I returned to Raleigh-Durham last night around midnight. My luggage finally made it here this afternoon. So, I think I can close the book on the e-Learning for Educators state leadership teams retreat, which was far better than I thought it would be.

I took the day off since I went to Alabama and fired things up on Sunday this week, but ended up working some anyway. I never got into that zen state that sometimes strikes when I’m working at home, but no biggie. I’m tired. It’s allowed.

My glasses still haven’t arrived; I was all over the mailbox at noon and was sorely disappointed, then found out that they were held up in a customs shipment and won’t ship USPS for a couple more days. That’s a drag. Also, I’m hoping that they’re not radioactive or something. I don’t know why a bunch of glasses would be held up by customs.

On my last morning in Alabama, someone had written a message on the beach to his girl (or her girl, but given that this was Alabama, I’m guessing it was a dude). I thought it was sweet– it was the first thing I saw when I looked out my window in the morning.

Click to see it a little larger.

Whee.  The couple in the next room is having some serious sex, and I can feel the thump of it through my headboard.

Ugh, I am pooped.  I’m at the state leadership teams retreat for e-Learning for Educators.  This is, in many ways, the inaugural meeting for North Carolina– it’s the first time all the members of our leadership team have been in the room together.  We start the work of really forming the team tomorrow, but it’s impressive that some of our team members made the leap of faith necessary to come here when their roles in this project aren’t really even defined yet.  I hope they will find it rewarding.

I came in yesterday for the directors’ meeting, and I don’t know what I would have done if we hadn’t had time to socialize over dinner last night, because we hit the ground running today and just kept going.  We had some time to ourselves in the afternoon; I could see my peers walking on the beach, but I spent most of it out on the patio of my hotel room working.  I figure this could be my last chance this week, because it looks like we’ll be busy from 7:30 AM – 9:30 PM the next couple days.  I am so glad I had the sense to take Friday off as a comp day.  I am so going to need it.

View from my balcony:

Notice the position of the sun relative to the coast. You don’t often get to see the sun setting along the coastline like that, but the beach runs east to west rather than north to south.

The cluster of people in the first picture is a smattering of state directors for e-Learning for Educators and EDC staff.

We had a keynote speaker at dinner (can I whine about sitting for three hours in a dining room chair?  can I note that I did it three separate times today?) who talked about sociometrics, and holy cow, it was way cool.  I had not thought much about how opinion leaders could be formally identified, and it seems so obvious now.  I made some Twitter notes… I’m sure people thought I was just texting all throughout the session.  (Well, maybe not, this seems to be a crowd that would understand what I was up to.)

http://twitter.com/rosswhite/status/999734683

http://twitter.com/rosswhite/status/999780791

http://twitter.com/rosswhite/status/999800548

I married her.

• Beginning in January 2009, I’ll be serving on the advisory board for the Pittsboro St. branch of the North Carolina State Employees Credit Union.  I love the NC SECU!  If you’re a member– at any branch!– of SECU, feel free to tell me how it’s going.  Advisory board members love to hear what’s going well and what you’d like to see from the SECU.  Ideas for services you’d like to see are particularly welcome!  (No, “free money” or “money for hugs” are not suggestions I will take to the branch manager.) 
• I have finished the first seven days of a 30-in-30 grind.  30 poems in thirty days.  After seven days, I have five sonnets.  I did not set out to write sonnets, people, it’s just happening.  But I am finding them tremendously liberating.
• This is my first post since election day, and I suppose that just about everything that could possibly be said about this election has been said.  I have nothing new to offer.  I feel a great sense of hope about the direction that this country could take under Barack Obama.  I really believe he’s going to be an incredible President, because more than any politician I can remember in quite some time, I believe he’s an incredible human being.  (And I am delighted with the direction of the Democratic Party under another guy I think is pretty great, Howard Dean.)

  But for all the hope I feel, as proud as I am of the American electorate, I am just disgusted with referenda passed in states like Florida and California that deny human beings basic rights, that relegates some people to second-class citizenship.

  Gay rights are civil rights.  

  According to tax laws, if a tax-exempt group — religious or secular — promotes ideas which contradict important public policies (like desegregation), then the group’s tax-exempt status may not be granted or extended. Tax exemptions are provided in exchange for groups’ providing services to the community; when the groups undermine important goals of the community, then the tax exemptions are no longer justified. 

  I have heard some calls for petitions to strip the Mormon Church of its tax-exempt status for its role in the passage of California’s Proposition 8.  I support this action, and I support the removal of tax-exempt status for any non-profit institution which engages in partisan political activity.  I hope you will too. 

I’m on a listserv that isn’t very useful.  We all have a common professional interest, but we have all joined at different times, and the list has devolved into a more social hodgepodge than a true professional community.  I’ve been thinking about online communities at work, so I used my broken list as an opportunity to think about what true professional community entails.  I just wrote to a friend about this.  Here’s what I had to say (information that would identify the list has been edited or removed):

I think our listserv is broken.  I think it is is irreparably damaged.

Well, obviously not, right?  It’s very active, and participants from a variety of backgrounds send messages regularly.

However, the list is dominated by just a few individuals who have been active participants for quite some time.  Very few posts come from participants who have joined in the last two and half years.

