The Pitch Pipe - October 2008 - (Page 5a) By Jennifer Palus, Region 23 RMT associate, TESSITURA Quartet, Metro Nashville Chorus, Region 23 As Sweet Adelines, we are intimately familiar with the concept of collaboration. We do it on the risers, in our quartets, in our meetings, on our committees. We live it … except, perhaps, when it comes to online communication. Has an e-mail string ever gotten “out • of control” within your chorus or region? • Do decisions get made made because not everyone was aware of an e-mail? • Have you found yourself searching through dozens (or hundreds) of emails to find information that you remember seeing but can’t recall? • Have you been frustrated when attempting to gather feedback from a group via e-mail? • Do you ever wish there was a way to give everyone the same information at the same time? The challenge with e-mail is that it is a “push” medium. That is, the sender controls the timing and content and pushes it to the receiver. Many times, that’s exactly what we want — especially with time-sensitive or one-way communication (you’re telling me something with no need for reply). But to truly collaborate, we need the back-and-forth of dialogue — and often with multiple parties. To collaborate, we need “pull” communication, where the user determines how and when to interact. The Wiki Solution Great examples of “pull” communication are collaborative Web sites called wikis (the term was coined in 1995 and was drawn from the Hawaiian term for shuttle bus: wiki-wiki. Wiki means quick). There are a variety of wiki sites available to the public, both paid and free. The free sites include advertising, which is how the sites make money. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) is the best-known example of a wiki site, and it illustrates many of their important attributes: • User-created content; no programmer or webmaster required to update pages. • Multiple authors have input n a single topic. • Heavy use of links to cross-reference ideas and topics; topics suggest other topics. • Site moderators who can correct errors or remove malicious content. A hierarchy of user permissions to limit the type of edits allowed; for example, baseline users can comment on the content of a page; only those recognized as writers can edit the page; only an administrator can delete a page. • A truly dynamic structure, with eb pages that can be reorganized in real time. Region 23’s Journey to Wiki When the Regional Management Team in Region 23 started thinking about the possibility of a wiki site, we thought about using it to communicate and collaborate just among the RMT, e.g. sharing minutes, agendas reports. But, as we talked about what information could be housed on such a site, we realized open ing a wiki site to the membership would allow us to manage information in a more timely fashion (versus sending updates to a webmaster) and would allow us to encourage more cross-chorus interactions among the members. One key decision we made was that the wiki site would complement our traditional Web site, not replace it. We have some great information for visitors and prospects on the main site, but we also have had some frustration with out-of-date • Digital Edition Feature http://www.wikipedia.com
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