These megatrends sound right to me. In fact, is there any argument about any of this? | The work of students is increasingly seen as collaborative by nature, and there is more cross-campus collaboration between departments. While this trend is not as widespread as the others listed here, where schools have created a climate in which students, their peers, and their teachers are all working towards the same goals, where research is something open even to first year students, the results have shown tantalizing promise. Increasingly, both students and their professors see the challenges facing the world as multidisciplinary, and the need for collaboration great. Over the past few years, the emergence of a raft of new (and often free) tools has made collaboration easier than at any other point in history. |
- The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing. Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information are paramount. Mentoring and preparing students for the world in which they will live, the central role of the university when it achieved its modern form in the 14th century, is again at the forefront. Universities have always been seen as the gold standard for educational credentialing, but emerging certification programs from other sources are eroding the value of that mission daily.
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- People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to. Life in an increasingly busy world where learners must balance demands from home, work, school, and family poses a host of logistical challenges with which today’s ever more mobile students must cope. A faster approach is often perceived as a better approach, and as such people want easy and timely access not only to the information on the network, but to their social networks that can help them to interpret it and maximize its value. The implications for informal learning are profound, as are the notions of “just-in-time” learning and “found” learning, both ways of maximizing the impact of learning by ensuring it is timely and efficient.
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- The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized. The continuing acceptance and adoption of cloud-based applications and services is changing not only the ways we configure and use software and file storage, but even how we conceptualize those functions. It does not matter where our work is stored; what matters is that our information is accessible no matter where we are or what device we choose to use. Globally, in huge numbers, we are growing used to a model of browser-based software that is device-independent. While some challenges still remain, specifically with notions of privacy and control, the promise of significant cost savings is an important driver in the search for solutions.
Read more at wp.nmc.org |
I just returned from a great learning experience in Seattle. What makes a learning event a winner for you?
Every year for the last six, I have flown to Seattle to attend Gnomedex, far and away my favorite and most powerful learning event. This year’s Gnomedex, the tenth, is the last of the series, so I thought it appropriate to examine what has made the event so damned good. 
Gnomedex X
Community
Gnomedexers self-identify as geeks. Attendees share the belief that technology is good (awesome! cool!) and can help make Earth a better place to live. The badge of honor is to do something with tech, not just talk about it. Old hands share knowledge with novices. We respect one another’s expertise. We build on one another’s ideas. Participants are authentic.
Everyone is excited about learning new things and putting them to use. I probably take away more than most because this crowd is not in my traditional comfort zone.
Gnomedex might not work if it had thousands of participants instead of a few hundred. Everyone being able to fit in the same room fosters intimacy. People recognize one another from prior years. The downside is when someone asks me if I remember our intense hour-long conversation last year, and I would swear I’ve never met them before.
It’s hard to describe what gives Gnomedex its mojo: while it is irredeemably geeky, and often covers trends in technology and society before they hit the mainstream, it’s neither a dry technical meeting nor a science-fiction con. In a way, it’s like an annual online-community family reunion, except all you need to do to join the family is show up. I’ve made lots of friends and deepened other friendships there.
Derek has terminal cancer. Three years ago he addressed the crowd from his hospital bed. Yesterday I asked Derek how he was doing. He’s thankful for every year he lives. He’s not going to get better. I asked if he was doing everything he’d always wanted to do. Were this not Gnomedex, I wouldn’t ask something like that. By the way, Derek wrote “The Gnomedex Song.”
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Listen to the Gnomedex Song
Facilities
Gnomedex takes place at the Bell Harbor Conference Center. The food is superb. Snacks, ice water, coffee, and soda are always available. There are plenty of nooks, sofas, and meeting spots to foster conversations. The main meeting room is just the right size for our 300 people. Rows are tiered so everyone has a view. Chairs are comfortable.
Sound is professionally monitored. 
