Moving from on-line to face-to-face and back again

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —January 22, 2007
Filed in Collaboration

I met John Smith and Bev Trayner face-to-face for the first time last year in Florence at a CP2 dialogue. I’d known both of them for years before this meeting. Before Florence it was an online and Skype acquaintance. My face-to-face meeting made a huge difference on how I viewed my role in our community: I’m more involved, I can see the core team, I can really hear the language.

John and Beverly have just published a paper on how they have brought communities together using a combination of online and face-to-face interactions. In each case the face-to-face part consists of an event. Online interactions are used to ramp-up and then ramp-down before and after the event.

They conclude their paper with six heuristics:

  1. Design for learning using CPD model is productive
  2. Spending time on social processes
  3. Using different media to negotiate language as part of a larger process
  4. Creating new possibilities: subgroups and outside experts as resources
  5. Demonstrating leadership roles in different media
  6. Provoking shifts in “comfort zones.”

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

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