There is part of my work that I hasn’t been writing much about over last two years. Not because it’s so confidential, but because most of the complexities that I had to face and to learn from are still too complex for a blog post. I am about to disengage from the project to focus on my PhD; I hope I’ll be able to reflect on the things properly one day, but I also need a placeholder for some of the lessons learnt (or, to be more precise for some things where I’ve learnt a lot without having an answer :)

• how your relations with specific people in a project implicitly define the commitments you make and how painful it could be if those unspoken ‘personal constellations’ are changed
• how important is time for developing a shared language, how much you should fight for an opportunity to have it and that the best way to do so is still doing things together and not talking about doing them
• how hard is facilitation of technology adoption, especially if you are already in a technology-mediated settings
• how to make sure things are on track without having the responsibility or means to ‘manage’ (and without doing them yourself ;)
• how to communicate online – hmm, more precisely: how to get ‘optional’ feedback online, how to make decisions asynchronously, how to orchestrate selection of media to fit everyone even if there is nothing there that fits everyone, how not to spam everyone, but still have everyone updated
• how not to be involved, even if it’s good for the project
• how to tame passion
• how to introduce things (slowly :)
• how to balance between decision-making and training
• how to make decisions about technology design with subject-matter experts who don’t know much about technology
• how to write difficult things in email without ruining the relation behind
• how shared working practices could grow in a heavily distributed project
• how to go back and forth between languages; how it is much more than the languages themselves and the need to switch, but the whole cultures and mindsets behind
• how to plan and manage things you can’t plan and manage (community life and support :)
• how to balance paid long-term members and recently joined volunteers in the same team

One day (when I finish my PhD and get back to doing things instead of doing research ;) I will be much better facilitator because of all the experiences above :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/10/11.html#a1843; comments are here.

• Do you want to be a management guru?
• Note to myself: think in terms of innovation acceptance stages for every new project
• 5 stages in e-moderating and more on collaboration tools for communities

It could be amasing how easily you can get drawn into mistakes you made before while having necessary knowledge to avoid them…

Let me first tell you about one of the things I has been doing while not blogging :)

I’m coordinating a European project focused on supporting collaboration of innovative small and medium enterprises (iSMEs) in Russia (official title is RUSMECO – Enhancing Russian SME collaboration and business development through COmmunities of practice). It’s two year project with business/academic partners in four EU countries and three Russian regions.

The first phase of the project is focused on understanding specific problems Russian innovative SMEs have and then figuring out which of them could be addressed in via “communities” (which is a way to address solutions on information sharing/ learning/ networking/ collaboration spectrum). The original plan was pretty straightforward – start from the literature and doing in-depth interviews with selected iSMEs, use insights to develop and run survey to reach a bigger group and then invite participants for the workshops that provide feedback on the results and discussion on solutions that could work (and then work on developing them).

It didn’t work that way – we found out that it was very difficult to motivate iSME representatives to spend their time on interviews and questionnaires. Not only because they are busy anyway, manoeuvring in transitioning economy and changing regulations, but because it was very difficult to explain to them what the project is about because the whole idea of communities was new to them.

Necessary detour. Many KM concepts and practices still have not reached Russian business world (and academia as well) – apart from a few exceptions most of the KM talk there is still about why it could be useful to invest in something like that, rather then deciding what and how to do. Communities of practice, while there as a reality, is not part of conceptual thinking about management and not a format that organisations would deliberately support with some business gains in mind. [more on this]

While dealing with the problem I realised there is something we overlooked during the planning stage: the relation between the degree of understanding the value of communities in business settings and project planning we had laid out. At that moment I thought of a similar mistake I did 6 years ago while planning for e-learning introduction in a university. Similar to 6 years ago I thought of an instrument that could help to prevent it – stages of innovation acceptance by Diane Dormant.

