Collaboration - sharing the soft learnings

For the last few weeks I have been looking at sources, potential platforms and tools which let project teams, or even wider groupings , collaborate around what I'm starting to call the 'soft stuff'.

A comment I made on the NZ LibraryTech is part of this thinking. They had, rightly, posted on that lovely feeling of satisfaction that comes when you get a project to come out almost like you had envisaged . In this case their newly launched Publications New Zealand - a beta website of the publicly accessible record of New Zealand publications.

I in turn replied that I had enjoyed their account of the development process, and asking for more detail on their process - e.g. did they use persona' and scenarios - how did they document these - through formal use case, or activity wire frames etc

I had a triple interest in asking or engaging with them. First, I really rate the new voices that are emerging out of the NZ National Library, and this blog is one of their forums,

Second, I love watching/ listening to reflective learning in action. It works, and sometimes we need to be reminded that the primary ingredient is honest open engagement. I think their account is a really great example of both.

Thirdly, and to our joint purpose here, because I am seeing more and more projects in the heritage/knowledge sector starting to deliver solid assets into the digital commons, I'm equally interested in talking about how we unpack these assets and identify and share the common learning, especially around the development process.

Defining the soft stuff
As part of this I want to start a discussion on what tools and ideas do we need to share these learnings - not just around process - but also in terms of what could best be called the 'soft stuff" - the unexpected outcomes - the bit of the project that changed peoples thinking - the way the project picked up on other areas of collaboration - how it started to fit with the wider ecology of new web tools and methodologies - how the project was received, and what are customers or collaborators doing with the tool on offer.

The response from the National Library Publications NZ project was encouraging - in a word, they are up for some kind of communal thinking.

My question this morning, is, who else is up for this - and/or what other projects in the knowledge and heritage world would like to put there hand up?

The next step would be how to organise the conversation. I'm hoping to post on some tools latter in the week - but in the first instance, I'm keen to test the water as to who else is up for this - whether in New Zealand, or further afield.