Co-authorship chat
A group IRC chat about collaboration and authorship, on Tuesday Dec 10, 2013
— Log opened Tue Dec 10 00:00:16 2013
12/10/13 22:08< stephenwright> Dr. Rigby, would you care to state exactly what is the order of the evening? We are to define a word, is that correct?
12/10/13 22:09< scottrigby> stephenwright ok yes
12/10/13 22:09< stephenwright> The word is "coauthorship"?
12/10/13 22:09< stephenwright> Or is it "collective authorship"?
12/10/13 22:09< stephenwright> two words
12/10/13 22:10< annetsirk> also, if it's not a terribly long explanation, may i ask why the shift from skype to IRC?
12/10/13 22:10< scottrigby> I was (probably taking some liberty) seeing co-authorship as a kind of shorthand for collective authorship…
12/10/13 22:11< scottrigby> we've been using IRC whenever we need to only text-chat, because 1. it's not owned by Microsoft (when we first started, neither was Skype - how times change!); 2. it's more secure, and not monitored (it's the hackers communication method of choice); 3. i just didn't think about continuity :)
12/10/13 22:12< stephenwright> let's suppose that co-authorship is collective authorship with two syllables less.
12/10/13 22:13< scottrigby> stephenwright that's what i was thinking ;) I'm not known for my terseness (I always have verbose mode enabled apparently!) but i like shortened variants where possible
12/10/13 22:13< stephenwright> I was thinking we might start with expressing our surprise at the fact that "authorship" now needs to be qualified as "co-" in order that its collective dimension be acknowledged (and even then…).
12/10/13 22:14< scottrigby> stephenwright i like that as an introduction
12/10/13 22:15< scottrigby> Ok well also, i tried to spell out the motivation for our chat in that facebook invite…
12/10/13 22:16< annetsirk> an impending publication
12/10/13 22:16< scottrigby> …even though it annoys the hell out of me that artists and activists still use FB for organizing - even though we know the primary income for Facebook is our data that they re-package and sell back to us (and others 'like' us) in the form of ad impressions
12/10/13 22:16< stephenwright> The rise of possessive individualism left us so far removed from collective authorship that when it came back we actually needed the word "coauthorship" to name it.
12/10/13 22:16< stephenwright> (sorry I missed the FB invite)
12/10/13 22:17< stephenwright> Though I will sign up once usership is remunerated
12/10/13 22:17< scottrigby> well, we have to have individual authorship as culture producers… otherwise what ammo would we have when pitted against each other for jobs and other 'opportunities'?
12/10/13 22:19< stephenwright> And more importantly, we have to have it enshrined in law that we owe nothing whatsoever to the collectivity for whatever skills we may possess and exchange in the marketplace, nor for any other successes in life. We are the authors of our destiny.
12/10/13 22:20< scottrigby> Right! because if we weren't, we couldn't be blamed for not trying hard enough for being in debt, or growing up poor, or any other failure
12/10/13 22:23< stephenwright> but the idea according to which individuals are the sole proprietors of their skills etc, which can be traded as commodities, is a very recent idea (or abberation) historically. It never existed prior to the 17th century, and only triumphed relatively recently.
12/10/13 22:23< scottrigby> we started touching on the problems of its opposite - the mandate for individual authorship
12/10/13 22:24< annetsirk> i think it's important to map the trail of information as it's built up into cohesive ideas
12/10/13 22:24< scottrigby> yeah. so that's one part. The rise of individual authorship, from a historical pov
12/10/13 22:24< stephenwright> well, we don't want to dwell on it
12/10/13 22:24< stephenwright> but we need to render it as strange as it is
12/10/13 22:24< scottrigby> i do think that's important though… because it kind of queers the seeming naturalness of if
12/10/13 22:24< LizR> All I can think about is shopping and what I want, then self-reflexivity, then the coauthorship of identity
12/10/13 22:25< stephenwright> queering the seeming naturalness is exactly the idea!
12/10/13 22:26< scottrigby> LizR i love what yo do with shopping btw; you really make it filthy
12/10/13 22:27< stephenwright> but we also need to posit the qualities of wiki-ing swarms of words into meanings
12/10/13 22:29< scottrigby> stephenwright agreed. in addition to the historical and political reasons for the rise of individual authorship, I was thinking we could get into some of the practicalities of collective authorship
12/10/13 22:29< annetsirk> perhaps it depends on what societies accredit to fueling creativity.