Professional sound
Tiered seats remind me of business school
Two very important elements which should be de rigeur at any tech-oriented event:
- Electrical outlets are close by every seat.
- Wi-fi is free, ubiquitous, and trouble-free.
Format
All presentations take place in a single room. Concurrent events would water down the focus and energy level. Presentations are held to 20 minutes. Most are catalysts for questions. There is always time reserved for questions. Runners take portable microphones to the questioners and don’t let go of them; not giving up control of the microphone insures it’s being held in the right place.  Sex educator Violet Blue delivers her 20 minutes. She told me this was the rare conference where people weren’t hitting on her. We gave Violet a standing ovation for her voice against censorship.
The backchannel is very active. Between sessions and during announcements, the Twitterstream is projected onto the main screen. Tweets add viewpoints and keep people on their toes. I sometimes learn as much from the Tweets as from the core presentation.
Twitter backchannel on the big screen
Diversity
 
Both genders and all ages take part. This year four eleven-year olds blew everyone away. They conducted interviews with Scoble and many others. They manage a business remotely. They are astute at tracking their web stats and reacting strategically. They get a lot more page-views than I ever have.
Documentation
Geeks and cameras go together. A vast array of high-end SLRs, pocket cams, video cams, and Flips are continuously recording events and interviews. All of Gnomedex is streamed live. You can view recordings of every session after the fact. As a result, the influence of Gnomedex reaches far beyond the 300 people meeting in Seattle. Furthermore, we’re green; we didn’t have a printed schedule this year.
What Doesn’t Work (for me)
I don’t like sloppy presentations, something you rarely see at Gnomedex. But at the other extreme, I don’t enjoy presentations that are too slick. For me, this guy qualifies:
He began with a great analogy: how people at the airport crowd the baggage carousel, making it impossible for the rest of us to see. So let’s be more considerate. Back up a few steps. We’ll all be better off. Spread the meme and the whole world wins.
This message is being delivered flawlessly. No ums. No ahs. Perfect pitch. Dramatic movement around the stage. To slick. It almost lulls me into overlooking the subtest: Buy my book. Hire me to help you figure this out. Give away copies. The e-version’s only $15. Trickery! I was about to barf.
Online Artifacts
If you missed Gnomedex X, you can still listen in. Look at the Gnomedex site. Also, search for Gnomedex on Flickr and YouTube. Look at the MindMaps from Jeff Barr What went on? See The Sense of a Gnomedex and Notes Great events leave a healthy trail of breadcrumbs. The online artifacts of the event stay on line — enabling you to find people, links, and stories after the show is over.
Networking
What goes on in the hallways is more important than the presentations. Breaks are frequent. There’s a party every night. People get to meet and learn from folks they’d otherwise never know. You knew that.
Opening party
Over the years I’ve enjoyed shooting the shit with Mike Arrington, Adam Curry, Dan Gilmor, Steve Rubel, Robert Scobel, Charlene Li, Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis, Darren Barefoot, Steve Gilmour, Mark Canter, Sarah Lacey, Vanessa Fox, and other geek luminaries.
Clarity
Chris Pirillo has his fingers on the pulse of the social web, is a bundle of energy, and seems to know everybody who is anybody. Perhaps more important, he’s a straight-shooter. Chris sets the direction, recruits the speakers, plans the event, is master of ceremonies, and schmoozes with hundreds of people.
Family Affair
Chris’s mother Judy is the official timekeeper; Joe runs the microphone to those who ask questions. Both are all over the place helping out. This year, both of Chris’s brothers joined in. At the final session yesterday, the family trooped on stage for a reminiscence.
Joe and Judy Pirillo
Some of you will remember that Elliott Masie’s mom and father-in-law took part in his early TechLearn events. His wife and sister-in-law are heavily involved. Unless one was raised by wolves, inviting one’s parents to an event sends a real statement. It says “I’m proud of what I’m doing. I want to share it with you.”
End of an era?
