Editors Note: Jen wrote this on Saturday when the WSH conference was in full swing. The conference has now come to a close and we are enjoying some quiet time in Old San Juan – RA

Hola from sunny, humid San Juan, Puerto Rico! The Work, Stress, and Health Conference is in full force now and I have a bit of time before my next session, so I thought I’d reflect on a common theme that has emerged for me so far:

Bridging the gap between science and practice

We talk about this a lot in our field because of its applied nature but in my experience not many have actually DONE anything to build this bridge. Academics and practitioners live in different worlds, have different goals, interact with different kinds of people, and speak different languages (e.g., academics don’t regularly refer to employees as “talent”).

But we need to focus on our similarities in order to form partnerships. We all want to make the world a better place to work. The only way we can do that is if we find some way to feed the science-practice feedback loop.

One way to do this is through exchanging information. Enter OPIEWeb. As an academic, I fully admit that I have very limited practical experience. I’ve never tried to implement a 360 feedback system. I’ve never conducted any organizational training. My strengths lie in more “academic” (okay, geeky) sorts of things. I’d love to hear from more practitioners on OPIEWeb and learn about the realities (and hardships) of putting research into practice so that I can, in turn, do better research.

My point in a few words: We can learn from each other. Let’s use OPIEWeb as a tool for doing that.

Saludos. La edición de hoy de OPIEBlog viene a usted de la Salud Trabajo y de la conferencia de estrés en la soleada San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Since even that meager sentiment eclipses my grasp of the Spanish language, the first paragraph has been brought to you by Google Translate.

This edition of OPIE Blog is in fact, coming to you through the magic of the Internet, from the Work, Stress and Health Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It seems like a natural place for OPIE to be, but in reality, I am just continuing my trek around the globe, following Professor Bunk like a lost puppy (Jen’s Kickn’ World Tour 2009 for those playing at home).

I was asked recently why I go to these things and I realized when I sat down to write this, I missed the most obvious bit: I get to talk to really interesting people who are passionate about what they do. There really is no substitute for passion and when I see it in professionals I can’t help but be swept in. Who doesn’t like a good love story?

Some of the attendees at this conference are so passionate about their field that they are among the first OPIEWebbers ever. Not including myself, there are at least three OPIEWebbers here with single-digit user IDs. Early-adopter badges of honor, that I hope they’ll want on a T-Shirt someday. In fact, if you have a user ID under 30 and want a t-shirt, send an email to OPIEWeb@Gmail.com and I will make one for you.

To that aim, we have a new feature this week called “Got Flair?” which is accessible from your user profile. Eagle-eyed OPIEWebbers will note that the “Got Flair?” link has been there since the beginning, but now it works. Sort of. You see, this new feature is a snippet of code which you can paste into your user pages on other sites like blogs, profile pages, etc. which proudly displays your OPIEWeb reputation, badges and icon. It also links directly to your OPIEWeb profile page so visitors can see what you have been up to. The Stig has graciously allowed to be used for demonstration purposes because, well, that’s his job. This block is constantly up to date so you can always show the world your OPIE flair. The part that “sort of” works is a little icon for OPIEWeb. I haven’t uploaded one yet because…

We’re getting a re-design! Woo-hoo!

A graphic designer named Rob Vance has donated some of his brain power to help make OPIEWeb a nicer place to be. We’ll hopefully be unveiling the new design within a couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

As for now, I am off to enjoy being surrounded by palm trees. If you’re at the WSH conference, look me up. I’ll be following Professor Bunk around and trying not to ruin the carpet.

Whenever you put a bit of yourself out there you are bound to learn something. Here at OPIEWeb, I try to get a blog post out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in addition to lurking around the site and making sure things work as well as possible. Needless to say there has been a lot of learning on my end. Here are a few things we’ve gleamed in the first month of OPIE*.

Announcing on Listservs is a great way to get a big spike in site traffic. In our first weekend, we had a peak of 162 visits. That would be a good thing if we had content for them to see and interact with. The rest of the month was a nice slow smolder as folks checked back in that were interested. Most people answered questions, some made accounts and a few even asked new questions.

We’ve interacted with some IO Bloggers who have been giving us some fantastic feedback. We’re listening to our users and you should start to see site improvements very soon. There is a certain sense of irony involved when an IO focused web site has usability issues. To that end, we’ll be making adjustments in button positions, the wording and visibility of the side bar and generally making OPIEWeb a more pleasant place to be. The feature spotlight series will hopefully make it easier to explore all the hidden features of OPIEWeb in the meantime.

If you remember our RSS feature spotlight (and really, who doesn’t?) then you may also recall all of the different ways in which OPIE broadcasts site updates out into the world. We’re harnessing 2 of those in order to power the militant social wing of OPIE. On LinkedIn, the OPIE Groups news feed is powered by the blog RSS feed, as is the Facebook fan page’s status. On our Twitter page (say that 5 times fast and try not to think of Bambi™) you can see when a question or the blog has had activity as powered by the standard question feed. All of these announcements combined have been great at keeping OPIE fresh in your mind and new users are finding us daily.