12/10/13 22:29< annetsirk> the greeks thought it to be: the genius
12/10/13 22:29< annetsirk> not the individual
12/10/13 22:29< stephenwright> what are some of the qualities of collective authorship, some of the mechanics, we can assert?
12/10/13 22:31< annetsirk> storming of brains and connecting
12/10/13 22:32< stephenwright> I always have felt that one of the underlying preconditions for fruitful collaboration (coauthorship in terms of labor) is differentiated skills at the outset. Not genius versus subservient intelligences. But different skill sets, different contributions to the mix - in terms of words, vocabularies, experiences, outlooks, all that stuff that makes collaboration tough and frustrating is what makes it potentially fruitful.
12/10/13 22:33< scottrigby> whoops i was disconnected
12/10/13 22:33< scottrigby> did you see my post on 'creativity'?
12/10/13 22:33< annetsirk> and an openness in the process of ideation for following what the collective can make
12/10/13 22:33< scottrigby> The last thing I saw was [17:31:12]
12/10/13 22:33< LizR> How some of us see ourselves is embedded with illusion- identity is a coauthorship of self and we perform this through our individual consumption practice
12/10/13 22:34< scottrigby> was there anything after that?
12/10/13 22:35< scottrigby> LizR I think you're right to bring capitalism into this. It may not have been where this got started, but it's definitely what continues to drive the need to break up any kind of autonomous collectivity
12/10/13 22:36< stephenwright> A variant on that - and this I take from week one of P@W, from something Sean Dockray said - is that collaboration allows common vocabularies to be cross-purposed. He said that programmers and artists were using similar word sets, but to different ends, and confronting them made everybody a bit more self conconcious and gave them expanded traction
12/10/13 22:37< scottrigby> stephenwright right - which is why we need to continue working with others to develop a more useful glossary of shared terms! Cross-purposing existing terms from different contexts is a good way to get started with that
12/10/13 22:38< annetsirk> common space ///// meeting space
12/10/13 22:38< stephenwright> I agree about the need to see the rise of possessive individualism as a precondition for homo economicus and capitalism. But that is more about the dynamics of non-collective authorship than coauthorhsip. We need to take back the initiative and so to assert how co'ing works and what it adds
12/10/13 22:39< scottrigby> Has anybody read James Herod's book "Getting Free"? I know that part of the Utopia School library came from you. I mention it because Cindy helped organize the conference that made that book possible… and it lays out a very good case for a network of autonomous neighborhoods as a step-by-step play towards gutting capitalism
12/10/13 22:39< coco_away> oh wow!
12/10/13 22:39< coco_away> no i didn't get a chance to yet
12/10/13 22:40< scottrigby> annetsirk definitely. I also see spaces like this as a meeting space… not as good as face-to-face connections, but even in a world run by autonomous local groups through radical direct democracy, there would still need to be channels like this for federating inter-group communication
12/10/13 22:43< LizR> I'm not sure capitalism is going anywhere. Brand performance is the new collectivity. Brand performance is just as powerful is individualism
12/10/13 22:43< coco_away> what do you mean by brand performance?
12/10/13 22:43< coco_away> sorry if i missed that earlier i just joined
12/10/13 22:43< scottrigby> OK so i missed this from earlier when I got booted - pasting it so we have it here:
12/10/13 22:43< scottrigby> stuff that makes collaboration tough and frustrating is what makes it potentially fruitful"
12/10/13 22:43< scottrigby> I also said: "
12/10/13 22:44< LizR> Allowing brands to speak an ideal, or preceed me -As a form of participating in collective consciousness through consumption.
12/10/13 22:45< stephenwright> Brand performance… is that something we need to be wary of falling prey to? Or just something to despise in general?
12/10/13 22:45< scottrigby> LizR there's definitely collectivity there, but it's not autonomous collectivity. The buying group (if that can be called a kind of interest group - i think you're right it can) doesn't get deliberate on it's own terns, or chart it's own course
12/10/13 22:45< scottrigby> I think that's a good point. We need to distinguish the qualities of the groups and 'collectives' we're talking about
12/10/13 22:46< stephenwright> It's a complex issue, no? But I'd like to hear your thoughts on its relevance here.
12/10/13 22:47< scottrigby> Well, when Basekamp presented groups, it didn't choose to present examples of corporations - although they're groups
12/10/13 22:47< stephenwright> the basekamp brand. Is that an issue? If not, is let's say, Occupy a brand performance? Or what is…
12/10/13 22:47< scottrigby> probably the most dominant group structure at this point
12/10/13 22:48< stephenwright> But P@W did look at examples of overidentification - like IRWIN, NSK, LAIBACH…
12/10/13 22:48< scottrigby> well, i may be reading into it, but i thought LizR was talking about the collectivity involved in consumption. ALmost like, if the People of Walmart were seen as a kind of collective
12/10/13 22:48< scottrigby> stephenwright for sure!
