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Filed under: Internet

OrCom Students in a Wiki World

In my recent post about The Third Place I talked about how we, Organizational Communication students, are involved with a lot of online collaboration activities; hence, the need for WiFi. In this post, I'll be telling you how exactly we collaborated for one project.

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The above photo tells a lot about our group meeting habits. Yes we cannot meet without our gadgets. They’re practically THE STAPLE in every meeting. But there is more to what your eyes can see when you catch us in one of our third places. As Organizational Communication students, we learn a great deal in class about the different ways of collaborating online and how it is changing the way businesses and people do work. So we do not really need to look at each other straight in the eye just so we could come up with meaningful discussions. While preparing for the competition, we even talked via Google Chat and Twitter even when we were just a few meters apart. Online, there are also blogs that feature various online collaboration tools that groups can use for free. While class activities do not always require Organizational Communication students to collaborate online, we found the use of wikis particularly helpful when my team mates and I joined the 2009 PRSP Grand Prix. Here we decided to experiment with Springnote, as suggested by Alvina, since it is both free and user-friendly.

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How was it helpful? First, since we are a team of 7 people, it gets taxing to constantly email each other for updates our own research. Using online collaboration tools made the process easier for it allowed us to store all information in just one virtual container.

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Second, since the competition entailed some paper writing, we needed to ensure that each section of the paper that was assigned to us goes well with the other parts that the other members are working on. The collaborative and real time writing and editing functions of wikis allow us to cross check without any hassle.

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Third, since we can’t always expect our team to be complete during meetings and scheduled interviews, our notebook made it easier for the other team members to individually catch up without the need to bug other members on what transpired during the meeting. Of course this requires that someone in the group takes down notes in every meeting and patiently inputs it in the notebook so that the team members who weren't around can just take what happened from there.

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The calendar function of Springnote also allowed us to schedule meetings and interviews while being mindful of each others’ appointments.

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Overall, our first attempt at the Wiki World was a success albeit we encountered some password difficulties. And with more and frequent exposure to this and other kinds of online collaboration, I am sure that it won't be long before Organizational Communication students start taking the lead in incorporating this technology to the organizational processes of different companies in the Philippines. Ms. Ingrid Cudia, a BA Organizational Communication graduate, surely did well in incorporating the different ways of online collaboration in running Sieg Web Solutions. ** Team Gondo Gondo is a.k.a. Team Praxis

I got overdosed.

HISTORY

  • I used to list down my agenda before I go to the Internet shop.
  • I didn't have my own internet connection until last semester.
  • I managed to be productive in an hour or so of staying in an Internet shop.

COMPLAINTS

  • Waiting in line in those computer shops again
  • My flash disk always getting infected by NewFolder.exe, Funny UST Scandal.exe, or ravmon.exe
  • Too limited time to work on my research or home works
  • No extra time for an online job, ergo, no chance to amass MONEY MONEY MONEY
  • Incomplete productivity

MEDICATION: Broadband installation at home

PSYCHOSOCIAL REACTIONS

1) I-can’t-work-with-all-these-distractions effect

Do not get me wrong. I do enjoy chatting with my friends because it actually de-stresses, not distracts, me. But the fact that the list of the things that you can do online is almost endless, my distractions also became endless. When a distraction is just a click away (or when it conveniently presents itself to you), how can you ever run away from it?

2. I-am-a-busy-bee-do-not-talk-to-me-world effect

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Whenever my mom sees all these opened windows in White Winona's desktop, she would often conclude that I am in engaged in an online meeting with my group mates and for that I must not be disturbed. Well for one, she is not always right. But I never bothered to correct her. And I bet I am not the only guilty person here. With all those must-be-explored sites, must-be-read contents, must-be-tried-apps, I can spend the entire day just tinkering with my laptop. I can also fool myself (and the people who look at my desktop) to believing that I am a master of productivity with all those sticky notes found all over my desktop. But the truth is they are just there and they can stay there for as long as they want. See the fall sense of busy-ness AND productivity there? So at the end of the day, I will be an exhausted person (with strained eyes, back, and neck) and unupdated daughter/sister/niece/granddaughter who, in fact, did not really learn much but gossips and did not really accomplish much but page-hop.

3. I-might-be-missing-out-on-something-somewhere effect

The idea that conversations done online serve to supplement (or complement) whatever talks I have (or just had) with my friends, my family, classmates, colleagues, and others face-to-face, I feel the need to be always visible. You know the feeling when it’s been 24 hours and you haven’t logged in any of your SNS or YM accounts, like you are missing half of your life by not doing so? So you make yourself accessible online, with an attempt to shun distracters by appending that Busy icon. Well obviously, you can't expect the trick to always work. And for fear that I'm  missing something online, I realized that there are far more important things in the REAL WORLD that I'm actually missing.

