Harold Jarche

Who’s your city, Canada?

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In Who’s Your City, Richard Florida focused on the US. Now we Canadians have an opportunity to tell our story. From The Creative Class Exchange:

Now, I’d like to ask for your stories about Canadian cities Tell me about the place you live. Why did you pick your city or region? How did you go about picking it – what was your strategy? What other kinds of places did you look at? How has that choice affected the rest of your life? Your job or career? Friends, family, or romantic interests? Fulfillment and fun? Real estate jackpots or money pits? Would you do it differently next time? What cities and regions are on your radar for the future and why? That’s it. 100 or 200 words, on any or all of those subjects. 300-500 words could be even better.

Ten years ago we chose Sackville, NB (pop. 5,000) as our home. I was taking early retirement from the military and I had the choice of moving anywhere in the country. I wanted to work in the field of educational technology and a position was available at Mount Allison University, so I started at the Centre for Learning Technologies. The job went away several years ago but we have stayed here.

The university, a hospital, proximity to an airport; coupled with small town living and reasonable real estate prices attracted us here. We have stayed because of the lifestyle, friends and the now the ability to work at a distance because of the Internet. Without the Net, we would not have stayed, as there are not a lot of good work opportunities in the area.

Photo of Sackville’s “famous” Mel’s Tearoom by Chris Campbell

It’s obvious that the Internet is an integral part of my work, so how has living far from any major urban centre affected my life? First of all, I have been involved in many aspects of our small town and could volunteer myself to death if I wanted to. I’ve had opportunities to be on a hospital board, work with a wildlife institute, get a renewable energy investment co-op started and lately help launch a community supported agriculture initiative. It’s the advantage of being in a small pond.

I also have been pushed to look far beyond our local area for work and professional development. Had I lived in a large metropolitan region I might have been able to find enough work locally and just been satisfied with that. Living out here in Atlantic Canada I’ve had to look far and wide for opportunities, hence my blog and my involvement with international groups and issues.

I would like to stay here, as it’s been a wonderful town to raise our two boys. Once they decide to leave home we may move but I don’t foresee a move to a mega-city. We live on a major rail line and even if gas prices go through the roof, rail travel to Montreal or Halifax would still be a good option. If we ever got our Commons going (maybe, who knows) then it would be one more reason to stay.

the community is the curriculum

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The title of this post comes from a line in Dave Cormier’s article on Rhizomatic Education published in Innovate: Journal of Online Education [free but registration required, and I’m not sure why they insist on this additional hurdle for access].

Why rhizomatic?

A rhizomatic plant has no center and no defined boundary; rather, it is made up of a number of semi-independent nodes, each of which is capable of growing and spreading on its own, bounded only by the limits of its habitat (Cormier 2008). In the rhizomatic view, knowledge can only be negotiated, and the contextual, collaborative learning experience shared by constructivist and connectivist pedagogies is a social as well as a personal knowledge-creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises. The rhizome metaphor, which represents a critical leap in coping with the loss of a canon against which to compare, judge, and value knowledge, may be particularly apt as a model for disciplines on the bleeding edge where the canon is fluid and knowledge is a moving target.

Is your field of expertise or your area of work on the bleeding edge? You may want to read Dave’s article.

Update: Dave has published the entire article on his blog. Thank you :-)

PKM – Personally Managing Your Knowledge

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Note: More recent version here.

This post marks my first direct link to the newly created Work Literacy site.

Learning is an individual activity that often happens with and is supported by others. We may learn on our own but usually not by ourselves. Unless we live on a desert island, we learn socially. In looking at how we can make sense of the growing and changing knowledge in our respective professional fields (e.g. Pluto is no longer a planet), I see two parallel processes that support each other. One is internally focused, as in “How do I learn this?” and the other is external, as in “With whom can I learn this?”.

Internally, we go through a process of looking at bits of information and try to make sense of it by adding to our existing knowledge or testing out new patterns in our sense-making efforts. The process I have developed for myself is to:

  • Sort,
  • Categorize,
  • Make Explicit, and
  • Retrieve

I have called this my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system, a term that is not original to me, and is based on the work of many others. There are also three externally focused activities that I believe complement our internal learning. These are to Connect, Exchange and Contribute. These internal and external activities are a way of moving from implicit to explicit knowledge by observing, reflecting and then putting tentative thoughts out to our “community”.

In the interest of not having an enormously lengthy blog post, the rest of this article is attached as a 5 page PDF. It elaborates each of the processes and describes some of the tools available. This is an extension of an earlier post, PKM – My Best Tool. Please feel free to share it.

