My current focus is to establish improved ways to document the dialog process and the results of dialog so that lessons learned can be carried forward.Part of the reason for this focus is realization that dialog can be very resource intensive -limiting how often it happens, so a natural question is how can available facilitation resources be expanded through more and more effective practitioners and how can the knowledge, insights, or questions gained through this investment be efficiently and effectively shared?

The approach being explored is applying knowledge management concepts to an actual dialog (“A spiritual Response to Global Crisis”)to begin the process of learning how to document a dialog and begin considering an ontology that will make the documentation and sharing of dialogs easier and more effective. Not all dialog would be appropriate to document but the are instances where: scarce practical examples of a dialog method exist, a significant investment of time or expertise has been made, or an exceptional insight has been reached, and in these cases it would be a real loss not to seek documentation that allows transfer of knowledge and skills to others exploring similar issues. While they could be treated separately, I have in one document tried to:

  • Summarize the content of the dialog (e.g., what was said about the topic) so the results can be built on by others. The level of documentation would vary depending on whether it: would need to stand on its own or was supporting participants in remembering sufficient detail to carry the ideas forward.The process of documentation, though, has a direct benefit of adding depth and dimensionality to ones understanding of what was learned.
  • Record the actual dialog process: techniques and how structured, context, issues and effectiveness, to allow skill sharing of: what to use why and when, problems or benefits and etc. This allows skill sharing and advancement in the field of facilitation. Again the level of documentation will relate to intended use.
  • Considered what researchers might want to know towards understandingwhat issues people are concerned about (leading to greater action on the topics of concern).

My after the fact attempt has been highly instructive, but shortcomings are acute in a limited ability to document the actual dialog techniques since those details were not well recorded, and also the difficulty in writing up a dialog in isolation from other participants. But with the shortcomings come some basic questions and ideas for how they could be resolved. For instance: what value added is there fordialog participants to recording some of their own issues and observationsvs. one persons impressions of all?; if participants see themselves creating something will it improve the dialog?, would a volunteer note taker be acceptable with appropriate safeguards? Could an online tool help with recording observations, ideas and etc. outside of the dialog? What is the appropriate division of note taking between the facilitator and a volunteer participant? What can be formatted in advance to avoid breaking the flow?

The documentation provided aricher perspective on the dialog as the process of trying to establish the logic made some things discussed more clear and revealed questions the dialog passed over or did not fully explore.

I have in the main followed a report format, but it may be more efficient to follow a more concise format with: bullets (like something “open space” or “world café” approaches might come up with), or preset forms, or an electronic format with drop down boxes and space for free form comments. The tradeoff being development time, speed an actual documentation may take, and usefulness of the end product in terms of search and knowledge transferability.

In the case of St. Ethelburgas, given their mission in facilitation knowledge sharing and issues exploration it may be worthwhile to develop something that reduces the effort of documentation by staff and maximizes the efficiency of searching, and also providing using content. Extra dimensionality would be added if a few participants were willing to volunteer to act as knowledge ambassadors for a period of time and answer questions for those interested in the knowledge gained so that any future dialog for example might extend learning already gained or be informed by issues or questions that might otherwise not be considered.

The key to successful process development would be:

-a good appreciation of what purpose the users might put the information to,

-followed by the availability of volunteers to act as recording or transmittal agents.

-collaboration on ontology and report design and

-exploration of what software might add to developmental efficiency and accessibility of the end product.

In terms of actual use by the intended audience, the question is whether pent up demand exists forthe result of collaborative inquiry and for the learning and improvement of dialog techniques.

Finally, how much would content drive demand? From experience many individuals have pent up interest in addressing social and faith issues and providing a framework and tools for them along with an audience of others and interested organizations may just draw them out. Organizations might learn the benefits of this sort of input as something that helps with their mission, leading to more engagement by the public, leading to more engagement by our institutions and so on.

In some sense my current enquiry can be summarized as the questions below:

  1. How can dialog skills be better shared?
  2. How can dialog be more effective in itself?
  3. How can larger problems be solved via overlapping dialog?
  4. How can important questions be raised effectively in our society?
  5. How can persons and institutions be made more sensitive to the need for broader engagement?
  6. How can we more efficiently heal the distrust arising out of different religious, cultural, or power differences that keep people from working together?
  7. What structures and governance can be created to make the above occur naturally and more efficiently?
  8. What ontology and taxonomies will efficiently aid with the documentation process?
  9. What sorts of questions will the ontology need to answer?

Miscellaneous:

A practical part of the improvement of dialog techniques and documentation is the development of a workable ontology that will efficiently organize information to enable the answering of questions like the following:

Initial ideas towards an ontology are bulleted below. While the task can seem large, there is ground that likely has already been gone over by others and there is specialized software that helps, but, the most important aspect of an ontology is understanding the sorts of questions that it will be trying to find answers for. Having gone through this process it should be possible to better plan future dialog to yield more effective results: anticipating how participants and facilitator might use the experience and enabling them more towards this end; and making any findings useful to interested parties such as those planning further work around the same social issues or organizers & sponsors or etc.

Below are some random notes on some aspects of the needed ontology or report format needed as a result of this exercise.

Domains covered:

  • In general there will be a predefined classification hierarchy to assist documentation, with a place for notes to personalize each selected classification. These classifications will be adapted from a preexisting ontology/taxonomy, developed manually, or suggested through ontology text mining software.) for areas including:
  • Dialog techniques
  • Social issues
  • Religious issues
  • Conflict types
  • Participant demographics
  • Speaker/Presenter characteristics?
  • Purpose of dialog
  • Goal or anticipated use of dialog
  • Type of finding or issue raised
  • Expected beneficiary of information
  • Expected use of information

Context

  • Some general description of the group participants: their background, how they were selected and why they wanted to participate.
  • What were some of the specific issues participants were seeking answers to (followed by the degree to which the dialog helped).
  • What the organizers were hoping to achieve and how they would expect the results of the dialog to be used.

Record of Content

  • Summary of information presented.
  • Questions that arose of particular relevance and the key discussions around them.
  • Group conflicts and consensus on the subject matter {1, 2, 3, …}
  • Concerns that people have raised
  • Ideas generated for personal and organizational improvement (q, r, s, …}
  • Further areas indicated for dialog or research {i, ii, iii, …}

Record of Techniques. For each planned or unplanned application of a method use a drop down list with companion free comments to document:

  • Which method and why it was chosen in terms of:
  • Expected goal of the dialog.
  • Timing and dependencies on other preceding dialog or expected involvement on future dialog.
  • Degree of moderation expected to be needed
  • Size and number of breakout groups
  • Degree of success
  • Problems encountered