Hello!

Having just re-read Liz Rykert's late night posting of June 19th to start
Topic 2 - Literal & Virtual Communities, I suddenly realized that I had not
posted the summary of the last week's discussion on Electronic Work Spaces
and Communities.  Ah well, I've been occupied in the literal work and
community world and have not been able to get to this task. Now it is a
sunny Saturday afternoon, and I'm going to be brief in my summary of the
first topic, so I can do as Nora did, and head out on a bicycle while the
sun still shines :-)  alison.

Although the topic started off with questions of creating on-line workspaces
or communities, and the implications of the technology for communities - the
focus of much of the discussion was on the virtual workspace and
organizational supports for using electronic venues.  We wondered whether :
 - technological changes and electronic communications were imposed, or
offered new opportunities;
 - what were the costs, tradeoffs and sacrifices (loss of jobs or new
potential activities)
 -  whether they created isolation in the workplace or offered ways of
connecting isolated people
 - if the electronic work space is a model of a social process and a
territory with features and tendencies but no people

Organizational support was seen as key to successful use of electronic work
space to connect isolated people, to build community and share learnings.
 There was conscern that those [administrators?] who support cuts in budgets
are the same people who do not support electronic communication.

Three words were seen as encapsulating the use of the electronic workspace
and the potential for it to assist consumers: TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY
 and to promote COLLABORATION.  Transparency also is a good term to describe
the key feature for this topic: electronic work spaces work best when they
are integrated in our organizations, supported and 'transparent' in looking
through and using as a window to other spaces and processes.  Accountability
may well describe our concern for linking our health promotion work with
communities and our work within our organizations using the electronic
venue. And collaboration is what some of us strive to achieve in creating
electronic work and community spaces.

Alison Stirling
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