Why was this the last Gnomedex? Essentially, there’s not enough Chris to go around. It takes too much to put an event like this on. Chris says the only way he’d resurrect Gnomedex is with solid sponsorship and a professional events manager. He fears any sponsor would want to take control; professional managers would be out for quantity, not quality. I’m not so sure it would have to be like that.
Funding Gnomedex would build a company’s reputation in front of influential geeks like nothing else. Putting on a two-day event in Seattle would cost a pittance compared to any ad campaign. Think of the value Robert Scoble brought Microsoft by giving it a human face. I expect Son of Gnomedex to appear in 2012. That will give us true believers time to crowd-source our thinking and find a sponsor with deep pockets, long-term vision, and a pure heart. Read more at www.internettime.com |
In thirty years of consulting, I have never had a client hire me on a pay-for-performance basis. They are afraid my advice will make them too much money, depriving them the opportunity to pay way less than my advice is worth.
Perhaps it would be better for consultants to offer a money-back guarantee. I've done that -- and never had anyone refuse to pay. David Craig suggests a simple way to call out this scam. Insist that, from now on, all management consultants are paid by their results. If they promise greater productivity or higher sales, fine: don't pay them until it comes through. Today, almost no management consultancy works on this basis. If they did, they'd all be bankrupt.
And yet, and yet... you almost have to admire the rancid chutzpah of it. As the management consultant Bruce Henderson once sniggered: "Can you think of anything more improbable than taking the world's most successful firms and hiring people just fresh out of school and telling them how to run their businesses -- and [getting them] to pay millions of pounds for this advice?" It's tempting to chuckle at the absurdity -- until you realize the cack-handed consultants' scythe could come for you. |
I expect to see Brian in about an hour. He's keynoting Gnomedex this year --- and we've talked at the last three Gnomedexes. Unless you literally run your business with your ears plugged and your eyes covered, you are aware of the importance of social media and its impact on both brand and bottom line. However, while social media is the topic du jour in mainstream news, on blogs, in books, at conferences and at your local Starbucks, we may still underestimate its overall promise and potential.
The socialization of business is comparable to the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland or the red pill in the Matrix. If ignorance is bliss, awareness is awakening. Where there’s insight, there’s opportunity – but with opportunity, there’s also a cost. In this case, that cost is financed through learning, change, adaptation and innovation.
Social media is deceptive. It appears easy, free and yours to own simply for the price of admission and engagement. If this post were to live up to an alternate headline, say the “5 Easy Steps to Managing Your Brand Online,” the list might look a bit like this:
1. Monitor and listen to conversations related to your brand and competitors
2. Start a blog, create a Twitter profile, set up a Facebook brand page and broadcast a YouTube channel
3. Draft social media guidelines
4. Be transparent and authentic
5. Ask questions, introduce polls, curate interesting content and have fun
It’s not that the list is untrue or menial. In fact it’s where many organizations begin their journey towards a new era of discovery, relevance, and earned prominence. Keep in mind however, that as social media matures, consumers are becoming increasingly discerning. The simplicity of “Top 10” posts disguise the significance of this incredible (r)evolution.
They are mastering their social domains and experiences and, as a result, their attention is not only thinning, it’s focusing on the relationships and information that’s most beneficial to their regiment.
Rather than looking at the easy ways to use social media to manage our brand, let’s examine five next-level steps for managing and ultimately defining your brand online.
1. Listen and learn – Listening, monitoring, and reporting are obligatory cogs in the social media machine. Gathering intelligence to inspire meaningful and actionable social programs is, on the other hand, priceless.
Measuring share of voice and frequency of mentions is helpful in understanding what is happening in and around us. But if you expand your horizons to surface the share of all conversations related to your market and position within the broader landscape, you also discover missed opportunities and inflection points – along with areas for improvement, innovation and expansion.
