ID and Other Reflections

I have finally done it...

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:48:00 PST

I have finally done it. After months of soul-searching, rationalizing and deploying all other tactics we humans typically do when we don't want to take a decision, I have finally done it. Taken the decision to leave ThoughtWorks. My fellow ThoughtWorkers will know why this took me months and why it's perhaps one of the toughest decisions I have ever taken...

But this post is for those who don't know ThoughtWorks. On the surface, it's a software development and consultancy firm, best known for bringing Agile to the world of s/w development. But that's only the surface. Under it, it's one of the most humane and ethical organization I have known. It's an organization where social and economic justice are not espoused as a mere formality...It's an organization driven by a desire to do right--right by its clients, right by its employees, and right by the world. I am proud to have been a part of it. A part of me I guess will always remain a ThoughtWorker.

Why did I leave you may be wondering...I had to move back to Mumbai where my family is. After years of being a weekend mom and wife, I did some soul-searching and retrospection. And I think the values instilled by TW helped. I realized I had to come back and balance out my work life and home life.

So here I am...back in Mumbai ready for a new start. I guess the prospect of looking out for a job feels a bit daunting at this point, especially after TW. Ready to start all over...Wish me luck!

Links for 2013-01-06 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:00:00 PST

Assessing the ROI of training

Links for 2013-01-03 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 PST

13 Ways to Learn in 2013: The eLearning Coach

Links for 2012-12-09 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:00:00 PST

I’ve Given Up On Balance. I’m Going For Depth Instead.
As content becomes more fragmented, you could try and compete with that by doing more and more, by curating other people’s content, by then running your content through Twylah, by having that “twitter magazine” come out which puts all your tweets and links in one place so that people can catch it if they missed each particular one. Or you could do the opposite. You could go deep. You could be that voice that everyone listens to because when it speaks, it is so deep and rich that it’s worth slowing down to listen to. Or, perhaps more importantly, you could chose to follow others who you think have gone deep. As I said yesterday: Choosing who to follow is the single most important act in a connected world.
More on Trust in the Social Enterprise – confused of calcutta
In order to create a real community you have to first bind people together by a shared interest, then you have to bond them together through interaction and then you have to build/engage them into joint action. This philosophy of binding-bonding-building is a basic principle for all that we are doing.

10 Books from My Reading List

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 21:32:00 PST

I have spent the last couple of months reading--reading and reflecting, scribbling random ideas in my tattered moleskine but not really blogging. My thoughts felt more scattered than usual...and I wondered if it had to do with the books I was reading. A couple of months back I made a conscious decision to move away from pure L&D, Instructional Design and Performance Consulting stuff to those which would challenge my thinking and perhaps force me to question myself and the choices I am making. I picked up some of those mentioned in the list below after reading reviews, receiving recommendations or just browsing. I haven't regretted a single choice.

I am putting up the list here to share with my friends and communities. These books have moved and challenged me, made me feel guilty and exhilarated--all at the same time, provided insights, changed how I think and have often left me feeling confused--at many levels. I am profoundly grateful to the authors for penning these...for opening up doors and windows for the likes of us.

The list for you to pursue...

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen
Dumbing us Down by John Gatto
The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyenger
The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward Wilson
On Violence by Hannah Arendt
Alone Together by Sherry Turkle
Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain
Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

Links for 2012-11-08 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 00:00:00 PST

Fresh from DevLearn 2012: Mobile Learning | MicroAssist
Communicating information and designing training are two different things Mobile devices are perhaps better suited for the former. However, both provide performance support and used judiciously, can help create a rich learning experience.

Managing Diversity through Community Management

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 06:32:00 PDT

It's taking me a while to get back on track with regular blogging after an almost 4 months hiatus. And I don't like it at all. But I am slowly getting back on track. On the positive front, I have been doing a lot of reading—mostly around organizational behavior, organizational development, culture and diversity, motivation and communication, and how these relate to social business and knowledge management. As a community manager and social business evangelist in a highly distributed and diverse organization, I’ve begun to realize not only the value of but the critical need to understand these aspects.

What did I learn during the last fortnight?

It’s essential to understand the fundamentals of how to facilitate cross-cultural communication in order to be an effective community manager.

I think my biggest Aha! moment occurred when I came across Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory while researching diversity as a part of organizational behaviour. I’ve referenced the model here from Flat World Knowledge book on Organizational Behaviour. I highly recommend this book and others on this site for their clear, concise, well-written and referenced matter. And one can read them for free!

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Model

Needless to say, culture is hugely significant in how people communicate, take decisions, interact with teams and clients, and approach their work and the workplace.

As an enterprise community manager and a proponent of collaboration, knowledge sharing and dialogue as a means and tool for learning, I found that this model provide substantial insight into the communication style and preferences of individuals. Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that this is a model that Hofstede came up with after conducting a large survey-study of IBM employees across approximately 90 countries. And, the dimensions may not be true for each and every individual in the country. It’s quite possible to find a submissive Austrian or an individualistic Chinese.

When I look at this model through the lens of an enterprise community manager in a distributed, highly diverse and rapidly growing organization, it’s worth remembering how diversity can impact cross-cultural communication. Even as organizations begin to embrace the tools and technology of becoming a social business, exhort their employees to participate and collaborate, urge their customers to share feedback and float job descriptions to hire social media and community managers, it seems worthwhile to reflect on this.

It’s common knowledge that in today’s organizations with a globally distributed workforce, collaborating on cross-functional projects across countries, partaking in distributed decision making and more are the norm. This necessitates meaningful, timely and transparent communication. And a successful social business is nothing if not an organization that communicates seamlessly and transparently at all times. However, this open communication is easier said than achieved and often, a lack of understanding of cross-cultural dimensions can be the barrier. It often becomes a case of:

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Robert McCloskey

Someone hailing from a culture that extols/practices collectivism might be more willing to see the commonalities in a forum thread discussion and respond to those, drawing together the collective ideas of the participants. To someone from an individualistic culture, this may smack of conformance or groupthink and drive them to see the differences and add their own perspective to the debate. It’s important to remember that neither is good or bad in and of itself—both debate and consensus have their place and are necessary for healthy communication and interaction. What is important is to maintain a balance and see the virtues of both.

An organization that seems to uphold one over the other--e.g., an overly debate-oriented culture may run the risk of leaving out/alienating those hailing from a country where collectivism is valued. This, of course, is an extremely simplistic inference used merely to illustrate what I mean by being sensitive to the impact of culture on one’s communication style and preference. However, given that many organizations are focusing on inclusivity and embracing diversity, it’s important to keep this in mind.

Where does an enterprise community manager come in?

An enterprise community manager will typically be aware of what’s taking place at an organizational level via the discussions, debates, blog posts, status updates, etc. on the org’s collaboration platform. And through skilful facilitation and community management seasoned by an understanding of cross-cultural communication, they can not only uphold a culture of diversity but actually act as a connector or glue that bind together people of varied background, skills, race and nationality. They can play a critical role in helping the Human Resource department meet the challenges of diversity creatively and meaningfully, helping to create an organization that benefits from the different aspects of a diverse workforce.

I will be writing about this topic for a while as I mull over the hows and the whys…I would love to know if any research exist around the impact of cross-cultural communication on community management.

Taking Stock and Making Choices: Working from home and other such stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 23:40:00 PDT

I have come back to blogging after a hiatus of almost 5 months. Mostly, business as usual at work and crisis situations at home took my time and attention. My father’s heart attack and the subsequent rush to Kolkata taught me a few things—about myself and my priorities. It forced me to take a long hard look at myself and what I’ve been focusing my energy on over the last few years. Because I love what I do (and I am hugely fortunate in that sense), it’s very easy to let my work consume me and my time.

Much has been written about priorities and work life balance—especially for women. And it is increasingly becoming evident to me how difficult it is for a woman to pursue a career (that is do everything it takes to grow and keep up) and also be the mother and wife and daughter she wants to be. I didn’t realise how deeply this constant tussle and tug of war have been affecting me at a sub-conscious level till I had to sit down and weigh some of the choices.

To be connected to colleagues and co-workers, be in office as much as possible. Skype and Hangout are second best. Face to face is different, and it matters as Simon Sinek points out in Restoring the Human in Humanity. Bonds don’t form over a Skype call but over coffee and lunch when conversations veer to the personal and discussions revolve around interests. Luis Suarez summarizes the key point in the para here:

… we need handshake leadership; we need to have handshake conversations, handshake friends, handshake dialogues, handshake meetings. You name it. We just need to bring back the human spirit into all of the interactions we keep getting involved with. It’s eventually what makes us all more humans…

But I have a problem. To be in office, I have to be in a different city altogether and this means I can only be a weekend wife and mom. I did that too for a very long time…close to about 4 years till I decided not to.

To strike a work-life balance, work from home as much as possible (most of the time). This taught me a few things about work, technology and myself. Technology—is great for exchange of information, updates and other transactional stuff. But not so great for building bonds and trust. Work—complex knowledge work requires solitude as well as collaboration. Working from home offers me plenty of solitude but not the intellectual stimulation and those over-the-shoulder conversations so crucial to serendipity, ambient awareness, and informal learning. Activity streams and collaboration platforms can enhance and support such awareness but not replace it. Myself—I am a true blue introvert and while I had kind of known this all my life, Susan Cain’s Quiet. The book revealed me to myself, clarifying why I made some of the choices I did. How does working from home affect me as an introvert? Immensely! For someone who cringes at the thought of social small talk and just picking up the phone to have a chat, being an introvert coupled with working from home puts me even more on the periphery of things than ever. I realize that I run the risk of just hovering on the edge—an onlooker but not quite a participant.

To let people know about my work, socialize it as much as possible. In today’s non-hierarchical, networked organizations with fluid job roles, conversations over coffee are often how people find out about skills and common passions. In the absence of such conversations, I have to consciously make an effort to write about and communicate what I do within the organization. Now, if you are as old as I am (that is 41), you will remember growing up on the adage “your work should speak for itself”. This makes socializing (publicising?) what I do (when I do it) out of character and especially hard. It’s definitely a skill much needed in today’s extrovert oriented, non-hierarchical workplaces.

To grow myself, go that extra mile—always. Ever since I started working primarily from home, I realized (even more so than before) the importance of online communities—within my organization and without. As a practitioner in the adult learning and development space with specific interests in social business and community management, knowledge management, capability building and organizational development, I have started tapping into different online communities where I can “meet” practitioners. While I have always been an advocate of informal learning (immensely grateful to Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Jay Cross and the ITA for showing the way) and communities of practice, I am now becoming an evangelist of both. Without the support of various online communities, I doubt if I would have had the fortitude or the skills required to do my work effectively.

To add value, do the work that puts me in flow--always. Now this seems like an obvious statement. But this is especially significant when one works most often in solitude which requires a great deal of internal motivation. It would have been impossible for me to keep going if the work itself didn’t drive me. If anyone reading this is a knowledge worker and is thinking about working from home, read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow. While it may seem idealistic to say “I will only work where my passion lies,” it is also intrinsically honest. If I am passionate, I will strive to deliver my best—not because of external reward and recognition but because of my internal drive. And as Daniel Pink has pointed out in his now legendary book, Drive, internal motivation is one of the driving forces of creative knowledge work.

Are you a knowledge worker working from home? I would love to learn from the challenges you’ve faced and overcome…

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Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:00 PDT

In Delhi: EDGEX2012

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 03:54:00 PDT

I am siting aboard a Jet Airways flight on my way to attend and present at the EDGEX2012 conference in Delhi. It's officially starting from tomorrow. But we--the speakers and the organizers--are meeting today. I am sure Viplav Baxi has already started his day and the folks are already meeting at the Habitat Center, the location of the conference.

Am I excited? I guess that would be an understatement. I am looking forward to 3 days of insights, learning and most importantly, getting to meet others similarly passionate about education. Viplav calls it the Disruptive Educational Conference. I must say I agree. Vehemently!

Yesterday, as I added a few final touches to my presentation, some random thoughts fleeted across my mind. I jotted these down as they occurred to me and have copied them here. Without edits.

