#dl09- Enabling user generated content

Presentation description

Post conference reflection:

This was the best presentation I attended,  i think. Perhaps my perspective is a bit stilted because I love the idea of developing a program that truly engages users to develop and govern content.

Also, it seems that although this project focused on developing a community for creating user generated content, it’s aim was to develop content that was formalized. Tests used for certifications (?).

A lot of work went into identifying and prototyping the process for all phases and identifying SME (Subject Matter Expert) participants.  I believe we can take away the major phases of design and implementation from the model shared with this project and evaluate how we can apply it to our own projects.

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How to scale?
1.Hire the right people (love what they do).
2.Have acess to community of dedicated.
3. Define rules of engagement.
4. Allow water cooler talk.
5. Holy Grail of scale get people to help other people.

Cisco learning network based on wiki

Exam colaboratory
Help incorporation of certification holders

Why?
Create a collaborative environment for item development.
Tap into a larger group of smes
Increase involvement of targ audience
Exam security.

Natnotes@
I heart this presentation@

Phases–
$$$$Zero phase
1. Define icentives
2. Define expectation
3. Define workflow
4. Build wiki interface used for collab
5. Recruit smes
6. Teach smes
7. Use out if the box people to manage dev of architecture. @This is key@

Example of incentives -
altruism (doing to help others)
100 pts for a book
StATus

Sme management:
Recruit and select
Make them feel part of ateam
Qualification test for smes
Virtual onboarding
Virtual orientation meetings

Define workflow (kiss- keep it simple):
Author writes item
Posts item
Peer review
Internal review
Author makes changes
Item is accepted and notified

Natnotes @this is a huge involved project. I love. @

$$$$Phase 1 Pilot:
Define pilot variables.
What did u learn from pilot?
Best practice prove the concept before you scale up.
What resources do u need to scale up?

MEtrics metric metrics
How long did it take to produce item
Review item?
How many revisions did it take?
How much time per reviewer.
Sme attrition rate.
Explain why they dropped.
Sme satisfaction
Smes tracked their time in a worksheet.
Anonymous online survey. Vovice?

Pilot was sucessful.
113 usable items
7certifications

What they learned from pilot
Review honor system no go
Need to set up expectations
Incentivize review process
Attrition rate high
Writing skills vary
Some smes didn’t get it

Incentives best practices.
Provide value.
Tap into intrinsic values too.
Make sure that the focus is not simply into the rewards.
Avoid diluting the value of what your giving away.

Question &&. How do u prevent item duplication????

Exams in English.
Collaborate with other languages Maybe not formal.

<<<>>>

$$$$$Phase 2 expansion operationalize

Phase 3 implement:
Where IT really comes in.
Automation

IP considerations
Determine what you want to protect.
Set up your agreement.
Work with ur legal dept.
See if satndard non disclosure will work.
Make sure orig items are presented.

Questions@ how long did this take?
What changemanagement challenges strategies?

Meaningful Conversations on Twitter

Click to view original posting

This is a very interesting assessment of the exchange that goes on in Social Media like Twitter. I can see the incremental increase in relevance. I’ve been really learning about the value of Twitter over the past few weeks.  The author, Rajesh Setty, notes that exchange on Twitter doesn’t really extend past the third level in this chart. This is engagement with others, not the engagement between oneself and the actual information you may find on Twitter. From this perspective, at least for me, Twitter actually does have a great deal of “Immediate and Future Relevance.”

I’m finding that Twitter not only connects me with more information relevant to my interests and my job, it also is helping me connect and learn about others through their blogs. I get an introduction to these folks via Twitter that I would never get from just a search for a different topic. Also, sometimes people’s skill with what I call the “Twit Wit” actually draws me to learn more about them and their blog. There is a certain “speedy Zen” about Twitter that I”m finding increasingly appealing. Even though Twitter is a bit limited when it comes to sharing and exchange, it’s a great doorway into the worlds of it’s many participants.

Fighting Management Preconceptions about Social Learning

I just found this wonderful preso on Social Learning. I kept on slapping thigh laughing as I read… “Oh yeah, that’s a good one!” For me the highlights were:

Yes, Play is OK - you need it to grow innovative, collaborative and fast-adapting employees.

