Comments on: group cohesiveness

By: tending the garden » a women-focused users group: the very, very beginning

tending the garden » a women-focused users group: the very, very beginning — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:06:04 +0000

[...] I mentioned nearly a month ago that we were starting a group whose goal is to get more women involved in open source. We had our first group meeting this evening. [...]

By: User First Web » Following Selena’s Lead

User First Web » Following Selena’s Lead — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 05:57:54 +0000

[...] My friend Selena pointed out that we had both written about the Clay Shirky article that I referenced earlier this week. She was kind not to point out that she wrote about the article two weeks earlier. This is simply the latest in a series of times where Selena was ahead of me on discovering valuable things. [...]

By: selena

selena — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:55:23 +0000

Thanks for reading and thanks for the link.

My wheels started turning where she talks about the difference between talking and doing, and the role of structure in a “doing” organization.

“Unstructured groups may be very effective in getting women to talk about their lives; they aren’t very good for getting things done.”

We’re trying to accommodate both talking and doing by having structured and then unstructured time in the meetings.

But, to be effective, I think that we may need two identities, separated into two events – one event for encouragement and support (and venting), and another that just *is* the change (lots of women working on F/OSS).

Anyway, great food for thought. Thanks.

By: Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:42:25 +0000

Glad you liked that talk, thanks.

Interestingly, one of the great documents of group life came about while discussing movements designed to get more women involved in society at all levels. It’s called “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”, by Jo Freeman, and it discusses the feminist movement (then called the women’s movement), ca 1970.

http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

In particular, one of the things I learned from it (and tried to echo in A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy) is that in the absence of official structure, you don’t get a harmonious world of structurelessness, you just get an unofficial, and often ugly structure instead. Freeman concludes that formal structure, done right, frees a group’s better nature.