I wouldn't be attending this conference if it weren't for social media.
I was introduced to the work, ideas and blogs of most of the speakers via Twitter.
What I have learned in the last 3 years have been completely via social media. Social, informal learning.
I am a part of a huge global network of educators and learned, a virtual community of practice.
Knowledge in this community is constantly being reconstructed through dialogue, conversation, and debate.
There is no knowledge repository. It is a construct of the network, a constantly flowing and shifting set of paradigms and practices.
There is no one place where this knowledge is stored. It resides in the network.
The network itself is constantly shifting. The edge becoming he center and vice versa.
If we cease to converse, we will cease to create. Conversation is the key to continuous learning which is our key to survival today.
We are, in a way, going back to our roots when our forefathers gathered around the fire to exchange stories.
These stories were not merely means of amusement but keys to survival. By sharing experiences, the elders of the tribe passed on their knowledge about an unknown, unpredictable, dangerous world full of chaos and novel challenges (think of the Cynefin Framework).
This is where we need to go back to. Albeit in a different manner. However, the situation is not very different. The business world is changing, becoming unpredictable and chaotic.
There is no time for an individual to learn from his or her own experiences. We have to go back to the story swapping days, capture tribal knowledge and build on it.

Today's linear, structured, syllabus-and exam-driven model of education is uniquely unsuited to meet the needs of this volatile, changing, chameleon like world. Linearity needs to be replaced by holistic focus on pattern matching, exploration and creative thinking. Think of how the divers learns in the example JSB cites in the power of pull.

I think we can all feel the coming of a huge change. It is already beginning in pockets with parents choosing to homeschool their children, open courseware gaining popularity, adults opting for meaningful work over just jobs. These are tiny facets of a much bigger wave sweeping across different sectors and it's presence is being felt.

I am looking at this conference to highlight some of these changes, to think about what we as educators can do.

Wheels down, Delhi! Time to get off.

Links for 2012-03-07 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:00:00 PST

Community of practice and trust building - ... a beginner at something
Trust-builders open personal profiles (self-declaration) shared conversation, activity stream, searchable (enabling independent verification) recommendations, awards, certifications (independent third-party opinion) co-action, collaboration (co-creating work products) success , and sharing it (experiencing demand for work products, or admiration)

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Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 PST

EDGEX 2012: About Disruptive Education

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:52:00 PST

This sentence from Stephen Downes post A World to Change best exemplifies one of the key drivers behind a conference like EDGEX2012: We need to move beyond the idea that an education is something that is provided for us, and toward the idea that an education is something that we create for ourselves.

With EDGEX2012 coming up just round the corner, I must say that I am super excited. It’s getting a bit difficult to focus on my daily work, the BAU stuff and not wander off in my head to the conference. Thanks to Viplav Baxi, we finally have speakers and thought leaders like Stephen Downes, Jay Cross, Clark Quinn, Dave Cormier, et al. coming together in a conference in India.

But I am jumping ahead as usual. I wanted this to be a blog post on what the conference is and why I think all educators—teachers, CLOs, L&D consultants, policy makers and policy breakers, and anyone who has anything to do with enabling others to build capability—should attend. If you believe that the current education system is failing us, is no longer sustainable, is neither fair nor equitable, then this is the conference for you. If you have ever been inspired by the writings of Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Pedagogy of Hope), then this conference is for you. It is about disruptive education. About freeing education from the shackles of a building (call it school, college, what you will) and democratizing it. It’s about handing power back to the learners and creating the environment for learning to happen. And it will. We have experiments like the Hole in the Wall by Sugata Mitra to prove us right.

The Connectivism and Connective Knowledge MOOC (massive open online course) that Downes, Siemens and Cormier started in 2008 exemplifies networked learning, and the transformative impact of technology on learning. Most importantly, it does not have a “fixed body of knowledge” that learners need to go through. “Rather, the learning in the course results from the activities you undertake, and will be different for each person.” And this is the fundamental, quintessential personalized learning taking place on a massive scale year after year. I had joined the MOOC in 2010 for the first time. Since then, I have been a sporadic visitor to the MOOC and have always found nuggets of learning that suited my need at the moment. It empowers you—the learner—to architect your own learning.

Closely aligned to this, we have Jay Cross—the proponent of Informal Learning. At a time when organizations were investing in formal, top down training programs, a vestige of the Industrial Era and Taylorist ideas of productivity improvement, Cross, Marcia Conner and a few others were busy advocating informal learning, workscaping, the power of social tools and the importance of building one’s personal learning network. I find this coming together of the different strands that constitute how we learn and perceive and make sense of the world today in a single conference quite remarkable.

The conference also has speakers like Grainne Conole, Martin Weller, Les Foltos, Douglas Lynch and others. And the overarching themes are:

Informal Learning, Communities of Practice, Connectivism
Personal Learning Environments, Open Distributed
Learning, Net Pedagogy, Learning “Design” in a 2.0 world
Learning Analytics, Ubiquitous learning
MOOCs, OER University, Stanford AI
Role of teachers and coaching in an open distributed learning environment
New forms of assessments

There are resources here for those keen to know more about connectivism, learnscapes, communities of practices, open design, social network analysis and more.

Managing Information Flow on Enterprise Platforms

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:20:00 PST

Are multiple activity streams the way forward for enterprise platforms...?

As an enterprise community manager, I am often faced with varied user questions and needs. One that has been surfacing on and off recently is around the ability for more granular filtering to find relevant content.

Before I move on let me briefly explain how Jive--which powers our social platform--works. Jive offers users the ability to customize their two activity streams--one stream reflects everything the user is Following on the platform and this includes people, places and content. The other reflects what the user is Tracking--and Jive makes a subtle distinction between "follow" and "track". Tracked content, people or places are deemed to be of greater relevance to the user and all activities and communication in these get captured in a separate stream called What Matters: Communication along with @ mentions and direct messages to the user.

Nevertheless, in spite of this level of segregation and filtering, I have had users requesting for further granularity, more specific filtering options, and ability to follow tags and such. Some deep diving and conversations exposed that users were missing or feared missing out on information. As is wont to happen with activity streams, content quickly moves below the fold and runs the risk of getting overlooked. A heavy user of TweetDeck and Hootsuite, I could identify with the need for further granularity. Both these applications make my Twitter use a breeze by allowing me to set my filters and create multiple streams.

Moreover, from an enterprise context, finding relevant content at the point of need is of paramount importance. While I was surfing the net to see what other organizations/users are doing, I stumbled across an interesting posts by Alan Lepofsky that seemed to mirror what I was thinking: Making Activity Stream More Manageable. I have quoted from it here: If we are going to continue down the path of taking dozens of different pieces of information and cramming them into one place, then a single stream is not the way to go.

In a different post, he writes: … I am concerned that having status updates, file sharing, Q&A, news links, CRM updates, social media feeds, workflow approvals, ERP orders, support tickets, polls/surveys and a dozen other sources of information all piped into the same stream can make social software almost unusable.

The more I think about it, I am beginning to feel that multiple activity streams is the way to go. Moving from a locked down inbox to an activity stream is a paradigm shift, and one that is well on its way to taking place. And reflects how far we have come. Nonetheless, enhancing user experience by giving them more control to filter in what they need or filter out as the case maybe will lead to greater adoption of social business platforms. Enterprise platforms will also need to give users greater flexibility and the ability to create personalized lists, follow tags, and so on. I am sure those days are not too far away and social business platforms like Jive and SocialText are improving by leaps and bounds.

Will greater granularity kill serendipity?

I don't think so. With content being created, shared and commented upon every second of every day even in the enterprise, it is essential that users be able to effectively filter and curate for themselves in an intuitive manner. Some of it will get taken care of by smart, automated filtering options like Jive's Recommendation engine, which suggest content based on the user's prior activity on the platform. But this may soon not be enough.

What do you think? Have you encountered similar needs? I would love to hear from you.

The 21st Century Curator

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:02:00 PST

If Web 1.0 was about online access and Web 2.0 is about social nets, Web 3.0 will be coring down to content that really matters. ~wrote Martin Smith in the post, Curation - The Next Web Revolution.

As mentioned by Harold Jarche in the slide share presentation, NetWork, the internet changed everything—in volume, velocity, virtualization and variability. And nowhere is this more evident than in the content being created every second of every day. Take a look at this infographic which captures what gets created on the Internet every 60 seconds very nicely: http://pinterest.com/pin/247698048225202468/.

Source: go-gulf.com via Sahana on Pinterest

Not surprisingly, curation has become the next buzzword after social business. With content coming at us with the force of a tsunami and the fury of a tornado, curators seem to have become our saviours—our sense making guide. One post out of five I have been reading in the past few months seem to be associated with curation or its close cousins—aggregation and filtering. Even as I read, I was tempted to apply some of the curation strategies and put together this post. I like to build some context around the links because—who knows—in the Internet world, a working link today can be a dead link tomorrow.

Curation today takes on a new meaning in the context of technological affordance, information abundance, diminishing attention, hunger for contextual and timely information, and constantly shifting, globally linked landscape. In this complex and chaotic world, making sense can only be a constant endeavour, pattern matching a crucial need. And this is what today’s curators do—aided and inspired by technology.

I will not delve into the root of curation as traditionally practiced by museum curators and librarians, which conferred on them the status of an expert. And those thus anointed went on to shape the taste and understanding of humans who arrived at their domain. For a deeper understanding of the rise of curation, I recommend that you read Steven Rosenbaum’s Curation Nation.

A little reflection reveals that curation is a way of life for all of us—we are all curators. How we put our curation skills to use is what makes us unique. We are curating when we pick the books that will adorn our shelves; we are curating when we choose our furniture; the store keeper is curating when s/he selects and arranges the display. We are also curating when we choose what to share with our Facebook friends. And in each type of curation, what comes across are unique perspectives, a sense of pattern and a representation the curator wants the world to see. But I digress.

I want to focus on curation and the need we feel for it today and some of the skills that make for a curator. I have also referenced some of the posts and articles that shaped my understanding and thoughts around curation.

In the September of 2009, Rohit Bhargave wrote a post called the Manifesto For The Content Curator: The Next Big Social Media Job Of The Future? . I stumbled across this quite recently. And one of the most telling sentences that leap out from the post is this: “…By some estimates in just a few years we will reach a point where all the information on the Internet will double every 72 hours.” While the magnitude escapes the capacity of our mind’s ability to comprehend, this does beg the question: should we focus on creation or curation? How do separate the wheat from the chaff? How do we make sense? Bhargava goes on to define a Content Curator thus: A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online. This then is an individual, who makes sense of the deluge and presents it in a manner that is coherent, easily understood and relevant.

He followed this up later with The 5 Models Of Content Curation. This post highlights the 5 potential models of curation as he calls them, which are forms or manifestations of a curated output. You may want to read the post for a detailed understanding, but here is the gist of what he mentions:
1.       Aggregation: Aggregation is the act of curating the most relevant information about a particular topic into a single location.
2.       Distillation: Distillation is the act of curating information into a more simplistic format where only the most important or relevant ideas are shared.
3.       Elevation: Elevation refers to curation with a mission of identifying a larger trend or insight from smaller daily musings posted online.
4.       Mashup: Mashups are unique curated juxtapositions where merging existing content is used to create a new point of view.
5.       Chronology: Chronology is a form of curation that brings together historical information organized based on time to show an evolving understanding of a particular topic.

Here’s a visual representation of the model above taken from Beth Kanter’s post: Best Practices for Content Curation for Nonprofits at Social Media for Nonprofits Conference.

Curating is also defined thus: … I mean curating in the sense of organizing, editing, displaying, highlighting, captioning, commenting on, and all of the activities you'd see associated with telling a specific story from your point of view…~ in the post, Curating Information as Content Strategy.

Aggregation is perhaps the most frequently seen manifestation of curation because it is easier to do than the rest. Aggregation can be automated by setting smart filters and alerts. But while useful, it is lower on the value chain. However, aggregation can be infused with greater depth as described in Is Content Curation the New Black …many of the world's top websites and blogs are largely curation-based. Lifehacker.com is a great example. There's a smattering of their own stuff, a more substantial article mixed in here and there. But it's largely about curating the need-to-know info in the world of, well, life and tech hacks.

