TLC CONFERENCE CENTRE Heide Brown

As the quest to achieve fundamental change, both locally and globally, is central to my life, I am delighted to find that the Transformational Learning Community (TLC) has an on-line interactive Conference Centre. Within this Conference Centre there are five conferences and I have chosen the TLC Conference Centre for this report. Its purpose, as stated in its Lobby, is to be a place for people who are concerned about social and personal transformation to communicate with and learn from each other. So far I believe it succeeds on both levels.

Using the above URL, I registered in the Conference Centre. Registration is a simple, non-scary procedure involving a user name and password. The TLC Conference has 12 topics. I have chosen to concentrate on Topic #5: Using the On-line Media to Discuss & Learn About Transformation, because of its relevance to this course.

Topic #5 was started in October, 1996, and is still going strong. There are 64 postings to date ranging in length from one sentence to several pages, and there are 6-8 active participants. The content is mostly a theoretical dialogue. When one participant expressed a desire to discuss more practical grass-roots implementation of an idea, another Topic was formed for that discussion. The interactions are polite, friendly and supportive. Many comments are addressed to particular people, by name, as responses or additions to their thoughts. There is a tendency to build on other peopleıs ideas, suggesting further directions or posing questions rather than being argumentative or confrontational. (For example: "I like what you said about .... and .....")

At the beginning of Topic #5 I noted a reference to Dialogue Guidelines. I looked for these guidelines, without success. Finally I e-mailed the member who mentioned them and he directed me to the Topic he is facilitating, where he introduced them as the Rules of the Road. They are comprehensive process guidelines that apply to written or spoken dialogue. All the conference postings that I have read seem to follow these rules, whether consciously or not. These rules could be called the netiquette or protocols and conventions of this conference. They are lengthy, but basically call for respectful behaviour, speaking from the heart, suspending judgment, and empathetic listening skills. I have suggested to the conference coordinator that it would be useful for newbies like me to have easy access to these rules, possibly through a link on the welcome page.

I like the technological set-up of this conference centre. I find it easier and more user-friendly than newsgroups and listservs, and technically more accessible than the MUDs, MOOs and MUSHes.

Participating in the conferences involves posting a response by filling in a window, and itıs easy. I would recommend, however, that you save any of your words of wisdom before actually posting them, as I did lose some of mine.

There are over 100 members in this conference centre. When I registered I had to fill out a personal information page, where the only thing mandatory was my name. Optional information include e-mail and homepage, which automatically become links. When a member posts to the conference, each posting starts with the members name, which is an active link to that memberıs personal information page. I looked up the three most active members in my topic, who also tend to have ideas that I like, and found out that two of them are from Canada, and one from Australia -- interesting.

I have encountered some technical problems with this site, which have led to an on-going interaction with the site organisers. This interaction has been positive, both in teaching me and in helping the organisers work out glitches in the system.

When I login, I feel like Iım walking into a smorgasbord.

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