If you read my last post, you saw that we held a “twitter un-chat” as part of our efforts to include our offsite friends, colleagues and extended networks in our f2f #OCE2o12 event. It would be a bit strange to have a gathering of online community enthusiasts (OCE) without some online experimentation. The idea of the UN in the un-chat was that we were not setting questions up in advance. They would emerge through the onsite open space process and/or through conversation on twitter, and people off- and onsite would participate.

You probably saw that Nancy White brought a copy of Digital Habitats as a prize for online participation. Nancy White and John D. Smith were also facilitators at this event, and co-authors of the book along with Etienne Wenger, who could not attend.  I love this book, and you can see from the reviews that many of us have written that it has been appreciated and used in many ways.

Let me first say that people onsite enjoyed everyone’s input and questions from a distance. We didn’t project the tweets; I just interjected to relay comments in either direction. The topic conveners looked forward to these contributions and shared in the emotions (a round of belly laughs instigated by @PhDAda comes to mind) brought into the room.

As I said in the earlier posts, decisions were subjective, but @sparkandco (Holly MacDonald) stood out. She stayed with us through the topics, despite missing the buzz of our room. In one of our topics we got talking about the power of the whole person on line, and Holly did that beautifully and naturally. Her parting tweet read

Thanks for letting me hashtag crash #OCE2012, enjoyed participating, but heading out to a volunteer meeting. Following some new tweeps!

She listened, reposted questions for others and RT’d others. Several of her posts brought uncommon perspectives to conversations. As one example, Paul Stacey had convened a conversation about creating a great home/office workspace. We shifted from physical space and technologies (she contributed to both) to a conversation about home vs. work responsibilities. Everything was about separation until Holly came in with:

As freelancer, mostly I love that there’s no artificial divide btwn work/home.

It was wonderful to have Holly and so many other thoughtful people join us for the hour (and throughout the day). Thanks! A copy of Digital Habitats will be heading from one island to another shortly, Holly.

Paul Stacey and I had a brief conversation during the break about how much better we could become connecting people across that onsite/offsite boundary. Some people have invested considerable effort in this with some great results (Beverly Trayner and Etienne Wenger’s current work with BEtreats comes to mind). But Paul and I agreed it is a rich space for much more work and innovation. I wonder what the boundary will look like for #OCE2013?