Robert Scoble’s post, the 7 needs of real time curators, lists what affordances technology and tools should offer a curator for them to add true value—something beyond just aggregation. Excerpt below:
1.       Real-time curators need to bundle.
2.       Real-time curators need to reorder things.
3.       Real-time curators need to distribute bundles.
4.       Real-time curators need to editorialize.
5.       Real-time curators need to update their bundles.
6.       Real-time curators need to add participation widgets.
7.       Real-time curators need to track their audience.

It is difficult to deny anymore that curation is the need of the hour. Whether we depend on others to provide us with curated content or we decide to become curators in our area(s) of expertise or interest, the need for curation as a sense making and PKM activity is undeniable. This of course means that we should at least be familiar with the basics of curation and the technological affordances.

The next natural question then is how does one begin to curate? And here I found Tim Kastelle’s post, Five Forms of Filtering useful. Filtering as explained in the post, takes place in two ways—the judgement-based or human and the mechanical. Judgement based filtering occurs at different levels—Naïve, Expert and the Network. Mechanical filtering is driven by Heuristics and Algorithms. Our interest and passion can take us from being a naïve filterer to being an expert.

An expert on a topic may use any or a combination of the curation forms mentioned above—aggregation, distillation, elevation, mashup and chronology—to present their readers with a certain perspective or overview. This is of course similar to the PKM model suggested by Harold Jarche.

For effective curated output, pattern recognition is essential. A good curator sees patterns before others, can connect the dots in seemingly disparate pieces of information, and can distinguish between an important trend as opposed to a passing fad. The one critical difference between PKM and deliberate curation—as I see it—is that he former is inward focused even while taking place in a networked world. The latter is deliberately outward focused with the intent of presenting a perspective or an insight or a trend to others. The steps involved are similar while the desired outcome may be different.

In conclusion:

How do the skills of a curator apply in an organizational context? More than ever before, as we know. In globally distributed and networked organizations engaged in doing complex work, where exception handling is likely to be the norm, it is crucial for information flow to be transparent and to have folks who can spot the patterns, connect the dots and provide that key insight which keep an organization on the cutting edge. They may or may not be officially conferred the title of curators. But the need is irrefutable. Probably the biggest challenge facing organizations today is not the lack of data creation, but the lack of someone who can connect all the floating dots—inside and outside the organization—that lead to meaningful decisions. While some aspects can be automated—using analytics—it still requires a human curator to recognize patterns and present the output.

Who are likely to be playing the role of key curators in an organization? Most likely to be the community managers! With organizations going the social business route and investing in a social platform, community managers will soon become an essential role. And community managers are the best placed to play the role of curators as well. One insight I gleaned from this post by Bertrand Duperrin: Are curators the missing thing in enterprise 2.0 approaches? Curators are focused on information flows without thinking they’re leading or managing any community. From which I draw the inference that curators need not be community managers, but community managers should ideally have curation skills or work closely with curators to build a successful community.

As Clay Shirky said here: Curation comes up when search stops working…[and] when people realize that it isn't just about information seeking, it's also about synchronizing a community.

More on the specific skills we need to develop to be effective curators in my next post.

Reference: Content Strategy and Curation: A stack on Delicious

A Surprise!

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:02:00 PST

Today I received a pleasant surprise! And one that also humbled me. One of my Twitter friends notified me about this post: Asia Pacific's List of elearning Movers and Shakers -- http://www.prlog.org/11780265-asia-pacifics-list-of-learning-movers-and-shakers.html
I appear in this curated list of the top 10 movers and shakers, and I was delighted. Then as the euphoria settled, I was beset with questions. Do I really deserve to be on this list? How can I contribute more to the industry of elearning? How can I make my learning more transparent?

Even as the Questions buzzed around inside my head, I felt the accolade bring in responsobilites-- a commitment to be authentic, to share what I learn, to continuously learn and enhance my skills, to give back to the community of elearning that is the source of my inspiration.

I want to thank each one of you for the appreciation and wholehearted support, and for being a constant source of my learning.

I hope to keep growing and learning from the community. And to give back!

Exceptions are the new normal

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:54:00 PST

“Exceptions are the shadow economies of firms today and is fertile ground for social business solutions, which thrive in an exception-driven environment…” ~John Hagel : http://www.dachisgroup.com/2011/03/reflections-on-social-business-summit-2011/

In today’s work environment, exceptions and not rote task rule. You can’t train for exceptions nor create checklists or Job Aids. Exceptions encountered are solved by people bringing not a hammer for the nail but a bagful of toolkits, problem solving skills and an open mind. And very often the expertise of their network. Exceptions are more effectively tackled when that network has diversity built into it.

Sameer Patel in the post Why Exception Handling Should be the Rule writes: “Each exception requires a different set of experts or problem owners, some known but most unknown, and often spread across a global footprint at large organizations.” (emphasis mine)

Rigid rules are the enemies of exceptions and organizations that impose rules with an iron hand are the worst off when it comes to handling exceptions. Exceptions require frontline workers to take discretionary steps. When rules limit these abilities, then we run the risk of inefficiency, unsatisfied customers and unsolved issues.

Sameer Patel in the same piece references an HBR article by Adrian Cott called Are Scorecards and Metrics Killing Employee Engagement? One of the paragraphs in the article states:

“Rules are comfort food for management. When something goes terribly wrong, the first response is to add more rules and policy. Of course, managers have good intentions: protecting the company from bad choices and creating accountability. That's what everyone learns in Management 101. Yet the net effect often shifts accountability to the wrong places. Unassailable rules and metrics shifts accountability away from management and down the chain to the front-line employee. Rules allow managers a surefire way to dodge their responsibility and protect their career.”

Metrics and policies, while necessary for the running of an organization, should not become iron casts for the employees. And in this age of complexity and never-ending change, exceptions will continue to be the new normal. Enabling and empowering front-line employees to deal with exceptions will be one of the keys to an organizations survival in today’s environments.

This requires:

1. A culture of trust

2. Transparent workflows

3. Networked and connected employees

4. An environment that supports mistakes and encourages learning from failures

5. A culture of sharing not only learnings but also mistakes made along the way

I am deliberately staying away from over using the term social business. But to me it seems that one of the measures of success (ROI if you will) of social business in an organization should be how effectively does it enable employees to deal with exceptions.

Trust, Tacit Knowledge and Social Business

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:02:00 PST

As I read the post on Resolving the Trust Paradox by John Hagel, I was reminded of two things—the talk on the power of vulnerability by Brene Brown and what Morten Hansen says about tacit knowledge sharing in his book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results. I had written about the latter in my post Molotov cocktail = Weak ties x complicated knowledge.

Hansen explains Molotov cocktail in the context of network building and explains how weak ties can be detrimental to the transfer of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge (by definition knowledge that is un-codified, not visible and sometimes, not “articulatable” in very black and white terms) requires strong ties to be shared. Strong ties—as we know—are based on trust.

With complexity, chaos and constant change taking over and becoming the norm, we can expect codified knowledge stocks to have a shorter shelf-life. A constant state of flux will give rise to ambiguity, uncertainties and questions—all of which will exist in the form of tacit knowledge in the minds of people as they encounter real world challenges, device innovative ways to deal with those, make mistakes and learn from them. We have moved from an age of best practices to emerging practices and no one can be intelligent on their own any more, as rightly quoted by Michele Martin in her post Learning Together. I loved the quote so I have pasted it in its entirety below:

(Socrates) introduced the idea that individuals could not be intelligent on their own, that they need someone else to stimulate them. . . His brilliant idea was that if two unsure individuals were put together, they could achieve what they could not do separately; they could discover the truth, their own truth, for themselves. ~Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity

The complexity is further compounded by the nature of distributed organizations. In today’s model of a global organization, teams are often scattered, employees work onsite or from home, road warriors are always “on the road”—in short, the concept of teams working shoulder to shoulder every day, literally and metaphorically standing by each other, talking over problems and challenges at their desks are slowly being replaced by virtual teams who interact via social tools and platforms, use Webex for meetings, get into teleconferences to talk over issues and update each other via emails. In this context, how do we build trust? Given that knowledge sharing and knowledge building are much more than an exchange of information and updates and involves the realm of tacit knowledge, it is critical that we build trust first.

Enter social business! Emergent social platforms made communication and knowledge sharing easy even among people residing on opposite corners of the planet, total strangers to each other. We suddenly had access to all the experts whose books and posts we had read with admiration. Twitter changed it all. Seeing how individuals adopted the entry of e2.0 for personal growth and development, organizations decided to jump onto this bandwagon, and with good reason. Adopt, adapt or be annihilated!

But very soon organizations treading the path of social business realize that a “platform does not well-knit organization build”. What is required is a move toward a trust-based, dialogue-driven culture that will facilitate the evolution of new ideas, reshaping of the old and the spread of the new. Collaboration in an enterprise is very different from collaborating with individuals for one’s personal goals. As Hansen explains in Collaboration, organizational collaboration is meant to achieve certain goals—whether it is to resolve a tenacious problem, come up with a new product line, or to make a breakthrough discovery. However, matters become sticky here. All of these situations require the sharing of tacit knowledge, a willingness to express half-formed thoughts, safety belts that allow people to make mistakes publicly and learn from each other. And the overarching quality that can make this happen is trust.

And in the context of a distributed workforce with workers who have in all probability never met each other, how easy or challenging is it to build trust? Can we engage in meaningful conversations via a social platform with someone we have never met before and share those half-formed thoughts?

Even as organizations invest in social platforms to conduct their day to day to business, online communities are taking over real world teams. This does not automatically make the former more efficient, it is just the way it is going to be. We can no more fight it than we can prevent the sun from rising. And this is where I think one of the biggest behaviour changes is needed. As John Hegel says in the post, “It turns out that the very practices that helped us to build trust in the past are now contributing to the erosion of trust.” If we continue with practices that helped us to foster trust in an environment where we met each other face to face almost daily, those practices are not going to be very effective in an environment driven by activity streams, social tools and apps, and conference calls.

When the very premise of communication has changed, we have to re-think and re-imagine our efforts at building at trust. It will require a great deal more courage to come forth and express our fumbling ideas on a social platform for all and sundry to see and comment on than it did to express it within the safety of a room with five other people of one’s team.

50 Posts and Articles that Made Me Think in 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:23:00 PST

Inspired by Jane Hart’s Top 100 Articles of 2011, I thought I should put down at least the top 50 that has made me reflect and ponder in the past one year, has changed the way I do things and shaped quite a bit of my work-life decisions. Not all the posts have been written in 2011, but since I either stumbled across them in 2011 or read them with greater appreciation this year, I thought it fair to include these in the list. In the past one year, I have made a career shift or should I say expanded my work portfolio (and I have described the move here), and these posts and articles have been instrumental in helping me make sense of the move and impart some value to the work I do.