2. React to and lead conversations – While many organizations monitor conversations related to keywords or respond simply to those who invite participation, the prospect of social media lies beyond first-degree dialog. This is a chance to leapfrog conversations by learning what it takes to lead them and then embodying the position you wish to gain.
Responding to relevant commentary is only the beginning. Introducing social objects that address needs or direct actions in the form of posts, videos, imagery and other commentary to demonstrate passion, expertise and leadership ensures a comprehensive rotation of inbound and outbound marketing, service and communication.
3. Divide and conquer – What becomes clear in those first points is that no one department owns social media. Depending on the industry, conversations usually align with distinct facets of business including service, marketing, product/service, HR, finance, etc. This is the beginning of the socialization of business. As relevant conversations and the information present within them are scrutinized, it becomes clear that they feed and are fed by distinct information. Prioritize and assign inbound and outbound activity based on a conversational workflow that reflects the nature of organized and relevant long tail discussions.
4. Adapt – Reactions to negative experiences don’t scale. Identifying recurring patterns of negative experiences and connecting emerging themes to those responsible in order to develop targeted and sweeping fixes negates widespread negative sentiment and alleviates unfavorable publicity. But it also does something more.
The acts of listening, responding and solving make for an adaptive organization. The process transcends lip service to action. As we all know, actions speak louder than words.
5. Design metrics into campaigns and measure performance – One of the primary reasons discussions around metrics and return on investment in social media are hotly debated today is because many of the examples we hear and see are designed without an outcome or measurable success designed into the program. That’s not to say that they’re any less important, however.
Metrics, by nature, are devised to document movement. As such, KPIs and ROI should get factored into the planning process of all social media programs. Introduce clicks to action, conversion opportunities and experiences with desirable outcomes, then compare activity and results to other programs to learn, focus resources and evolve with the market.
Social media is as dynamic and expansive as it is simple and complex. At the very least, the socialization of business is aspirational. We are competing for attention, affinity and commerce in forums where quick start guides and instruction manuals are in process of development and may never in fact, materialize. What’s clear, however, is that we are competing for both the present – and the future. Read more at www.briansolis.com |
Clark Quinn's post below made me realize that I can substitute "life" for "learning" in 90% of my recent writing. Informal living. I'll be revisiting this theme. In a conversation with my ITA colleagues (we keep a Skype channel open and conversations emerge daily), we revisited the idea that there’s a higher perspective that needs to be highlighted: social media is a business engine, both internally and externally! Jane Hart’s been helping clients with social media marketing, and this has been an entree to talk about social media for working and learning.
The point here is that conversations are the engine of business. (I mean conversations in the broad sense of discussions, collaborations, partnerships, productive friction, and more.) We converse, therefore we work. Just as, internally, innovation, research, new products etc are the results of interaction, so to are the external aspects of business. Market research is listening to customers, branding is conversations about value propositions, negotiations with partners and suppliers, RFPs, it’s all communication. And, the Cluetrain Manifesto has let us know that with the internet and more open information, we can’t control the conversation, we have to be authentic and engage in open communication.
So if we move up a level, we recognize that both internally and externally, to succeed we need to facilitate conversations. We need a social media infrastructure that allows stakeholders internally and externally to negotiate mutual goals and collaborate to achieve them. The successful organization needs to fundamentally rewire itself into a wirearchy. He who communicates best, wins.
Communication is fundamental to human nature; we’ve developed the ability to accelerate our adaptation to the environment by communication. We’ve moved from evolution to invention. We interact, therefore we are. I’ve largely been focused on internal dialog, but it’s clear that from an executive perspective, you need to realize that communication is fundamental, and social media is another technology lever to move the earth. We’ve been doing it with the phone and email, but there are so many more powerful tools to augment those now. We moved from the buggy to the automobile, and we can (and should) move from email to a rich social media environment. If we want competitive advantage, at any rate. And you do, don’t you? Read more at internettime.posterous.com |
This article almost gets is right. I'm a tremendous fan of John Hagel and JSB. Indeed Pull is the way of the future. However, there's always going to be room for some Push: it's the novices' on-ramp to making sense of Pull. You have to start somewhere.