“Control is an illusion” – Okay… this is where I slip into incredulous teenager mode: Duh! You can control what people are learning and sharing about as easily as you can keep water in a sieve.  The presenters note that “80% of learning happens outside” of formal learning systems in their control. This is “Informal Learning” in action. The faster leadership realizes that building a company culture where learning is valued, the quicker they will start fostering a truly effective organization. Also, it’s very important to build the expectation that employees are really responsible for learning (their job and how to enhance their work).

People already share bad information - no kidding. Everyone has experienced the grapevine effect in a workplace. Human beings honestly seek knowledge about the goings on, some need it to function and work effectively without fear. They will even speculate on management’s behavior when they have no information, which is why transparency is less dangerous than keeping your lipped buttoned.

I also really liked the fact that they provided some solutions for measuring ROI (Return on Investment).(CRUD: I actually wrote this section but it got lost in the blog ether when I was trying to save my post)  I think it’s possible to tie a company’s increased success to social learning initiatives through anecdotal stories.  Also, connecting increased levels of innovation could also be possible. Think James Burke’s Connections (the show from the early eighties). Much of the show argued that the worlds most famous and influential innovations such as the combustion engine would not have happened if people did not make connections with each other.  I think if you analyzed the history or development of a particular innovation at your company you can actually trace the connections that were needed to make the innovation happen. You may be able to identify whether or not these connections would have happened with the social networking  efforts in place.

Some excellent points were made, but I suspect that no amount of brilliant arguments will convince the hardcore curmudgeons that insist that Social Learning/Networking is bad and evil. My only question… Can I work for the folks who made this presentation?

Overcoming Top 10 Objections To Social Learning V2

View more OpenOffice presentations from Mzinga .

What Does the Ideal Virtual Workforce Look Like?

I was talking to my manager the other day about writing some sort of article that highlights the skills and talent needed to manage a virtual team. Last year I was able to briefly describe the ideal virtual employee. I decided to come up with characteristics for both virtual managers and virtual employees.  This is what I came up with so far… I’m still working on it.

Click on the image to view the full sized mind map

I based the qualities and behaviors of managers on several of the managers I’ve had in the past whom I felt to be highly effective. In a nutshell, I really liked/like working for these people and I’d pick up another job with them in a heartbeat if it was available.

Honestly, I feel that the first thing an effective manager of a virtual team does is hire ‘the right people.’  In a sense, half the chore of managing a team is done once they’ve hired the correct type of person. This isn’t easy, because good employees are often hard to come by, and I speak from my own experience on hiring panels in a corporate workplace. Often interviewees have been coached to “talk the talk,” and a hiring manager needs to be able to see through this. A good virtual manager will probe employees to see if they can truly demonstrate the qualities and behaviors of the “ideal virtual employee.”  Moreover, a virtual manager will request and thoroughly review a portfolio of the prospective hiree’s past work before the actual interview. They will aslo ask pointed questions about how the interviewee accomplished or made these portfolio items.

To be honest, when I enter an interview, I actually look for the behaviors I described above in the hiring manager.  I want to know that the person who’s leading me is capable of managing me and the whole team effectively. There’s nothing worse that being hired into an extremely dysfunctional team. I’ve often thought of scripting scenarios that take the best moments from interviews I’ve had with managers.  I’ve even thought of taking the best coaching moments I’ve experienced and sharing them.  So many of us have in the past worked for or currently work with poor managers, sometimes It’s good to know that there are good ones out there. While the economy is bad right now and many people might be willing to put up with working in a dysfunctional workplace, it’s still important to hire good managers (virtual or not) who encourage productive innovation. Innovation and the ability to change and adapt readily is what helps companies survive in succeed in trying times.

Addendum… thanks to Twitter, I’ve found a number of interesting articles on virtual workers:

• Is There a Virtual Worker Personality: Interesting article that argues that it’s the ’social butterflies’ who make the best virtual employees.
• Video: Managing in a Wired World: (Video) Importance of authentic communication in virtual management.

Okay… so now I understand what Twitter is all about

Image originally from the Morguefile. Click to view the original

I’ll admit the idea of telling people what you were doing at any given moment did not appeal to the side of me that adores my privacy. Also, being involved in conversations with others that absobed so much chatter didn’t spark the curiosity of that extremely methodical part of me.

Yet the side of me that has come to appreciate “Stream of Consciousness” really gets it.

But after first joining Twitter I can see what people like about it.

