Designing and Implementing Multidisciplinary Collaboration

I'm in Boston for the CIMIT hosted Designing and Implementing Multidisciplinary Collaboration meeting. Check out the website here. You'll see links to the agenda and participant bios to get an idea of who is there and what we're doing.

Tonight was the faculty dinner, and one can only hope that the conversation tomorrow is half as interesting. There were a lot of questions about collaboration. What question are we trying to answer tomorrow? A lot of great metaphors emerged in response.

A favourite as depicted by Laura Chasin of the Public Conversations Project was the notion of different people all owning pieces of knowledge that are like one of many pieces of a shattered pane of glass that is a complex problem - whose solution is mandatory to the continued existence of our species. Only when these pieces of glass are brought and fused together through the mechanism of effective collaboration can the greater item/problem be completely addressed.

I will try and do some video postings from the meeting tomorrow. Promises to be exciting. I'm loving Boston. Can't wait to come back when I've got some time on my hands.