Science of Team Science
1st annual conference
Chicago

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“Choose your adventure!”

I pitched our project to twenty people, learning also about their interests – some are attending the conference to learn, others are presenting posters or are part of the official program. I was shy to tweet anything except to record who I met, partly because I wanted to have the real-time conversation and partly because I wasn’t sure how far to go with attributions in this social setting (even though no one objected to being either tweeted or blogged by first name).  A few things caught my attention, though, such as Michael’s tease about where I had hidden the clues concerning James and my action research project. Was it a kind of “choose your own adventure” story? Michael and Cameron bantered their expertise, got me thinking more about secondary networks, wondering about team “formation stories” and unconferences.

Everyone was in a good mood, smiles and friendly chatter filled the room, definitely characterizing all the conversations that I had. Some “issues” did surface, such as

  • the challenge of researchers or scientists “being recognized as a team,”
  • the opinion that “scientists are divas,” and that there might be
  • something to explore concerning presenters who are “organized and boring” compared with those who are “chaotic and creative.”

“Opening the net for serendipity”

Cameron mentioned some of the hazards of backchanneling, which is not what we’re doing with the #teamsci10 twitter hashtag but definitely something to keep in mind. Rather, we’re building an archive with as many views as possible on the knowledge being shared during this conference. A few people thought they should not participate because they are too blunt or provocative. I think this is all part of the mix of real groups; what’s interesting will be what we all, together, make of this journey together over the next three days.

Maria said followers need to have the same characteristics as leaders. I think this fits with what I wrote in the previous post about cooperation, and might jive with Michael’s emphasis on creating conditions for spontaneous connections. We’ve all got roles that contribute in various ways to a group’s functionality, the trick is shifting and switching among team members according to the skills, talents, techniques, experience or situated knowledge called for by the problem or task at hand.

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