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A Collaboration Case Study - A Day-By-Day Wiki Growth Journal

728455233_0d7b38ddeb_m Jenny Ambrozek and team used a collaborative environment (in this case, a wiki) to author an article on "Connected Intelligence."  The wiki can be found here: Learning Through Participation and Connecting Intelligences: Experimenting with a Wiki to Co-create an Article

The project was very interesting in its introspection on what was working, and what wasn't, as the process evolved.  The page on "Lessons," in particular, provides a great data point into what actually happened.

"June 29, 2007, with deadline looming. co-author Jenny Ambrozek posted an article update and invitation to participate to the 21st Century Organization blog 21st Century Blog

June 30 Knowledge Jolt blogger, Jack Vinson, blogged about our article writing experiment Jack Vinson Blog

July 2 Jenny Ambrozek in checking Technorati www.technorati.com for activity around our blog post also noted Jack Vinson’s Policies Can be Changed post and added a comment.

A Facebook www.facebook.com and email exchange followed. The Jack Vinson Wiki Page was created and we captured Jack’s insights about “policies” impacting knowledge sharing and learning in a real laboratory.

It took the wiki+blogs+Technorati+Facebook+email to gather the laboratory example.

Co-Creating Takes Time

It was 14 weeks from wiki creation to article deadline but the bulk of activity happened in the last month. The authors had competing commitments and it was only as the deadline approached and focused their attention that real structural activity began. What we didn’t realize was that although a collaborative product benefits from connected intelligence, the production cycle must allow for more review and reflection by the various participants.

Unknown is how many more people we could have reached, and how much richer or different, this article would be if we had started outreach earlier. As the wiki remains open so readers can contribute their reactions and tell us what we’ve missed. "

Check out the analysis of the evolution of the wiki here.

photo: tanio

July 19, 2007 | Permalink

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Comments

Chris, Thanks for sharing and aiding reflection on our article co-creating experience. For the record the inspiration for our "introspection" (great word), about the intersection of tools came from Nancy White. As I'm familiar with Ronald Burt's writing about "structural holes" and where opportunities lie in networks and organizations, when Nancy said during a phone call:
"it’s the space between the tools where things happen."
I paid close attention to the ecosystem of interactions and technologies our collaboration involved.

Posted by: Jenny Ambrozek | Jul 20, 2007 11:46:54 AM

And I wished I could have contributed more to the article beyond my case study. There were a lot of interesting things happening in the article that had me thinking. Maybe if there had been more time.

Posted by: Jack Vinson | Jul 21, 2007 8:44:22 PM

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