I have divided them across five categories for easy reference. From the categories, you will be able to see what has influenced me the most in the past one year. At times, I have also had difficulty in “slotting” an article under a specific category. Many of the articles span groups and are interlinked. I have listed them in some sort of reading order or the way they made sense to me…

Social Business

The future is podular by Dave Gray
Putting Enterprise 2.0 into Context by Andrew McAfee
Factories: the original social businesses by Anne Marie McEwan
The Path to Co-Creating a Social Business: The Early Adoption Phase by Dion Hinchcliffe
Moving Beyond Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement by Dion Hinchcliffe
Seven Lessons Learned on Social Business by Dion Hinchcliffe
Systems Intelligence, Serendipity and Listening for the Better Decisions by Riitta Raesmaa
From social intranets to collaboration ecosystems by Fred Cavazza
What is a social intranet or an intranet 2.0 ? by Bertrand Duperrin
How Digital Business Will Evolve in 2012: 6 Big Ideas by Dion Hinchcliffe
Why social business is different - Part 1: Reusing stored collaboration by Dion Hinchcliffe
Social networks are becoming your personal operating system by Brian Solis
Five Emergent Strategies for Improving Social Business Performance by Dion Hinchcliffe
Open Work: Using Social Software To Make Our Work Visible Again by Dion Hinchcliffe
Why E2.0 and Social Business Initiatives Are Likely to Remain Difficult by Jon Husband

Community Management

Community Management: The Strategic New IT-Enabled Business Capability by Dion Hinchcliffe
Community management: The 'essential' capability of successful Enterprise 2.0 efforts by Dion Hinchcliffe
How to Build an Online Community by Vanessa DiMauro
11 Social Media Yodas Define Community Management “Passion”by Baochi Nguyen
Who's To Blame For A Failed Community? by Claire Flanagan
Social Software Is Not Enough by Rachel Happe
Community Managers are Human Experience (HX) Professionals by Rachel Happe
Top 15 Ways to Kills an Online Community -- Again by Vanessa DiMauro
Community Managers’ Reading List: 27 Books fromQuiip
Why You Need to Foster Community at Work by Shawn Murphy

Content Strategy and Curation

Capitalizing On Curation: Why The New Curators Are Beating The Old by Drew Neisser
Manifesto For The Content Curator: The Next Big Social Media Job Of The Future? by Rohit Bhargava
Return of the Editor: Why Human Filters are the Future of the Web by Karyn Campbell
Are curators the missing thing in enterprise 2.0 approaches? by Bertrand Duperrin
The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators by Robert Scoble
Curation in the Enterprise: Actionable information by JP Rangaswami
Curation and the enterprise: part 2 by JP Rangaswami
Curation and amplification will become much more sophisticated in 2012 by Vadim Lavrusik
The Future Of Journalism – By Ross Dawson
‘Controlled Serendipity’ Liberates the Web by Nick Bilton

Complexity and the changing face of 21^st C Workplace

Moving Beyond “Work as Usual” in a Complex World by Thierry de Baillon
Why Is Knowledge Sharing Important? A Matter of Survival by Luis Suarez
Essential Skills for 21st Century Survival: Part I: Pattern Recognition by Venessa Miemis
Connected companies, complex systems, and social intranets by Gordon Ross
Diversity, complexity, chaos and working smarter by Harold Jarche
The Satir Change Model by Steven M. Smith
Connecting Agile Business with Social Business by Dion Hinchcliffe
Avoiding Chaos, Losing Serendipity? by Julie Hunt
The Collapse of Complex Business Models by Clay Shirky
The connected company by Dave Gray

Workplace Learning

Social Learning and Exception Handling
Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson
The Five Failures of Workplace Learning Professionals by Will Thalheimer
Social Learning is NOT a new training trend by Jane Hart
Jobs, work and technology by Harold Jarche

There are plenty more but in the interest of keeping the list manageable, I have limited it to 50 articles. I have not included posts around learning and instructional design or elearning —still my first love—and will add a separate post with the links to resources I have found useful.

Content Curation: One More Role for an Enterprise Community Manager

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:25:00 PST

Faced with the tsunami of information, we are all floundering to find our way to content that actually matters. From setting up filters--both of the automated and human variety--to trying to make sense of what we find, we are in a fix, so to speak. Hence, we see the rise of content curators as a breed who will help us to make sense of this world of worldwideweb that has suddenly gone amuck.

The scene within an enterprise is not much different. The lifespan of enterprises are declining rapidly. And the only way an enterprise can survive is by being on the cutting edge of their field, by being adaptive and by making the right decisions quickly. This requires a quick access to the hive mind of the enterprise and an ability to connect the dots to make sense of the underlying pattern.
We are all striving for a world where we find exactly what we need, the conversation we want to be a part of and the content that helps us make that breakthrough decision. Arnold Waldstein puts it elegantly:

I’m dreaming hard for a conversational-based reality online. I want to parse my world by conversations, by topic, by trusted connections daily.

How does this tie in with the role of a community manager, you may ask!
Very closely, I would say. An enterprise that has adopted a social business platform and is trying to shape a path for a conversation-based reality, content creation and consumption, and communication via the platform will see a proliferation of content that could range from sales decks to discussion threads on the appropriate technology stack to use on a specific project. This is the proverbial organizational hive mind but someone has to enable the enterprise to make sense of this stream, separate the wheat from the chaff, and connect the dots to reveal the key patterns below. Only then can this knowledge flow become a part of the decision-making process and enable users to take the right decision quickly.

What role can an enterprise community manager play?
In this case, the community manager's role would be akin to that of a museum curator. Curators at museums lay out the best pieces in a manner that:

Catch the viewers attention
Tells a narrative that makes sense to the viewer (e.g., one would not hang a Picasso painting next to seals from Mohenjo Daro)
Gives a sense of the bigger scheme of things
Makes it easy for viewers to "jump" to the sections that interest them
Have enough metadata for viewers to understand the context

Similarly, the enterprise community manager (or anyone who is playing the role) needs to help community members do one or more of the following:

Find what users need on the platform without getting lost in a maze of content
Surface useful and interesting content that the user may not have had prior knowledge of
Contribute with ease and know where to place the content they are producing

Deconstructing each point one by one...

Find what users need on the platform without getting lost in the maze
This will entail a blend of manual and automated work. The automated bit will take care of the filtering and aggregation, but the curation work needs to be done by a human being. J.P. Rangaswami, in his blog The Confused of Calcutta, describes it thus:

When a human curates, she does three things. She selects something (or things) from a larger group. She organises those selections cohesively. And she arranges to present those things in such a way that people find it easy to engage with those things.

This in the context of a social business platform like Jive requires--among other things--consistent tagging, proper aggregation, enabling quick search options, providing guided navigations for frequently accessed pieces, and grouping of similar groups and content in an appropriate manner. Some of these can be achieved via the user interface design and the use of pre-built widgets that allow community managers to pull in content defined with specific tags and categories. This can be made as general or as granular depending on the community's need. The platform allows community managers and group administrators to insert widgets within their groups to facilitate aggregation of specific content type for easy consumption. This can be compared to a museum curator displaying the best pieces and ensuring that sufficient light falls on the pieces so that viewers can spot them with ease. However, the making sense bit still needs to be done manually.

Surface useful and interesting content
This entails listening to the community, being aware of the needs and drivers, and keeping a keen watch on the different contributions and conversations taking place on the platform. One needs to develop a nose for useful content just like an experienced editor develops a sense for what could be breaking news. This skill cannot be automated and requires constant engagement with the community to develop. By surfacing hidden gems, community managers enable users to make those serendipitous discoveries that could lead to breakthrough innovations, more engaged participation and a sense of commitment to the community. The greater the benefit users derive from their membership to the community, the higher will be their involvement and engagement.
One of the ways to surface content of interest can be via newsletters. However, there is a risk here. In a bid to target the entire enterprise via one newsletter, one runs the risk of making the newsletter too generic and thus of no use to anyone. Having a specific target audience in mind enables effective curation. A good curator will seek, sense, synthesise and then share in a manner that adds value to a specific user group. Curation is not just a collection of links and resources--it is a synthesis that reveals the pattern behind the links and list of resources. And by revealing the patterns, a curator can help an organisation make breakthrough finds.
The key here is to remember that each content piece is a social object around which conversations will evolve, further content will be generated and ideas surface.

Contribute with ease
The idea of a social business platform is to facilitate participation and conversation. This implies making it completely friction-less and free-form. However, that is not all. It also implies enabling users to know exactly where on the platform can they "place" their contribution. Any confusion here can dramatically reduce contribution. Simple guidelines and a few do's and don'ts are good to start with. The community manager needs to reach out a helping hand and move the content piece to the right container if need be. This kind of hygiene check goes a long way in keeping the platform user-friendly and the content findable.

The Seventh Hat of a Community Manager: UX Design

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:42:00 PST

"Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away", said Steve Krug in his classic Don't Make Me Think! This is an excellent thumb rule for designers--and as I got into my role of a community manager--I learned the value of this rule for community managers as well. I have recently blogged about The Six Hats of a Community Manager, and here is the seventh one.

Does a community manager need to become an UX expert?

This doesn't of course mean that we become UX designers by virtue of being community managers. That might be stretching it too far. After all, UX designers come with years of experience, expertise in a specific area, and knowledge of their subjects. Nevertheless, a community manager needs to understand the basic tenets of good usability.

An online community hosted using a social platform is as much about usability as it is about collaboration and communication. A confusing interface, a sub-optimal navigation and a search that doesn't yield the expected results--are all surefire ways of losing and alienating potential community members. I will elaborate on this theme in the post.

Just as we are attracted to well-designed localities where it is easy to locate and reach the frequently accessed places like the grocery store, the pharmacy, schools and parks, the bus depot and the railway station, similarly an online community needs to offer the same comforting and pleasant user experience to keep members coming back. Shaping the user experience will also depend on the kinds of users the community targets. Oftentimes, an out-of-the-box implementation of the platform one is going to use to host the community may not work. It needs customisation to meet the requirements of the business and the users.

What does a community manager has to do with this? Isn't that the designers' and the developers' job?

The designers and the developers will help to "design" and customize the platform; the vision and the requirements need to come from the community manager. S/he is the one who knows what the long- term goal of the community is going to be.

A community manager's tasks start long before the community is born. It starts from the time an organisation decides to move towards a more social way of doing business. It starts long before s/he is designated the community manager. Anyone who is going to be responsible for the launch and ultimate use of the platform, i.e., a potential community manager, needs to think about shaping user experience. Launching a platform and expecting users to participate and start contributing is wishful thinking just as assuming users will keep coming back to a platform with poor usability is.

This can mean sitting with the web design team, figuring out what the original platform offers and what are the tweaks required to make it user-friendly for the organisation. It is important to delineate all possible use cases and user types and explore how they are likely to interact with the platform.

It is important also to remeber that all employees of an organization are not going to form one large, massive group. They will segregate and form smaller communities around functional areas, roles, projects, perhaps locations and regional offices, capability areas, and even hobbies and interests. Any user of the platform will most likely be part of at least more than one smaller community. And given that an organization's social platform is going to be their knowledge sharing and collaboration hub, it is important to identify the key actions a user will perform on the platform. S/he will consume content and also contribute; participate and sometimes lurk; sometimes search and, at times, browse. Keeping in mind this gamut of actions a user is likely to take, it is crucial to shape the user experience to be as seamless as possible.

It is useful to pinpoint what are at least the top five actions a user is likey to perform, and here is a suggestive list:

Find and participate in communities relevant to them
Find specific content at the point of need
Locate experts at the point of need
Participate in different forums
Follow other users

If the navigation and the design of the platform makes it difficult for them to do any one or more of the tasks mentioned--we are going to "drain their reservoir of goodwill" and they are unlikely to become loyal community members.

Make the first experience memorable

The first page a user typically lands on is the site's Home Page. Make this a pleasant, non-head-scratching experience. Some thumb rules to consider with respect to the Home Page (based on my experience and may differ from community to community) in no particular order:

1. The Home page should clearly tell the users what are the key actions they can take on the platform and make them easy to perform.

2. Whatever is clickable should look clickable.

3. The search box must be prominent, and it is best to avoid putting any search criteria like, "use only lower case". This adds a layer of friction.

4. The navigation bar must absolutely be self explanatory; the users should not have to think what clicking on any of those links/tabs/buttons will do. It is best to use convention even if it seems boring.

5. The fonts and color scheme need to take into consideration users of varying ages.

6. The Home button needs to pop out; it is the North Star for the users.

7. There needs to be a clear sense of hierarchy so that users know what are the key actions to take as opposed to "good to do" stuff.

8. Provide visual cues to help users navigate.

9. Have clear directives for first time users. This can be something as simple as a prominent "First time users" link leading to a video or screen cast on how to navigate around the platform.

10. Allow users to provide feedback easily, perhaps via an easily accessible feedback link from the Home page. This tells users we are open to listening to them and are willing to improve.

It's time to wrap up this post. Community management goes beyond curating content, welcoming users and facilitating discussions. It is also about enabling frictionless access to collaboration for members of your community. Frictionless can be achieved in multiple ways--by making the environment welcoming, by guiding members to the right groups and content, by enabling easy access to the collaboration platform and making the site design intuitive and easily navigable.

I would love to hear your views on this. How important is it for community managers to grasp the basics of usability?