A few tricks I learned quickly to reduce the noise factor on twitter:

• The more followers/followees you have the faster the pace of the conversation. It’s good to search for conversations using “key words.” You can also save the chat
• You can easily save tweets you like by clicking the “Star” or favorites option.
• Just accept that you’re not going to get every piece of information being shared. Twitter is pretty ephemeral and it embodies that life of ephemerality characteristic of some aspects of “Internet life.”
• Make comments even ones that appear to have no point every now and then.
• If you’re sharing something cool include the link (be forewarned… if the link is too long you may not be able to share it. Hopefully, web developers out there whose pages require long urls are noting this. Or the twitter people might be able to develop a feature that allows you to associate links to text so you don’t go over the 140 character limit).
• Addressing someone directly requires including their Twitter ID (ie. @nlkilkenny) in your tweet or post.
• If you must, you can search through the archive of a saved search. Depending on the volume of a conversation you may be searching for sometime till you get to the beginning.

I’ve actually learned a lot this weekend on Twitter. Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I get this way when I learn a good deal of new and fascinating stuff.  I saved a search for Arduino technologies because I’ve very interested in learning how to make clothing and knitwear use electronic features using the Arduino Lilypad.

Arduino Lilypad

Can you imagine having a purse that’s hooked up to your cellphone so that it blinks a certain way when different people call? I’d also like to make some kind of garment (even just wristbands) for my brother that plays different sounds. He’s a musician that tries to bring traditional and non-traditional sounds and instruments together: OO-Ray.  I was searching through Make.com’s site and found some very fascinating applications with Arduino tech including this Fabric Synthesizer. What a wonderful way to showcase ingeniuity and creativity.

Art and textiles meet electronics and music

Brave New Web

My husband just sent me this interesting article in how “DreamWeaver is Dying.”

This isn’t a matter of bells and whistles, it’s absolutely fundamental. Ultimately a web site is all about content – posting it and making it findable – and Dreamweaver and the other static HTML editors have proven fundamentally flawed when it comes to these two core tasks (and features such as Dreamweaver’s libraries and templates are patches not solutions).

I think the lack of searchability is what really bothers me about putting pages up for our courses with DreamWeaver.  As the article points out, the model of authoring static webpages and managing html files from a central point may be going the way of the dinosaur, but I want to take some time to think about the future that is being hinted to us in this article.

The only feasible course for the future is for content to be posted by the content contributor, whether that’s the site owner or site visitors, and for the best possible navigation to be constructed around that content on the fly.

I’m okay with this, because I’ve been trained to ‘look for things’ using searches and to search for wording using the built in text finder in my browser. I’d argue that I have this so ingrained in me that I feel powerless and helpless when I cannot search for anything electronically. This afternoon I about had a fit because I was finding it difficult to use the Postal Zipcode index/book at the Post Office, so I called my husband and asked him to look up the postal code on the net. I even wondered… why the heck doesn’t the post office have access to this information via their computers? I and many others know how to navigate and search on the web, but what about those countless people who honestly don’t know how. We need to train them how to do this.

Not to mention we have to break them of the thinking that only ‘experts’ can manage and create content. Also, will this ability to have multiple ‘loci’ of control for content creation/editing cause confusion or even conflict? How can you train people to work with each other effectively and follow rules of etiquette for changes?

I know that it will probably be at least a few years before the idea of dynamically created and shared content will be universally accepted or as normal as e-mail.

As Tom Arah points out, this sort of change will present many opportunities for the “web designer who can adapt.” But how? I can think of a few things:

• Designers will need to chill out and let go of their old ways (no more sacred cows, more tasty innovative burgers)
• Designers will need to be able to effectively partner & communicate with developers to both learn how to manage dynamic content as well as the different possibilities available to them
• Designers need to know when different tools & widgets will be appropriate for managing and presenting content
• Designers need to learn how to manage & leverage user contribution/management of  content and build this to their design plan and possibly user training plan.

Understanding the 21st Century Learner

I’ve seen a few of these presentations floating around the web, but I’m sharing this one because it’s a good discussion piece for people to share with others. I found this on the Always Learning blog.

The 21st Century Learner

View more presentations from Kim Cofino. (tags: learner k-12)

We make this case all the time that the “Net Generation” learns differently than many of their predecessors. I’ve seen many adults view their children’s way of communicating and connecting with suspicion and fear.  It’s almost as if some of us adults are living in the movie Village of the Damned with all the Midwich Cuckoos. We’re really not quite sure how to handle the quirks of our progeny and we fear what they’re capable of because we don’t understand. Well, in the movie they really did have a reason to be afraid because the children were evil aliens.