The framework is simple and it’s one of the most useful leadership instruments for me (I blogged it three years ago ;). It suggests that in their acceptance of an innovation people move through several stages and that if you want to promote new practices you need a strategy that corresponds to the stage where people are (check the original post for more details on stages and strategies):

In our project most of the planned efforts were focused on demonstrating-training-supporting communities for innovative SMEs while people in our target group were hardly aware of what a community could be for them. After bumping into a number of problems we had to adjust our strategies to advertising and informing, but it would be much smarter to think about it in advance.

So, given that it’s a repeated mistake I should make a note to myself to think in terms of innovation acceptance stages for every new project I start. Hopefully it will become a routine while working on planning…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/12/16.html#a1714; comments are here.

• WBC04: selected
• Change: patterns and leverage points
• Natural selection

What could be better when you get off the train from Moscow in the morning? 10 min walk, fresh orange juice, free wifi, pancakes and all the time you want…

Unfortunately couldn’t find any website or info in English. The address is Zhukovskogo, 28; phone +7 (812) 272-35-12. You can check plazes or maps:

• in English – crossing of ul.Zhukovskogo and ul.Vosstaniya in the lower right corner
• in Russian, but with location marked (should be easy to find given that red line metro station is the one at Moscow railway station :)

Opens at 9 in the morning, so don’t take the train that arrives at 7 :)

And while I was googling – some other nice cafes in St.Petersburg.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/11/25.html#a1709; comments are here.

• Free WiFi in Moscow
• Travel plans: UK, mid-July
• Amour of India

I’m looking for experiences and advice of using wiki for a project – any pointers?

To be more specific: the idea is to use a wiki as a shared space for both, project management and accumulating projects results. I’m especially interested in the first one: how wiki could be used for planning, coordination and updates? what types of project management pages it makes sense to create? tips and tricks to facilitate active participation?

On practicalities: 12 organisations in 5 countries, ~30 people, most with little or no wiki experience…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/06/09.html#a1581; comments are here.

• Wikis and blogs: convergent and divergent conversations
• Ready for a wiki
• My dream wiki/weblog tool

This time in Moscow was different – next to all other things I was running a kick-off meeting for a project (will tell more later – when marketing stuff is out :) with several European and Russian partners. For many Europeans it was the first experience in Russia – signtseeing, but also learning about the culture and preparing for the joint work.

I wonder if I was annoying with all my questions about their experiences :) I was so curious to know what did they discover, find different, similar, worth attention… Even with open borders Russia is still pretty much unknown for many foreigners: image of Russia is a strange combination of cold war time impressions and stories in the media magnify specific issues, but do not tell much about everyday life. I’m happy that this trip made it a bit different at least for a few people.

What I found interesting (and – in retrospect – it shouldn’t be that surprising) that most learning about culture came through experiencing it – finding a way around the city and, especially, three days of joint work with Russian people (like a discussion on financial issues of the project that illuminated many issues that Russian businesses are facing). I was there with two colleagues, and, in spite of all my attempts to prepare them by telling stories it feels like my stories were nothing compared to the richness of their own experiences even in a limited number of situations.

We didn’t design on purpose for those experiences, but, given my believe that understanding cultures – similarities and differences – is crusial for this project, I really would like to think how to make “learning about culture through experience” element stronger next times.

I also think about this from an ethnographic perspective – I’ve read too much about learning culture through reflecting on moments where you as an outsider do not fit. What is strange and funny is my own role – I was constantly switching between being Russian, being someone living abroad and being someone in between – understanding both sides, trying to mediate for common language, thinking of mediation process… This in-between position shows me a way to redefine my own identity and go beyond my current dichotomy of being a guest in the Netherlands or being a stranger in Russia.

And – in case you are curious – main impressions of our European guests (my biased summary ;)

• passion of Russian people
• beauty and scale of Moscow
• green and beautiful parks
• life that never stops (like bookshopping after midnight – and seeing that there are others :)
• a strange combination of a modern high-standard city (could be any European capital) with third world elements – differences that somehow co-exist next to each other

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/05/28.html#a1579; comments are here.

• Weblog as a research notebook (4): field notes are overrated
• Why it’s good to be a digital immigrant
• Studying weblogs at Microsoft: ethnography?