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Archived at: http://www.cmsreview.com/Resources/Community/Responses4.20040418194751.html
This is certainly all coming together now.
I would suggest we keep the group as small as possible for a while yet, though.
If we have an inwards focus (a true community of practice), then we need to make sure that initially we only have those in the group who can contribute on equal terms to the group (in otherwords, a collection of *peers*).
There is also the important issue of trust. This needs to be built up, particularly to overcome any potential issues such as IP rights. At present, this core group has fairly strong ties (although we haven't yet all met face-to-face).
When I first thought about this idea, and floated it to Bob Boiko's Advisory Board group, I invisioned no more than a dozen (or max two dozen) people initially in the group. A "hothouse" for knowledge sharing.
Once we get things going, and have a strong foundation, we'll then be ready to push things outwards to a wider audience, and wider participation.
On that vein, while I would certainly be happy to contribute some money out of my pocket, I think we should avoid the need for money as much as possible right now, to keep things simple. I also don't see that we need a formal (legal) organisation structure, but if someone has time to do all the paperwork, then great.
Anyway, just my $0.02,
James
I'm with James in that we should keep things as simple as possible. Learn to walk before we can run. We're setting ourselves a very ambitious set of tasks and we're all very busy people. I would be worried that we would over-reach.
However, I wouldn't see any harm in expanding the numbers on the discussion list a bit. It's very hard to get a vibrant and ongoing discussion going with a very small group, no matter how experienced they are. Over the years, I've seen so many lists rise, flame briefly, then die quietly. I wouldn't like that to happen to this.
My proposal is that we develop the best known and best respected discussion
list on content management for a period. This, in my opinion, would require:
1) Objectives of the list
2) Rules of discussion
3) Promotion
4) Strong moderation
I think moderation would be essential for success. The moderator would not simply be an editor, they would, equally importantly, promote discussion by seeding key topics. A way of having a moderator would be that each of us would agree to moderate for one month.
Ideally, the moderator would have a theme they want to explore. At the end of the month, they would summarize the discussion. The result could be published on the website as reflecting our combined opinion on a particular area. Thus, we would be evolving a sense of what the organization is about.
What do people think?
Best
Gerry
I am all for focus on a few things. But I want them to happen on an Internet time scale - i.e., ASAP, to prove that we are a working team, and that we can get the big things done when the time comes.
I too would like to expand the list of members, as you know to get more energy and get real work done. At least one elected member has not responded yet at all, and several barely at all. We now have two clear votes for expansion and one opposed. May we hear from others?
Re: mailing list. I am very supportive of a strong and active CMS mailing list. Since the temporary suspension of the old cms-list@cms-list.org (run as a hobby by Phil Suh), the community has been using cms@lists.cms-forum.org. [The old list shows some signs of returning soon. Their archive, broken for two years, has just reappeared, current through January, when they crashed.]
We wrote a strong list etiquette statement, and for the first few months I sent reprimands (off-list so as not to embarass anyone) when people abused the list. It is now a very well-behaved list. The membership is growing slowly and steadily. It currently has 495 members.
See http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html
It is not pre-moderated (i.e., requiring a pre-read by the moderator before posting). List activity is quite variable. Sometimes there are a dozen posts in a few hours. If these posts were delayed at all by a moderator, it would dampen all the immediate reactions.
When a strong exchange had a lot of new material, I edited it to take out redundancy and fix typos, then posted the messages to http://cms-forum.org.
I think we could and should seed the list with interesting topics. But I doubt that most of this busy group of CM Professionals has the time or energy for moderation. So I propose an alternative to "moderator-for-a-month."
May I suggest that we each post a provocative question to the list - say at least once a month? And that another of us also provide a thoughtful answer. That way two of us on average would appear every day. I am sure the list would soon have an excellent reputation.
Should I post a schedule of dates so we don't all pile up?
Date of month we post something provocative to cms@lists.cms-forum.org: Are we all subscribed? Subscription info is at http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms
Scott Abel - 1 and answer another's post 10 days later = 11
Bob Boiko - 2 answer on 12th, etc.
Joseph Busch - 3
Tony Byrne - 5 - answer somebody tomorrow, etc.
Bob Doyle - 6
Donna Fritzsche - inactive.