We have 5 research methods tagged items on the site already. That’s great as OPIE is well tuned for such things. Over the next month I suspect that more people will start asking questions and will push the boundaries of what OPIE is good at. We intend to keep pushing out with new layers of functionality. The job board is almost ready. After that we’ll be looking to add a document library for uploading and classifying course materials.

Enough about us. Now, lets talk about you, the reader. The potential OPIEWebber who is just here for the articles. What can we do for you? Tell us in the comments section below, or by sending an email to OPIEWeb@Gmail.com. If you will be at the OHP Conference in Puerto Rico this weekend, drop OPIEWeb a line. I’ll be watching the email address for impromptu meet ups and you can deliver your feedback in person!

*Technically, the 7th is OPIE’s launch anniversary. However, Professor Bunk and I, along with some OPIEWebbers, will be in sunny Puerto Rico for the OHP conference on the 7th.

Why OPIEWeb?

OPIEWeb is the ONLY Peer reviewed, Peer edited and Peer rated Q&A site for Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Occupational Health Psychology and Organizational Behavior.

OPIEWeb is built on the StackExchange engine which gives it the ease of entry of a discussion board coupled with the editorial control of wikis like Wikipedia. It also adds a reputation system. As you ask thoughtful questions and give helpful answers, the community will vote on your entires and award you reputation, which will grant you more editorial control. OPIEWeb also employs a tagging system that classifies questions based on topic, making it much easier to find similar questions to yours via our built-in search. Separate automatically generated RSS feeds for each tag and question also allow you to follow topics you are interested in easily and be alerted to new questions and answers quickly.

The combination of editability, voting, sorting and built-in search make it easier to follow and find than a listserv exchange that gets forwarded, replied to, resent and sometimes clipped along the way. Discussion boards quickly become outdated and topics can be difficult to find again once they fall off of the main page. With OPIEWeb, all of the bits of a conversation are in one place with the community’s confidence in the information along with it in the form of votes. Questions are easy to find via tags, and your user profile keeps track of questions you have participated in, making them even easier to get back to.

Practitioners and Consultants

The applied folks have a unique perspective from inside of organizations that can help better inform academics, improving the research done in Universities. Practitioners and consultants can also help answer students’ questions about career paths and job prospects.

Professors, instructors and grad assistants

Send us your students as a part of their exam preparations or whenever your response is “I don’t know” and let the OPIEWeb community fill in the blanks. Spend some time on the site insuring that the answers they get are accurate and complete.

Grad and Undergraduate students

Students can help their fellow undergraduates and graduate students to better understand the wide world of Industrial/Organizational Psychology by asking about what isn’t clear from the classroom and answering questions on topics they feel strong in.

Join today!

Joining OPIEWeb is easy. In fact you likely already have a user name and password. Once you’re there, dive right in and ask a question or look around at what has already been asked. Expand upon existing answers or refute previous arguments. Just be sure to provide evidence in the form of a summary of, and links to, source materials.

Whether you’re a practitioner, consultant, academic or student, OPIEWeb needs your questions and answers.

Given that OPIEWeb is an entrepreneurial (I’ll never be able to spell that word correctly) venture, I guess that makes me an entrepreneur.  Don’t get me wrong – I am positively excited about launching this wonderful site.  But there is something about being labeled an “entrepreneur” that clashes with being an academic.

I am not a bottom-line thinker.  I don’t like the idea of pushing a product on people.  And I was initially very uncomfortable with the idea of having to put ads (<<shudder>>) on our site.

I’m an idealist.  In the beginning I had this crazy notion that tons of people would come to OPIEWeb and get hooked.

And in an ideal world, that is what would happen.  I think that everyone – not just academics – has an internal desire to seek and share knowledge.  And that is the overall mission of our site.

Because people did not flock to OPIEWeb like I thought they would, it appears that we need to do more work promoting our site and sharing our vision.  So reality has brought this idealistic academic down from her ivory tower.  Not all the way down, but just enough to realize that people are busy and the thirst for knowledge may not be enough of a motivation to drive people to our site.

To that end, Rob and I have been brainstorming ideas on how to make OPIEWeb more user-friendly.  I said to him, “we need to make it ridiculously easy, otherwise people won’t go and they won’t contribute.”  That’s the entrepreneur in me talking.  The academic in me would prefer to challenge you.

So here’s the way it goes:  Rob and I will do our best to make OPIEWeb as easy to use as possible.  My challenge to you is to generate the best possible questions and answers you can in the interest of furthering the great discipline of organizational psychology.

Some folks who know Jen and I pretty well will be receiving usernames and passwords in their email inboxes for OPIE Blog. This is to seed the user pool here on the blog and also to test the features that make user contributions possible. If you have something you want to get off your chest, please feel free to post it here as you will now have that ability. This is not me trying to pressure anyone into contributing though.

If you haven’t received a username and password for OPIE Blog,  and would like to contribute blog posts to OPIE Blog, send an email to OPIEWeb@Gmail.com and I’ll make one for you.

Thanks,

Rob