Category: social media

I CAN pronouce Mooloolaba

From theother66 on Flickr, creative commonsThe last leg of my Australian adventure took me north to the Queensland beach town of Mooloolaba. I had been practicing my pronounciation so I would not mess up. Again. Last year I presented via video to the Learning Technologies 2008 conference. This year (Learning Technologies 2009 or Twitter tag #lt2009) I got to be there in the flesh and I wanted to get it right. MOO – LOO – LA – BAH with equal emphasis on all the syllables!

On Wednesday I ran a half day workshop on Technology Stewardship. (As promised, the slides are here.) It was a pleasure to hang out with Anne Bartlett-Bragg, Claire Bray, Paul Doherty, Jay Mair, BronwynDavies, Billy Ramadas, Gillian Smith, Alison Bickford, Colin Warren , and Mary McVay. We explored their own technology stewardship in their communities with the Spidergram exercise, some playing around with the Social Media game cards and conversations about our work. The afternoon flew by.

Digital Habitats Nov09 Frameworks

View more presentations from Nancy White.

Then we retired to the Mooloolaba Surf Club for the official opening cocktail party. Surf Clubs are an important part of Australian coast culture and it was fun to get a peek inside of the place where all the volunteer lifeguards hang out, as well as a critical community center.

The conference proper was Thursday and Friday. I helped kick off Thursday with the keynote, “Me, We and the Network,” where I continued on my theme about the importance of having a line of sight to the full range of learning contexts – individual learning, group or community (bounded), and the wider, free-ranging network environment. In the middle of the talk, I tapped the group in the room to help me sing happy birthday to Larry, since I would miss his birthday on the 21st. They did a brilliant job!

Me Weand Everyone Nov09 Learning Technologies conference

View more presentations from Nancy White.

Tweetclace While in Mooloolaba and surrounding area, I did a little shopping, including a Tweetclace! Bronwyn Stuckey (@Bronst), Joyce Seitzinger (@catspyjamasnz) and I went to the Eumondi markets and I, um, supported the local economy!

Online Community Workshops in Sydney

Sorting community issues

Tuesday saw Matt Moore of Innotecture and I at the Australian Technology Park facilitating two half day workshops on online communities. The morning was a small group focused on the newer practitioner, and the afternoon added a diversity of experienced and energetic online community managers and designers.

The morning’s small groups enabled us to go into details with each person and what they wanted to do online. This idea of the continuum from the individual, through bounded communities and out to networks again permeated my thinking and input, priming my pump for Friday’s keynote at Adelaide’s EDayz09. More on that later…

In the afternoon, Matt and I decided to use some exercises to help raise the range of issues associated with advancing an online community by looking at current states of people’s communities, how they got that way and possible positive and catastrophic futures. Frankly, there were some good starts to conversations, but the diversity of the group and the speed at which we went through the exercise did not completely satisfy me – nor I suspect, many of the participants. Matt later reflected that we just made it too complicated and I think he was right. When you have advanced practitioners, the key is to let them share and compare.

I’m always torn when I’m “giving” a workshop. Matt and I have tons of things we can “present” and “talk” about, but that goes counter to a lot of what we preach in terms of participatory processes. Yet content gives an hand hold, an affordance, an anchor to focus conversations. I think we need to get the mix — so we are refining for Melbourne next week where we’ll run the same pair of workshops again on Tuesday.

For me, the highlight was again meeting all the great, interesting and intelligent people and hearing their stories. I look forward to more.

 

Trend Question: Social Media Fatigue?

As part of my “gear up” for Australia, Matt Moore and I agreed to do some blogging to start surfacing issues for conversation in our face to face events. Matt had a great idea to share some of the trends I’m seeing elsewhere in the world and then asking people what they are seeing in Australia.  After thinking about it, I realized this might be interesting to my main blog readers. So this will be the first in a series of posts. I’ll try and cross pollinate the responses…

Are people experiencing “social media fatigue?”

I’ve been working mostly with global groups in international development. This sector is a bit behind other sectors, so there is still a great deal of interest and excitement in social media. In fact, there seems to be a slightly greater amount of interest and actual adoption than a year ago and fewer signs of fatigue than I see with some of my colleagues in the United States.

What IS a challenge is discerning the strategic application of any particular bit of social media, and a great deal of concern about figuring out what is useful for one’s organization, and what is a silly waste of time. At the recent KM4Development gathering in Brussels, we even convened a Social Media Skeptics session which in the end was less about skepticism and more about identifying useful practices and paths. With one exception. Locations with poor connectivity and electricity are sick and tired about hearing about tools they can’t even see.

What have you seen in your work in Australia?

