.

The potential is limitless, it could grow to thousands, none of them physically connected, they would only be connected by the members and the reports to the central body i.e. WDDM.

But it needs vision to be able to see the potential.

Have a look at http://www.planet-thanet.fsnet.co.uk/phoenix/

I most likely showed too much of the 'potential' but failed in my ability to describe how simple it is to operate.

Regards

Bernard