CPsquare

The Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop has always been international and it always feels a bit miraculous when everybody lands “on the same page.”  Since one of the participants suggested that we not just meet online but actually talk, we’ve been having teleconferences as part of our learning and being together.  (I think we started having teleconferences around 2001.)

Our experience in the workshop confirms the notion that the technologies we use bring us together (somewhat more, often to great effect) and yet always exclude some people and always seem to require more planning.  If we want to meet during waking hours, some people are just left out of an international gathering like our workshop.  And if we meet at this time of the year, we have crazy daylight saving shifts to contend with.

Consider the fact that our workshop always has people from Australia, the US, and Europe and stretches across 6 weeks.  We use US time as the constant and our Monday get-togethers for the workshop that starts on October 24 bounce around as follows:

* Next day in Sydney

This particular miracle would simply would not happen reliably without the World Clock!