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Kerry Santo: We need to talk about facilitation

Franz, about the Virtual Communities, what I have noticed in being part of many and having to start my own soon is the unecessary conflict between community members that arises.

Now some of this arises in what has been posted and has been taking in a different way in which it was meant and it has caused a lot of friction and threatening and abusive behaviour.

What I would like to see in the RIC brochure would be facilitation skills, mediation skills and dealing with conflict online. I know its necessary to give people the technical tools and know how to run communities virtually but I feel the softer non technical skills would be useful. Would this be part of the coaching process?

That is definite. I call the coach also the "passive innovator" because part of the learning process is to bring people together that are complementing and potentially helpful to each other. Managing conflicts and making that productive is part of the game. I think that goes to chapter 7 and 8. I am not sure when I will have the structure ready but why dont you write some suggestions here:"

Kerry Santo: More thoughts on the passive innovator/coach role

In order to bring people together that are complementing and helpful to each other I think it would be helpful to have a set of questions to ask would be great to help me determine the values and what the person was looking for in order for me to make a match. I don't know whether that would be some sort of profiling system to find out weaknesses and strengths.

As at the moment I am kind of sensing who would get on with each other and who wouldn't this is kind of easier to do offline that is online. But a profiling system would help enormously as sometimes you can get things wrong.

As far as the mediation/facilitation/conflict skills I feel I need more guidance and education in this area but am unsure where to look for these as I have just been doing stuff naturally and building relations. I think actual scenarios would be a great way of learning this.

Also I sometimes I have problems getting my point across to government officials in an effective manner. So guidance in this area would be very welcome. Anyway Franz, just emptying my head with thoughts about this.

Kerry it is great having you think along with me Franz

HelmutLeitner: Online communication differs much from real life communication because it contains much more ambiguity. This comes from a lack of context and background information. Misunderstandings can be avoided by clearness, positive interpretations and asking questions in doubt. But not all conflicts come from misunderstanding and not all conflicts can be avoided. There are conflicting real interests and in rare cases you even have to do with sick people, although one should never utter or be sure of such a diagnosis. Conflicts also shouldn't be seen as entirely negative. No recipes can be given, but there are lots of experiences to learn from. Every single communication is new magic. Meatball Wiki ( http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?RecentChanges) is a great community caring about that and a rich source of such knowledge.

First of all congratulations and thanks to Franz for the large pile of work he has done. It seems to me that we now have a real good basis for the exchange of our differing minds on what RIC might and shall be.

As it turned out at our meeting with the DSTGB on 21st June. we have different things in mind thinking about RIC and how Regional Information Coaching might become true

What I am missing is the for my foundation most important thought of Regional Information Coaching as a means for realising equal opportunities to all.

The brochure describes RIC more as a means to support people thar are aware of the opportunities ICTs offer to them. These are mostly well educated people, mostly younger ones and maybe those who come from urban areas and are dreaming of a life in rural areas. I admit that it is necessary to give opportunities of work to those people and to lure them to the villages. But what about the other ones, the disadvantaged, not or badly educated, without the skills to make use of ICTs to improve their lifes.

To overcome the digital divide is it necessary to support the so called underserved, you really find them in rural areas and they need the support of RIC.

So I think we need to reshape the image of RIC to contribute to the goal of digital inclusion.

At the start RIC can not be a profession as is written in the Introduction. And I do not agree that the support of active entrepreneurial people is in the heart of Regional Information Coaching, it's one part of it but not the core one.

Please find my comments to the single chapters on the discussion pages.

FranzNahrada: Thank you Jutta for breaking, after Waclav, the ice of the ERDE community to talk about the RIC brochure. I think the points of dissent are minor and will be solveable, and I encourage everybody to add their point of view here.

Andrius: Jutta, I think your points are very important. I had some thoughts on distributing resources in the case of timebanks. I will write some more on that. I am coming up with an argument of where to place resources - they should be focused for maximum vitality at the geometric average - that I think yields maximum benefit for the most isolated and for all of society. What that means here is that the isolated people in a village benefit most by way of energy focused on those locally who are willing and able to reach out to them.