Thinking about conversations

The next Gurteen Knowledge Cafe is about conversations and I have been doing some thinking ahead on the subject ahead of the event. Much of this has been through an exchange of emails with Ray Shaw who is leading the debate at the Knowledge Cafe. I have tried to capture some of these thoughts as pictures as this is how I like to do my consulting.

The categorization of dialogues tries to show how conversations differ from other forms of dialogues that include the extremes of preaching and interrogation. My conjecture is that two factors we need to consider is to what extent a participant in the dialogue has control of the exchange and to what extent the exchange of information is balanced between the participants.

This gives us the four extremes where one person is telling (preaching) or interrogating and another person is the recipient, i.e. being told or interrogated.

I've defined conversation as the square in the middle where there is equilibrium on both the control of the exchange and the direction of the change.

The next diagram considers "tools" in terms of the degree of interactivity they allow (e.g. blogs allow some feedback via comments but this is limited) and in terms or the richness of content within the exchanges (e.g. Instant Messaging is just text).

I do not think that either of these models is complete and I am not sure yet whether they will prove to have any value but I am sure that my thinking on conversations will get a boost at the Knowledge Cafe. I'll post an update then.