The Six Hats of a Community Manager

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:47:00 PST

In my previous post, I wrote about the tenets of communitymanagement based on my learnings from the past 6 months. In this post, I want to talk about the different hats that we need to don as community managers. This was well put in the diagram by Andy Wibbels which you can see in this post called Inside the Mind of a Community Manager.It graphically represents a number of things a community manager needs to be aware of in her/his role.

In my post, I want to explore all the "hats" a community manager needs to wear to execute her role. The premise of this post is that when an organisation makes a conscious effort to move towards a more social way of doing business, it usually begins with the introduction of an enterprise collaboration platform. Employees, who have been using emails and, perhaps, mailing lists and google groups till then as their mode of communication and collaboration, are now expected to use the collaboration platform for their day to day business. This shift calls for some intense community management and community building, and the post focuses on the different roles a community manager needs to play during this time.

The hat of a Change Agent

When an organization moves to a different mode of communication, it calls for a huge amount of change management. What we are asking for is a behaviour change. Conceptually, the change may appear to be a very simple one--move from emails to a more open mode of communication on a collaboration platform. However, living in the inbox is a deep-rooted habit for most 21st century workers. And to be honest, email is the most frictionless, asynchronous mode of communication today. Why then will people bother to make the shift?

As change agents, we have to make two things very simple for them -- the act of making the shift and the reason behind the shift. Let's take Amazon as an example. I end up buying books on my Kindle not only because I want those books but also because Amazon makes it incredibly simple for me to buy them. It has changed my reading and buying habits tremendously. And I have changed without appearing to have made any conscious effort to do so.

Similarly, we have to remove obstacles from the path of change. We have to be obsessed with making the shift to the new collaboration platform easy. This of course is easier said than done. There will be umpteenth obstacles beyond the control of a community manager ranging from the constraints posed by the platform itself to enterprise security policies that impact how users access the platform. Make a platform difficult to access--this means anything more than two clicks--and users will exit. Moreover, the steps needed to be taken to make the shift have to be crystal clear including what the expected outcome will be. Dan and Chip Heath says in Switch, "What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity." Ambiguity will doom any change effort. And they will go back to the default behavior--in this case email. While emails may be a sub-optimal medium of collaboration, human beings will default to known behavior in the absence of clear and easy path to change.

The hat of a Trainer

All new platforms-- no matter how intuitive it may seem--require some training. This can be in the form of simple how-to documents, screencasts, videos, webex sessions, and anything else that you can think of. What is important to remember perhaps is that designing and creating these training materials is not enough. We need to ensure they reach the users. This could mean creating a Training/Help Center on the platform that can be a one-stop shop for users. Reaching out to users proactively to find out if they need help is also recommended. Keeping the training materials crisp and to the point is critical. Mapping the training to typical use cases is also important. Providing generic, platform related information is not too useful. Instead, the training material needs to focus on what are the typical ways users are likely to interact on the platform and why would they need to do so. Shaping the guidelines, screencasts and videos around these use cases can help onboard users quickly to the platform.

The hat of a Content Curator

As people begin to access the platform, get comfortable with the functionalities and features, what comes next is a proliferation of content. At least in an organisation like ThoughtWorks, that is the trend. With the proliferation comes chaos. The activity stream turns into an overwhelming flood and people lose control of their information flow. It is the job of the community manager to go through this flood, pick out content of interest and value for the community and aggregate that in a manner that makes consumption easy. Each platform will have its own functionalities and features that allow a community manager to curate and aggregate. Jive SBS--the platform we use--has certain useful widgets that let us do so. However, the curation part is manual. Moreover, to be a trustworthy and respected content curator, it is important to know the interests, needs and passions of the community. This requires constant engagement with the community, listening to the community and having an eye for detail. I will write more about what makes for a good content curator in a later post.

The hat of a Connector

Collaboration platforms are all about connections--between contet and people, between expertise and need, between skill-sets and projects, between people and people. As community managers, we need to set in place a system that enables findability and accessibility. This could mean anything from inculcating practices like tagging for searchability, helping users to fill out their profiles for findabilty, to manually connecting the nodes. Since community managers have a bird's eye view of their community, they are often best placed to spot a need and a corresponding solution--be it for a certain expertise, content or skillset. The role of a connector is crucial in creating business value for the organisation and is a skill all community managers need to hone.

The hat of a Brand Ambassador

Needless to say, we need to be cheerleaders for our community. There is no replacement for enthusiasm and passion. Marketing the platform--albeit subtly--is one of the tasks of a community manager. Telling stories of successful use cases, collecting examples of how collaboration is positively impacting workflow, business and innovation and narrating these stories-- all help in branding the community as well as in getting the skeptics on-board. It is important to find the evangelists and believers and encourage them to share their stories.

The hat of a Consultant

This is perhaps the most frequently donned hat and covers a gamut of skills including needs analysis, solution designing, influencing, facilitating, and negotiating. This calls for a post by itself but I will touch upon the key points here. Typically, in an organisation/enterprise, a single community of all employees will not be an effective means of collaboration. They will split into teams and groups driven by many factors from functional areas and interests to roles and projects. These teams will form their own communities with their specific and unique goals and objectives. It's our job to help the teams articulate their objectives and enable them to design their community experience in a manner that supports their objectives. It also entails sharing best practices around collaboration--where collaboration implies fruitful comings together to achieve common objectives.

Six Tenets of Community Management: Learnings

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:24:00 PST

I am back again after being away for more than 3 months. I have been somewhat lazy but I also deliberately stayed away from posting as I tried to consolidate and synthesise all that I was learning. I have been playing the role of an enterprise community manager for some time now—6 months to be precise—and thought it would be a good idea to jot down my learnings from the past few months.

This post is directed towards new community managers, who have recently donned the mantle of community management and are perhaps finding that there are more things to do than one had thought of. I have had my successes and failures, stumbled and cursed myself at the end of the day for not having predicted a question or a reaction, stayed up at night reading all possible books on community management from the classic Cultivating Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger to Jono Bacon’s The Art of the Community—only to realize that no amount of reading will teach me what my living, breathing community will.

I can’t remember where I read it, but this is the quote that inspires me: To solve tough problems, have tough problems. And believe me, in a geeky, hard core technology driven organisation filled with hyper active, questioning geeks like ThoughtWorks, community management is no mean task. It can be exhausting but also exhilarating; challenging yet rewarding; sheer hard work but also a huge amount of fun.

Here are some of learnings crystallized over the past few months.

First tenet (and many have said this before me): It’s about the people.

It’s not about the platform; it’s not about technology; and it’s absolutely definitely not about the community manager. It’s about the people who are the heart and soul of the community.

Second tenet: A community manager is an enabler, a facilitator, a guide.

Our job is to ensure we are there for our community, for our users. We need to be a combination of a 24x7 help desk, a consultant, a trouble-shooter, a listening ear, a bridge, and occasionally a shoulder to cry on.

Third tenet: Be clear and precise in your communication.

Clarity, objectivity and having one’s facts right will go a long way in establishing credibility. Whether engaged in oral communication or drafting a written one for the communities’ consumption—read and re-read for verbosity, ambiguity and obfuscation and remove these. Yes, I just used the word. Basically, never obfuscate. In short be simple, to the point and clear.

Fourth tenet: Be empathetic.

No matter how strongly we feel about the social platform, how firmly we believe in the absolute goodness of social engagement, and how strongly we feel that everyone should just “get it”, put yourself in your community member’s shoes and tread the path they are treading. Ask questions, observe usage patterns and offer help. Being judgmental is a “no no”.

Fifth tenet: Keep your ego at home.

There’s no place for ego in this role. We can’t afford to put ourselves first if we want to be half-way good and trusted community managers.

Sixth tenet: Seed the bright spots and successes.

In the initial days of the launch of a social business platform, most community management effort will be focused on initiating and managing change. And this is the time when a huge amount of frustration can also set in. It often feels like you are taking one step forward only to fall back by three. However, one thing I have learned is that looking for what is not working can be overwhelming, daunting and scary. However, if we can think differently and see what is working, we can replicate the bright spots. Analysing what is working, why some users are engaged and participative, what their usage patterns are like, what imbibes a sense of belonging in them can help us to come up with a “matrix for success.” Replicating this matrix can be a step toward facilitating quicker change.

I am still thinking about the last point and will write more about it in a later post.

5 Questions to Ask When Setting up Communities

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:47:00 PDT

While the terms community management and community manager are more popular, I have never found them very comfortable to use. It is perhaps to do with the word management--which reeks of Taylorism, hierarchy, command and control--all the connotations that to me are anathema to creating a sense of belonging, infusing passion, and leading. I am happier with community leadership or community facilitation. A facilitator is an enabler, a helping hand and a guide. Good facilitation should almost be invisible, empowering members to take decisions and actions. Anyhow, I digress. I will leave the deconstruction of the word for another post...

I want to document a few of my initial learning from setting up communities within our organization. But I am leaping ahead. Let me set the stage a bit.

I have mentioned in my earlier post here that we have launched an enterprise-wide collaboration platform powered by Jive. As typically happens--there are early adopters who embraced the change and became active contributors on the platform. Then there are the cautious and the wary, dipping their toes in so to speak--but not quite willing to see all the benefits yet. And of course there are the sceptics--the quiet and the vociferous. To bring these individual users—endowed with diverse abilities, motivated differently, and at various levels of platform adoption—together to form communities is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Yet, on the surface, it seems fairly straightforward. Create communities (i.e., groups on the platform) pertaining to the key capability areas/practices and people will join their “respective” groups to participate, share knowledge, collaborate to find solutions, have engaging conversations spanning different continents, countries, and time zones. That's the vision! But moving towards it requires carefully thought-out steps, clearing the path, and laying the bed—a process of continuous nurturing, tending, and guiding. No wonder the metaphor of gardening is so popular with community building! It comes closest to describing what needs to be done.

A note of clarification: When I talk about communities here, I am referring to groups of people who come together to achieve a shared purpose, learn from and share with each other, and enhance the group's as well as their own individual capabilities.

Having tried my hand at helping to set up a few communities at the initial stage of the platform rollout, I learned a few valuable lessons. Because dumping everything I have learned into a single post will make this horribly long and confusing, in this post I have focused on the initial steps to take before setting up a community.

Aside: And my instructional design background is standing me in very good stead indeed. Setting up a community requires the same level of diligent analysis of needs, objectives, and desired output as does the creation of a training design.

Communities/groups in an enterprise setting form to serve different purposes. They operate under vastly different dynamics as compared to voluntary communities that form on the web, and I don't merely mean in terms of membership numbers. Communities within an enterprise have specific objectives to achieve, goals and tasks to collaborate towards—all of which should ideally help the organization to move closer to its overarching goals and vision. What’s more—each community can and will be very different from another—forming to serve entirely different purposes.

Some of these communities may revolve around core skills and capabilities important for the growth of the organization. These will be imbued with the spirit of long-term vision of capability development, sharing of knowledge and solving of complex issues. Others may form for a very specific purpose--around a project, event, or even a task. These are typically time-boxed communities seeing a spate of activities for a short while—used as an online gathering place to share ideas, insights, and conversations. In either case, I have learned that when someone requests for help in setting up a community, it is a good idea to ask:

What are the objectives of the community?
Who are the target members? What are they expected to do when they join the community?
Who is going to tend the community, i.e., facilitate, moderate, and guide members?
What business needs will be solved by the forming of this community?
Who are the stakeholders? Are they all on the same page regarding the community’s goals and objectives? Do they have a shared vision?

Once these basic questions have been sorted out, it is time to design a few simple and concise guidelines for the community leaders as well as the members. Without some concrete points of reference, it is difficult to remain aligned with the community's vision over a period of time.

I will share my thoughts and learnings around this in the next post...

From Instructional Design to Enterprise Community Facilitation

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 23:18:00 PDT

This is a long overdue post, the draft of which had been languishing in my dropbox for some time--half forgotten. But finally I felt this needs to see the light of day. I have reached something of a cross-roads in my career, and I wanted to document the process of this arrival. It has been a long and exciting journey so far, dotted with exciting projects, some wonderful clients, and a tremendous amount of learning. But now I am traversing down a new path--albeit one I have wanted to travel for a long time.

