I had the pleasure of interviewing Eugene Kim before CTC about collaboration and the need for simplicity. I also sat in on his panel. And I was thoroughly glad I did. There was very little overlap in the interview and session, and I was really pleased with the whole session.

Eugene really took on the un-conference ideals and shook things up. We started the session by all getting into a large circle. Each of us on a level, being able to see everyone, and with Eugene as a part of the group. Instantly created a whole new dynamic.

First, Eugene's definition of collaboration:

Two or more people interacting and exchanging knowledge in pursuit of a shared, collective, bounded goal

What does this mean? Simply that people work together towards some finite, measurable end.

Today, we struggle to communicate. To collaborate. Eugene thinks we have lost the knowledge to work together effectively. And so we struggle to find technology and knowledge to meet our collaborative needs. Eugene draws on an interesting example to explain why we have come to this struggle. He uses parenting.

For centuries, people grew up together in large extended families and social groups. Knowledge was passed on orally and through sharing of traditions. Some of this was simply just everyday knowledge you gain from being a part of a larger community. As we have now recently grown away from this type of societal structure, more and more just living in single family homes with little to no daily interaction with family or neighbours, our learning of many of these norms has been disrupted. As a result, people have lost knowledge on how to parent. You didn't see whole bookstores devoted to the subject before. But now you do.

The same thing can be said for collaboration. We have been collaborating for as long as we've held social groups. Collaboration is communication. And it's never felt this complicated. It just was something we did. Now, we've lost that knowledge.

We've also become impatient. We want technology and services to work immediately, without training or setup. But we forget that the things we do everyday to add performance to our workday did not come to us so quickly. Writing. Spelling. Typing. These all took years of development. We must sit back and remember that some high performance tools will have tradeoffs.

An interesting topic we went over was that of patterns. Christopher Alexander was an architect who developed a concept of patterns which very much coincides with what we talked about above on lost knowledge. The idea is that we intuitively grasp patterns, even though we cannot easily vocalize them. For example, we understand basic constructs of our own language and apply that to learning new languages intuitively. Once, vocalized, these patterns produce the "ah ha" moments we all know. Like the "i before e except after c" pattern. It makes sense. And is easy to apply.

Well, the same patterns exist outside the bounds of language alone. For example, we can look to centuries of "great" architecture. Not just the pyramids, but the elaborate chapels and castles and cities of the past. Somehow, we've lost the pattern needed to reproduce works of this magnitude. Sure, we have our skyscrapers. But do they have that greatness we all feel when we enter some of these old pieces of art? The pattern is lost. We can feel it is there, but it has not been vocalized.

A pattern has a goal of quality, even if it cannot be named. A pattern is a named best practice, when vocalized. If you name the pattern it becomes real. Something to share and improve upon. If the knowledge of the pattern is lost, if the implicit knowledge is not passed on, the pattern and the ability to make it explicit are lost. It requires great effort to regain this knowledge.

Regaining knowledge of the patterns of collaboration is the social necessity for us to improve how we interact and work together towards some end goal. Technology is not the solution. The solution is social. For us to examine our interactions for the pattern for success. Perhaps this is where best practices will become important. So that we may seek out why some teams work better together, and why some do not.

Some patterns to consider:
The permission to laugh - remember Finding Neverland with the kids in the theatre?
The permission to participate - sitting in a circle, as we did here
Shared display - whiteboards are great collaboration tools, especially if everyone has a pen
Visible pulse - RSS, IM: you can see others working and making things happen

I hope I've done justice to this panel. I look forward to speaking with Eugene again in the future. Great work.