Category: social media

Common Sense and the Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work

Sacha Chua’s The Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work has a few things going for it. First, it is a great use of simple visuals. See you CAN draw! Second, it has a sense of humor. Third, it does a great job of communicating key ideas in 14 simple slides about how to use social media usefully as one transitions from school to work. Finally, at the core, the slides are deeply embedded with that fabulous magic, common sense.

There are two things I want to draw out of this video. The identity thing and the common sense thing. First, take a look at the slides.

The Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work

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Identity

I have been in conversation with Shirley Williams of Reading University about identity (see her cool site here) and she has been tracking the shift in social media use of her students as they began to explore their identity beyond university and into the workplace. This is also a topic of the CPSquare Connected Futures workshop. David Armano also has a nice post (and visual!) about this topic. What Shirley, David and others are surfacing is a skill set that might very usefully be embedded in both our educational and business organizations. A couple of weeks ago this was a key point to a presentation I made to educators in Estonia. This is a system level change. How is your organization changing to recognize how identity shows up in the era of social media?

Common Sense

Why not make a blog post about two totally different things, eh? Back to common sense. What ever happened to common sense? What the heck IS common sense? How do you define it? How does it show up in your world?

Sometimes I think the most value I bring when consulting is common sense. At other times I think I’m stating the obvious, like the village idiot. There seems to be an interesting overlap that might make us dismiss common sense as boring, not innovative, old skool. Common sense can also be our ruts, our outdated mindsets, even our bad habits. Or good habits grown irrelevant.

So how do we make the most of common sense? When is the village idiot useful?

Communities and Networks Connection Hotlists

spring buds by choconancy on FlickrNow that we are a couple of months into the “signal sharing” of the Communities and Networks Connection, I wanted to share the top posts people have clicked into on the site (courtesy of the magic of Tony Karrer).  I find that sometimes I am paying attention to the site, and other times it is off my radar. But when I look at the top hit list below, I recognize many of the posts as ones I have read, so for me, personally, there is resonance with what other people are finding interesting. And I find THAT interesting.

The following are the top posts in March from featured sources based on social signals, with a few annotations from posts that I found useful.  Notice how many are about Twitter!

