SAHRI

When the idea of SAHRI came; I talked to Steve Shu, a friend of mine (from the days of Telcordia Technologies) COO of 21 Publish, our host for this blog about the idea.  I presented the situation to him ---

--- our collaborators will be geographically disconnected

--- our collaborators will have busy (limited time for synchronous collaboration)

--- it will be long term committments (for any given project)

--- most of them will be technologically naive.

He pointed me to a few technologies he thought could help us for collaboration - those were: netmeeting (for video conferencing), blogging, wiki, and a couple of others.

So, I tried to see how simple/hard it was to operate these technologies and what the potential was.  I created this blog in about 15 minutes (note the date June 7th - less than 3 months ago).  Then I went on to wiki (I had heard of Wikipedia in news a few months ago, but never really examined it).  It took a few days to figure out what wiki's potential was and then went on to create a wiki page on pbwiki.  It was a password protected project and I spoke to the creators of it.  They were very helpful in explaining to me how to use wiki.  But the password protection created a problem (other limitations were there).  So, went along to our current wikisite at    Academia Publishing.  They have also been a great host. 

Here are some positives and negatives of each of these technologies:

Blogging:

+ can have a team of people contributing to a topic by giving them "authorship access" (which I can do, just ask me).

+ you can link the articles together, refer them (just go to your "Dashboard" and create a new entry, once there, "add Link").

+ The history is clear; and allows anyone to see what the thinking was at each step of development (it is a good discussion tool) and others to refer. 

(-) it allows only authorized persons to contribute (anyone can comment, but only certified users can create a new article).

+ Allows RSS Feeds (this way everyone can keep up with what is going on with SAHRI on their desktop (if you are using something like Yahoo!, MSN or a news feeder. 

Wiki

+ Anyone can Edit anything

(-) Anyone can Edit anything (it is important for everyone to login, so it's just not "anyone" who is submitting the information.

+ It allows tools to revert back to a previous form, if someone has a malign intent.

+ It is a good tool to BUILD on an idea,

+ VERY EASY to learn

(-)  Does not allow RSS feed

+ but, does have "my watchlist" and "recent changes" to see who made what changes. 

We (Kennedy mainly) about providing our own "desktop."  I think he is still working on it.  This is where you will have an account like My Yahoo! on the web (servers housed either at my home or Kennedy's!); there you will have your own email (sahri.org); your own task manager, you can save searches from our database (not yet created), leave notes for your team members.  Get your RSS feeds etc.  I think we still have that as a goal (at some time in the future). 

Thoughts on Active and Passive Communications:

With Email Group, RSS feeds, people can get the updates and discussions delivered to them, of course they have to open the email and read it; but it is passively getting the information.  But with Wiki, it HAS TO BE ACTIVE participation.  You have to go to the website and check out the pages that interest you.  

I would like this group to be a group with active participants.  

There is a rule in "wiki world" at least in the Academia Wiki --- that the founder will be the major (may be the only) contributor for more than 6 months.  Then others may join in.  This makes sense.  Until the founder (in this case, me) is able to communicate the vision and get others involved, participation will be minimal.  I think the rule applies to this blog as well.  As you can see, there are only two active participants (me and Kennedy).   I hope that I am able to communicate our vision effectively and get others to actively participate. 

Thoughs on Management

One of the things I have said to people about SAHRI - it will provide an opportunity for EVERYONE, not just physicians and physicians in training.  There are issues that relate to management of an organization (as loose as this is predicted to be).  So, if there are MBA students, MBA's, business consultants - isn't this a great project for you to provide your thoughts on!  

Here we have a unique obstacles:

1.  We have (and will continue to have) a loose organization structure.  Until we have resources to have our own research staff, everyone will be functioning as a 'collaborator.'  But how do you get them to collaborate?  What's in it for them?  Is reward for a possible publication enough?  Or do we rely only on their good will? 

2.  How do you effectively communicate?  How do you assign task, form a team?  

3.  We have a proposed vision for the organization, how do you make it come true? 

4.  How do you effectively manage our intelligent resources?  Is it just using what we have at Resource Database?

5.  Besides addressing real life situations, you will also learn from Steve's expertise (on his Non Profit blog, his personal blog).  He has some good forward looking blogs on how business may be done in the future.

Biren