With our collaoration process hammered out in prior posts, I say we’re ready to engage at the next level: working as a team to describe, frame and inventory the problems in our ecosystems. Besides vetting the process and our assumptions, we’ll get an important feel for the scope and scale of what lies ahead. We’ve built a team w/ high-energy talent. It’s time we put that talent to work.

The first stage in our process (per the EcoDNA model) is to establish ground rules; here’s what we have to date, from prior brainstorms:

1. chat is for idea sharing; #ecosys collaboration is for integrated problem solving
2. we will develop a portfolio of actionable solutions
3. we will model our solution in the “white spaces” between areas of our expertise, as we seek to connect the dots
4. we will build our community on mutual trust, so that all group members can engage without any preconditions, presumptions of authority, or attempts to control outcomes; all contributors will follow this model, to ensure a productive exchange
5. we will seek representatives within the ecosystem components being discussed (HC: doctors, nurses, patients, administrators, payors, etc.; EDU: teachers principals, administrators, parents, etc.) ; we’ll start with our assembled core team, though recruiting for specific ecosystem roles will be ongoing
6. demonstrate that virtual collaboration can drive social innovation, adapting our collaboration process for improved results as experience is gained;

plus a few more specific rules of engagement:

1. each contributor speaks only for self, and not for an employer or any affiliated client or sponsoring company
2. diversity of our stakeholder mix will be adjusted over time, as we identify need for additional expertise
3. professional demeanor/respect must be maintained at all times
4. group consensus will be required to finalize any outcome

When the above is confirmed by the team, we’ll quickly move on to the next step, framing problems, by producing an inventory of specific challenges in each ecosystem. For our 10/12 8pET #ECOSYS chat, please be thinking: a) are you comfortable with this plan; and b) do you have a sense of how we would most efficiently create a comprehensive:

1. problem inventory for Healthcare ecosystem
2. problem inventory for Public Education ecosystem

Prior to launch, please make sure you’re comfortable with the steps in our threaded Discovery process, as shown in the EcoDNA model. If we have consensus on the approach, work could begin as soon as 10/19.

Core team members: please download free copies of SKYPE and YUGMA, as you’ll need these in the weeks ahead to collaborate on our ecosystem domain models. Before we’re done, we’re going to develop at least one graphic representation for each ecosystem. For those already on SKYPE, we can spend the last few minutes of our 10/12 chat talking live (9:30pET) to connect voices with avatars and continue brainstorming.

The hard work is next, so let’s start the launch sequence and synchronize watches. T-minus 7 days and counting?