An instructional designer by profession who started her career anlayzing learner needs, creating micro-design documents, writing story-boards and discussing the nitty-gritty of course navigation with visual designers, I have long been interested in the power of social, collaborative and informal learning. This interest was initially triggered by Jay Cross' seminal work, Informal Learning, Morten Hansen's Collaboration, Wenger, et al's Cultivating Communities of Practice, Wenger, White, et al's Digital Habitats, various blogs--primarily those by the ITA members and others like Michele Martin, Nancy White, Dave Pollard, Dave Snowden, Nick Milton, George Siemens--and later, books like Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham's The New Social Learning, and John Hagel and JSB's The Power of Pull. And my own foray into the world of social media with Twitter. And over all of this hovered the Cynefin Framework that Shawn Callaghan's video had introduced me to. So, even while I scripted storyboards and designed programs for corporate elearning courses, consulted with clients on the best possible means of rolling out elearning in their organization, and suggested elearning solutions befitting their problems--from training engineers and mechanincs on fixing motorbikes to navigating a new software--I was on the constant lookout for an opportunity to put into practice the social and informal learning blend into workplace learning.

Learning--especially in today's workplace beset with complexity, rapid change, and new challenges--as we knew it was changing. It had to change for an organization to survive. There was scant time to design courses to address needs that evolved from moment to moment, that was undefined, needed creative solutions, and innovative daring. The age of Connectivism was truly upon us. One's ability to solve a problem or find an answer to a burning issue via one's network was fast becoming the measure of one's success. The age of social learning is here. The age of Collaboration and Participation is here. Powered by enterprise2.0 tools and technology, laden with social media tools and apps, fueled by the Pods and the Pads, social business burst upon the scene. It soon became a buzzword but also showed organizations the path to survival, a way to remain on top of things, to face complexity with agility, to meet cusotmer demands with inovation.

Folks like Andrew McAfee, Dion Hinchcliffe, Sameer Patel, Bill Ives, Riitta Raesmaa, J.P. Rangaswami, Venkatesh Rao, et al. showed the direction to the future of work All of this led to my growing interest in communities, communities of practices and the art of community managment, further fueled by Jono Bacon's The Art of Community.

Therefore, when an opportunity to dabble in communities and play a part in designing and enabling a social and collaborative learning environment as an enterprise community facilitator presented itself at ThoughtWorks, I jumped at it with alacrity. My interest in social business expanded beyond the by now well-defined benefits of reduced time to market, increased scope for innovation, customer engagement, and such. I wanted to understand how communities within an enterprise can help build capabilities, enable expertise, and truly transform an organization into a learning organization.

I have seen how thoughtful use of social media can transform individual learning, help build one's PLN, and fuel one's passion. I wanted to now explore the impact of social media, communities and collaboration on orgnizational learning, on the building of a learning organization. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to experience what I had so far been reading and dreaming about.

Communities would be the building blocks of a successful move towards being a "social business". Cultivating communities would help to build capabilities, develop skill sets and enable the move from being a novice to an expert easier and quicker. However, theoretizing is always easier than practice. And only as I began to actively help set up communities did I realize the challenges, the needs, and the perseverance, patience and hard work required to put into play what I envision.

My ongoing learnings from helping to set up communities will be topics of other posts. However, I couldn't have started on those without setting the stage so to speak... For the foreseeable future, this blog is going to focus on my experiences and stories around setting up communities, enabling collaboration, and learnings. I am grateful for my Instructional Design background which is standing me in good stead on this new road...like a trustworthy friend.

Lurking is Not a Static State

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:51:00 PDT

Lurking and its role in communities has been on the forefront of my mind for the past few days. It has received a lot of attention in the past from the thought leaders in the realm of learning and the role of communities in personal as well as organizational learning. I have recently taken on enterprise community facilitation and was curious to see how people are interacting on our enterprise collaboration platform. The analytics told me that over 40% of the users are Active Users (a term Jive uses to describe all users who log in to consume content without necessarily interacting with the content in any manner). This is also proved by the fact that many of the groups on this platform have membership of ~300 but obviously not everyone is a Contributing User. They are lurking on the edge, consuming content.

Somehow, the word lurker has become associated with pejorative connotations of people taking from communities without giving back, of not contributing, of being selfish and feeding off the hard work of others. They are the free riders. However, is that truly the case? Would we consider silent participants in a meeting or at presentations lurkers? Not really. They showed up. I think what makes lurking seem dubious in an online environment is that we can't technically "reveal" our engagement. No one can see the engrossed look on my face when I read discussion threads in the Learning and Skills group. A lurker might very well be giving back by performing better at their jobs, by sharing insights with others in the context of their daily work by using the learning gleaned from lurking. This is especially true of communities in enterprises. Since the give back is asymmetric and happens in a different context, this goes unnoticed. Does that mean they should always continue to lurk? I don't quite think that happens. Some of the research material points to a cycle of participation that I have mentioned later.

I recalled some of the posts and articles I had read in the past about lurking as a behavior in online communities and what it indicated, and decided to dig through those again. At this point, I also "serendipitous-ly" stumbled upon a couple of conversations recently that touched upon lurking (this is why I love social media).
The questions going through my mind were:

Do people learn when lurking?
Is it an indicator of the value of the content being generated on the platform?
When does lurking change to participation?
What can community facilitators do to turn lurkers into participants?
How is lurking different from non-participation?
Finally, are lurkers considered as community members?

After digging through the references and some old articles I had saved, these are some of the key points that emerged.
Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith in Digital Habitats calls lurking "legitimate peripheral participation."

From a community of practice perspective, lurking is interpreted as “legitimate peripheral participation,” a crucial process by which communities offer learning opportunities to those on the periphery. Rather than a simple distinction between active and passive members, this perspective draws attention to the richness of the periphery and the learning enabled (or not) by it. (p. 9)

Quoted in Lurking or Legitimate Peripheral Participation by Christy Tucker

Etienne Wenger in the Communities of Practice: Learning, meaing and identity explains the five trajectories of participation behavior:

Legitimate peripheral participation, not fully participating (lurkers)
Inbound, headed toward full participation
Insider, fully accepted into the community
Boundary, sustaining membership in related communities of practice and “brokering” interactions between them
Outbound, in the process of leaving a community

from Lurking and Other Behaviors

There are subsets of lurkers who are Active Lurkers. In Active lurkers – the hidden asset in online communities, writes:

Active lurkers are those that may take something from the community and pass it along to others using different channels – so they participate in your word of mouth. Active lurkers also include those people who may visit a customer support community and find a solution to their problem without contributing to the community. Those people derive a lot of value from that community interaction and so does your company since they do not clog up your customer call center. Active lurkers also include those who will contact the original poster through a different channel, like telephone, email, or perhaps a face to face meeting – in effect continuing the conversation outside of the visible public side of the community, but not outside of the community itself.

From Lurking builds commonality

...Sometimes. Lurkers are part of a group's latent energy; good things happen when that energy is activated. Lurkers are part of the all-important weak-tie network, and it's important to keep them engaged, even if engagement does not translate to participation. ... the lurkers are a critical part of the weak-tie network -- they need to understand the concepts being discussed so they can discuss them cogently with people who may be outside the network in question.

Just a couple of days back I read Luis Suarez's post on Social Learning at TELUS by Dan Pontefract, where Dan Pontefract says (and I am quoting Luis Suarez's post here):

You don’t have to have everyone on board to get value: Indeed, something that we have seen ourselves, over at IBM as well with some of our social software tools, like IBM Connections Bookmarks where about 35k fellow IBMers make use of it, yet the entire IBM population of 400k benefit from it, because the search results from our corporate Intranet search engine are injected with those social bookmarks that folks keep adding along. And it looks like the folks at TELUS share a similar experience; while they may not have achieved just yet 100% penetration with their social tools, the ones who are making active use of them are helping everyone else get enough value, perhaps not just producing valuable content, but digesting it as well.
This is, in my opinion, a critical point regarding the adoption of social tools within the enterprise, mainly from the perspective of setting up the right expectations and encouraging those who would want to make use of the tools to use them, while allowing the remaining ones adjust accordingly and figure out by themselves whether they would need to jump in as well or not. Let them figure out the value they would want to get from it is probably as good as it gets in order to allow for knowledge workers to understand how, when, why and what to contribute, whenever they may be ready.

There are communities where we continue to remain as lurkers. This happens due to various reasons. Participation, I think, is a factor/output of multiple variables. Some of these are:

Comfort level with the topic under discussion and having something substantive to say.
The perceived expertise level of the others in the community (if I am out of my depth, I may just lurk).
The place of the community in my daily life (if it is on a topic of peripheral interest, I may just lurk).
The attention/time ratio I can devote.
The feel of the community--does it feel welcoming and generate a sense of belonging, accepting of different opinions, composed of people at different levels of expertise, and so on.

When one or more of the above mentioned participation criteria are not met, users tend to lurk. But, as described above, lurking is not necessarily a bad thing. Lurkers often have weak ties to a community but form bridges between communities. They often try to use their listening engagement to distill many opinions and seek the larger pattern. By virtue of being distant from the core of the activities, they may spread themselves thinly across multiple communities and are in the key position to know what is happening where. And talk about these communities cogently to those external to the communities thus driving users towards the communities.

Big Cat Trail--The Charm of Corbett

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:10:00 PDT

Corbett was our final halt, and definitely a fitting end to this year's Big Cat Trail.

Five o' clock in the morning saw us at the small, quaint station of Ramnagar. We had boarded our train the previous night from Delhi. The short, comfortable ride was a nice experience.

Our jeep awaited us at the station and soon we were off-- headed towards Dhikala, where we had managed to get a night's stay. Getting bookings at Dhikala had proved to be an overwhelming and frustrating task accomplished only through Sumeet's perseverance, patience, and I guess, sheer will. Having stayed there, I can only say that I am immensely thankful we got to stay at Dhikala. Without Dhikala, the Corbett experience would have been very different. Disappointing perhaps... Dhikala turned it into a dream. Situated about 60 km inside from the gate, any visit to Corbett would be incomplete without a stay at the Dhikala Lodge.

The drive to Dhikala from the gate took about 2 hours...and that was our first taste of the forest. Corbett is completely unlike any forest we had visited so far. Nestled below the mountain ranges, it is cross-crossed with mountain rivers flowing over rocky beds. These are breathtakingly beautiful, even in the height of summer when the rivers had mostly run dry. This exposed the underlying beds of multi-colored stones weathered and smoothened by the years of rain, sun and shine. The sun's rays falling on these made them glisten like semi-precious jewels, of intriguing shapes and sizes...I was completely enamored. They varied in shades from purple to pink, grey to ochre. I particularly loved the violet ones with a hint of white on them...

On our way we stopped at the Crocodile Point-- a spot above a river from where one can spot crocodiles... We were lucky to catch our first glimpse of one resting on the bank...looking like a log of wood to a large extent. As we went in, I was torn between marveling at the beauty of the forest and looking out for any wildlife that may cross our path. Corbett is also well-known for it's bird life, and this added to my sense of anticipation. We saw a group of four Oriental Hornbills fly overhead--they caught us by surprise and unfortunately, we weren't prepared with our cameras.

In spite of it being Mid-May, this forest still retained its foliage and greenness. I could only try to imagine how dense it would be post monsoon. No wonder everyone had said that spotting the big cat in Corbett is extremely difficult.

We reached Dhikala around 10 am and headed straight for a sumptuous breakfast. We had the rest of the morning to laze about till our afternoon safari at 4.00 pm. I meandered around the lodge area which is pretty large. It overlooks an enchanting river-bed which was completely dry and formed a sand bank at this time of the year. I was to find out later how beautiful it looked in the moonlight, the whole sandscape turning into a shimmering bed on which the trees cast their huge, dark shadows. It requires a much more proficient writer than I am to capture that beauty in words. All I can say is I could have happily sat there gazing into the night watching the play of moonlight on the sand.