Frank Gilbane - 7
Bev Goodwin - 9
JoAnn Hackos - 10
Dana Hallman - 11
Erik Hartman - 12
Mary Lee Kennedy - 14
Jane McConnell - 15
Gerry McGovern - 16
Howard McQueen - 18
John O'Donovan - 19
Brendan Quinn - 20
James Robertson - 22
Ann Rockley - 23
Bill Trippe - 24
Lisa Welchman - 27
Martin White - 228
So maybe the first question to be discussed should be:
"Do we need any cash and what for?"
If we can work out what we may need to spend then we can start to figure out where we can get it from.
Secondly, I like the idea of discussing issues and then publishing them. I also think people could submit and publish thought-pieces. If we create something of value that is peer reviewed then we will create interest, traffic and possibly revenue (if it's really good).
The relatively new Interaction Design list has been quite successful and set it's goals and modus operandi through a series of timeboxed seeded discussions (timeboxed were too short but then there were hundreds of chatty members). Off topic discussions also continued in parallel.
Thirdly, in terms of expansion, I don't think there are enough people on the list to have a really busy discussion. However, if we want to develop some expert content (to publish) then this may not be a problem. So I need to know a bit more before casting a vote.
Cheers,
jod
No, I'm the one a bit off track. James and Gerry are saying keep things simple. So I am looking for simple things we can focus on, and do together today.
I was suggesting we make our existing public CMS mailing list (495 subscribers) into that "best-known and best respected" list Gerry describes. It would be very difficult to start still another list, but not very hard to improve the (already good) reputation of an existing one by clarifying its objectives and really contributing great material to it. You are right that we could not of course then close it for our members only. But I believe it would be a great source of members.
My personal vision is not to say "join our group to see what expert things we are saying to one another," but "join the group that provides so much expert advice to the world."
I am looking for any concrete thing that we can all do together as a proof of concept. James Robertson's Knowledge Base Wiki suggestion is one concrete thing. JoAnn Hackos' call for a Glossary of Terms is another. Brendan Quinn has added a number of definitions in the last couple of days. A well-run mailing list was also mentioned by some, and now that Gerry has moved it forward, I think of it as another possible validation that we are a working team.
Apologies for the confusion. It is hard to have discussions like this via email. I have researched some tools for virtual meetings. Old-fashioned telephone conferencing, perhaps augmented by looking together at the same web page like your webinars I have attended, seem very useful.
I had thought we would organize these eMeetings for working subcommittees, but we might try to have one for the whole group? It's not clear that there is any hour that all of us could attend, but we could try.
I can appreciate Bob Doyle's interest in getting things moving at Internet speed, and Bob has been of immense value to the CM community (with a small c ) in the way that he has developed the web resources around his site. However people, and in particular relationship building, do not move at internet speed.
I have a sense that we are trying to mount a horse and then gallop off in several directions at once. At the core of a Community of Practice are a number of key elements. These include establishing trust between members and letting the CoP define its scope on the basis of what needs to be done - i.e. reacting to requirements, and not trying to set out mission statements at the outset. The size of the group also needs to be carefully managed. Size is not a success criteria - it's all about knowledge exchange between members when there is a problem to solve.
At this point in time I would like to be a member of a small community bound by trust. I also gain benefit from being a member of a public discussion list/email forum where anyone can post a query. The old CMS list was brilliant in that respect even if email etiquette was notable by its absence at times.
Moderated lists are very difficult to manage in my experience because of the very broad scope of any list, and the inability of a single person to manage the content elements, as distinct from etiquette management.
We also need to bear in mind that we all have day jobs, and for many of use earning a living as a CM professional this is an evening and night job as well! So although sub-committees etc are a good idea they also consume a great deal of time, effort and intellectual energy.
One of the problems we have at present is that the entire discussion about the various community ideas is being handled as an email discussion, and it really is very difficult to work through the comments. I think that I would find it useful to have a Word document that summarises the current situation and options that we can all then comment on, to a deadline, and then either join up for the concensus line, or not, as we feel is appropriate. I think that there should then be a moratorium on new good ideas for a period of time so that we can see what works and what does not. Currently I feel that almost every day we are going in a new, albeit exciting, but resource-heavy, direction.
If this all sounds negative it is not meant to be. I just feel strongly that we need to keep the membership small, with every new member now being recommended by en existing member, and work on a true international Community of Practice on good CMS practice.