You can actually view the entire movie on Youtube.

Of course, our children aren’t evil aliens. What a silly thought. I do still think that the young can benefit from experience and guidance, and this is something that we star-struck adults shouldn’t forget. Part of 21st century education should truly focus on teaching critical thinking because of all the information out there that young people must sift through to separate the wheat from the chaff. Critical thinking should be a behavior ingrained in young adults. They should be able to analyze the nature any subject including the advantages and disadvantages.  This type of thinking should be as natural as breathing.  I can think of an exercise that applies to the subject of electronic connectivity.

There are some advantages to being connected all the time, but there are always disadvantages.  I threw this image together in less than five minutes. I’m sure if I had the help of others the responses would be much richer. As I was listing the pros and cons it was clear that many arguments for had an opposite argument against. This is something that young people (and old ones too) should be able to perceive. They must also learn to use their best judgment to determine the path of action or reaction that is correct for them based on their list of pros/cons. Of course, this is no comfort for those who like to have clear plans of action or rules set down for them.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Electronic Connectivity

Change is Good, Change is Natural… Stasis is an abomination to nature

Excuse me while… I chew on this thought for a bit… I may wax philosophical. Things change. The seasons change. The Earth changes.   Geological records have proven that the Earth’s surface has changed many times over it’s long life. People change. Throughout history, technology has changed the way humans live, produce and interact with each other.  Do you think the emerging democracies could have occurred after the Middle Ages and Renaissance without the printing press and proliferation of ideas through books?

But why then do we so cling to the desire to ‘keep things the same?’ I’ve been wrestling with this idea ever since I can remember.  Maybe this explains my love of History. Perhaps humans naturally crave stability because they’ve spent much of their unrecorded and recorded history dealing with the seemingly unpredictable nature of the elements, disease, and natural events.  Animals respond to change via natural selection or development of instincts, but we actively try to stop change from happening or build constructs that allow us to thrive despite change.

What would happen if we had a ‘long memory’ for change?  Who would build communities or cities on a flood plain or riverbank if they had memory or records of constant floods? How would we deal with social change? Would we nod things off as just a fad that would pass or would we actually try to develop laws or social institutions that were meant to adapt to change? I’ve noticed that politicians rely on people’s limited memory of history in order to push their agendas or to get elected or re-elected into office. Sometimes I lament that we live such mayfly lives. Still, having this memory might actually cause use to become more conservative in our actions. Since we could better predict cycles of events because of our personal memories.

Someone had the foresight to build this house on stilts - Image from the Morguefile.

Resources/more stuff:

Why people resist change (from the Slow Leadership Site)

Is Web 2.0 over complicating things?

Technology allows me to be an ‘on-the-fly’ sort of tourist. I don’t have things planned out before I get to a destination like my parents did. They had travel agents who got them packaged tours where everything from morning wake-up to afternoon snack and evening meals were all scheduled on a daily plan. I shudder to think of enjoying travel in this way. I might read extensively about a place and it’s neighborhoods before I go, but if I know that I can have Internet access when I’m there, I pretty much leave it up to the moment. When we were vacationing in San Francisco, I did my usual thing… went straight to Google maps and searched for places that I wanted to see or needed to visit: food, shopping, neighborhood historical spots, or the nearest Rite-aid to buy a replacement pair of pantyhose. When I was searching for eating places and boutiques, I noticed that a number of places had websites. A number of restaurants sounded good, but they just had too much ricketa-racketa (flash) on their websites. Come on! I just want a menu… or maybe even photos to look at. I want to know what you’re store, business or restaurant has to offer. A few sites required me to download a plug in. Others sites seemed like some design nightmare similar to some conceptual art experience designed by an irritating esoteric character from Nathan Barley. Worse, important information like ’store hours’ or a phone number was often hidden under some cryptic heading other than the obvious ‘about us.’

I actually thought if their websites are this pretentious, then they must be pretty annoying. Ergo, I didn’t want to give them my business. The funny thing is some small mobile devices don’t play Flash very well. Often the information I needed could just be on a list. Yes, from a consumer’s point of view the web needs to be simple and easy to use. As Jakob Nielsen put it:

“Most people just want to get in, get it and get out….For them the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool.”

