Unconference

International Association of Facilitators, North America

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis. Since then 100s of 5 minute talks have been given across the world. There are thriving Ignite communities in Seattle, Portland, Paris, and NYC.

by Harrison Owen, creator of Open Space.

Upcoming online event, Feb 18-20 2009, to discuss improving conferences.

AACE is pleased to announce and sponsor "Spaces of Interaction: An Online Conversation on Improving Traditional Conferences,"

An interactive planning process used world-wide in diverse cultures to achieve shared goals and fast action. Future search leads to cooperative planning that lasts for years.

In the opening chapters, Block takes inspiration from the likes of John McKnight, Robert Putnam, Christopher Alexander and others to crate some basic patterns for collective transformation. These are beautiful and quite in line with the work I do and the things we teach through the Art of Hosting.

This research attempted to test whether the granting of points for receiving the most votes as the "best post" would affect the quality of subsequent postings to online discussions. Five online discussions were held in a small graduate-level course in leadership theory, and postings were coded into Bloom's taxonomy. Quality was defined as the percent of postings in the upper three levels (Analyze, Evaluate, and Create), but did not change. By asking students their reasons for choosing a posting as best, content analysis resulted in five reasons: "personal," "new," "stimulating," "informative," and "like me," which are compared to the instructor's views. When asked if the availability of points affected their performance, nine students felt the points did not affect their postings and two students tried harder because of them. While these results do not capture a link between receiving rewards and improved quality in online discussions, this exercise may capture the process whereby compliments for good postings may set the standard for how graduate students think and contribute online.

more about online moderation but still related.