Comments any one?
Is anyone going to XML Europe / Seybold Amsterdam / Gilbane Content Management Intensive next week? I believe Frank, Tony, Bill, Erik, and myself are going... enough to at least have dinner and go over a few topics. I'd be happy to organise something, although someone like Erik would probably know Amsterdam much better than I...
After that I'm going to a vendor conference in May and hopefully Seybold in August... but that's too far in the future for what we're talking about.
Actually I just had a thought: we could prepare our platform, charter, resources, membership fees etc, and aim for a big launch at Seybold/Gilbane this year? That gives us a good four months to get everything sorted, which doesn't sound too bad.
And of course it gives us a milestone to work towards.
There will be no Gilbane/Seybold event in San Francisco this year. We have mutually decided for various reasons to focus on our own events. So there will a single Seybold Conference in August in SF, and a Gilbane Conference in Boston in November. We are still friends and I actually serve on their Advisory Board and have helped them re-focus their event on the publishing community. So they will have a CM Track as part of their conference which will be publishing-oriented. Our own events in LA and Boston cover all verticals and apps. I am happy to provide more detail off-list re the decision if anyone is interested.
Back to Brendan's idea... No doubt a group of us will be in Boston in November anyway, and it might be the best opportunity to get a large % of us together and get a lot done whatever stage we are at.
Frank
For me, and I'm sure many of the rest who are so very busy, this lets me allocate time to complete the task and get the task completed by the specified date. I just can't respond instantly to everything or nothing gets done, or not done well.
I suggest that we provide a date, say April 30 for people to indicate which sub-committee they would like to participate in, then let each sub-committee meet, however they choose to do so, set a date for completion of our tasks and see what happens.
It's going to be a bit slow and chaotic for a while, but I think it will come together. If people don't volunteer, so be it. Having worked with a lot of volunteer organizations it is always a core of people that make things happen, not the whole group.
I guess that is my 2 cents.
I'd like to see the group start off small and decide through a continued discussion about activities, mission, costs, and so on. I'm afraid that with a much larger group this could go the way of many listservs. The STC single-source listserv has pretty much deteriorated into a discussion of FrameMaker and Web Works and other tools. We need to center on real issues of method and change management rather on what tool to use. Of course, that's the same case we keep making with customers--"it's not about buying a tool."
Sorry for my recent silence.
Here are my comments on various points raised:
Physical gravity:
My experience is that virtual groups work best after "physical consolidation". Most of you know each other; most of you are based in the States. This makes me think that the gravitational center will be in the States, or at least start there. However, I think that every time there are minimum 2/3 of us at an event, we should always meet up, discuss a relevant point depending on what's going on, communicate back to the others. I don't think a web-meeting will work at this point.
Will anyone (besides Peter Morville) be at iExpo in Paris in June?
Virtual gravity:
I hope very much that the culture and (later) legal form not be too US-oriented, but international and diverse.
I vote for controlled expansion of the list of members, balanced by re-deployment into small teams dedicated to specific points with realistic deadlines as already suggested. The points as I remember cover both structural and conceptual points.
My degree of involvement:
Travelling: I am an independent consultant, self-employed, do not have the means to flit around the planet nor do the other independents I know (no offense taken Brendan!) without a solid business reason, meaning dollars. Which means I will not be participating in many of the physical meetings.
Time: My activities only partially include content management in the strict sense, and after reading a number of the recent postings, I need to re-consider if I should be part of this founding group or not.
I am very interested in this group, but the focus may be too specific for me.
My interests in this group are building relationships, sharing ideas, contributing to a knowledge base (based on a broad definition of content management). I like the idea of contributing ideas around themes.
I am not interested in certification programs, a structure requiring significant financing, nor action items that require a lot of time on a regular basis.
The types of issues I focus on in my work as a consultant are:
- How does an organization define the difference between global and local (or common and specific) content, and what systems can they set up to create and share it efficiently (cost and time).
- To what extent should an organization standardize their intranet content and publishing policies? How much autonomy should a local unit have?
- What content strategy works best on the intranet home page. (Different strategies for different companies at different points in time.)
- How can you implement an effective "content people network" in a geographically dispersed organization (or in any organization, actually)? From both the content owner and the "space owner" viewpoints.