  1. Twitter Compared to IM, Email and Forums– Collaborative Thinking, March 2, 2009
  2. Social Media ROI: Measuring the unmeasurable?– FreshNetworks, March 22, 2009
  3. How to use Twitter for PR– FreshNetworks, March 15, 2009
  4. Tom Vander Wall Nails My Sharepoint Experience– Full Circle, March 23, 2009
  5. Circling Around To Enterprise 2.0 Again– Collaborative Thinking, March 12, 2009
  6. Understanding Communities of Practice– Collaborative Thinking, March 6, 2009
  7. Crowdsource as a way to create a community– Library Clips, March 15, 2009
  8. Team-based CoPs compared to cross-functional CoPs– Library Clips, March 11, 2009  (John and I have been having fun in the comments and writing on many related things lately. I like this kind of “juice!”)
  9. CoP Series #6: Community Leadership in Learning– Full Circle, March 10, 2009
  10. Twitter as Search Engine or Community Seed– Full Circle, March 6, 2009
  11. Twitter 3 years on, and why it’s the killer app!– Library Clips, March 4, 2009
  12. Twitter: Measuring clickthrus Social Media Metrics– Laurel Papworth- Social Network Strategy, March 16, 2009
  13. CoP Series #5: Is my community a community of practice?– Full Circle, March 5, 2009
  14. CoP Series #4: Practice Makes Perfect– Full Circle, March 3, 2009
  15. Examples of online communities in the financial services industry– FreshNetworks, March 17, 2009 (I deeply appreciate examples and cases)
  16. Why do people write reviews?– FreshNetworks, March 12, 2009
  17. Enterprise 2.0 for an Enterprise of One – Part Two – Content Monitoring– Portals and KM, March 10, 2009
  18. The ten commandments of managing online communities– FreshNetworks, March 7, 2009
  19. Future of Social Networks by Charlene Li– Elsua, March 20, 2009
  20. CoP Series #9: Community Heartbeats– Full Circle, March 19, 2009
  21. CoP Series #8: Content and Community– Full Circle, March 17, 2009
  22. Social media ROI – a calculator for not for profit campaigns– FreshNetworks, March 25, 2009
  23. Response to “SharePoint 2007: Gateway Drug to Enterprise Social Tools”– Michael Sampson – Currents, March 15, 2009
  24. Red-Tails in Love: Birdwatchers as a community of practice– Digital Habitats, March 28, 2009 (interesting that my post on our book blog did better than the same post on my blog!)
  25. Best Buy & Enterprise Social Networking– Collaborative Thinking, March 19, 2009 (This post also showed up as a shared link a lot in my Twitter stream.)
  26. McKinsey on Making Enterprise 2.0 Work is Reminder of Process Centric KM in Early 90s. – Portals and KM, March 18, 2009
  27. Enterprise 2.0 for an Enterprise of One – Part Four – Content Collecting, Assembling, and Creation – Potential New Approaches – Portals and KM, March 12, 2009
  28. Enterprise 2.0 for an Enterprise of One – Introduction– Portals and KM, March 9, 2009
  29. Team-based communities are about change, commitment and tasks– Library Clips, March 8, 2009
  30. Tinkering and Playing with Knowledge– Full Circle, March 8, 2009
  31. Turning Instant Messaging and Presence Upside-Down & Inside-Out– Collaborative Thinking, March 7, 2009 (I had not seen this one, but the title is so intriguing, I’m going to look at it next!)
  32. Twitter: Skittles does a twitter bomb– Laurel Papworth- Social Network Strategy, March 2, 2009
  33. The lies behind online ratings and reviews– FreshNetworks, March 27, 2009
  34. Examples of online communities in the not-for-profit sector– FreshNetworks, March 5, 2009
  35. Twitter for Business and Government and number of Australians– Laurel Papworth- Social Network Strategy, March 30, 2009
  36. How to tell a story about yourself without sounding like an ego-maniac– Anecdote, March 26, 2009
  37. Red-Tails in Love: Birdwatchers as a community of practice– Full Circle, March 26, 2009
  38. CoP Series #10: Stewarding Technology for Community– Full Circle, March 24, 2009
  39. Workflow 2.0– Library Clips, March 23, 2009
  40. Burton Group Field Research Study: Social Networking Within the Enterprise– Collaborative Thinking, March 18, 2009
  41. Enterprise 2.0 for an Enterprise of One – Part Five – Content Publishing and Archiving– Portals and KM, March 13, 2009 (OK, you guys, look at how many times “Enterprise 2.0” shows up.  And also see how multipart blog series – mine and others – are showing up on this list. Coincidence?)
  42. CoP Series #7: Roles and Scalability– Full Circle, March 12, 2009
  43. Does your story have impact?– Anecdote, March 11, 2009
  44. Enterprise 2.0 for an Enterprise of One – Part Three – Content Collecting, Assembling, and Creation – Current Approach– Portals and KM, March 11, 2009
  45. Impact of Social Software Within the Enterprise by Jon Iwata– Elsua, March 9, 2009
  46. Twitter in the Workplace– Collaborative Thinking, March 6, 2009
  47. Business Blogs Trump Social Networking Sites as New Business Drivers – Portals and KM, March 4, 2009

Here are the top  from April so far:

