Comments on: Dude, I Just Colleagued My Dean

By: Sharon M. Leon

Sharon M. Leon — Fri, 21 May 2010 09:58:28 +0000

Can I say how bummed I am that I’m not going to be at THATCamp for more than Saturday morning? I think that this is a hugely important discussion. I’m working on a number of variations on this theme in larger venues — history teachers generally, members of waning professional organizations. I’m concerned about building a level of buy-in for a system that can function on local relationships (ties within districts, schools, departments), but doesn’t have to (ties based on fields of interest, pedagogical perspectives, etc.). Zotero plugins seems like it will be key in the long-run.

By: mkgold

mkgold — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:26:19 +0000

Thanks, Boone. I think you’re right that the larger issue here is something we’ve discussed often in recent weeks — what happens to professional communities as they become more social? (maybe we can call this the “CUNY Pie Effect.” And it might be worth wrapping this particular topic about friending into a session that covers a range of issues related to that larger umbrella.

One thing I’d like to make clear is that although the semantics are important, this issue does not solely concern terminology. I’m also interested in discussing the specific functionalities that might be developed to help members of a professional community collaborate and share. So, perhaps one concrete issue that could be both yakked and hacked is the question of exactly what user data-sharing functions should be available between connected members of a network. For instance, how can we build new functionality into something like BuddyPress, for instance, that would allow members of a group or two friends to share Zotero libraries or dropbox folders?

By: Boone Gorges

Boone Gorges — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:21:38 +0000

Cool idea, Matt. I’ll be anxious to see what comes out of this conversation. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment expressed in your penultimate paragraph: it’s highly likely that the “right” conventions, insofar as there are any “right” ones, will have to emerge naturally in each individual community, and the conventions will probably differ between them. Having a larger conversation about how to frame questions about the relationship between the ‘social’ and the ‘professional’ will go a long way toward informing the formation of those conventions.