Innovation and Collaboration Cafe Update

[Harry Webne-Behrman]

Greetings, I & C Learning Café Participants!

We hope you are all doing well and having a good start to the month.
This note is to remind all of you that we will be holding our 2nd
Innovation and Collaboration Learning Café on Tuesday, February 17th,
8:30 AM – 1PM at the Pyle Center. If you haven’t yet registered,
here’s the link: http://www.ohrd.wisc.edu/reg/catalog_course_detail.asp?course_key=23004

The Design Team (Erin, Craig, Jane, Darin, and myself) will be meeting
on Tuesday morning, December 23rd, 8-9am at Café Solèil (on the
Capitol Square… on Pinckney) to plan the next Café -- please join us
and help create the next event! We are currently expecting to retain
many of the same elements as the first Café, but we want to make sure
that “Track A” folks get a chance to continue to develop their
responses, including new people along the way, and that we offer the
full group some innovative, new strategies that can be applied in a
variety of contexts.

All of this begs the question: Have you followed through on any
‘action plan’ commitments you made on Nov 18th? Please continue to
engage in the process, act on those things that are meaningful, and
seek collaborative support from/with others in order to advance your
plans of action. Please let me know if I can assist in any way. Our
plan is to create an active dialogue among us (engaging others in the
UW-MANIAC Network, as well), so we can continue to share ideas and
insights, react to one another’s questions, etc. You can start by
joining the UW-MANIAC Google Group at: http://groups.google.com/group/uwManiac
-- please be sure to let me know if there are any difficulties doing
so – and go ahead and share something to get us started!

One final thing: In a recent NY Times article, “You’re Leaving a
Digital Trail. What About Privacy?” (November 30th), John Markoff
reported on an experiment, occurring at MIT with their students. While
it ostensibly focuses on the privacy issues related to life in the
digital age, I found that it had much to say about collective
intelligence and the value of collaboration. You might want to take a
few moments to check out this article, and consider its implications
for some of the innovations you may be contemplating:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html

(BTW: A fine book that also explores this subject is James Surowiecki,
The Wisdom of Crowds)

So, please register for the Feb 17th Café and tell your friends and
colleagues… we had a great turnout last month, and it will be
wonderful if we can continue to build on that foundation. And if you
can join us in the planning process, please come the morning of Dec.
23rd, as well.



Regards,



Harry & the Café Design Team