Are there other people in this group who are interested in these issues? If so, we could create a sub-group to look at best practices and case studies in defining content management strategies for organizations.
Good night from Grasse,
Jane
- I favor the committee structure and process Bob proposed
- I love the "when ever two or more of you are gathered..." idea
- I would however favor a summit. Maybe somewhere too good not to go to.
- I like staying this size till we all get on the same page.
- I would favor us putting dollars, lira, yen, etc. where our mouths
are.
- I would favor action on the part of the non USA's to teach us how this
can be international (Swiss banks and so on)
- Jane' favorite issues (global/local content) seem central to me too.
Finally, I'd love a better way to communicate.
Cheers All
Bob
It would be useful to know where people are actually based or where they are going to be. I'm planning to be in the states a number of times this year and, for example, I'll be San Francisco and Seattle at the beginning of May. I will be meeting up with Bob B while I am in Seattle but I have no idea who else is nearby...
As Brendan said, some forward planning knowing what's on and who is going to be where would help.
Is it be possible to have a central reference to help find out who is where and when they will be there?
I hope all of you are healthy and well. The sun is finally shining on the east coast of the US after a solid week of rain.
It would be helpful for me if we could work on the non-CMS related aspects of the proposed organization: the administrative details. I think given the small, but still sizable, number of participants and our highly-opinioned consultanty culture, we just need to put some structure and process around how we interact. I like the idea of a community but someone has got to be in charge - now. If that means dues at this point then I’m up for that—with the understanding that things may not work out in a way that I can support in the future or may not work out at all.
If we could agree on the list of issues we need to tackle and prioritize them –that would be a great accomplishment. Then we can just move down the list. I think we’re implementing before we’ve written a requirements document—and we all know that’s bad J
My suggestion for the start of a list would be:
1. Are the 23 of us going to contribute funds to this organization right now?
If no, then we’re kind of at the mercy of all our schedules and will have to appreciate any time that anyone is willing to contribute. We won’t be able to plan and execute well.
2. If we can contribute funds and pay someone (Scott) to get this show started, what does the formal structure of the organization look like?
1. How often do we meet in person?
2. How do we “elect” people to tasks?
3. How do we determine what tasks we would like to tackle?
4. How do we make decisions?
5. Are there other organizational managers, what are their roles & responsibilities, etc.
6. Etc. – you all know the drill
3. With a governing structure in place we can then ask: What are we trying to achieve, mission, marketing, audience—and then move on to tactics – which is a lot of what we’ve been talking about already.
I know people would like to move quickly (internet time I think someone say). I don’t think you can create an organization in internet time. We’re talking about building trust and structure in a group of people—not building an application. I think if we really mean to have a long-lived organization, we need to take the time to lay a proper foundation or we’ll collapse under the weight of a short term success.
Scott/Bob D as our current designated administrators, could you get a consensus on a time to talk? Set it a few weeks into the future so as many of us as possible can free up some time. I'd even be willing to do it on a weekend if that would help.
I have signed up for a phone bridge capability at my lab.
Note: done in Internet time- you ask for it there, it comes out here (actually Scott and I have been discussing for days). I very well know that trusting human relationships take a long time to mature, but getting specific jobs done should not.
Our call-in number is 1-413-200-7075.
You must enter an access code followed by the # key.
The access code is cmpros# (267767#).
Scott and I will test these tools very soon to shake out any bugs.
A few of the group will meet at Amsterdam/Gilbane next week. If they telephone in to our bridge, I will encode the call and stream it on a web page (requires a login) so some of you can listen in at no cost.
Any member can also call in at any time to be part of the active conversation. You do not have to call at the beginning, and you can drop out at any time (and back in) to save phone charges - as you listen on the web. It will require Real Player in your browser.
These are something like the tools used in your webinars I have attended, but they will allow us all to talk to one another, and any one of us can advance the web pages. Any of us can take over as leader/speaker/moderator and navigate. The top of the page has speaker and listener icons.
If anyone would like to help us test the phone bridge capability, we need only send an email to those who want to talk, set a time, and then call 1-413-200-7075 at the appointed time. I have set this capability up to be used by any of us at any time.
If you want to test the web page eMeeting, when you call in you need also navigate to the eMeeting pages.