  1. A simple explanation of the Cynefin Framework– Anecdote, April 2, 2009
  2. Social search, Help engines, and Sense-making– Library Clips, April 1, 2009
  3. Examples of online communities in healthcare– FreshNetworks, April 8, 2009
  4. 45 provocative propositions about using social technology– Social Reporter, April 6, 2009
  5. Is cassette culture to thank for web2.0?– FreshNetworks, April 4, 2009
  6. Helping councils learn to share with social media– Social Reporter, April 5, 2009
  7. Extending the customer experience – the Zappos story– FreshNetworks, April 10, 2009
  8. Using Twitter for the wrong reasons– FreshNetworks, April 9, 2009
  9. Big brands in social media: Ford and Southwest Airlines– FreshNetworks, April 2, 2009
  10. Sources for social technology propositions – please mix your own– Social Reporter, April 10, 2009
  11. The Semantic Web is Now AKA Web 3.0 But is It Really?– Portals and KM, April 8, 2009
  12. netWorked Learning:connecting formal learning to the world– Full Circle, April 3, 2009
  13. Social networks: acquisition or retention tools for marketers?– FreshNetworks, April 5, 2009
  14. Are online communities all a game?– FreshNetworks, April 3, 2009
  15. Blog networking study: choosing channels– Mathemagenic, April 9, 2009
  16. Can you shift your organisational culture by introducing social media?– Joitske Hulsebosch, April 5, 2009
  17. IBM Lotusphere 2009 Highlights – Social Softwre in the Enterprise by Chris Reckling & Sandra Kogan– Elsua, April 3, 2009
  18. Using experts to get real engagement in online communities– FreshNetworks, April 3, 2009
  19. Hybrid ecosystem of narratives– Taming the spaces, April 12, 2009
  20. The Company as Wiki by Best Buy– Elsua, April 11, 2009
  21. The cultures of collaboration – Inside Knowledge– Full Circle, April 11, 2009
  22. Technology Stewardship and Unexpected Uses– Digital Habitats, April 9, 2009
  23. Spidergram to visualise community orientation, adoption, and requests– Library Clips, April 8, 2009
  24. Behavior Guidelines: Unblocking Social Media at the Firewall– Laurel Papworth- Social Network Strategy, April 6, 2009 (I enjoyed this one a lot)
  25. The Social Media Experiment Is Over by Adam Christensen– Elsua, April 3, 2009
  26. Grass roots inspiration from graduating social entrepreneurs– Social Reporter, April 3, 2009
  27. Winemakers’ Communities of Practice– Full Circle, April 1, 2009
  28. Blog networking study: establishing and maintaining relations via blogging– Mathemagenic, April 9, 2009
  29. User Adoption Strategies for Lotus Connections– Michael Sampson – Currents, April 8, 2009
  30. Why is word-of-mouth for brands so important?– FreshNetworks, April 4, 2009
  31. The Net Promoter Score and the value of Promoters– FreshNetworks, April 1, 2009
  32. Challenge: SharePoint and NGOs/NonProfits -go or no go?– Full Circle, April 10, 2009
  33. Technology Stewardship and Unexpected Uses– Full Circle, April 9, 2009
  34. Communities, e-participation, crowdsourcing, innovation, selling content: variegated links– eme ka eme, April 7, 2009
  35. The Many Meanings of Our Words– Full Circle, April 7, 2009
  36. Monday Video: Share– Full Circle, April 6, 2009
  37. Comments on Jeff McKenna’s Agile Development Blog– Portals and KM, April 6, 2009
  38. UC And Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0– Collaborative Thinking, April 3, 2009
  39. Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity– Digital Habitats, April 2, 2009
  40. Travel Budget Slashes, Meeting Crunch and Going Virtual– Full Circle, April 2, 2009
  41. Successful Social Networking for Business Collaboration by Ed Brill– Elsua, April 1, 2009
  42. Nancy Dixon’s Conversations Matters Blog– Portals and KM, April 1, 2009
  43. The Ultimate Question: The Interview– Community Guy, April 8, 2009
  44. Our top five posts in March– FreshNetworks, April 7, 2009
  45. Slides from SharePoint Master Class in Europe– Michael Sampson – Currents, April 6, 2009
  46. Have a disagreement? Resolve it virtually– Endless Knots, April 2, 2009

I can also sort out the top keywords, but I have to mess a bit with how they display, so I’ll save that for a separate time.

Social Media Marketing GSP: A Tweet-book

First Set of TweetsToby Bloomberg is not the type to let the dust gather. She is always looking at things, asking “what can we do with that” and, rather than just asking, she starts trying and doing. She is a force to be reckoned with!

She is at it again with her latest experiment, Social Media Marketing GSP: A Tweet-book. She asked me to be one of her guinea pigs… um… I mean interviewees… for chapter 6 on communities and networks. Of course, I had to say yes. Here is a bit of context. My tweets are embedded. Let’s see if this makes any sense!

So what’s a Twitter-book you may be asking? It’s a book written using Twitter as platform and distribution channel. Social Media Marketing GPS #smgps is the first business book to experiment with this format.

This Twitter-book is structured as a “real” business book and includes: a foreword, introduction and chapters. Each chapter will have a 1 question interview with people knowledgeable about the topic. All posts will be hash-tagged #smgps.

Chapters and interviews will be tweeted Monday – Friday through the end of April. I invite you to join me in this experiment in a new way to write a business book. Please add your insights and learnings to the stream; they’ll be incorporated into the book. My ultimate goal is that this Twitter-book will serve as a resource about social media written by and for marketers. So explore .. have fun .. discover and don’t be afraid to try it out.

second set of tweets Now that Toby is on chapter six, she has sussed out the process a bit and suggested earlier in the week that preparation is worth it, and that trying to not get carried away with too many tweets is also useful. That asks the writer to be both succinct per post (140 characters) and overall. With the size of the question Toby asked me, that was challenging. How to be brief but substantive, eh? It is harder than it looks.

