Visual communicator and artist Nancy Margulies (and a constant source of inspiration for me) let’s loose with Seuss Poem
WOW!
Year: 2009
Congratulations to Beth Kanter, Active Networker
If you ever doubt the powerful combination of one motivated person and a large social network, take a look at this Businessweek story about my friend Beth Kanter.
One of the Web’s First Social Networkers – BusinessWeek
Ask Kanter about fundraising, and her strategy quickly becomes clear. She reaches for every tool that can connect with people, and she works them tirelessly.
I met Beth in 2005 at the first Blogher. I was intrigued about her taking shoe pictures. I was blown away by her energy and passion to learn and expand what she knew and did. VORACIOUS. And we became friends connected mostly by electrons, often cross posting to each others’ blogs – a lot – in the early years of our friendship.
I watched as her social network grew, the scope of her ambitions expand from a project focus, to changing the way non profits used social media for their communications and fundraising. More than any other individual I know, Beth changed the landscape, one post, one tweet, one connection at a time, all the while understanding the amplifying powers of networks.
Well, not just networks. You see, Beth adds the personal touch. The warmth. The connection. And the fearlessness to try new things, to ask people to engage and participate. The technology stewardship to make all the crazy tools work. This is active network activation. There is nothing passive here.
Using social media for any reason is not disconnected from our warmth and humanity. Just ask Beth!
Fabulous CogDog and 5 Card Stories
A while ago I blogged about Scott McCloud’s 5 Card Nancy
I loved the visual and the “game!”
Now the amazing Alan Levine (aka Cogdog) has created a 5 card flickr story generator – plus a special version for Northern Voice. I don’t know if I am supposed to spill the beans or not, but I had so much fun making 2 quick stories that I have to share…
By the way, I’ll be co-presenting/facilitating/playing at NorthernVoice with Barbara Ganley and Laura Blankenship, plus I’ll be doing some graphic recordings of at least one of the keynotes/plenaries.
Learning: more than conversation
Today I took part in a small portion of a larger online/F2F event originating in Germany from LearnTec.
It was fun to trade ideas with Heike Philips, Dave Cormier and Jay Cross (and I am sorry Jennifer Jones was unable to chime in due to timing/home rhythms at the early time of day). We all were strong proponents of the value of conversation in learning (informal or otherwise) but I found myself backing off a bit and reminding myself that conversation is one of the three legs of my learning stool.
- Conversation – making meaning, getting different perspectives, trying out and testing ideas, challenging assumptions.
- Individual reflection – (because group reflection is a subset of conversation, no?) Stepping back, reviewing, observing, evaluating our own learning both in terms of process and content. Reflection provides us needed self awareness and the ideas we bring back into conversation.
- Reification – borrowing from Communities of Practice theory, what we create that expresses what we are learning or have learned. With internet tools makeing self publishing so easy, this area has blossomed – videos, images, blogs — things that manifest both our conversations and our reflections and put them out for wider consideration.
These three are a vortex, always intersecting with each other, even competing for our attention, eh? I wish I had paid more attention to reflection when I was younger. 😉
I have a habit of worshippping at the altar of conversation. But like all things, I must not let that blind me to other elements. It is in the interplay, the fluctuation between things, the margins, the tensions of what we know and don’t know, that learning happens.
Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities
Ward Cunningham interviews my co-author John Smith (along with Etienne Wenger and I) about our upcoming book “Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities.”
One of the things that John says in this video is the importance both of a view of a community from the inside AND the outside. This is why I love it when communities sit within wider networks to make this possible.
As we work through the final layout, it is starting to actually feel real. YAY!