A healthy list would have more broad participation from a wider variety of voices.  But most of my peers, the people who joined recently (I have quietly surveyed, but obviously there’s small sample size, unrepresentative sample, and confirmation bias, all at work here) have expressed that the reasons they don’t use the listserv are:

• The volume of messages unrelated to our professional topic is too high.
• They end up deleting most everything because they don’t want to sift through the unrelated stuff.
• Not very many discussions are directly related to the professional topic; those related to it are often tangential and focused on employment or “meta-”topics.
• The listserv seems to be dominated by a few “power users.”
• There’s the perception that there’s a lot of in-joke-iness that isn’t welcoming to new participants.
• There’s no sense of shared vision on how the listserv is used.
• There is no mechanism for knowing who the posters are.  (Other than their e-mail signatures.)

Part of my job recently has been looking at virtual communities, including professional learning communities.  At heart, I believe that’s what the listserv was designed to be.  But the barriers to entry keep it from realizing its full potential.

So, my early brainstorming around the issue has led me to a series of steps.  Keep in mind that this is all still a braindump.

Fixing the listserv requires a dedicated group of users to:

1. Identify the power users.
2. Convince power users that there is an issue and building consensus that it can be fixed.
3. Find out what power users want from the list.  Figure out how that is different from what new users want.
4. Devise and offer an alternative venue for power users.
5. Make sure that the alternative is somehow more appealing than the listserv.
   • The alternative must have clearly stated, shared values and principals which anyone can access at any time.  (community norming… those norms must remain negotiable)
   • The alternative must have some directory function so that people can find out more about who they are talking to.  (encourages new users)
   • The alternative must fulfill the social needs of the power users which are currently prevalent on the listserv.
   • The alternative must separate purely social discussion from discussion of our professional topic in meaningful ways.
   • The alternative must support and encourage shared and reflective practice of our learning goals– our true, core professional topic.
   • The alternative cannot be more demanding technologically than e-mail.
6. Engage the power users in making (and promoting) a shift to the alternative.
7. Recruit more casual users to the alternative, which should reinforce its value to power users.
8. Repurpose the listserv so that it serves a more discrete purpose.
9. Enjoy the benefits of increased  engagement and a more robust community of practitioners, as well as an inbox that isn’t so crazy.

What do you think, dear reader?

Ladybug and I are back at home in Dear Dirty Durham, after a brief vacation in Colorado.

Since we are geographically dispersed, my family has traditionally celebrated Christmas over Thanksgiving weekend.  However, this year, with the exorbitant cost of plane fare (particularly when we booked the tickets in July), we decided to opt for a cheaper weekend, which resulted in HalloThanksMas.  (By the end of the weekend, we joked that we might as well include Easter and Arbor Day in there.)

My sister was a cat for Halloween.  We went to her office in downtown Denver, where many of her co-workers were also in costume.

The highlight of the trip was several hikes up to the top of Table Mountain (though I’m not sure if it was North Table Mountain or South Table Mountain… heck, we might not actually have been on either of the Table Mountains) early in the mornings.  We took my parents’ new dog Ranger up each morning; we got to watch the sunrise on Saturday but went up a little later on Sunday.  Lots of deer on the mountain and beautiful views.  I took some pictures on Ladybug’s camera but haven’t gotten them up to Flickr yet– I’ll post them when I do.

The lowlight of the trip was Friday night.  I awoke with a start around 5 AM, having had the distinct sensation that I felt something in the bed.  Of course, whenever you wake with a start like that, you freak out for a second before you realize that it was just a dream and you head back to sleep.  I got up and opened the door so the cat could come in. I lay my head down when my heart stopped racing.  But I could not fall asleep.  I kept feeling like something wasn’t right, and realized after a couple minutes that I was hearing something that wasn’t just normal nighttime noise and wasn’t the cat rummaging through the room.  I sat up in bed again and turned on the lamp.  Ladybug stirred and I told her something wasn’t quite right.  I picked up the pillow at the head of the bed to adjust it, and there was a mouse in the bed!

My natural instincts kicked in: I swatted it out of bed with the pillow and yelled “What the fuck?” simultaneously.  Ladybug opened her eyes and said, “What?”  I told her there was a mouse in the bed, to which she replied, “Don’t let it get in my hair,” and promptly went back to sleep.  I was wide awake at that point, so went into the living room and read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle for a while.  My sister came out into the living room around 5:45, talked to me for a while, then fell asleep in one of the living room chairs until her husband fetched her around 6:45.

The moral of the story?

If you see this cat, do not trust her to keep your house rodent-free!  Bad kitty!

You thought the tire slashing and dead bear cubs were rotten.  Now take a look at this:

State Democratic and Republican party officials are decrying the appearance of a casket with an anti-Barack Obama sticker at a Craven County polling place. State Democrats said Saturday the coffin and sticker are an attempt to intimidate people voting early. And Republican Party spokesman Brent Woodcox said the matter should trouble all citizens. “All decent, law-abiding citizens of North Carolina are outraged by this incident,” said Woodcox. The state NAACP says the casket was in place for at least several hours. A bumper sticker on it showed an image of Obama and the phrase “O’ No!” (THE NEWS & OBSERVER; THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11/01/08).

Very classy.

So, I hate to be the jerk here, but are there similar incidents that might be construed as an effort to suppress the Republican vote?