The Blogposium Explained

Jack Mason, IBM Strategic Communications, HealthNex Producer

Since the "Blogposium" idea I floated in an early post has gotten some positive feedback, I wanted to sketch out the idea further today.

The gist of the plan is this: to bring the growing community of healthcare IT blogs comes together for a three-day, blog-based event that focuses us all on a particular policy challenge or issue in ehealth. In other words, temporarily convert our circle of blogs from disparate journals of commentary into an actual working group.

The end result of the process would be a tangible report, brief or plan that would make an actual contribution to the progress of networking healthcare.

I don't know if a group of blogs has ever tried to collaborate on such an open policy development project (I found one example in a search on "blogposium"), but the idea of pooling our brain- and blogpower on such a concrete objective strikes me as natural extension of this medium. (It's also right in line with IBM's aggressive goal to be an innovation partner and catalyst wherever it can, and healthcare is one area of strategic focus.)

In thinking through the logistics of a Blogposium, the three-day structure seemed to make immediate sense.  Here's how the work might break down:

Day One (Thesis): All participating bloggers would tackle an issue (for illustration purposes, let's say that focus would be on establishing priorities for advancing e-prescriptions) and propose different strategies, ideas or analysis in a post.  Everyone reads and comments on what each of us has contributed, and steers the wider audience to review all participants' posts.

Day Two (Anti-Thesis): Blogposium participants produce new posts based on what they've learned from each other, and suggest the outline and key findings for the final product or position paper. Comments from reader/observers should also focus on reacting to everything they've learned across the confederated blogs.

Day Three (Synthesis): Here's where the work all comes together. One or two editorial leaders of the project distribute the outline for the final paper, and assign pieces of it to each Blogposium participants.
The semifinal draft is assembled and published on all participating blogs(or perhaps a wiki that all can point to) for final public comments, suggestions or contributions.

That's at least one way this process might unfold. But because this is at its core a collaborative innovation, people who are interested in shaping this experiment should chime in with their ideas on how best to organize such an effort.

Should the process be longer? Shorter? Should reader/commentators have a bigger or different role to play, perhaps as a voting audience? What is the most suitable problem for this Blogposium approach to take on? Should the final product be produced on a public wiki, which might be a better platform for group editing?

In any case, I hope you will begin to spread the word on this germ of a project, and take an active role in helping it become a new model for how blogs and public discourse can become a more powerful tool for constructive work.

IBMHealthNex

Comments

[Colin Jervis, Kinetic Consulting]

Jack,

I like this idea. It's based on classical principles, of which I am a fan. We might try one that's based on a slightly different approach, such as Edward de Bono's "Six Thinking Caps" or a more consensual approach that seeks to find common ground and then build on it.

Another method it to use a hybrid of Checkland's soft systems method, since many problems in healthcare fit this definition, What it the problem? Then an iterative systems-based approach.

Sorry if this sound too intellectual, but it can be fun and use techniques that can be more creative than verbal methods: why don't we set up a scribble board for rich pictures or have protagonists send in their visual representations of the problem space?

I must admit that I like robust debate as a furnace for forging ideas, but a more consensual approach has its merits--and might be fun?

[Tim Gee]

Jack, sounds like a great idea and one in which I'd like to participate. How do you plan to choose a topic? And, what do you see as the practical use of a resulting work product?

Ideally, the work product should be more than just a white paper we can all point to. Perhaps one practical utilization of the end result would be as input to a standards setting group. Your proposed process could even be adopted by such groups as a means to gather input beyond the usual cadre of folks who work on the standards committees.

One topic that I've been involved with recently (and has been a topic of conversation at HIStalk) is the potential regulation of networked medical devices and clinical information systems. This represents a current challenge to HIT adoption and might be at a level of scope that a group of bloggers could impact.

[John]

I'd be interested in participating. I've just started doing a Healthcare blog
http://www.crashutah.com/emr

I'd be interested in this sort of collaborative environment. My main focus so far has been EMR and HIPAA.

[Jack Mason]

Colin & Tim:

The idea of actually contributing to a standards process is an outstanding one. Colin, perhaps you can post on the different methodologies you mentioned.

This is our innovation to create, so lets continue to tease on the process.

[Rod]

I'd be interested in this sort of activity on my blog Informaticopia http://www.rodspace.co.uk/blog/blogger.html if we can make it inernational rather than just US based.

We did try a version of this when blogging the Medinfo conference (originally proposed by Tom Campion) - several people wrote their own comments on their own blogs but agreed in advance on Technocrati tags which could be used on the posts - this then enabled anyone who was inerested to follow the contributions on several blogs which related to the same topic.

[Peter Murray]

The idea sounds great, Jack. I know that my colleague Rod Ward has already been in touch.

I think the idea has some congruence with, although also different elements from, our work on blogging health informatics events - see www.hi-blogs.info. I am sure we would be interested in exploring with you the potential for this kind of development.

Given the nature of health informatics, I think it *HAS* to be an overtly international collaboration.

[Stuart G Hall]

Sounds a good suggestion. In my fuzzy logic way it strikes me as a structured 'jam'..

[Jack Mason]

Stuart:

The blogposium idea does have much in common with the Jams, the massive internal online brainstorming and collaboration session IBMers participate in a few times a year.

Doing something similar across a circle of blogs is just a way to take advantage of the natural networking that has brought a dozen or so healthcare IT bloggers into the same sphere. I still really like Tim Gee's idea of working on a specific piece of an actual challenge, like some bit of an open healthcare technology standard.

[thielst]

There is a movement to organize IT bloggers attending HIMSS in San Diego and hold a social event. This might be a good place to have bloggers and readers discuss the idea (face-to-face).
For more info see http://thielst.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/01/blogger_and_rea.html#trackback

[Marty]

The concept is great, and I would love to participate. But I think we need to keep in mind the medium from which we hope to generate a message. Blogging is essentially a solitary activity. It's not a great medium for collaborative effort or heirarchical structures. And I think the HIT blogging community in particular is too diverse to pick a single standard or technology as a subject. Nor do I have time to learn a new collaborative methodology -- as interesting as all this truly DOES sound.

As bloggers, we are basically soloists, not parts of an orchestra. How about giving us a broad topic that we can each riff on, then do counterpoints? Examples: "Finding the Missing ROI in HIT," "Where the Government's HIT Investment Would Do the Most Good," "How to Achieve Interoperability in Our Lifetime," etc.

And, in keeping with the notion that blogs are a great place to propogate memes and a lousy place to write white papers, I would slightly modify the initial proposal -- Steps 1 and 2 are the same, with Step 3 being to suggest projects or programs based on the first two days' discoveries. Not suggestions like, "I think it would be really good if everyone just got along better," but full concepts -- substantive syntheses generated from the collected wisdom of the effort. What say?