Hi everyone
thanks for all the responses & posts concerning the format for the Well.
I am sorry I don't get to post more often -- I often need time to digest all
that's come in, and to reply to it takes time, which I don't have a lot of
these days. It seems though, that might be the case for quite a few of us.
Midi, you bring up a point about the politieness here at the Well, and the
effect that has. I can see how the focus on once-a month topics could have a
limiting effect, and perhaps that's part of the lower volume of postings
than, say, other community strings. That's one of the reasons I'm interested
in loosening up the format a bit, to let it be a resource for research,
creativity, etc., and for multileveleved discussions happening, even as we
treat a topic a month. Another thought about that effect follows on from Pam
& Andrea's comments about their experiences posting on creativity, which has
to do with the sometimes unnerving experiencing of posting, or discussing a
topic with others, and wondering what the invisible others in cyberspace
think/feel, etc. I still feel like I'm developing my "cyber chops" getting
comfortable with the various components of this project, of which there are
many levels
1) email as a medium
2) speaking in groups -- the fear that what we have to say is not important
3) speaking into cyber groups -- the facelessness & namelessness and
possibility of no response amplifying fear #2 to monumental proportions!
4) the topic of research, ideas, creativity provokes lots of edges, fears,
or judgements
5) the dynamic of a non-facilitated discussion group -- everyone posting
only when they feel like it - creates a new and perhaps awkward style of
group conversation
6) ??? - how is it for others?
On another note, we're working on getting rid of the spam by getting rid of
this mail list -- moving over to Yahoo groups. More on the technical details
of this in a couple of days.
Love,
Julie
-Original Message-
From: Franc Chamberlain [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 1:13 AM
To: villagewell
Subject: Re: creativity and the well
Hi - just to add that I was happy being a silent participant in the
creativity discussion - I made a choice to only contribute if I felt the
impulse to write a poem or story... that didn't happen, I wondered about
sharing something I'd written before but decided against that... I didn't
metacommunicate any of that because I didn't want to disrupt the flow of
what was happening!
love
Franc
