With (1) I am in great sympathy However, I do think we have a responsibility to be, if you like, “servant leaders” to use that felicitous phrase. If our learning partners cannot, for some time, find a good way to partnership, we can strive to adapt to them better, and perhaps suggest ways of proceeding, based on our experience.

(2) I find even more interesting as it seems new to me. I’m open to the idea (confirmed by experience) that decision making is messier than one would like. OK, messier than I would like! And, yes, approaches to addressing that could be very varied, from trying to achieve more order (as I am inclined) to (as you suggest) throwing growing media into the rubbish … if you don’t want to be the “expert” on that technique, maybe we can still be partners in addressing the challenge of technology (standards) adoption!

(1) Re Stephen’s “This is a significant challenge as it might require us to dilute our self image of ‘expert’.” Part of my difficulty is that in most of my work I see myself very much as a learner working to push back the ‘unknown unknowns’, but I am increasingly labelled as an ‘expert’ by people from outside my direct field of engagement. The problem here can be that other learners (who happen to be managers or technologists or academics), those I perceive as partners in a process of working towards good quality information management solutions, see me as the ‘expert’, so they feel no need to engage with what they perceive to be technical issues. ‘It’s all going to be OK, because the expert will solve the problem’. So to follow up this thought, perhaps we need to clarify that we’re partners (educators perhaps, though that may be a stretch for myself) and not ‘providers of the answer’.

(2) Perhaps we have a development of the Garbage Can Model of decision-making? Where we have traditionally (if that can be applied to the Garbage Can Model) three streams – problems, politics and policies – that have to coincide serendipitously to adopt solutions, we could posit a ‘technical education / appreciation’ growth medium in the garbage can that will have a subtle influence on politics and policies. This suggests that we do need an ongoing long term strategy of engagement with problem, politics and policies to create a more conducive environment for our contributions to solutions. It also means that rejection is not necessarily a bad thing – as long as there was positive engagement with the ideas.

Or perhaps, if people prefer, “educators”? The word possibly sits better with me.

This is a significant challenge as it might require us to dilute our self image of ‘expert’.

It’s hard isn’t it:-) but actually I think that we have passed a bit of a significant milestone (particularly in relation to web 2/web services) as it is much easier for the real users to actually try things without the same level of risk as say 10 years ago. I’m particularly thinking of using technology in the classroom. IMHO we’ll always needs some evangelising and I think we just need to continue to build and share “real” ways for people can actually use some (or all) of the cool stuff in their contexts.

S