It is also interesting to try and express something that both works read forwards and backwards. Readers reading back on Twitter, get it from tail to head. Those reading the recap on the blog and eventually the “book” (whatever form that might take) get it in order. Tricky. Interesting.

As I tweeted out my 12 140 character or less contributions, a few people wondered if I a) should be writing a blog post instead (they missed the context and Toby’s intro, I suppose) b) had too much nervous energy and c) how they might contribute. I think the burst of volume might not have been appreciated by all those people following me.

Hmmmm… what do you think? final set of tweetsAre we pushing a medium too far or is this a useful, creative application? Or something all together different?

Here are a few other creative writing experiments with Twitter:

The interview for Chapter 6 is also now up here.

Technology Stewardship and Unexpected Uses

Flickr cc from http://farm1.static.flickr.com/66/223828400_24606629d4.jpg?v=0I was cruising through my blog reader, hopelessly “behind” in reading (my own construction – I know I can “mark all read!”) and came upon a post from Vic Desotelle who pointed to a TED talk on Compassion which somehow lead me to a Garr Reynolds post about a TED Talk by Evan Williams of Twitter. (Talk about the network!)

The post had a quote that resonated with my experience as a technology steward to various communities.

Presentation Zen: TED talk: Twitter & the power of the unexpected

You never know how users will end up using your technology. Sometimes they end up using your product in creative ways that you could not possibly have thought of on your own.

As I work with NGOs attempting to roll out intranets and collaboration tools, I preach two things:

  • technology is designed for groups, but experienced by individual
  • users are creative – use that as a powerful positive force rather than trying to get them to conform with rules and limitations.

These two tenets have significance for technology stewards. It means that they cannot assume that the members of their community will have the same experience they do with any particular tool or platform, and that over time, the community will continue on a predictable trajectory of use of that technology.

It is about a dynamic evolution of practices and applications of the technology, not about the installation or the simple availability of the tool. So here are some practice hints.

  • Role model your experience and practices with tools, but don’t present them as the only options.
  • Watch for experimentation and amplify new, useful practices. Better yet, encourage community members to talk about and share their practices.
  • When members ask for tool adjustments based on their experimentation, work hard to accommodate rather than block innovation. This may mean going to bat with “higher-ups” to gain permission, or to allow the experimentation to fly “under the radar” until you can make a case for the value of the changes.
  • Encourage the fringies – the people who push the limits of a tool. Make them allies rather than enemies. Their pushing of your buttons may also create the innovation that you need to foster wider adoption.

What are your suggestions for technology stewardship that involved unexpected uses?

And… you never know where a link will lead you either. 😉

Photo credit: Alex Osterwalder on Flickr


netWorked Learning:connecting formal learning to the world

This morning at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am PDT (GMT -7) I shared some of my ideas about connecting the formal learning in universities to the wider, networked world to a group of learning professionals at Tartu University, in Estonia. This was part of School – From Teaching Institution to Learning Space which took place April 02 – 03, 2009 at the Estonian University of Life Sciences conference centre (Kreutzwaldi 1A, Tartu), Estonia.  Edited: you can watch all the conference presentation online http://www.ut.ee/547971. (Video of my bit is now available here.)

First, there is always the challenge of plopping in to a conference – at the end no less – with no context of what has been discussed in the first few days. There were a lot of great looking sessions, both in Estonian and English. So I worried that I was duplicating, or worse, being irrelevant to the group.  Second, there is the literal and figuratively the distance. I have to say, the tech team on the ground was terrific to give me video of the audience interspersed with everything else. It was the best job of a Skyped in video conference that I’ve experienced to date. During the Q&A I could easily see and hear the folks there in Tartu.  My hats are off to Toomas and his technical team at the university.

The slides are below and some additional resources can be found  here.

The key idea that I was hoping to put forth is that in a rapidly changing world. it is essential to connect domain learning to its context in the world – including the network of people in that domain and the diversity of the application of the domain in the world. Today’s students are going out into a world of uncertain jobs, changing financial situations and — well — a tough world. The more connected they are to that world during their higher education, the better positioned they will be to work in that world.

What do you think?

Networked Learningand Wider World Final

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