A colleague was recently at a professional conference with dynamic speakers and participants from far and wide. He came home feeling empty and unfulfilled. He described the use of technology during the event as excessive given that everyone was in the same room. People were not given the time or permission to dialogue with each other – they, instead, had to tweet their reactions. He groaned at the thought of putting his complex musings, stimulated by the dynamic speakers, into snippets of 140 characters or less.
At the same time – technology can add rich connections, creative twists to the ordinary and innovative sparks to learning and sharing. In fact, technology can actually build a profound sense of community among people around the world or down the block.
As community developers and group facilitators, we constantly search for tools that will help us spark a group into dialogue and inspired action. Sometimes these tools are props (like rose coloured glasses or devils forks) and sometimes they are high tech. We’ve played around a lot, some examples include smartboard technology, new powerpoint techniques, wordle.net, facebook, and surveymonkey - all with various degrees of success.
Tracy recently become the owner of an iphone and wondered if the app world had anything to offer. An app (application), downloaded onto a smart phone, is NOT going to facilitate a meeting, lead a workshop or mobilize social change. It might, however, give community developers and group facilitators a tool or two to kick start a group conversation, dig deeper and more creatively into complex issues and maybe even help to synthesize ideas into action. We thought we’d put the world of apps to the test! When we find some apps that have some community developer appeal – we will try them out and write reviews here on our blog.
Lets start with basic reading and reference resources. These are nuggets of information that are not necessarily interactive. Not having an ipad – the thought of reading a whole book on the iphone makes the eyes start squinting! We downloaded three free reference books that caught our eye. Following is our reviews:
Cloudbook: How Cross-boundary Collaboration is Transforming Business. This ebook written in 2009 by van Ommeren, Duivestein, deVadoss, Reijnen and Gunvaldson is literally 248 pages in an electronic form. We would have loved a way to jump around the book quickly – chasing the concepts that resonated with us most. It requires a lot of work to translate their business messages about change and collaboration to the social sector. Chapter 5 has some thoughtful content on collaboration and the mediums that we have used historically and those that we should concentrate on to improve collaborative efforts. Interesting to note that our postal system has strong roots from 2400 BC! Learning about information sharing is key in community development – and the faster technology influences how we share that information, the more we have to read to stay informed! Interesting read - but on an iphone – only in small doses!
Collaboration is King. This app is like shopping at Winners. There are some decent items on the rack but you have to take the time to sift and search. This app contains information about how to find collaborative ideas online, collaborative tips and tricks, online collaboration and more. It is made up of, a collection of blog titles with links to the actual site, of which some of the links don’t lead anywhere. Once we get a couple of nuggets, this one likely won’t be saved on the phone.
Unleashing the Super Ideavirus (lite/free) version. We love how Seth Godin has combined text, graphics and video in this “vook.” The lite version only contains two of the 18 chapters available, the full version costs $4.99. Each chapter has a great 45 - 90 second video clip including Seth Godin speaking to the chapter concepts. The text is also scattered with hyperlinks to help explain background and context or…to be honest, to lose yourself in cyperspace. One link was for a Mona Lisa reference which took us to the Louvre website, which then had us planning a trip to Paris! The concept for this book is about marketing ideas (not products). “An idea that just sits there is worthless. But an idea that moves and grows and infects everyone it touches…that’s an ideavirus.”
Looking forward to reviewing other apps. We have found some on visioning, some related to group facilitation and lots that support creative thinking. Stay tuned!
Village Raising Question
What’s your favourite “work” app?
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