Social Media in Intl. Dev: Sarah Blackmun

Sarah BlackmunNext in the series of podcasts (previous podcasts linked below) is Sarah Blackmun of the Pangaea Network. Sarah is another long time online colleague and friend from the late 90’s who also seems to connect with others in my network (especially around her studies at the Fielding Institute where we both have a lot of mutual friends.

Sarah brings some different aspects to light about social media in international development. Sharing about work she and Dr. Steve Eskow have been doing in Ghana, Sarah brings in the issue of gender, particularly the importance of recognizing that often womens’ experiences are very different from men, so thinking about introduction of new technology needs to be with a full awareness of gender. Take a listen.

podcast-logo SarahBlackmun

Related Links

Sarah’s Bio
Sarah Blackmun-Eskow is President and Chief Operating Officer of The Pangaea Network.

Sarah  has four decades of experience as a president, CEO, and general manager of education-related international businesses. She served as the CEO of Harcourt Brace International and as President of Harcourt Brace Media Systems Corporation. She was a founder, with Dr. Eskow, of the Electronic University Network, where she served as Chief Operating Officer. She also served as COO of Durand Communications, Inc., a technology firm based in Santa Barbara.

Blackmun serves as President and Chief Operating Office of the Pangaea Network, where she coordinates research, planning, budgeting, implementation, and day-to-day operations.

In addition to her business background, Blackmun-Eskow has nonprofit and community service experience, including serving as a Commissioner of Human Services in Santa Barbara County; chair of the Justice and Outreach Council of Trinity Episcopal Church; and board member of AIDS Housing Santa Barbara. As a member of the World Mission Group of the Episcopal Diocese of California, and in her earlier position as  information officer of the Episcopal Diocese of California (San Francisco), Blackmun established connections with Episcopal and Anglican leaders in the U.S., Africa, Latin America, and the Philippines.

Blackmun-Eskow earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University and a Master of Arts degree from Bowling Green University. She is currently a doctoral student in the School of Human and Organizational Development of the Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California.

Social Media in Intl. Dev: Dr. Steve Eskow

Dr. Steve EskowFinally, I have grabbed a few minutes to add the next couple of podcasts in the series on Social Media in International Development. (Links to all the previous podcasts are at the bottom of this post.)

This podcast is with another online colleague I’ve known since some of my early online days. I met Steve through Electric Minds, an early web online community. At the time, the context I knew Steve in was in education. Now he and Sarah Blackmum (whose podcast will go up later this week) are working with the The Pangaea Network doing work in international development, much of it faith based.  Steve shares a bit about the work they are doing in  Ghana and some basic heuristics about introducing (or not introducing) new technology. Take a listen!

podcast-logosteveeskowSept9

Steve’s Bio

Dr. Steve Eskow is Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the The Pangaea Network. he earned his Ph.D. in Higher Education from Syracuse University, an MA degree in English from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Dramatic Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the founder of the College Consortium on International Studies, a federation of 95 colleges that provides study abroad opportunities to 4,000 students annually in 30 countries; founder of the Rockland Community College Office of International Studies and its International College, which organize the college’s study-abroad programs in some 20 countries, offer technical assistance to schools and colleges abroad, receive and place foreign students, and create curricula incorporating international themes; founder of the International/Intercultural Consortium of the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges; chairman of its Advisory Committee; member of its Curriculum Committee; founder of the International Services Association of the Community Colleges of the State University of New York; founder of The Faith and Development Network, the Electronic University Network; and co-founder and current Chair of the Board of The Pangaea Network.  Prior to his current positions, he was on the faculty of the School for Transformative Learning, California Institute of Integral Studies; Director, “Keeping America Working” Project of the American Association of Community and Junior Colleagues (1983-4); President and Chief Executive Officer, Rockland Community College (A College of the State University of New York) (1963-83); and Dean of Instruction, Mohawk Valley Community College, Utica, NY (1956-63), Instructor of English; Chairperson, Division of General Education.

Eskow was the U.S. Representative to 1978 UNESCO Symposium on Contributions of Higher Education to Community Development, and a lecturer and consultant to Ministries of Education and colleges and universities in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, the Soviet Union, and India. Assignments include work in Kenya, Tanzania, Barbados, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, England, France, The U.S.S.R., Israel, and India. He served as Principal Lecturer, United States Information Agencies Seminars on community college education, in five Indian states in 1975. He returned in 1979, sponsored by the U.S. Fulbright Commission, to lecture in four Indian states and conduct major international conferences on community-based education; and in 1982, for the Asia Foundation, to plan vocational education programs.

Previous & Related Podcasts: