Category: tools | Page 2 | Full Circle Associates

CPsquare’s NING Stackathon – Tech Stewarding Learning Opportunity!

Are you stewarding technology for your community? Did you or are you considering a NING site? You may want to join in with CPSquare’s NING Stackathon. It will last for a year, but I suggest you get in on the ground floor now. John notes at the bottom that if you are willing to contribute a case, he will waive the (VERY MODEST) entry fee. Plus you get a six month CPSquare membership. Folks, JUMP on this!

Here are the deets, via http://cpsquare.org/.

Launching our Ning Stackathon
By: John David Smith
Hackathons are the current equivalent of a barn-raising, where people get together and work really hard for a short period of time on a fun project that somehow contributes to the common good. We’ve used barn-raising as examples of the kind of personal, skin-in-the-game generosity that’s involved in communities of practice.
We’re inventing a new portmanteau. A Stackathon is working party that’s slower-paced than a hackathon and more reflective. It gathers useful examples of something with a lot of sense-making built into the process. Therefore a stackathon is not like the current craze for content curation. Read on for details about CPsquare’s first Stackathon.
During this stackathon we’ll gather profiles and portraits of as many living Ning-based or Ning-supported communities as possible. We’ve started developing a list of interesting examples. As we stack these communities one on top of another, we expect to discover new hacks that could make any of them more effective, sustainable, and fun. (And those hacks are probably relevant to simpler or more elaborate platforms than Ning, too!)
We will try to be somewhat systematic in describing how Ning is configured for each community and how it fits in the community’s digital habitat. We’ll pay attention to the ongoing role of leadership, facilitation, and technology stewardship. That means understanding what the community is about, what kinds of activities are typical, and what other tools a community uses in each community. Understanding that would give us a better idea of how and when to recommend Ning. Our stack will also suggest many possible methods that one community could borrow from another (including the use of auxiliary tools, plug-ins, themes, membership restrictions, etc., etc.).
During the stackathon (which will run for a whole year, from March 2012 to April 2013) we’ll have discussions in CPsquare’s Web Crossing site (password required: it’s for CPsquare members and people registered for the Stackathon), we’ll collect ideas in various Google Docs, we may have teleconferences, and we will collect some of our insights on CPsquare’s Media Wiki site. It all depends on what people want to do and are willing to do.
You can participate in the stackathon by joining CPsquare or by registering for the Stackathon here (costs $10). Any Stackathon registrant who contributes a full community portrait gets their registration fee refunded and they receive a CPsquare membership during the last 6-months of the Ning Stackathon.
(Thanks to Amboo Who for the photo!)

Updates from Communities and Networks Connection

I’m continuing cleaning up and adapting my technology configuration this week. Here is part 2!

I confess, I don’t pay nearly enough attention to all the good things flying past me, including things on my own Communities and Networks Connection. In case this is new to you, this is an aggregation project led by Tony Karrer. He set up a system that lets me curate content from a wide variety of bloggers interested in communities and networks (If you aren’t on the list and want to be, drop me a line!). Tony just let me know that Aggregage, the platform that powers has some new features that are now on the Communities and Networks Connection. Announcing the PERSONALIZATION ENGINE! That means that Communities and Networks Connection now allows you to sign-up and have your content personalized based on their interests. You can sign-up via the “Personalize Your Content” button on the right side of the interface shown on the right side of the picture on the right (right, right?).

Tony has explained it well on his site, so I’m quoting the master. He refers to his own aggregation site, eLearning Learning

Now with personalization it’s even better. The picture below gives a sense of what’s happening:
Curators handle finding the best sources of content. The system then uses social signals such as those coming from Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, delicious as well as clicks and views. These are compared to averages for the source and also looks at who is providing the signal, how often they signal things, how often they signal for that particular source, etc. Those aspects existed before and it does a good job of finding great content. You can read a bit more about these aspects in eLearning Learning Launches New Features.
What’s new now is that the site allows you to sign up and provide your Twitter and LinkedIn information. The site will look at your activity on these sites and the content of what you share. It will use that to find interests as well as to cluster you with other users who are like you based on interests and sharing. You can partially control your interests via the Subscription page as shown below:
This will change over time based on your LinkedIn and twitter activity. You can always visit and manually select interests as well. You can read a bit more here: Personalization Explained.
The system then can combine three pieces of information to figure out what will be most interesting to you:
Social signal score – are people in the audience finding it interesting
Topic match – does it match up with your interests
Like sharing – are individuals who are like you sharing this
The system uses these to both rank things on the site and to generate Daily and Weekly newsletters.
The reason that I’m most exited about this is that I partly use eLearning Learning to make sure I don’t miss things that is good content that is relevant to me. Now with personalization, it is even less likely that something will sneak by.
I also personally like the format of the new newsletter.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.