The first safari into Corbett was much awaited by all of us. As our jeep rolled out of the Dhikala gate into the forest, I found myself trying to absorb the feel of the forest with all my senses. Corbett, I realized, had a very distinctive scent made up of dry woods, crushed leaves and the foliage around us. Maybe, other forests do too, but it was in Corbett that I became acutely conscious of this. It was heavenly, almost intoxicating. As we wound our way through, looking to spot bird or mammal, I was constantly pulled into this world of heady fragrance.

Corbett, we found, is also known for its herd of wild elephants which apparently are prone to charge safari jeeps. Our driver and guide were both on high alert for these animals and regaled us with tales of how they had been caught between a charging elephant in the front and a herd of them at the back. Anyhow, the stories failed to alarm us and we were eager to see a herd. And we did! A huge herd was crossing the meadows when we reached the spot affording us a good view. Later we saw a huge Tusker heading into the forest, pausing now and then to shower himself with sand. It was an impressive sight.

That night was an experience I will not forget soon. Around 3 in the night, I woke up to flashes of blinding lightning and an incessant sound of thunder. Rain was falling in sheets...it was an awe-inspiring sight. I stood at the window which very fortunately overlooked the sand bank. The zig-zagging, near blinding flashes would light up the entire scene for long seconds to be followed by ominously loud crashes of thunder. In those seconds of lightning, everything was eerily illuminated-- the sand bank gleamed, the trees looking ghostly in that white light, while the rain lashed down. This high-drama of nature continued for the next two hours and then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. I stepped out around 5.15 am and was greeted by a sparkling clean world, strewn with fallen branches, torn and crushed leaves, and a strange silence. After the night's rampage, the birds were still to start their morning chirping...

We went for our morning safari a little tentatively, our guide warning us that there may not be much to see after such a night. Soon after, belying his words and living up to its reputation for being unpredictable and fickle, nature decided we should have our first glimpse of the big cat in Corbett. She had been sitting on the side of the road down which our jeep traversed. We had missed her because of the dense foliage and had gone ahead. Just then, our guide caught a glimpse and urgently asked our driver to reverse. This caused us to inadvertently block her path and she went inside the undergrowth. We waited not really knowing whether she would make an appearance again. However, her mission of crossing the road was evidently uppermost in her mind. A few seconds later she sprang out--that is all I can say--on to the road, mock-growled at us perhaps for causing her that slight delay, and vanished into the other side with a leap. It was all over within seconds. I think I had stopped breathing and taking a picture had not remotely occurred to me. She was gorgeous...a true Royal Bengal Tigress.

We continued with our safari, pausing to see the avifauna life. We did not see anymore of the big cats in Dhikala but we were not disappointed. Later in the day, we went over to Bijrani, which is much closer to Ramnagar station and hence, gets crowded. It doesn't match up to the Dhikala experience. Nevertheless, the safaris into the forest are always beautiful. This zone is not as replete with birds and other mammals as the Dhikala one but we did see the big cat.

What bothered me were the kind of tourist who came in. They seem to be coming with something like a circus show in mind. Noisy, insensitive to wildlife, and raucous, they detracted from the environment. The forest guides did not seem well-equipped to control tourist behavior. I do think there needs to be an educational program put in place that tell tourists prior to entering the forest, how to behave, what are unacceptable behaviors and the penalties for the same, what to expect, and what wildlife means. And this should be a mandatory part of the safaris. This would also be a good way to raise awareness about wildlife and their status in general.

This is becoming an endless post, and I have not even touched upon the different birds we saw from the red-collared doves to the dollar birds and emerald doves. I think I should wind-up now. Corbett should be on all wildlife lovers list of must-visit forests. It offers one of those rich, unique experiences that is difficult to forget. I am waiting to go back again...

Big Cat Trail--Beautiful Bandhavgarh

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 21:20:00 PDT

For some reason, this has been a post very long in coming...but finally, I have put down my thoughts.

Situated close to In Madhya Pradesh, this was our next destination--our penultimate halt in the Trail. We boarded our train from Jaipur for Umaria, a tiny station probably known for it's proximity to Bandhavgarh. Our pick-up awaited us, and we drove down to the White Tiger Forest Lodge about 30 km from the station. The short ride was a pleasant one. The road was exceptionally well-maintained, and soon we were at our destination. We had the rest of the day to freshen up and rest till the time of our afternoon safari.

I had heard that tiger spotting in Bandhavgarh is almost a given because of the sheer density. However, our first ride into the park belied this hearsay. The forest is beautiful, like all forests are; however, it lacked a bit of Ranthambore's elegance and mystique. Anyhow, that did not deter me from enjoying the ride. What perplexed me however was the route system that decreed not only following a specific route (which is completely understandable and should be done to avoid overcrowding of certain sections), but also completing it. This meant, more often than not, that we were driving to complete the route within the stipulated safari hours, hardly stopping to enjoy the wildlife. We also came across forest officials blatantly disregarding any such rule and using forest vehicles to take friends and relatives on tours. This did put us off.

Anyhow, back to the experience. Our first tiger sighting at Bandhavgarh was of the Bokha male and his cubs. This shy tiger was just coming out after having had his drink of water and was climbing up the slope of a small embankment when our jeep arrived at the spot. He is beautiful and as he paused to glance around, I marveled at the grace and strength. He walked up the slope and vanished into the undergrowth. At this point, our safari guide said that we could take an elephant ride inside to see if we could spot him resting.

Agreeing with alacrity, we mounted our elephant and went in. Sure enough, he was resting under the shade of a tree, and this afforded us ample opportunities to take some close-ups. Just as I was gazing my fill, we heard some commotion and our mahout said, "tiger!" This is a magic word, and we looked up from Bokha. Sure enough, there was a tiger emerging from the forest. He passed very close to our elephant. We were informed that this was one of Bokha's cubs. Happy fortune was with us, and soon the two other cubs soon followed. Full grown in size, they nevertheless stayed together not having yet acquired the hunting skills needed to survive alone.

I was overjoyed when we saw the legendary Kankatti the next day. She was sitting half submerged in a pool of water hidden by thick undergrowth, shrubs and foliage. Her face had a certain sinister beauty-- perhaps because of her sightless eye. The green leaves partially blocking her face from view added to the mystery. Her good eye glanced at us, sharp and bright. She is a beauty with an attitude.

When we left Bandhavgarh, I knew I wanted to come back. To see more of the forest, see Kankatti and Bokha and the new male. I just hope and pray that they and the rest of our existing wildlife stay safe. I hope that with rising awareness, we will be able to control poaching, restrict encroachment on wildlife space and grant them the security and peace they need to exist, to survive. We want our tigers to roam our forests with pride and in safety. We don't want to see them on our long list of extinct aimals.

Big Cat Trail--Ranthambore Rocks!

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Thu, 26 May 2011 04:59:00 PDT

Our next destination was Ranthambore. Just the thought of visiting any forest is enough to add bliss to my existence. But Ranthambore is extra-special. It is home to the legendary tigress, Machhli. This is the forest that Valmik Thapar and Fateh Singh Rathore wrote about exhaustively. I almost felt I knew some of the tigers there. I couldn't wait to see it.

We arrived at Jaipur in the middle of a hot summer's afternoon. The sultry, hot air physically hit us as we left the precincts of the station. From the station, it was an odd 180 km drive to Ranthambore. I won't touch upon the onward drive, which was eventful in its own way. That will just deviate from the focus of the post. Suffice it to say, we arrived at Ranthambore in time for our evening tea. We were booked into a hotel called Hammir. Made entirely of red- bricks, it was a quaint old place. Somewhat ramshackle and run-down, it had a charm just because it was not too posh and perfect. I loved it. It had a certain old world ambience that blended into the surroundings. The long, broad verandah outside our room was reminiscent of the terrace at my ancestral home where I grew up. I experienced a moment of instant affinity.

I waited for the morning with impatience, trying to imagine the forest in my head not quite successfully. Finally, it was time for the safari and we set off. On our way, we passed a couple of antelopes grazing by the roadside. I felt we had finally arrived.

Ranthambore took my breath away. A forest of contrasts, beauty and elegance, it was picture perfect. It is a forest that can inspire poets and dreamers. Sheer rock faces rise on one side, while the other side is flanked by the Ranthambore fortress. At least a 1000 years old, this majestic old fort adds to the unique charm of the place. The forest proper is a valley nestled between the cliffs and the fortress. As we wound our way in, our safari jeep tilted at impossible angles most of the time because of the rocky terrain, I mentally saluted the driver for his superb control. Clinging to my side of the jeep, I could only marvel at the spread of breathtaking beauty. It felt a bit like falling in love at first sight where the breath is knocked out of you, and you surrender to your senses. For some inexplicable reason, I was reminded of Foreter's A Passage to India...

Our first drive led us towards the Rajabaug lake. This is akin to the jewel in the crown. Glimmering and glittering in the sunlight, the lake had water even in the height of summer. In patches yes, but this was enough to drive the fauna of the forest towards it. It is home to a host of birds who clustered around the edges of the lake in search of food, shade or just to slake their thirst. They were in constant motion--flying, fluttering and hopping from spot to spot. We would suddenly see a flock of Alexandrine parakeets fly off in a flutter of green... A group of Treepies would swoop down clamouring for attention. It was a magical place.

Far away, in the centre of the lake was a tiny fort kind of a structure, a quaint remnant of the past. In this lay a tiger, fast asleep. Far from the madding crowd with nary a thing to disturb him there. To be very honest, I could barely spot it with my naked eye. But my camera caught its stripes.

I could have spent days just hanging around the lake. But we had to move on. The drive around the forest gradually revealed its beauty. The flora at this time was dry and skeletal divested entirely of its foliage. This barren starkness threw the fort and the cliffs in the background into sharp focus. What would have, at other times, been covered in dense greenery, was now revealed in all its majestic glory. The sunlight cast mysterious shadows on the cliff walls that I can see in my mind's eye even now. I am too amateur a photographer to have been able to capture that beauty.

Ranthambore has a rich variety of avifauna life that thrilled us. Birds like the Rufous Treepie are so abundant and so fearless that we could photograph them in evey conceivable pose to our heart's content.

While the first day's drive did not reveal more than a tantalizing glimpse of the tiger, I felt replete. I was unaware of the drama that would ensue the next day. It was on our final drive into the forest that we had our real tiger sighting, but oh what a sighting it was.

As we drove in for our final safari, we wound up at a spot that seemed to be buzzing with human activity. Jeeps were lined up bumper to bumper with hardly a spot to maneuver in. There must be a tiger in the vicinity, declared Saad, our guide. We had also arrived at a similar conclusion and held our breath in anticipation. Earlier Sumeet had declared that we would see a tiger in this safari, and his prediction seemed to be coming true. As we inched our way upward, we arrived at a point where we had our first glimpse. A male tiger was sitting with his back to us, resting from the heat. There is a tigress on the other side, can you see her? Asked our guide. With the uncanny understanding developed through years of driving in the forest, he knew exactly where to park our jeep so that we would get the best possible view (second best given that Priyanka Vadhra's jeep was there). Anyhow, we got a good view. And the sighting that unfolded before our eyes made me forget the presence of everyone else.

The tiger and the tigress were sitting at opposite ends of an open, grassy space. Each had appropriated a tree and was sitting under its shade. The tiger made a point to raise his head every now and then and taking a quick glance to ensure his tigress was still there. Then, he would just flop back, overcome by the effort in this sultry heat. Finally, she got tired of waiting for him to make a move and sauntered over to where he lay. What followed was an amazing display of love and affection between these two inherently solitary animals. The memory of it can give me goosebumps even now. They rubbed and nuzzled against each other, indulging in playful love bites. I watched spellbound. I think during those few moments, there was a collective withholding of breath...It was too beautiful and had a poignancy that made my throat ache...The thought that we might be driving these animals towards extinction was unbearable.

Just that afternoon before coming from the safari, I had bought a painting from a nearby store of two tigers nuzzling each other... I had wished we could see something like that in real life. The painting seemed to have come alive for me.

The final safari at Ranthambore left nothing more to be desired except a deep wish to come back to this place again someday. And a fervent prayer that we will be able to check the deadly march towards extinction--of the tiger and other wildlife that are our legacy and pride.

Some of the photos are here...

