Activation
“I love @rotanarotana way of being able to capture what he’s learning and working on each day https://rotanaty.com/2021/03/15/motion – the title most fitting “motion” because without that we’d be standing still, not growing or developing. Taking stock of what we do and how we do it.”
“An example of a week of ‘narrating our work’, by @rotanarotana https://rotanaty.com/2021/03/15/motion #PKMastery”
I continue to make sense of and narrate my work and learn out loud as I did in mid-March. So what did I do in the last weeks of March and early April? To read more, click on each title below.
📘 Book Project
Writing, editing, designing, formatting and converting my ebook made me realise that self-publishing is what I do and will continue to do. I am grateful to a few beta readers for their feedback, encouragement and suggestions while sharing my book progress in the draft and beta versions. Finally, the editing of my ebook is done.
I have figured out how to design and format my book on Word to convert it into formats ready for self-publishing. In addition, I have worked on the design of my book cover and finally picked my ebook title.
🗨️ Art Conversation
Within our global community of fellow explorers, we have weekly collective art experience remotely. One session was hosted by our fellow explorer and one of the community hosts, Klara Loots. It was a real treat to see how a fellow explorer is so creative, inspiring and deliberately curating and creating meaningful life and work with an entourage full of artists, craftsmen/women, wondrous artefacts, and love.
🕸️ Personal Knowledge Mastery
I have continued to participate in the PKM workshop. I am slower to go with the knowledge flows than in 2020. I revisit what I noted, reflected on, produced, and made sense of last year from each introduction, activity, tip, and link unleashed over time in the remote asynchronous workshop guided by Harold Jarche.
I also accept not following the order of the activities released every other day. For instance, I jumped from activity four on ‘human filters’ to activity seven on understanding media. With the global cohort, I shared my updates oldies to examine one technology at a time with McLuhand’s tetrad:
Shift to communities and random collisions.
Effects of video and effects of audio.
In another activity related to ‘sensemaking’, we are also invited to pick a tool among the directory of learning and performance tools compiled by Jane Hart, play with it, make notes as we experiment with it on our own, and revisit it after the workshop our notes and if it still makes sense to use the tool. I picked a tool not in the directory: OBS Studio, for the virtual camera to attend or host web meetings through video conferencing. There are a lot of possibilities with this tool. From presenting web content professionally, live streaming, and recording ourselves.
I still play with the tool and figure out how to use it through how-tos on Youtube. This tool is a handy way to present ourselves in web meetings or events. I will also check out who uses OBS Studio and how with my network.
🤔 Mind Management
I continue reading and using David Amerland’s book, ‘The Sniper Mind‘. I am impressed by the depth of research and writing of the author. Paul Simbeck-Hampson highly recommended reading the book. This book is about mind management, thought discipline, and the science behind how our brain works.
It is full of insights from snipers whom the author interviewed. The latest finding on neuroscience, real-life stories and, business cases, experiments help us understand what drives us and how we self-improve in our life, health and work. I had no clue about neuroscience and snipers, but I know I strive for excellence, activating my strengths and capabilities. This book helps me build my mental, physical and emotional toughness and responsiveness. My quest to self-improve while looking into myself, finding out my fear, what cannot stop me, and why and how I can make better decisions to act.
🧬 Community Management
I am still catching up with the community management space’s latest practices through a few podcasts, newsletters, blog posts, and an online course. So I dived deep into the online course from The Community Roundtable Academy on Community 101 to get certified and explore the four frameworks and models that form the foundation of a thriving community program.
One of the activities, The Community Skills Framework, invites us to identify and understand our skills gaps and rate ourselves on a scale of 1-5 for each skill. That way, we can get a score per community skills family and see which are the main ones to focus on for our professional development goals within the year and beyond. After I did this exercise, what struck me was that my top community skills are:
1. Content skills
Editing. Curation. Taxonomy & Tagging Management.
I have always been into the content universe as I love working with content excellence, blogging and self-publishing. This skill set helps me to develop and produce community content and programs. The contents are strategised and used to fit into an overall community narrative at a higher level.
2. Technical skills
Community Systems Administration. Technical Support. Member Database Management.
It is often the lowest skill for community managers as they don’t need them first. However, improving these skills family is a great way to increase our community team’s value. These are the notes I took while hearing and hitting pause during the course. Over a few community projects I did with startups and their customers, I felt they were pregnant primarily when the community went online, sometimes global, and working remotely and anywhere.
3. Engagement skills
Empathy & Member Support. Listening & Analyzing. Moderation & Conflict Facilitation. Promoting Productive Behaviors. Facilitating Connections.
Skills of any community manager for his daily work to build and grow communities to lead them. In this course, we also dig deep into the Community Engagement Framework with its four stages: validate, share, ask and answer, and explore – out loud. My professional engagements as an internal community manager, membership in a few global communities of practices and learning communities, and this course from TheCR Academy made me rethink how online engagement is measured in meaningful and relevant ways.
What do the stage of the community and the culture looks like? Passive, reactive, open or proactive. Is it a networked community or not? Do we see a community culture that is passive and reactive? Do members feel comfortable enough to take ownership of problems and solutions?
Those three community skills families or disciplines inform me that I am heading toward a Community Specialist Role. Experience and time will tell me which one I focus on while exploring strategic initiatives and projects to support a community team to thrive. I look forward to becoming a bridge between community members of an organisation and a community team.
I am now certified by The Community Roundtable Academy for completing the courses:
Community 101 | Community Frameworks and Models
“This badge denotes successful completion and certification by The Community Roundtable of the fundamental online community course, Community Models and Frameworks. This is a lifetime certification.”
“The Community Roundtable’s Online Community Fundamentals course for new community managers outlines the scope of the community manager role in communities and provides prescriptive approaches for successful community management.”
Community Program Essentials
“The Community Roundtable’s Community Program Essentials course covers key topics in community program management. The course is aimed at professionals looking to grow their community program management skills and focuses on creating the strategic, operational and technical elements to make communities succeed within the larger organizational context.”
🔎 Future Skills Research
The map that I created and included in another blog post has evolved with my work on:
The Community Skills Framework from The Community Roundtable.
Four core work skills to develop through the Personal Knowledge Mastery Workshop of Harold Jarche.
Future work skills from the IFTF.
Work skills from the World Economic Forum.
Here is below my updated version of my future skills galaxy.
I see overlaps and found dots between skills, family, and sub-skills that we can leverage and activate on our own and in any team, network and community. What does your future skills galaxy look like?
🔎 Futures Thinking Meet-Up
We connect monthly with IFTF and fellow alumni from various industries and locales for a fun hour, sharing insights around our foresight practices. Often there is one host and futures thinking specialists from the IFTF’s ecosystem who shares their passion, work and journey. It is inspiring to hear and see the lessons learned while developing and enacting an initiative on futures thinking, whether a program, artefacts, products or services.
The best part of those monthly sessions is in the breakout rooms, where we meet and discuss with a small group of members over our introduction and a question suggested by the community hosts. Do we see smiles on the video calls when all the participants gather after the breakout room? What insights and takeaways do one member of the small group share? Who do you see as the regular participants of those meetups?
I have observed that hosting learning and networking experiences with a plan or none is becoming common in a few global communities.
🚲 Biking, Walking & Tea Time
Spring is here. Third lockdown in Paris, too. I still need to go for a walk and tea time away from the screens, gain clarity and stay sane. Biking is also another way to unplug, be in the flow and stay fit. I enjoy those moments very much.
Next: Potential and conversational.
Did you enjoy the post? Check out Future Skills.
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