Better Together: Moving From Push to Pull Learning
Mike Prokopeak
Corporate training is outdated. Uncertainty and change in today’s business environment mean that the model employed by many learning organizations to push out pre-built training is increasingly obsolete.
“Training programs are less and less relevant,” said author and consultant John Hagel. “It’s anticipating in advance what people are going to need when they’re going to need it. It tends to focus on knowledge that is already explicit and codified.”
Hagel is the co-author, along with John Seely Brown, of The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion. The book describes the ongoing shift in power from institutions to individuals through what the authors call “pull,” a mechanism that allows people to find and access relevant resources at the point of need. Hagel said the dominant model for institutions today is one that pushes, rather than pulls.
“Virtually everyone operates on the model that says that your first challenge is to forecast or predict demand and then to organize to make sure all the right people and right resources are in the right place to meet demand,” he said.
That model requires a tightly integrated and executed system, increasingly difficult to maintain in a rapidly changing environment.
“For a variety of reasons having to do with long-term trends playing out in the world, the ability to predict and forecast is more and more challenged and there’s a need to think about pull platforms, which allow you to draw out the right people and right resources wherever they’re needed, whenever they’re needed,” he said.
In a pull platform, talent development emphasizes on-the-job learning and informal structures rather than a formal training program. Pull learning gives people the ability to confront challenges and draw out the resources needed to develop solutions.
“The learning is actually a byproduct of facing unexpected challenges and ever-increasing performance requirements,” Hagel said. “If you really took that seriously, you would end up rethinking all aspects of the company from operations, how you design the organization, even what kind of business strategy you would pursue, and certainly what kind of technology platforms you would use to support them in their work environments.”
In addition to developing learning platforms that enable flexible learning, moving to a pull mindset requires redefining leadership. In a push world, leadership means developing a program and enlisting others to follow it.
“In a world of pull, it’s about helping people to develop the capabilities to become leaders in their own context so when they’re confronting an unexpected challenge they have the initiative and the questing disposition that will make them want to embrace that challenge and find creative ways of overcoming it and addressing it, and in the process learning from that experience,” Hagel said.
Hagel said two factors are largely responsible for the evolution of pull: digital technology and economic liberalization. The continued flourishing of technology shows no sign of slowing, driving more capability and uncertainty in the process. More liberal economic regimes increase the ability to move products, capital, ideas and people across geographic and industrial boundaries, thereby removing barriers to competition.
“Everything accelerates in terms of the change rate,” he said. “The uncertainty increases because new participants come in from out of nowhere and build scale very quickly, so it becomes a more challenging environment in terms of mounting competitive intensity, but also changing the basis of competition.”
For proof of the shift from push to pull, Hagel points to the long-term decline of return on assets for public companies in the U.S. Since 1965, return has gone down 75 percent and shows no sign of stabilizing, let alone turning around.
“That’s a huge red flag saying that the old world of push is more and more challenged,” he said. “We continue to hold on to the practices and institutions of push, but it’s yielding diminishing performance.”
Cultivating a proprietary knowledge stock is bound for failure. Instead, organizations should focus on creating effective knowledge flows that allow people to learn faster and replenish knowledge stocks at an accelerating rate.
“Anything we know at any point in time becomes more and more rapidly obsolete given the changing circumstances and conditions,” he said. “If all you do is hold on to what you already know and try to defend that and extract value from it, that’s a losing proposition. In this kind of world, it’s essential to really find ways to participate in a more diverse and expanding array of knowledge flows.”
External relationships may hold the key. Hagel said some of the most profound learning opportunities are not actually within the company, but at the edges — through partners, distribution channels and suppliers.
