This is an updated list (11/30/2007) of WROE participants by state.
State Team Members

The WROE faculty meeting at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel will be from 9:30am until 1:30pm next Monday, May 21st. 202 East Pratt Street,Baltimore, MD 21202,1-410-547-1200. You can get directions at http://marriott.com/hotels/travel/bwish-renaissance-baltimore-harborplace-hotel/
I have not received the room name but we will be in one of the parlor suites. Please check at the concierge desk or meeting boards for the room name. The plan is to have lunch together during the last hour.

The agenda will include updates from Modules 1 & 2, reports about state progress on their practica, and opportunities for dialogue and group learning about the texts and models we're using throughout the program. Please bring your OD in The Public Sector book with you.

If you have any questions about the meeting from now until next Monday, please contact Beverly since I will be away. Thanks!

In our planning meeting yesterday, I promised at least one case study on the use of social networking with OD. Here's one:

(reminder: the link to our WROE social network: http://www.myspace.com/wroestateteams)

The Internet, email, and Web conferencing tools have created the capacity for collaborating across time and space both within and between organizations. Just as technology has transformed the organizational environment, it’s also transforming the field of OD.

Continue reading "A Case for MySpace" »

We'll have a faculty meeting on May 21st from 9:30am until 1:30pm. This meeting will be in Baltimore at the same hotel where the AFSE and FO meetings are being held (Room TBA). Our agenda will include updates from Modules 1 & 2, reports about state progress on their practica, and opportunities for dialogue and group learning about the texts and models we're using throughout the program.

We'd still like to have one meeting prior to this, particularly to discuss the models we are using and carrying all the way through. Let Donna know which of these dates works for you: April 6, April 16, April 18, April 19 (am), April 23, 24 or 25 dgold@nea.org

Thanks!

We regret that few people responded affirmatively (or otherwise) to the announcement about this faculty meeting. Our resolve to try to make time to think and learn together is tough to do when our obligations and related schedules have us stretched hither and yon. So we take this lack of response not as a lack of interest in being the learning community we are trying to help our affiliates become, but as a sign that this date that we set at our meeting in Dallas has been overtaken by other 'stuff.' We will try again to find a time to have a dialogue about the texts and models that we are using in WROE. Be well!

This is to remind you that we'll have a WROE Faculty Meeting on Monday, March 12 from 2 - 4pm. Room location to follow.

We'll take this opportunity to talk about the Carnevale text, Organizational Development in the Public Sector giving all of us a chance to share issues, ideas, or thoughts we had while reading it. We'll focus particularly on the first three chapters this time around. We'll also look at some of the models we used in Module 1 and plan to carry through the whole program.

Let Donna know if you will be participating and whether you'll be in the building or on the phone, dgold@nea.org. Since we hope to have small discussion groups, being in the building is preferable.

Worth checking out:

The NHS Information Authority has compiled a guide called “Getting to 7 -
Cultivating Communities of Practice: the 7 Stages of Development” which we would like to make available to our members.

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are informal structures and not part of formal management line structures. They comprise members who do similar work, employ similar skills and face similar issues or have some other common interest in the work environment.

If you or your organisation is interested in providing support for multi working and multi agency partnership working, building trust and collaborative working between informal and formal groups/communities, then this is for you.

[online@http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=689]

Networking technology gives companies a new set of tools for recruiting and customer service—but privacy questions remain

by Rachael King

Encover Chief Executive Officer Chip Overstreet was on the hunt for a new vice-president for sales. He had homed in on a promising candidate and dispensed with the glowing but unsurprising remarks from references. Now it was time to dig for any dirt. So he logged on to LinkedIn, an online business network. "I did 11 back-door checks on this guy and found people he had worked with at five of his last six companies," says Overstreet, whose firm sells and manages service contracts for manufacturers. "It was incredibly powerful."

So powerful, in fact, that more than a dozen sites like LinkedIn have cropped up in recent years. They're responding to a growing impulse among Web users to build ties, communities, and networks online, fueling the popularity of sites like News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/12/05 "The MySpace Generation"). As of April, the 10 biggest social-networking sites, including MySpace, reached a combined unique audience of 68.8 million users, drawing in 45% of active Web users, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Of course, corporations and smaller businesses haven't embraced online business networks with nearly the same abandon as teens and college students who have flocked to social sites. Yet companies are steadily overcoming reservations and using the sites and related technology to craft potentially powerful business tools.

[Read Full Text Online]

WROE conference review notes can now be seen under "Important Documents" (OE Conference Review). Thank you Russell.