"...always attempting to reach a goal, or a set of goals. The goals themselves shift in time and place. Some are tacit, some are explicit; some are conscious, some are unquestionably assumed or inherited. Individuals will continue trying to reach the goal until they are impeded by some obstacle. This obstacle stops their progress and stymies their efforts to continue. In order to resume their progress, they need to design a movement around, through, over, or away from the obstacles"
Albert M. Selvin, Collaborative Sense-Making in Design

In order to support and encourage progress towards future business partnerships between public television stations and their university licensees, Reforging the Links will utilize collaborative, computer-supported groupware tools to assist and ease intellectual and administrative challenges, maneuvering around potential obstacles. The complexities of the Reforging the Links Project abound. The Reforging community of participants convenes academics, attorneys, and university administrators with seasoned public television producers and employees. The groupware tools chosen align with the intellectual and social nature of the this community of experts, core managers, tribunes and continuing education liaisons. Allowing collaboration outside the bounds of time and space, First Class Conferencing, QuestMap, and Project Compendium techniques support a community-wide dialogue and participatory decision-making. As the future business model and proposed Toolkit evolve, these new understandings can be explored and shared together.

First Class Conferencing will be used to share documents and issue papers prepared by the experts, tribunes, and partners. The First Class conference space will be indispensable before each face to face meeting, allowing for an exchange of ideas.

QuestMap will be used to support group problem-solving and decision-making. Based upon IBIS (Issue-Based Information Systems) methodologies, QuestMap provides Reforging the Links a simple and formal facilitation structure. Key elements of the Project's ongoing discourse will be shared through icon nodes, rhetorical link types, and hypermedia. Project Compendium techniques (provided by Bell Atlantic Science and Technology) will add modeling templates and specialized hyperlinking strategies, as well as software bridges to other tools and document, such as word processors, databases, and the QuestMap tool.

Used with permission. Copyright© 1999 the Soft Bicycle Company.

In the Reforging the Links Project we will focus on Compendium modeling techniques across four key processes: capital formation, media production, distribution/marketing, and university relationships. Much of the group work that occurs in model-building efforts will consist of discussion, argument, and brainstorming. A formal model structure will enhance group understanding and reduce confusion over "multiple meanings." Conversational Modeling techniques supported by Compendium will provide a common language incorporating defined rules, syntax, and structure for each of the following:

• The Organizational Model: The functional aspects of the tasks and activities
• The Knowledge Model: Expertise, talents, and external information access
• The Resource Model: Essential individuals, objects, and facilities
• The Communications Model: Who/What is communicated with, about what, using which resources and knowledge

Using these models, we will start with an inventory of current practices, critique and revise them, work together to develop a new idealized model of future current practices, and from that model, identify specific operational and organizational changes needed to support the new business relationships.

Compendium utilizes a flow chart, or matrix of Present and Future Implementation Models:

From Selvin, Al "Introduction to Project Compendium Techniques" copyright 1998, Bell Atlantic Network Systems Advanced Technology.
World Modeling framework diagram authored by Maarten Sierhuis and Rob van der Spek.

We will use this matrix approach throughout the project, moving from the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of the current model, moving to a model of current practices, and eventually towards a shared vision of a future cooperative relationship between the public television organization and their campus entrepreneurial content-marketing centers. The matrix elements will be used, in turn, to identify the areas of practice demanding change in order to maximize the benefits of both business institutions.

Project team members will be supported in collaborative construction, elaboration, and validation of models using First Class conferencing, QuestMap, and Project Compendium tools. Project meetings will be interpreted with Albert Selvin of Bell Atlantic Network Systems Advanced Technology, one of the developers of Project Compendium. Mr. Selvin is a trained Conversation Modeling facilitator. Mr. Selvin will pay special attention to the capture and display of both formal and informal insights from project meetings and online discussions, assisting team members in hyperlinking, managing, and sharing these ideas between the Project's process teams.

Online resources:
www.softbicycle.com/questmp.html
www.softarc.com/

By Rebekah Irwin
Reforging the Links Project Assistant
April, 1999
Copyright, © 1999, University of Wisconsin Board of Regents