“It’s not just about talent within your own organization. It’s how do you connect relevant talent wherever it is and build the relationships where you’re going to learn faster together,” he said. Read more at www.clomedia.com |
Content is not what it used to be. Twelve years ago at a big video show in L.A., the CEO of a production company asked me what I did. I explained that I designed learning systems. Ah, he insulted me, "You're content."
One person's content is just context to another person. It's another way we dumb down the world.
[I wish Amplify would identify items like the following as a Comment to a post rather than the post itself.] Charles, as Michael responds, I suspect we need to redefine what “content” is. Certainly, the emphasis on complex, pre-packaged content (textbooks, e-learning tutorials etc) must shift to a more fluid, flow based model of content. In many respects, this is what informal, social learning embodies – the short comment, prompted reflection, trying things out, taking action – all intertwined with your daily life experience. Tools that can help nudge, structure, catalyse that experience will come to the forefront as we genuinely take more individual responsibility for our learning – as we won’t be able to rely on traditional institutions to provide the right support in the immediate future. Here in the UK, it’s reported that we will have 200,000 students not getting access to University education despite appearing to have the right grades and while the integrity of that process is an another debate, it looks like a growing contingent of students will avoid fees and the relatively glacial pace of learning on offer within the traditional route, and will take a very different path that is much more under their control and personalised to their needs.
As David Mitchell, a comedian, in the UK reflected (I paraphrase), “The education system provides 4 years of knowledge taking a leisurely 12 years to give it to you.” To which I might add, by which time you’ve forgotten most of it and with the remainder you’re still left unclear how to apply it in a useful and productive way.
Things can only get better…in the end. Read more at mfeldstein.com |
Another test of Amplify. How well can it clip a page from Flickr? I wish there were a way to edit this.
I've been using Posterous to highlight interesting things I find and to re-post stuff to Twitter and Facebook. Amplify can do the same thing. It might make sense for me to do these things through Amplify, autofeeding Posterous so I don't orphan people who follow me there. 
Once upon a time, the world was predictable. Isaac Newton had convinced us that every action resulted in an opposite and equal reaction. Rene Descartes thought and therefore, was. People made long-term plans. Logic ruled.
Then we realized that everything is connected. Outcomes result from the interplay of complex adaptive systems. Butterfly effects, asymmetry, and self organization abound. What emerges next is anybody’s guess. It’s time to shed the delusion that we are in control. Logic is oversimplification.
What’s a person to do when complexity turns our clockwork universe on its head? In a increasingly volatile environment, rigidity is suicidal. But how can we be flexible without being wishy-washy?
My colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance agree that we need to embrace complexity, not hide from it. Harold Jarche writes, “Few are bored with complex challenges. The more people who are engaged creatively, the more effective the organization will be and no, there isn’t a course you can take to address this.”
The undisputed authority in this field is Dave Snowden. In October, he’s leading a series of one-day executive seminars on Leading Through Complexity: A New Simplicity. Read more at jaycross.posterous.com |
I'm trying to get my head around my social media strategy. Amplify offers lots of options. I can autopost to Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, Posterous, Tumblr, Wordpress, Ping.fm, Friendfeed, Delicious, and Bit.ly. I maintain half a dozen blogs. I post comments all over the place. There are multiple communities, aggregators, specialized searches, and more. Half of these things are already posting to one another.
My demands are many. I try to optimize my learning -- and that requires discovery, reinforcement, conversation, participation and more. And I'm continually experimenting with new concepts. I want to reduce busywork but my monkey mind enjoys continuous diversity. I want to be able to inject new thoughts into my social net from any of my sources and I want to be able to recall my writing and interactions through simple searching; I have no patience for manual indexing.
Experience has taught me that I won't use an application very long unless it's lots of fun or a normal part of my workflow or both.
After chatting with Paul Simbeck-Hampson today, I'm pondering the appropriate role for Amplify in all of this. I'm going to sleep on it...
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