Pushing bells and whistles or other advanced features may be too much if you’re forcing them on users. On the other hand, people should be restricted to just using the ‘tried and true’ methods. Mr. Nielsen argues that focus on Web 2.0 development and applications is causing many website builders to forsake good design. But I think there’s a growing market/audience of people who know how to take advantages and use the newer web technologies. To be fair to these pioneering web developers… they’re still trying to figure out what works and how to make it work well. Though many business successes have demonstrated the power of social networking through blogs, wikis and social networks/online community. A product or service can take off if a few connected users or mavens start talking about it on the web.

From a web educator’s point of view, the web has great potential to bring people closer together and these tools are more than just ricketa-racketa. Also, users can work collaboratively to develop content from written text, to music, podcasts. They can even build on concepts and enrich discussion with video sharing.

If you read this article… Nielsen sounds kind of like (excuse my words) an old fogy… who predicts that people’s use and behavior with and on the Internet will not continue as they grow older. He predicts that Internet use will go down as people age. For the sector of society who will become more involved in the ‘creative’ and ‘technology’ economies this will not be the case. And, of course their use of the technology will change because technology changes. Something just tells me that Mr. Nielsen or his perception and vision of things is sort of …. stuck. Maybe things will be this way for me when everyone is plugging directly into USB (or some kind of electronic) ports or even buying cyborg bio-add ons… I just won’t get it or understand. (Of course, you know I’m joking about the cyborg thing… well sort of).

I finally got a Second Life

Now how the hell do I get down… I’m stuck flying, suspended in the air. (okay… I figured it out… click the Fly/Stop Flying button).

My avatar, Bunny Kiwitz, suspended in the air at the “Pier of Culture.”
All I need is an umbrella and a carpet bag.

My avatar, in the Second Life Orientation Plaza with her new ‘outfit.’

Thanks to the TCC conference I was able to get my first taste of Second Life. I’m not fully hooked yet, but intrigued and I see the range of possibilities in here. I can now see what they meant by “steep learning curve” when it comes to learning how to be proficient in S.L. I unknowingly hit the “fly” button and couldn’t figure out how to get down. Also there are so many features and controls to work with that I found it a bit hard to get my bearings. Fortunately, the NMC tutorial ‘plaza’ allowed me to walk through a ‘museum of exhibits’ that showed me how to become familiar with the controls and features in Second Life. I was also able to learn a few things about how to integrate into “Second Life Culture,” such as how to use gestures and how to properly chat with people in a group.

During the conference I also attended a lecture/debate on the popularity and future of Second Life. One of the arguments in support of Second Life as a learning environment was that today’s students interact with and process information much differently than their predecessors. Second Life give them the opportunity to access it in a virtual space as well as interact with peers from all over the globe. These “Digital Natives” expect instant access to information and rely on social networking to get and build information. They have a ‘digital literacy’ because they’ve been raised with interactive technology that we “Digital Immigrants” need to be aware of.

Second Life allows participants to actively build both simulated and fantasy models and interact with these models. It stimulates creativity and promotes simulated learning of real-life scenarios. It provides students with the ability to engage in “situated learning” and as the one lecturer quoted, “work together to create a shared understanding that none have previously possessed.”

The half of this lecture that countered the support for SL, argued that the learning curve for Second Life is so steep that it’s just too frustrating for some learners. They also made the argument that subscriptions to the virtual world are dwindling and that people enter and experiment but they do not stay or continue to return. Second Life is merely another techie fad that will eventually become obscure and dated in the wake of progress.

Another point that this person brought up was that all the businesses that invested in real estate in Second Life are now pulling out. Personally, I think that the failure is due to the fact that they took a rather two dimensional approach to applying SL. They simply used it as only a virtual store. How boring! They could have developed an interactive storyline or even learning material around their products, and, oh yes, they could have given more free stuff. Free stuff always hooks people even if it’s free ‘virtual’ stuff.

I have this theory about these new virtual/simulated environments… that is when we (or most of us who are not digital protoges) become immersed in them our first instinct is not to create new and innovative things. We build what’s most familiar to us. In all fairness to the corporate businesses, they were in a hurry (as they always are) to get a piece of the Second Life action so they hastily constructed what they thought would work.

I believe that both sides of this debate brought up valid points. Though I’m becoming convinced that Second Life does provide participants with the opportunity to learn in a rich and interactive environment. Perhaps in the future it will become easier to learn and use.

I was going for the one piece tracksuit thing… maybe not my style but, oh well.