12/10/13 22:49< stephenwright> That played on brand performance. I just want to know more about this brand performativity. I'm very very wary of performative capture of all kinds. But that formula is new to me
12/10/13 22:49< LizR> Like- i show up to this chat wearing all Patagonia as opposed to Adam Levine for Kmart. This brand coauthorship sets the scene for potential collectivity.
12/10/13 22:49< scottrigby> in fact what LizR does with shopping is a version of overidentification. She shops in an alphanumeric order, making her shopping receipts (sometimes x-rated) poems
12/10/13 22:51< scottrigby> ^ also from earlier: agreed capitalism isn't going anywhere anytime soon. In the book i just mentioned, the suggestion is that a new world needs to be built in the shell of the current dominant order… and estimates that full on replacing that will take something like 50 to 100 years
12/10/13 22:52< scottrigby> but that there are things we can do now - way in advance of seizing factories and schools and hospitals (a far future phase that will be more natural once other things are in place) - without dooming ourselves to repeat where to many other anarchist or radical movements have failed
12/10/13 22:52< stephenwright> but, sometimes I show up for chats and although I'm not really aware of what people are or are not wearing they are sometimes all talking like Deleuze and Guattari talk. Is that brand performance?
12/10/13 22:52< scottrigby> *so
12/10/13 22:53< stephenwright> I mean, I can talk that talk too. But it's pretty ostentatious
12/10/13 22:54< scottrigby> I'm not overly concerned with avoiding branding altogether. IMO collectivising behind an idea begins to form an identity that could be considered branding. The danger with groups and identity from my point of view is that groups can also be pitted against each other, just like atomizing individuals. Weakening our power to get anything accomplished together
12/10/13 22:55< stephenwright> I was working the other day on an acronym: UIT. Use-it-together. As a kind of way beyond do it yourself, do it together, use it yourself, and authorship…
12/10/13 22:55< stephenwright> I was thinking that was a possible way to avoid having to even use the word "authorship" by requalifying it
12/10/13 22:56< stephenwright> Use it together is coauthorship without the authorship at all; its using words and noises and colors and marks for whatever collective repurposes may be desired
12/10/13 22:56< scottrigby> And I also don't think autonomy and collectivity should be considered antonyms… What a ruling className wants ultimately is passivity. A group can together decide their own course, rather than just floating in a mainstream
12/10/13 22:56< LizR> Cool, ok I'll read the notes after 7. !! UIT is interesting
12/10/13 23:04< stephenwright> and it's not a brand performance yet!
12/10/13 23:06< stephenwright> the thing is, scott, I think, that it would be a huge advantage to be able to talk about what we're talking about without having to mention authorship, except to pry ourselves out of it historically. if we had a better term, that short circuited it, that might be helpful. something like UIT.
12/10/13 23:06< scottrigby> stephenwright right… but i think most of us in this chat have firsthand experience of getting meaningful recognition of attribution in a collective project, at least to some peers, even when the result is publicly anonymous, or semi-anonymous (where the details of who did what are obfuscated purposefully)
12/10/13 23:07< stephenwright> and when we get overlooked, it can be hurtful…
12/10/13 23:07< atrowbri> basekamp.org is worth somewhere between $ 8.95 and $55.80
12/10/13 23:07< scottrigby> ^ I agree. Do you think a goal of "attribution without ownership" is still relevant in light of that? It doesn't force the idea of authorship per se… but if that is a barrier in our way then we will mercilessly attack it where necessary
12/10/13 23:07< stephenwright> sure. but that's because some people are getting the glory.
12/10/13 23:08< stephenwright> attributed usership
12/10/13 23:08< scottrigby> it's true. It's easier to say "fuck authorship", and escape visibility when you already have visibility.