So I’ll add my pitch – give it a try and let me know what you think. In the mean time, here is the best of Communities and Networks Connection 2011

LAUREL PAPWORTH- SOCIAL NETWORK STRATEGY | TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2011 8 ways to deal with negative comments in online communities
How do you respond to a negative comment in an online community,on Facebook? Shut the Page down, ban the commenter, suck up to them? How about a bitchy tweet on Twitter? Fight with them? Ignore them? Promise to do better? PS: Your marketing intern may not have that skill! Click for larger size. Ignore the negative social media commenter. MORE >> 2945 Tweets
ELSUA | WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 20115 Reasons Why Activity Streams Will Save You From Information Overload I heart Activity Streams. mean, I * love* them to bits! From the very first beginning that I got exposed to them over at Twitter, over 4 years ago , till today, where I am using a bunch of various different microblogging / microsharing services, both internal and external, I couldn’t work, nor get much done!, without them. live them. Exactly! MORE >> 116 Tweets
JENNY CONNECTED | SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2011 Recording of Etienne Wenger’s talk Here is the link to the talk given by Etienne Wenger to Lancaster University, UK last month Learning in and across landscapes of practice. This is a long talk and there is a lot in it to digest. Theory. Theory in social sciences is a way of talking about the world. Theories that try to explain everything tend to be reductionist. Identity. MORE >> 31 Tweets
JOITSKE HULSEBOSCH | MONDAY, MAY 9, 2011 Roles in communities of practice Does a learning community or community of practice need roles to function well? Should you officially assign these roles to people or is it best if people spontaneously fullfil certain roles? What about the self-organising power of communities? We thought it would be nice to share some of our thinking in this blogpost. Starting with ourselves. MORE >> 35 Tweets
ALCHEMY OF CHANGE | TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2011 How “Membranes” Build Great Organizations In this article, you’ll learn about a new way of thinking about organizational boundaries; one that helps connect what’s inside the organization with what’s outside it. You’ll also get a new framework for thinking about the way organizations engage customers, partners, and other organizations. The “Cellular Business”. Tweet. MORE >> 101 Tweets
COLLABORATIVE THINKING | MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2011 Activity Streams: Moving Beyond Event Aggregation
When it comes to 2011 trends, I posted earlier on ” Enterprise 2.0: A Transition From Destination Site to Platform Services “. Rather than publish a short list, I wanted to take some time to explore each trend in more depth. In this post, I want to examine the topic of Activity Streams. Level of insight : Inconvenient truth beneath the hype. effort. MORE >> 65 Tweets
FRESHNETWORKS | SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011 15 essential articles for online community managers
Image by moriza via Flickr. To celebrate the second annual Community Manager Appreciation Day , we’ve brought together 15 essential articles for online community managers and social media managers. This collection of articles, resources and thinking should have something for everybody to learn from or to add to. MORE >> 356 Tweets
PORTALS AND KM | MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2011 What Social Media and Enterprise 2.0 Can Bring to HR Processes
Last week I had the pleasure of doing a webinar with the enterprise 2.0 software firm, Bitrix. We covered “The Business Value of Social Media and Enterprise 2.0” with an emphasis on HR process because of the audience. I want to share with you a bit of my thoughts from that session. Others have taken similar approaches. MORE >> 70 Tweets
MICHAEL SAMPSON – CURRENTS | SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 2011 The Cost of SharePoint = License Fee x9 (It’s a Microsoft Figure)
In response to my post about making SharePoint not look like SharePoint , Mike asked where the figure I quoted came from. He said: ” I would also like to see you cite your source for the statistic you quoted. The problem with statistics is that anyone can toss them out but unless you fully understand the context they are meaningless. My Comments. MORE >> 78 Tweets
GREEN CHAMELEON | SUNDAY, MAY 29, 2011 Blog>> The Information Lifecycle
It has been a while now that I talked about my experience of putting incentives for KM initiatives in place. These thoughts are very valid for global activities, though we are starting in our company to look at a second approach: implement knowledge sharing in people’s daily activities without imposing additional work. MORE >> 17 Tweets
The Facebook Pages redesign – what’s changed and what does it mean? EMODERATION | MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2011
7 Levels of Social Media Engagement LAUREL PAPWORTH- SOCIAL NETWORK STRATEGY | THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2011
The Social Enterprise – Welcome to the Era of Intrapreneurship! ELSUA | MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2011
Value Creation in Communities of Practice JENNY CONNECTED | TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2011
Various ways to use social media as a facilitator or trainer JOITSKE HULSEBOSCH | WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2011
How People Define Smart Organizations: The Biology of Great Organizations Part II ALCHEMY OF CHANGE | TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2011
Changing IT Mindsets From Deployment To Adoption COLLABORATIVE THINKING | MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2011
How do different age groups interact across the social web? FRESHNETWORKS | FRIDAY, JULY 8, 2011
The Rising Need for Content Curation Skills and Capabilities. PORTALS AND KM | TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2011
Innovation as an Emergent Property of a Value Network VALUE NETWORKS | MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011
The sociable role of social reporters SOCIAL REPORTER | FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2011
Blog>> Knowledge Management in Intranets GREEN CHAMELEON | SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2011
What is the Value of a Tweet or Facebook Fan? LAUREL PAPWORTH- SOCIAL NETWORK STRATEGY | THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 2011
How to Use Employee Engagement to Boost Your Business ELSUA | WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2011
Attacks on connectivism JENNY CONNECTED | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2011
Twiitering = learning? JOITSKE HULSEBOSCH | TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2011
The Deep Science of Cooperation: Martin Nowak ALCHEMY OF CHANGE | THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2011
Enabling Participation: More Art Than Science COLLABORATIVE THINKING | TUESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2011
22 social media management tools – a wiki in development FRESHNETWORKS | TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2011
Putting Social Media to Work PORTALS AND KM | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2011
All Work is Networked VALUE NETWORKS | MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2011
FOSI European Conference 2011 – social networks, education, privacy EMODERATION | WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2011
Id Rather Be A Hammer Than A Nail or Nails Come in Boxes EVOLVING WEB | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2011
Media Trust explains how local news hubs will work SOCIAL REPORTER | WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 2011
9 Ways To Increase Your Productivity While Working From Home ELSUA | MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011
Why Smart People are Reluctant to Share MICHAEL SAMPSON – CURRENTS | SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2011
So many learning style tests, so little time. JOITSKE HULSEBOSCH | TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011
A New Approach to Multi-Stakeholder Network Assessment NETWORKING ACTION | THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011
Enterprise 2.0: A Transition From Destination Site To Platform Services COLLABORATIVE THINKING | TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2011
The social media landscape in 2011 – infographic FRESHNETWORKS | TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011
Social Enterprise Today: Useful New Content Aggregation Site PORTALS AND KM | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
How do Social Networks Create Value? VALUE NETWORKS | TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011
Blog>> Brains Respond to Stories as if They Are Real GREEN CHAMELEON | TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2011
New guidelines on how to keep online environments safe for children EMODERATION | TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2011
Presenting to myself on collaboration and social innovation SOCIAL REPORTER | MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2011
KM, Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business: One and The Same ELSUA | MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2011
Defining Collaboration – 2. Four Types of Work MICHAEL SAMPSON – CURRENTS | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2011
Twitter for organisations JOITSKE HULSEBOSCH | TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2011
Launching the Personal Kanban Book EVOLVING WEB | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2011
meeting formats JOHN TROPEA – DELICIOUS FACILIATATION | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2011