Big Cat Trail: Amazing Gir

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Wed, 25 May 2011 06:56:00 PDT

Sumeet and I headed toward Gir in Junagadh after our Kanha trip. The contrast between the two forests couldn't have been more shocking, and I am not referring to the fauna here. Let me explain a bit.

I have experienced Kanha in November, when it is still lush from the monsoon showers. The subsequent dry months hadn't yet been able to banish the green. In comparison, Kanha in May seemed incredibly dry to me. Most of the lush, green foliage was replaced by reddish-brown leaves; nevertheless, since the deciduous sal forest is liberally interspersed with evergreens, the forest still retained a semblance of greenness. After this, Gir came as a shock.

For miles--as far as the eyes could see--we saw nothing but stretches of leafless, brown trees--rather their skeletons to be more accurate. It didn't seem possible that this barren, stark landscape could also be a thick, foliage covered forest during other seasons. Interspersed with these skeletal trees were brambles and thorny bushes. The earth was varying shades of brown--occasionally turning to a brighter yellow here and there. The dominant color of the landscape was brown. Miles of it. This kind of bone-dryness must be seen to be believed. It has a beauty all its own; the very starkness lending it an air of mystery.

Just as I was trying to accustom myself to this first sight of Gir, a peacock flew by and perched on a nearby tree trunk. The contrast couldn't have been greater. The colorless and barren background enhanced the hues and shades of the living beings manifold--bringing everything into sharp focus. The peacock shone a brilliant blue--a perfect photograph moment. I settled down for the forest to reveal its surprises.

The biggest surprise that Gir had in store for me were the trackers. While I had read a bit about them, I was completely unprepared for what I eventually saw. The trackers play a unique role in the Gir ecosystem. They keep track of the lions by walking or cycling around the forest armed with nothing more than a simple stick. Their courage will put any self-proclaimed hunter to shame. Their job is to keep a lookout for any lion who might be ill or injured; their constant patrolling also keeps miscreants at bay. I saw them stand barely five feet away from a full-grown lion, totally unperturbed. I don't think they thought of it as a display of bravery; for them it was just a part of their daily routine.

The trackers also communicate the location of lions to the guides making it easier for wildlife enthusiasts to watch these beautiful animals in their natural surroundings. Bali, our guide, had promised us that he would show us lions till we wanted to see no more. However, not wanting to see anymore being an impossibility for an animal lover, I must say that we saw lions to our hearts' content. 28 of them...

Lions are social animals unlike tigers who are solitary and secretive. This characteristic makes lions not only easier to spot but also easier to photograph. One can be within 6 feet of a lion without him or her making any move to go away. We saw prides of lions sitting, basking in the sun, drinking water or just sleeping. I was very surprised when we saw a lioness with cubs peacefully sleeping--occasionally raising her head to see if everything was fine. Not worried at all. The most memorable sighting was that of a lioness in the act of stalking and hunting a sambar deer. She was immensely graceful in the fluidity of her movements. I was spellbound. It was National Geographic in the real world. The only spoiler was a horde of tourists who seemed incapable of distinguishing between wildlife and a circus show. I fervently hope that the forest department will enforce stricter measures to bring such tourists under control by educating them and vesting the guides with the authority to drive such tourists out of the precincts of the forest should they fail to adhere to the rules.

It must also be remembered that Gir lions are perhaps unique in their acceptance of human beings. Having lived with and among the Maldharis and Sidhi tribes, these animals are much more attuned to human beings than one would normally expect.

Apart from lions, Gir's prime attraction, it is also a bird-lovers haven. We were soon to find this out. In complete contrast to the stark summer landscape that makes up the major part Gir, there is a lush and verdant patch in the heart of the forest. This corner of the forest is seldom frequented by folks who have primarily come to see lions. However, for bird-lovers like us, this proved to be a treasure trove. I had never seen so many paradise fly- catchers fly around, flitting from branch to branch, tantalizing and luring us with glimpses till we gave in and decided to wait at that spot.

And not only this spot. Our drives around the forest revealed various species of avifauna that absolutely delighted me.

Gir is an entirely different exeprience. While lion spotting may lack the mystery and unpredictability of seeing tigers, it is unbelievably amazing to see lions in their natural habitat. Gir brought back memories of Elsa and Christian and seemed to proclaim the essential ties that exist between animals and humans.

The photos from the trip are here and here.

Big Cat Trail--Unforgettable Kanha

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Wed, 18 May 2011 18:42:00 PDT

I am still thinking about Kanha. It will probably always be my favorite forest. I saw my first tiger there in the wild last November—close up, an unforgettable experience. That’s when I told myself that I would come back again. Just like a first love always remains special, Kanha will always be very close to my heart. This was my second trip to Kanha. We are on our way to Gir now, and I am absolutely excited by the prospect of seeing the Asiatic lions, maybe black bucks and anything else the forest has in store for us.

Initially, I thought of writing a blow-by-blow account of the safaris and then changed my mind. This post is my impression of Kanha—the feelings it evoked and the experience it offered. Occasionally it may seem like a Stream of Consciousness flow, but I have left it as it is making not attempt to edit the words. It is a very personal account of my interaction with this forest. I am writing this as I sit in the train, heading towards Gir.

I never cease to be amazed by the beauty of the forest…it’s beautiful at dawn when the moon is still visible, the sky turning a pale pink very gradually, the last, fading stars twinkling here and there, the forest waking up. The trees are silhouetted against this backdrop. This always reminded me of one of my childhood favorites, “When the sun shines in the morning and the night is on the run, it’s a new day, it’s a new day, and I will fly up to the sun…”

The sound of the forest waking up is indescribable. It’s a symphony of bird calls, interspersed with the calls of animals waking up to the dawn. Perfectly orchestrated. There are no jarring notes; nothing seems out of place. Everything just fits in, perfectly made for each other. We would start our morning safari at 5:30 a.m. And the wait between waking up and actually going on the safari always seemed interminable to me. This is the time when the nocturnal animals are still around and the diurnal ones beginning their day.

We would leap onto the safari jeep as soon as it arrived. Once in the forest, I found myself straining my eyes and all my senses to catch a glimpse of a sign of life. Kanha did not disappoint me. I don’t have the skills or the power of words to describe the sheer beauty and the feeling of awe I experienced every time I caught a glimpse of an animal or a bird in its natural habitat—just where it is meant to be. I waited for these surprises with breathless anticipation as we drove through the forest, my eyes scanning and scouring the foliage for any sign of life. While we drove around following tiger pug marks, trying to read the tiger or the tigresses’ mind, following the routes they take with the hope of seeing this majestic animal, the forest revealed its other treasures in unexpected ways. Suddenly, a rustling sound here would draw our attention to a herd of sambars or a wild boar, a crack of twigs there would reveal a herd of bison feasting on the tender green shoots that popped up among the bone dry leaves in the height of summer. Its benign, slightly dumb look always made me smile. A couple of racket tailed drongos would swoop and tantalize us with a glimpse before flying away belying all our efforts to take photos. One thing I learned—no amount of preparedness can meet the surprises a forest has in store. It is just so much better to surrender to the forest, soak in the experience, and be grateful for those moments when it pauses long enough for us to take those photos we want in the hope of capturing some of the memories.

Within an hour of our cruise into the forest, the sun would be high up in the sky--scorching, beating down. The pale pink and cool blue dawn turned into a sunny, scorching day. But who cared! It was still beautiful—a different kind of beauty—bolder, harsher, starker. Everything now came into sharper focus. I loved the way the sunlight filtering in through the sal trees cast lovely shadows on the yellow-orange, sandy roads. The road seemed to resemble the striped pattern of a tiger’s skin. The forest makes you forget the heat, the discomforts, the amenities we take for granted in our daily lives. As the sun rose, an uncanny calm would descend on the forest. Dawn’s chattering and chirping would start to die down. The forest seemed to be preparing for its siesta. A few deer would stand in the shade munching on the green grass, small sambar herds could be spotted around the water holes quenching their thirst, enjoying the coolness of the shade. But life seemed to visibly slow down.

On such a day, as we drove around, hot on the tiger’s trail, she showed herself to us. We had been following alarm calls of the deer and had arrived at a spot where Javed (our driver and, to me, an integral part of my Kanha experience) and our guide felt the probability of seeing the tiger was the highest. As Javed parked our jeep, we prepared to wait. Collar-wali as she is called because of the radio-collar round her neck walked out of the forest. We were blessed to be the Gypsy she walked directly in front of. Totally oblivious to the cavalcade of jeeps and the human life that thronged to see her, she walked out with an elegance, nonchalance and grace that defy all descriptions. Her glossy fur shone golden-orange in the sunlight, the muscles rippled as she walked without hurrying, casting not a glance at anybody, focused on her mission. Her face was turned toward us, and I like to imagine that she was looking directly at us. I automatically felt my camera clicking away, the hair on my skin rising, almost forgetting to breathe. She sauntered across and vanished into the foliage on the other side of the road, leaving us feeling replete and yet wanting more. I know I will never be tired of the sight of this majestic and magnificent animal.

Almost too soon it always seemed to me, it would be time for us to leave the forest. We had to be out by 10:30 a.m. and any inadvertent delay could cause the driver to be suspended for a week. As we hurried towards the gate, I found myself calculating the time left for the evening safari to start. This inevitably happened every day. I wish there was some way to stay in the forest till the evening safari. I wouldn’t mind sitting on a machan for the rest of the day just taking in the ambience. It is a strange thrill to know that even when we can’t see a single sign of visible life, it is there all around us—pulsating and vibrant.

This time we visited all the three zones in the forest—Kanha, Mukki and Sarhi. At Sarhi zone, we caught our first glimpse of the chausingha and the barking deer. Both extremely shy and nervous animals, I count myself fortunate to have seen them so clearly. The chausingha did not pause long enough for us to take photos but the barking deer graced us with quite a few poses. The prominent V-shaped mark on her forehead was easy to see as she stood facing us—startled but not frightened enough to run away.

Sarhi zone is the least tourist-visited zone in Kanha because it is not known for frequent sightings of the big cat. For this very reason, touring this zone was a pleasure. Gangaram, the guide we had for this safari, seemed to possess telescopic vision and spotted signs of life where we saw only leaves, brambles and branches. His genius for spotting brought the zone alive for us and suddenly, a rather quiet zone seemed to be teeming with life. We saw some rare birds here including the scarlet minivet. My only regret is that my lens did not have the range required to shoot birds at such distance.

The day would end as spectacularly as it had it begun, the sunset no less picturesque than the sunrise.

I am still trying to pen down my impressions of the other forests. Here are some of my photos from the Kanha tour.

Take a look at Sumeet’s album for some great shots.

Next post coming in a few days: Amazing Gir.

17 Books for L&D Folks...

noreply@blogger.com (Sahana Chattopadhyay) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:30:00 PDT

My bookshelf...

More than 6 months back, in the September of 2010, I wrote the post: 27 Books for L&D Folks... It's time for part 2 of the post. Since then, I have acquired a Kindle and, very recently, an iPad. Kindle has reshaped my reading dramatically--making it social and part of a larger whole, connecting me to a set of folks similarly impassioned. Reading moved from being solitary to social. I became a part of a worldwide reading club. Somehow, and social psychologists will understand this--the ability to share and connect motivated me to read more, taking me beyond my domain, making me exploratory. I thought I would share my reading list of the last 6 months here...It's a random assortment but each one has expanded my thought-process in some way. Not all are related to learning or the workplace...This time, I came up with a list of 17.

The New Learning Architect by Clive Shepherd
The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow's Employees Today by Jeanner Meister
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt
The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation (Theory in Practice) by Jono Bacon
The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software by Jonathan Rasmusson
The Knowledge Evolution: Expanding Organizational Intelligence by Verna Allee
Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block
If You Want To Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott Page
Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Crucial Confrontations by Kerry Patterson
Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan
Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement by Ruth Clark

ID and Other Reflections

I have finally done it...

Links for 2013-01-06 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2013-01-03 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2012-12-09 [del.icio.us]

10 Books from My Reading List

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Managing Diversity through Community Management

Taking Stock and Making Choices: Working from home and other such stuff

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In Delhi: EDGEX2012

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