4. I-feel-like-saying-something-to-you-but-you-must-not-or-cannot-know-so-I-will-be-purposely-vague effect

Ironically, inasmuch as people are actually enjoying the idea of sharing bits of their lives (in their blogs, twits, shoutouts, statuses, etc) for the world to see, most of these I find superficial. If there were any that really mirrored what a person is going through (raw emotions and all that), the entry would be rather vague to protect some identities. I did that one too many times already. But while it can be therapeutic, it can actually feel pointless at times because at the end of it, you never really got your message across that person/thing/whatever. Apparently, the more freedom (and avenues) that I get to express what I feel/think/see, the more cautious I become, to the point of being ambiguous.

RECOMMENDATIONS

So how will a person like me combat all these seemingly negative effects of the medication that I thought will make me a healthy, productive individual? I will use two antidotes starting today.

  1. Create/Revive my personal dashboard (a really good prescription from barrycade). Selective exposure is totally the key because hyperlinks are obviously everywhere. To avoid being pointed to all those different (unnecessary) directions, I shall first expose myself to things that REALLY need my attention. This may seem too limiting but if I ever get idle, I would definitely love to explore sites outside my pseudo-bordered world.
  2. Stay invisible when I do not have any business online. Out of respect (if not need for gossip), I always entertain friends (not just random strangers) who talk to me online, but my work gets compromised. If someone really needs me, there are so many ways to contact me (leave an offline message, text, call, email) without me being pressured to set aside whatever tasks I have at hand.

Do you have any other recommendations?  

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On Internet Apocalypso

PERCEIVED INTENTIONS

A side tells me its bias is on the people outside the organization. The initial installment of the Cluetrain Manifesto treated top management as entities that are way too serious, if not extremely wanting, to control and exercise power over the organization and that is inherently bad. It talked about how managers should learn to shun being goal-oriented in place of playing in order to really connect with their market, comprising of their workers and the rest of the unique individuals on the Internet.

By revealing facts about how corporations are using or misusing the Internet, the people are empowered so that they will not fall too easily on the traps made for gullible consumers by advertisers and media buyers. It served as an eye opener so that they may realize how much their being a unique human is oftentimes forgotten by companies that are rather directed by their own selfish motives; hence, the rationale for them to speak up. The other side says it is to educate corporations. Though it may seem that corporations are defenseless looking at the revelations mentioned in the chapter, it still boiled down to the big idea of finding ways on how to attract the consumers of today given the changes in how people transact business, resulting from trends in the Internet usage. Corporations will not necessarily be kinder to their employees for the sake of being kind nor will they be more visible to their external public. Rather, it is another measure that they are taking in order to hit the consumer’s soft spot in product selection and buying. Whatever measure that may be…

  • allowing the external visitors to access some information from their Intranet;
  • setting up a real time technical support online;
  • opening up an online forum for the market to voice their concerns; or
  • allowing their janitors to author their corporate blog viewable by external people (and this was done in the Philippines already!);

…any top manager maintains the attribute of being goal oriented, with generating the highest possible profit as the ultimate goal. Imagine a top manager whose sight is not focused on reaching the goal. Where will ideas come from? He may not show direct interest in profit generation by disguising it as his desire for promotion; in any case it is partly contingent on the amount of money that they bring to the organization. They will only differ, then, on the creativity that they will employ in the process. After all, being goal oriented and playing (in the context provided by the Manifesto) are not mutually exclusive.

PERSONAL INCLINATION

I found it quite paradoxical for the author to actually talk about conditions where organizations can amass consumer purchases, which is by allowing people in organizations to play and connect to those outside the organization. This was after he mentioned on a negative note about how people are merely treated as units in a demographic survey, eventually being readied for advertisers. The stand is not clear. Or it is perhaps just peculiar in the sense that all he wanted was for companies and consumers to not take commerce to heart. Life, he said, must not be all about buying and selling, producing and owning. It is not business that should dominate the lives of the people; instead, it should be something else, something bigger, something more special—like personalized communication. Truth is some people will still have the same role as consumers, which can also be owed to the fact that in the business ecology, there will always be consumers and there will always be producers. It is the order of life and if one wants to change roles, from consumers to owners of the means and modes of production, then reading this chapter and incorporating it into his business may help him succeed. In that case, the Manifesto taught corporations, or corporate gods and goddesses wannabes, how they can leverage the Internet technology, albeit in a subtle way. The advent of the Internet brought to people opportunities to be heard of in ways that was rather not possible before. And it even required revamping of the previously held beliefs of organizations in the aspects of management and control in the new workplace, as well as rules in conducting business in the new marketplace. Power and control derived from information is also more decentralized than ever. Yet, all these do not preclude the fact that the present culture on Internet use made sustaining commerce an even more attractive endeavor, with all the creative, interactive acts that can be tried, instead of fully shifting people’s mindsets.