Hot Topics for 2011
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New Year, New Technology Configuration

Cleaning the messy office. Cleaning closets. And reviewing my personal technology configuration. In my current case, I’m talking more hardware than software! That’s what I’ve been doing over the slow weeks of early January before client work tends to kick in (and yes, I’m available!)

After cleaning up my office (lots of paper recycled and still two drawers of articles printed off from the net that I can’t quite let go of, organizing accounting stuff, etc…) the next thing I had to deal with is my internet service. I’ve had DSL, orginally through the beloved Speakeasy, but now part of Megapath. I loved the localness and great customer service of Speakeasy, but after about a year of their VoIP service for my phone I started having problems. And they said I needed to buy more bandwidth. I was stubborn. They sold me the package based on the level I bought and it SHOULD work, right? So I dithered for another year, contemplated moving to Quest Fiber, but once CenturyLink took over the complaints scared me away. That left me with Comcast. Sigh. I resisted for years. But we have Comcast for TV service (I am married to a television fan). So after researching, I took the plunge.

But, if I canceled my old Speakeasy internet and phone for my business, I still needed phone service. Comcast pitches the old “six months at a reasonable price,” then it balloons. And I don’t use my phone THAN much. So I decided to follow the advice of Eugene Kim (now at his new venture, Groupaya) and port my business line to GoogleVoice, then use the OBI110 device (Amazon associate link – full disclosure) to bridge Google Voice to my regular phone handset (not needed the computer to be on for calls). There are a few little twists to this process, which Eugene has generously captured on his wiki. This link is particularly helpful if you have to port a land line into Google voice via a mobile line, as Google does not port land lines.

