using web tools and methods to support earth science collaborations
DESCRIPTION
Many Earth science projects have participants that span multiple timezones,organizations and domains. Sometimes members of the group have never even metface to face. The requirement to be co-located in order to collaborate is no longer thenorm since there are now so many alternative methods of virtual communication andcoordination using web tools and methods. There are many tools (Drupal, Mediawiki,Google +, Twitter, Facebook) that support communication, coordination andcollaboration around a topic. The good thing about all of these tools is that they areflexible and customizable, but this also poses a challenge of how to set-up the toolsto best support your group. Often these collaboration are supported by an ad-hocmember of the group, who is working within the group, but also is supporting thecollaboration of the group. This person often will have created methods to supportingthe group such as sending out the email reminders, hosting the telecons andupdating the web pages. This at times can be a frustrating job because only a smallfraction of the group participates at any given time. This Birds of a Feather session isintended to bring together these ad-hoc community manager practitioners tocompare what is working to support virtual collaboration and what are thechallenges. Hopefully, the outcome of this session will be a web-based forum toimprove the efficiency of these Earth science community managers.TRANSCRIPT
Using Web Tools and Methods to Support Earth Science Collaborations
EIM BoF Session
Erin RobinsonInformation and Virtual Community DirectorFoundation for Earth Science
Community Management for Scientist
•Communities are distributed, multiple activities going on and need help with communication, coordination and collaboration
Starter Discussion Topics
•Defining the community scope and creating new communities
•How to promote things happening in the community
•Growing the community – quality of contributions, quantity of members
•Keeping members engaged and sustaining contributions
Wiki Workspaces