Online CoP meets face to face May 21, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : COP, cider , 2commentsSeveral of the members of the ukcider community have met each other on past occasions, but last Saturday was for me, the first significant ukcider face to face event, with seven cidermakers and enthusiasts gathering in Rose’s orchard in Dorset. You can see the photos and read more about the blossomtime celebrations and cider tasting, on the wiki page but here on this research blog, I want to think about how a F2F event might affect an online community.
It was effectively the first real face to face meeting of a CoP which has existed for 5 years or so online. Now I’ve done this kind of thing before, so I had no worries but it was interesting to hear others expressing great surprise at how well it worked, socially. They all got on together and had a great time with people they’d never seen before, chatting away like long lost friends, which I was able to explain is quite normal really. Not meeting strangers, but friends who just hadn’t happened to have met before.
Such an event can only strengthen the ties between those present, but what effect might this have on the CoP overall? It’s too soon to say, of course. I think most close communities develop an urge to meet f2f, overcoming quite substantial obstacles to do so, this one was just quite a long time in the making.
- |* I’d expect the members who were present to perhaps email each other more. That might cause a dip in the more public interactions. Should that be a concern?
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* Or they might make more personal, and perhaps off topic remarks in the group.
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* People who weren’t present have already expressed regret at not being able to make it, and this will increase the impetus to organise future events.
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* Others on the periphery might possibly begin to feel excluded by the added camaraderie of the regulars.
What’s your experience of what happens after a purely online community has met face to face?
Technorati Tags: communitiesofpractice, cider, online_community
Meanwhile, in another place.. March 13, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : COP, cider, Wiki , add a commentWhile my focus has been on the exhibition and barn raising for DARnet, there have been some important developments over at ukcider.
Quietly on Saturday, the wiki cider pub guide count passsed the 600 mark. This represents a quantitative move beyond the scope that any printed guide has managed to achieve, as well as being more accurate and up to date of course, having the advantage of an immediate, numerous and knowlegable online editorship.
And down in Dorset, Rose Grant whose cidermaking year is published as a kind of journal within the wiki, has been thinking hard about fitting out her own very real and non metaphorical barn which houses the cidermaking operations. The engineering problem is to raise a large number of apples from ground level to the roof in a continuous process to feed the apple mill, from which the pomace can then be dropped down into the racks to form the cheeses for the press.
Rose is considering building a single elavator which raises the apples above the level of the roof, and then dropping them down through a large diameter pipe set at 90 degress. But some testing is needed to find out how well this would work and there lies a problem in that by the time that there are enough apples around to set up an apple rolling trial, it will be too late to design and build the elevator ready for the pressing season.
This is where a community of practice such as ukcider really shows how valuable it can be to members, as Rose well understands from having learned enough about the science and craft of cidermaking to develop from hobbyist to small scale professional, through tapping the expertise and support which exists in the community.
The wise move is simply to explain the situation and ask the question, then parts of the problem begin to be solved.
I came up with this:
“There aren’t any apples around right now. But you can’t afford to wait for apple season in order to obtain the information you need to design the elevator.
Supposing somebody with access to a sack or two of apples in
the southern hemisphere reading this might have plenty
of apples available either now or in the next few months? It must be
late summer there now already. Maybe Rose could explain exactly what
is needed, work out how they should conduct the trials and take notes,
and they might even record a video of the apples rolling down the pipe
so the effect can be seen. The outcome from this little piece of
international cooperation might be sufficiently valid for the
elevator to be designed with a reasonable confidence that the gravity
feed is going work.”
Within a few hours on the mailing list, an offer came in from Trevor and Frances.
“Yes the southern hemisphere apples are maturing nicely. Here in New Zealand I have collected in the earlys a couple of weeks ago and Kingston Black last weekend, just a few lates inc Royal Wilding to go. I would be pleased to help with experimenting if Rose, you can sketch out your plans.”
And now detailed instructions are being transmitted around the globe.
It will be fascinating to follow how the remote experiment helps, or if Rose decides to solve the problem based on some of the other suggestions which members have posted. Somebody suggested using an open trough instead of a pipe, but the snag with that idea has been pointed out:
“I want to use a pipe rather than a chute as this would also send water pouring into the roof when it rains.”
One thing is for sure, with such remarkable determination no obstacle will stand in the way of this particular cider barn being up and running ready for this year’s increased production.
Technorati Tags: cider, ukcider, communities_of_practice, wiki
ukcider wiki expands to 500 pubs December 19, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : cider, Wiki , add a comment
On 17/12/05, one of the ukcider mailing list members who has got caught up in the quest to find real cider pubs up and down the country wrote in:
> We now have 501 entries in the wiki. The 500th was the Hop Leaf in
> Reading.
I decided this was an occasion to mark, and perhaps slightly prematurely
for the date, have a look back at the progress made and future direction.
“To get to where we are now in just 10.5 months (yes really) is an
impressive achievement by any expectations. The 500 milestone is
significant because it brings the online guide up to a quantity of
information which is comparable with a printed version already. And we
know the potential is there to go way beyond, just with all of those
undiscovered pubs in Devon, Dorset and Somerset.
The next period might look at quality as a milestone somehow.
The existance of this friendly group is the thing which has driven the
cider wiki forward and will no doubt continue to review the pub guide
and make corrections and additions as the situation changes up and
down the country. It’s important to keep that up, but I particularly
like the entries where you can tell that somebody has actually spent
some time inside a pub and mentioned little quirky details. There
aren’t so many of them and I wonder if there’s doubt in some
contributors minds as to what kind of writing is valued? The easiest
thing is always to follow on in the same style as what’s already
there, and perhaps that can lead to a kind of minimalist streamlining
which isn’t strictly necessary.
So I’d like to try and encourage more of the descriptive style
entries, while not at all discouraging the listing of bare facts which
are still much, much better than not getting around to it.
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Then there’s the rest of the wiki - it’s not just a pub guide, by any means.
Rich descriptive pages have been added during the year about
importing a Czech fruit mill, Asturian campsites with cider, recipes
and a discussion of the pub sticker idea.
The forthcoming festivals and events page seemed to work quite well,
so 2005 has been hived off and 2006 is starting to fill up already.
Then there are several other pages which are essentially lists, some
of which are valuable resources in the same way as the pub guide, and
others have just begun and then not developed much.
So all in all it’s been a great year for ukcider, with membership of
the mailing list creeping upwards together with the amount of
conversation, lots of good advice and appreciation. I don’t know
what’s in store for us next year, but with any luck it will be more of
the same.
Best wishes to all,
–
Andy Roberts
http://www.ukcider.co.uk
Technorati Tags: cider, wiki, community_indicators, online_facilitation
Thanks for reading Andy Roberts articles about cider
on Darnet
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
