February/March 1998

Let’s Get Virtual — And Physical

Few people know as much about web events as George Pór, founder of Community Intelligence Labs (CoIL), a consulting firm based in Santa Cruz, California. For 15 years, he’s been using the Net to help people and companies work and learn more productively.

Last fall, Pór and Arian Ward, founder of the Work Ecology Network, based in Marina del Rey, California, took part in a conference on how companies use technology to promote collaboration. It attracted 250 participants to Herzliya, Israel. Pór and Ward organized a virtual counterpart, called Knowledge in Action Online, that began a week before the gathering- and is still going on, over the Web.

Pór and Ward say it’s not always easy to synchronize physical gatherings with Web events. Here are three lessons they’ve learned.

1. Pick the physical site with the virtual site in mind. People at the physical event need easy access to the Web site. That was a problem in Israel, where the Internet connection was unreliable. "Prescreen the technical infrastructure- the country, the building, the room," Ward urges.
2. The virtual shapes the physical- and vice versa. If you want genuine online participation, Pór and Ward argue, you can’t use traditional formats. At a recent conference in San Diego, they organized a Knowledge Café in which discussions at themed tables corresponded to identical topics on the Web. "My number-one rule is to maximize interaction among participants, not between participants and presenters," Ward says.
3. Be a host with the most. Web events are about exchanging ideas, not about getting acquainted, says Pór and Ward. That means being smart about the people you choose to be moderators. "Not everything is a self-organizing system," Ward says. "Web discussions need to be facilitated."

Coordinates: Community Intelligence Labs, www.Co-I-L.com; Work Ecology Network, http://home1.gte.net/arian/