Times to Shut Up, Times to Sing Out
Yvonne Wood, Alison Talmage · 2025
This chapter describes the approach and range of technologies adopted by our discipline- diverse Research Accelerator community in our virtual Shut Up and Write! (SUAW) sessions. These meetings are more than writing in silence together; they can be transformed into collective social events through the strategic use of digital technologies. For those wanting to see how online SUAW can thrive, we map our progress, using community-of-practice and social construction of technology models, to show how technology – while not a panacea for community-building – has enabled connection and peer support. Over four years, collaborative engagement (member-hosted sessions), flexible adoption of technology, and planned orientation for new members have developed a mature, open, and flexible community of practice, fostering shared values and habits that promote productivity and wellbeing. Our research and relationships have been enhanced by periods of shutting up and singing out, in a community enabled by technological spaces.