To post or not to post? Do you ask yourself this question?
“to be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?” Hamlet, act 3, scene 1.
When you arrive at an acquaintance’s party where there are a lot of people unfamiliar to you, what do you do? Extroverts jump right on in – stride across the room with their hands outreached to meet fellow guests and party goers. Introverts pause a while, survey the terrain, listen closely for familiar topics or look for someone who is remotely friendly and cautiously greet them.
The extrovert will leave the same party having 65 conversations consisting mostly of small talk with just about everyone in the room. Names blur, faces blur, but they remember they had a good time. 
Introverts will have about 5 or 6 conversations, in depth explorations and foundings of relationships, learning and amassing great amounts of information about their conversational partners and building firm connections until they meet again. The next party they go to, they will see their new friends across the room, march straight on up and pick up the conversation again. The extrovert will also march right on in, but before they put out their hands, ask their introvert friends for the ’skinny’ on the person they are not sure they have met before (they have!).
It’s easy to choose one form of interaction style over another. It’s especially easy to glorify the extrovert approach, after all, what a contribution – 65 conversations in one night, while deplore the somewhat quantifiably lackluster performance of the introvert. It’s also easy to applaud the introvert for their dedication to relationship building and chastise the extrovert for their ’social butterfly’ behavior.
But these binary oppositions get us nowhere. The point is, that inter-action in any setting, requires both kinds of people. People to speak and listen, people to enliven and subdue, people to expand and focus, people to generalize and become specific. The best outcome is for us all to develop both sets of skills and approaches, learning to flex being communicatively extrovert and introvert according to situations, conversation partners and topics. This kind of communicative flexibility is rare and a prized asset to be attained.
In our SpineConnect community,there are those who are avid posters 
of cases, seeking advice, assistance and connection from their community members. There are those who respond actively to such requests sharing their wisdom and building a strong peer relationship. There are also others, newer to the conversation, wishing to learn a bit more before diving in, and consciously monitoring the conversation for when to contribute. To post or not to post, is similar to the quote from Hamlet – it is a question of being or not being. In online circles, we refer to this notion of “communicative being” as “presence” and in the absence of embodied presence, we have only our words and interactions. This discussion of being and posting though can assume that everyone has equal resources and capacity for posting and being and much online scholarship asks us to beware such assumptions. The person who is not posting immediately but watching, listening and waiting for a good time to connect is still present but may not have the resources necessary to contribute, be they space, time, access…..In these cases, the community may not be structured for full inclusion = there may be mechanisms which need improvement so that our quieter members can plug and play.
If you have a colleague who is in this situation, if you are in this situation, then we would love to hear from you! SpineConnect is in constant evolution and we aim to include all our members and facilitate their participation. Our connections and conversations make our community come alive — so if there are limits to engagement, it would be helpful to know what they are. Please send your suggestions to info {at} syndicom(.)com.
As William Shakespeare says, “take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.”
With gratitude to DoBeRaGi, OZinOH and Burnblue for everything they do!
Together we rise!
Kirsten Broadfoot
Tags: cases, clinical case, collaboration, colleagues, communicative flexibility, community, connections, health connections, health partnership, inclusion, medical connections, online, partnerships, post, presence, spineconnect, the collaboration, the colleagues
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
What a post! We actually did a study about this and found that both active and passive users have a voice in SpineConnect. The research revealed an interesting data point: both users had value from the site. Both were more likely to adopt new technologies and recommend new technologies to their patients.