It does not require a login at the moment. We are still setting that up. You will all have to login, and I would prefer to put that on a cmprofessionals.org page, so we get all your logins/usernames/passwords in the right place at the start.
Please give me a few more minutes of Internet time for that.
Of course I'm happy to organise a dinner somewhere in Amsterdam! But I'm only there on Monday, not Tuesday.
Should I organise a dinner on Monday 19 April? Shall we go on off-list or stay on the 'Pro's'?
Of course we'll give feedback on our 'Amsterdam CM Pro's Meeting'
Cheers,
Erik
Is there some time I can call you to test our new technology for eMeetings?
If we can get this to work, we could let other CM Pros attend the meeting in Amsterdam virtually.
And in any case I can record it and post it to the web so people can listen in when they have time.
An initial draft how-to is at http://www.cmprofessionals.org/emeetings.html
Ideally the meeting Monday would be in a room with a good speakerphone. Maybe Frank's hotel could find one. People will need a browser with Real Player to hear the streamed version.
Send me your phone number and a time.
Thanks for all the detailed instructions for the upcoming web meeting. I'm a Mac user, OS X, and use Real One Player. Do you think this will work?
If times work out, I'd be pleased to test with a group, and will try to hook in for the Amsterdam meeting, since we're in the same time zone!
[Ed. Test file to see if you can receive web versions of meetings - Bob Boiko - CM and IA a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup]
You must be swamped with travel and getting classes going. But if you have a moment, I would like to get that raw material you mentioned to help fill out the CMS Glossary entries. I'll supply the "elbow grease" you asked for. See the CMS Wiki Glossary.
We now have over 400 terms, about 120 with definitions. James Robertson and Brendan Quinn have been adding some, and I hope others will pitch in. .
JoAnn Hackos said a set of consistent terms was a key first step in forming a community, and I agree. Any real community is a community of discourse, with a more or less controlled vocabulary.
I have incorporated most of the terms in your CMS Evaluation Thesaurus (Thanks to you, Ann Rockley, Chu & Louie, Tina Hedlund, Florian Stahl). And we are using a thesaurus-style footer with every definition.
I have also scanned the indexes of all the major books on Content Management for new terms.
I like the idea of an "inward" focused group, but with a couple of caveats:
- am opposed to setting up a limited discussion group among us 23 and issuing pronouncements and occasional advice. Much more credible and robust outcomes if we involve the broader community -- and yes, I think there is a CM community: diverse, fractious, but seemingly very interested in steering key debates away from vendor white papers and webinars. It was an intuitive sense among several of us that we "belonged" to such a community that helped inspire the formation of the G23 in the first place.
- to the extent such a community can produce standard CM terminology, agreed-upon good practices (very hard, but quite valuable), and the like, people outside the community may sit up and listen as well (I know vendors will...). Hoorah for that. I'd wish for us to be more impactful than clubby.
Bob D's list of activities is very practical and seems to ring true to me personally, but I'll echo Dana and others in arguing that before we break into subcommittees, can we get "first principles" established. Our discussion thus far seems to boil down to a debate about what should come first: governance, mission, money, organization, leader, activities, ideas, trust, etc.
With trepidation for disagreeing with Martin, here's a vote for a mission statement first. I would hope we could agree on that even though we don't all know each other well yet. Then we can figure out the mechanics of how it could be realized, and agree by whom, and then measure at what cost.
Several people have posed alternate mission statements. Anyone else in favor of putting those on some sort of wiki or discussion board and working them over?
As I'm the furthest away from the centre, I should probably reiterate the committment I made earlier this year:
I would be very happy to travel to the US for a 2 day meeting on CM Pros, particularly if it was combined with (or near) a major conference.
One way or another, I'm definitely coming to the US later this year to finally meet up with you all.
The vision I had in my mind was that this core group of people would share knowledge internally, with each of us taking away different approaches, depending on where we started from.
Each member would then continue to disseminate information as they are at the moment, just from an "older and wiser" perspective.
Of course, when we start into the "outwards focus" for the group, there will be some central publishing of more standardised approaches.
(I think it's really important that we recognise that diversity is important. While we are all pretty much saying the same things, we are saying them in different ways, which will be better understood by some and not others. Only collectively will we get the message out to the entire market.)
That being said, I think we need to work out what the money would be used for if we did collect it...