So far so good. I purchased the required cable modem as directed by Comcast (Motorola SB6121 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0). Check. Bought a new router as my two year old router has been needed more frequent resets. (Linksys E3200 High-Performance ) Check. Scheduled install of Comcast 20MBS service for yesterday. Check. Clean out the stereo cabinet where I hope to put all this equipment (and free a little more room in my micro-office.) Check.

Delay leaving for meeting Sunday afternoon to be there when the Comcast tech arrived and … Comcast was a no show. Somehow, it seems, our appointment was cancelled. Now rescheduled for Thursday. Grrr. Am I going to regret this choice?

Today I still went ahead with the line porting. I got a cheap TMobile pay per use sim card, popped it in my old Tmobile handset (unlocked that I use for travel), and ported my business phone to my mobile. That took about 2 days. Today I started the porting process to Google Voice. Now I have to learn the ins and outs of GoogleVoice, how to get voice mail and all the myriad of options. Mamma mia. It ain’t simple.

Then I set up the OBI110 and tested my phone with it. The audio quality was terrible with lots of breakup, but I suspect this is an exacerbation of the problem I’m having with my VoiP from Megapath, so I can’t judge the sound quality until the new internet service arrives. Yes, I’m impatient. I also need to assess if the headset I’m using is fried, further deteriorating sound quality. I’m hard on headsets.

But wait- that’s not the only change. I have been frustrated a the current limitation of our home audio/video system. I want to stream music from my computer, I want to get rid of half the devices cluttering up our tiny living room and I want to bring more music into my daily life, not just when I’m at my computer. So we bought ourselves an 28th anniversary present of a Sony home music system (Sony BDV-E780W Blu-Ray Disc Player Home Entertainment System which we got on sale much cheaper than the current Amazon price – yay! But it still hasn’t shipped. Boo. ) which will replace the Roku box, the BlueRay DVD player, the old Onkyo tuner and trigger my husband to finally remove the VCR that isn’t working from the stack! The five small speakers will replace the huge, ancient (well used, loved and now not so great) speakers, freeing up more space in the micro-living room. We’ll be Freecycling the speakers.

The router I bought has a USB port and I plan to put a large external hard drive on that as my file back up (and if I can configure it with some of the constraints I’ve heard about Comcast) be able to access some of my key files from the road. Then I can also transfer all my audio library so I can stream to the new wifi enabled stereo and play on another remote speaker that, natch, came free with the stereo set. I understand that there are some format constraints with Sony (and which almost caused me NOT to buy it, but it was a weak moment, what can I say.)

The final part of my configuration update will be a new desktop. Since my computer is essential business equipment, I tend to replace it every 2-3 years, donating my old computer to Interconnection here in Seattle. They make it free and easy. Thank you, folks! I bought an iPad2 last summer – my first Apple product — and I hate to admit it, but I love it and use it. A lot. Which has me considering an Apple product to replace my pee-cee. For years, the money I invested in PC software was a major barrier, but I’m doing more and more in the cloud. I open Office much less often and everything else I can use on a Mac. So should I do it? What is the migration path? I have gone to the Apple store a few times considering MacBook pros hooked into my existing ViewSonic 21 inch monitor. Or the slimmer MacBook Airs. But to be honest, where I travel in my work, I rarely have secure places to lock up computers and I hate carrying that much money around. So I travel with cheap netbooks. So do I need a laptop? Why not an iMac all in one? SOOO many decisions. I have not decided on this last step and missed my December 31 deadline (for accounting purposes) so I’m sitting with the question. There is no urgency. It may, however, impact how I set up my remote drive on the hub. Hmmm…

It is no wonder my mom calls me every time she needs to change her tech configuration, or why my husband has me do most of it for him. This takes a lot of time and consideration. Technology stewardship is not for wusses! Even for me, who helped write the book.

How do you manage your personal technology configuration? Any tips or breakthroughs? Please, SHARE!

iPad Lust and Clash with Ideology

I have been wanting an iPad for my graphic recording work but I just haven’t given in. (I’m also debating various ebook readers to cut down on paper. I have a book habit.) But I keep getting uncomfortable. George Siemens sums it up for me.

However, for those committed to openness, the iPad forces a clash between technolust and ideology. Perhaps we need a self-help group for people in a state of cognitive dissonance due to the impressive Apple technology, but less impressive stance on openness and end user control.

via elearnspace › iPad. Yes, it’s rather good.

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