12/10/13 23:09< scottrigby> just like it's easier to be free with resources when they're plentiful
12/10/13 23:09< stephenwright> the thing is if you say "without something" (like ownership or authorship, which are the same thing) you also need to say "with something else"
12/10/13 23:10< scottrigby> But it's also possible - and there are many examples of this - where people who have not very much in the way of material resources and officially sanctioned power - deliberately open free spaces, and share what they have. What i mean is, the free culture movement isn't only made by rick kids
12/10/13 23:10< scottrigby> *rich
12/10/13 23:11< scottrigby> stephenwright oh but… i thought the first part is the "with something else" thing…
12/10/13 23:11< ThemPotatoes> A potato
12/10/13 23:11< scottrigby> stephenwright ^ in this case, 'attribution' is the with thing. Ownership is the without thing
12/10/13 23:12< scottrigby> or Organization is the thing we keep that is useful… Hierarchy is the thing we can toss out
12/10/13 23:12< scottrigby> "Autonomy without Individualality" might be another good one
12/10/13 23:12< scottrigby> *individuality
12/10/13 23:13< scottrigby> maybe slightly more relevant to the chat tonight…
12/10/13 23:14< stephenwright> yes, that's what counts in my opinion. but I have a hard time seeing attribution as replacing ownership. it's a differnent relational category. when you say attribution without ownership, you still need to replace ownership with a relationship to what is, or is not, owned. Like through usership. What is the title of the attribution?
12/10/13 23:14< scottrigby> the thing is, even in co-authorship / collective authorship, we still are talking about 'authorship'. What the hell are we talking about? Why is that useful (beyond getting jobs etc)
12/10/13 23:14< atrowbri> Is this a discussion about authorship or a discussion about deciding how to handle authorship?
12/10/13 23:15< stephenwright> we have a double task: talk about coauthorship as a virtue and an historical constant; but also contextualise and historicise it against the dominant conceptual institution of authroship and possessive individualism
12/10/13 23:15< scottrigby> atrowbri it was a very general invitation to include a "text" on "collective authorship" in a catalog for art and activism. So it's about whatever we all feel it should be about
12/10/13 23:16< stephenwright> I like your question, scottrigby "why is authorship a useful category"?
12/10/13 23:16< scottrigby> Yep
12/10/13 23:16< scottrigby> So let's toss around some ideas
12/10/13 23:16< scottrigby> One thing authorship is really useful for is for taking responsibility for ideas put forward
12/10/13 23:17< stephenwright> I would say, it's not a useful category per se. But the legal culture of today makes it insane to try and just pretend it doesn't exist
12/10/13 23:19< scottrigby> though… if people are open to the idea that ideas can be (and, IMO really always are) collectively arrived at —- even if sometimes the person putting pen to paper or typing, or even forming specific language for) usually the ideas gets the final credit — then it's not hard to see that a group can take responsibility for it's ideas by coauthoring a statement. The manifesto (or even a charter) is a good example
12/10/13 23:19< atrowbri> I ahree with the idea of responsibility, scottrigby. It's relevant to FOSS culture in terms of licenses that are open for any use, licenses that require attribution and the multiple attempts to create an "ethical" license (and thus be responsible for the code you are sharing).
12/10/13 23:19< scottrigby> atrowbri that's a great example
12/10/13 23:20< scottrigby> my last run-on sentence was a little hard to follow in the middle… i hope you get the idea
12/10/13 23:21< stephenwright> Ultimately and basically, authorship is nonsense: not one of the words any of us have used this evening could be alleged to have been "authored" by us. Nor by extension any of the strings of words, in any meaningful sense.
12/10/13 23:23< scottrigby> In a sense yeah - unless by it you mean "the group of people accepting responsibility for a particular iteration of the ideas put forward"
12/10/13 23:23< stephenwright> I mean, otherwise, how could anyone else easily decipher their meaning?
12/10/13 23:23< scottrigby> yep, it's shared
12/10/13 23:23< stephenwright> we are involved in a common effort called talking.
12/10/13 23:23< scottrigby> We contribute though. Maybe authorship is a term that just isn't all that useful - for what we want anyway.
12/10/13 23:24< stephenwright> we "use" words. What do you call people who use words? Our civilisation has decided to call them authors!
12/10/13 23:24< atrowbri> Authorship is as much about alignment as attribution.
12/10/13 23:25< stephenwright> Alignment?
12/10/13 23:25< scottrigby> atrowbri that's a more concise way to put what i was trying to say
12/10/13 23:25< atrowbri> I am not the author of these words but I am not aligned with the words you're saying. I am responsible for them.
12/10/13 23:26< scottrigby> where it could mean "a group of people accepting responsibility for a particular iteration of the ideas put forward"
12/10/13 23:26< stephenwright> ok
12/10/13 23:26< atrowbri> I think we are on the same page, scottrigby. It's not about attribution, it's about being responsible for what's said/written
12/10/13 23:26< scottrigby> taking some responsibility (publicly acknowledging) for a chosen position
12/10/13 23:26< stephenwright> But in cases of coathorship, is there a problem of alignment?
12/10/13 23:27< scottrigby> well, say a group of pirates writes a charter
12/10/13 23:27< stephenwright> I guess there is sometimes, but that's when authorship trumps coauthorship
12/10/13 23:27< atrowbri> Is there?
12/10/13 23:27< scottrigby> about their mutual position
12/10/13 23:28< stephenwright> well they might well align themselves around their manifesto
12/10/13 23:28< stephenwright> that's what this group of pirates is trying to do!
12/10/13 23:28< scottrigby> say a neighborhood coalition deliberates on a statement. They have coauthored that statement: they are publicly aligning themselves, as a group, with that position
12/10/13 23:29< stephenwright> so no problem!
12/10/13 23:29< scottrigby> Yeah. There's some use value in defining coauthorship in this way, right?
12/10/13 23:29< scottrigby> With a simple word like alignment, like atrowbri suggested?
12/10/13 23:30< stephenwright> Sure, because it opens the door to another issue which we cannot really sidestep I think: intersubjectivity
12/10/13 23:31< scottrigby> It's like Chantal Mouffe's concept of self-chosen interest groups. stephenwright, do you know if she has a concept of group authorship to go along with that?
12/10/13 23:31< stephenwright> I mean: is coauthorship richer, more expansive than the sum of its parts? Yes, I guess it is. And that must be because alignment is always in excess.
12/10/13 23:31< scottrigby> stephenwright yeah… intersubjectivity is the relation itself. Coauthorship is how that is expressed publicly and deliberately
12/10/13 23:32< stephenwright> I mean, I align myself with this new concept atrowbi has introduced, as a kind of coauthor (I accept to defend it and acknowledge its value) but I didn't think of it and may not fully understand its implications.
12/10/13 23:33< atrowbri> When I write, I am aligned with my words, or the words I quote. When I have co-authored things, I am sometimes insistent on specific words and coauthoring them very carefully, other times I am aligned with the person-topic intersection (as when Jessica and I co-wrote a chapter with Craig Saper in a book on Florida)
12/10/13 23:33< stephenwright> That enriches my subjectivity (thank goodness for such things!)
12/10/13 23:33< scottrigby> intersubjectivity doesn't need shared metacognitive awareness to exist
12/10/13 23:33< scottrigby> ^ stephenwright & atrowbri agreed!
12/10/13 23:33< scottrigby> Holy shit it's one big happy family again
12/10/13 23:34< scottrigby> ▓◀✪‿✪►▓
12/10/13 23:37< stephenwright> It's like this: I don't know atrowbri personally. I don't always either understand or agree with what he says. But I'm invariably enriched through contagion as much as through affinity. It makes coauthoring, or just collaborating, or even just talking more meaningful than monologue.
12/10/13 23:37< scottrigby> stephenwright for example this happens a lot when we have hours of discussion about an idea, sometimes in a row, and sometimes stretched out over years - and it plays a role in an art project, or a written text (or a number of them)… the crucial conversations that in part made those what they are… those are not considered part of authorship normally
12/10/13 23:38< atrowbri> -> contagion <—
12/10/13 23:38< atrowbri> i love that concept
12/10/13 23:38< scottrigby> contagion++
12/10/13 23:38< stephenwright> you see what i mean!
12/10/13 23:38< scottrigby> alignment++
12/10/13 23:40< stephenwright> so scottrigby coauthorship has an embedded component. Historically, or at least diachronically. Of course so does authorship; we develop a style, an ease all our own over time
12/10/13 23:41< scottrigby> I have this weird interest in people who are willing to co-develop a style >:)
12/10/13 23:41< stephenwright> much more interesting. far more wierd
12/10/13 23:41< scottrigby> or align themselves with a shared presentation form
12/10/13 23:42< scottrigby> haha it does get that way!
12/10/13 23:42< scottrigby> So what did we learn today? http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i2NslD1Dp3k/ThtWwFQsYSI/AAAAAAAAAQk/f4Ex0cNnRMU/s1600/life-in-school.jpg
12/10/13 23:44< scottrigby> Also… speaking of coauthorship… this is the first time in many many months that we've collaborated in #basekamp
12/10/13 23:44< JonathanD> hi
12/10/13 23:44< botkamp> hello
12/10/13 23:44< stephenwright> cool
12/10/13 23:44< scottrigby> hi JonathanD :)
12/10/13 23:44< JonathanD> scottrigby: I can provide logs at a later time.
12/10/13 23:44< scottrigby> JonathanD great thanks
12/10/13 23:44< JonathanD> Not a problem.
12/10/13 23:44< stephenwright> maybe we could really foreground the notion of what you call "co-developping a style"
12/10/13 23:45< stephenwright> codevelop is nicer than coauthor, because develop is not connotated the same way as author
12/10/13 23:45< stephenwright> but to codevelop, i still think it requires fundamentally differentiated input
12/10/13 23:46< scottrigby> stephenwright definitely. I changed that to "align themselves with a shared presentation form" (to adopt our rapidly co-developing language!), and also because 'style' is soemthing else that needs unpacking (or to be avoided, i can't tell how useful it is to get sucked into)
12/10/13 23:47< stephenwright> "style makes the man" as it were
12/10/13 23:47< scottrigby> I agree 'co-develop' implies iterations… something ongoing (not "created" from a devine spark inside an individual)
12/10/13 23:47< scottrigby> hahaha
12/10/13 23:47< scottrigby> indeeeeed
12/10/13 23:48< scottrigby> co-author also implies that - while written as a group - it is still originating from a single meeting point
12/10/13 23:48< stephenwright> that's an important point. though it might not be a stable point
12/10/13 23:49< stephenwright> I mean, we used to write stuff. then correct it. then reformulate it…
12/10/13 23:50< scottrigby> my 2¢ is that while co-authorship as a concept is more interesting (perhaps holds more liberatory potential) than solo-authorship, authorship is any form is still for the birds. Co-developing, alignment, mutually agreed upon contagion - opens more doors towards different kinds of social systems than the ones we have in place now
12/10/13 23:50< stephenwright> In essence, you're saying that authorship has tried to colonize and rationalize into a single owner what codevelopment has always done
12/10/13 23:51< scottrigby> ^ based on our chat so far tonight
12/10/13 23:51< scottrigby> stephenwright yeah
12/10/13 23:51< stephenwright> I totally agree.
12/10/13 23:52< stephenwright> I thought you saw some value in authorship as a way to stake out responsibility
12/10/13 23:53< scottrigby> and even - now thinking about it - "co-authorship" is almost a reparation of the challenge collective work poses to authorship… it seeks to colonize and rationalize into a single finite group (from a single original moment) what in reality is a longer history, with many many more players. Perhaps if we believe that logic, then a single group or a single moment can be more easily squashed
12/10/13 23:54< scottrigby> Even one multi-headed hydra is more easily beheaded than a continent full of people
12/10/13 23:54< stephenwright> scottrigby: you are in speculative mode high-burn!
12/10/13 23:54< scottrigby> Well, it's like mainstream dismissal of communism
12/10/13 23:55< scottrigby> point to a failure of one leader, or one movement/moment, and the whole historic project can be dismissed
12/10/13 23:56< stephenwright> the thing is, we can't go back to preauthorship, but have to move to something else; authorship ripped through town. now we need to retool. maybe coauthorship is not the solution
12/10/13 23:56< scottrigby> well, we do have other models now: the free culture and open source culture movements have some useful language. But we've seen with open source software, it can still be appropriated by capitalism; we definitely need to consistently retool - both be on guard, and be imaginative!
12/10/13 23:58< stephenwright> and pragmatic - because we are approaching the witching hour here in europe
12/10/13 23:59< scottrigby> with our language, the models we look to for guidance/historical alignment, the processes we adopt even for convening about these kinds of things, the modes of distribution we agree to use to communicate what happens in these group communications…
12/10/13 23:59< scottrigby> stephenwright T minus one minute
12/10/13 23:59< scottrigby> stephenwright so did we accomplish what we wanted?
12/11/13 00:00< scottrigby> Thank you to everyone who joined… whether debating, aligning, contaminating, or just lurking - this is the kind of thing I want to do all the time
— Log closed Wed Dec 11 00:00:04 2013
12/11/13 00:20< annetsirk> (sorry i just caught up, i had to finish up some work) I understand your questions involved more the role these terms and how definitions can/should shift, but i couldn't help but wonder for continuity's sake how the viewer can continue to learn from a group if they don't utilize a name? perhaps i've skimmed too quickly and missed the point, will read up.
12/11/13 00:21< annetsirk> I am glad this space is had. and it seems for your purposes text is preferable, however, i think something is lost without sound.
12/11/13 00:21< scottrigby> annetsirk I agree. I'm an advocate of using group names