Attached Document:

pkm-inside-outside

Open Source Social Networking Platform

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It seems that some folks have seen a business opportunity in developing an open source social network platform. From Insoshi’s website:

Insoshi is a product and a project. The product aims to be the best open-source social networking platform. The project is to make the product!

I posted my perspective on such an endeavour about six months ago on OS Social Networking Application. I thought for a while that Elgg had the makings of such a platform but it never really took off, except in a the educational field. We’ll see how Insoshi does and it’s good to have several OS options. I know that it will be a platform that I will look at for my clients.

I found out about Insoshi via Dan Martell on Twitter, so I’m sure the team at Spheric Technologies will be playing with it soon.

Performance, training, education and learning

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Updated 31 May

This thread starts with a presentation by Clark Quinn, which includes an examination of what he calls ePerformance tools. I think Clark’s work adds some clarification to the field and I agree with the intent to move away from the all-encompassing “learning” word, which is overused and misused.

Tony Karrer picks up on the ePerformance theme and notes:

I like the way he [Clark] stepped through the transition from thinking in terms of courses to thinking about broader uses of technology to support performance. His terminology around elements of what goes into ePerformance is a bit different than what I discussed in the learning circuits articles. The concepts are fairly similar.

This is followed by Stephen Downes take on the subject:

The main benefit of a term like ‘ePerformance’ for employers, I would say, is that there is no chance that learners will think that there is any intrinsic value to themselves in the transaction. Because if they did, then they would want to own the process, which is totally not what corporate e-learning is about.

I disagree with Stephen because a move toward performance and away from learning as the main objective of organisational interventions is much clearer. Performance is measurable, whereas learning is much fuzzier. organisations may say that they promote a learning culture, but all they really do is offer training. Sticking to performance also keeps the organisations out of the learning area

A performance-oriented intervention is focused on some type of desired performance that is made clear to both the organisation and the worker. The organisation wants stuff done and wants to be able to measure it. The worker wants to be able to show that it has been done and in return there is a financial transaction.

A focus on performance does not preclude organisation-sponsored learning activities. Many learning activities are obviously beneficial to the organisation, but usually not in an obvious and direct manner. Of course individual learning should be encouraged in the modern workplace where much knowledge work can not be finitely described in performance terms. But a focus on performance would have the advantage of avoiding “fire and forget” training/learning activities that waste everyone’s time.

There are many types of work performance that can be supported through tools, processes, incentives, training or other methods. A performance approach helps to ensure that what is done by the organisation is related to something that is articulated as beneficial to the organisation and the work that is done there. Human performance technology methods are one way of looking at these.

Learning is something that should be supported, but for the most part directed by the individuals. People who are not used to directing their learning will need support. I liken learning to morale. You cannot create an intervention, such as training, that will increase morale. Neither can you make people learn. You can have a work environment that supports individual learning, and there is no shortage of evidence that shows that this is good for the organisation as a whole.

My own working definitions of these terms [these are not robust, dictionary definitions, but just my own way of putting each term], which I often discuss here and with clients are:

Performance – something measurable and observable to achieve an agreed-upon objective.

Performance Support – tools and processes that support the worker in the desired performance, including, but not limited to, job aids.

Training – an external intervention, designed only to address a lack of skills and/or knowledge.

Education – a process with its main aims of socialization, a search for truth and/or the realisation of individual potential.

Learning – an individual activity, though often within a social context, of making sense of our experiences.

This means that training does not directly equate to performance improvement. Well-designed and conducted training can increase skills and knowledge if the individual is motivated and has the requisite abilities. So I would say that performance can be defined at the organisational level and training can be conducted by organisations. On the other hand, education is a social activity, usually run by the state or a non-for-profit institution. Learning remains an individual activity, with all of the variables of the human experience and much less clearly defined or controlled.

Organisations should get out of the learning business and focus on performance. Organisations can direct performance but they should only support learning. Individuals should be directing their own learning.

Thanks to my fellow freelancers

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Over the past five years I’ve had the opportunity to work with, or at least try to find work, with other independent business people. In most cases we’ve worked without any contract, non-disclosure agreement or other formality. We’ve just trusted each other and it’s worked out. I’d like to thank my fellow free agents for all of their help, especially in helping me get to the five year mark (officially next week).

Here are some great people with whom I’ve shared a common project:

Will Pate – a serial entrepreneur and the smartest young guy I know

Alec Bruce – an excellent writer and commentator on the local political scene

Hal Richman – who has much experience and wisdom

Patti Anklam – smart and insightful

Marquis Bureau – a real diplomat to work with

Jay Cross – a wealth of knowledge and ideas, and fun to work with

Jim Pickard – the hardest working partner I ever had (and an engineer to boot)

Vaughn McIntyre – an experienced executive who really understands business

Rob Paterson – a true visionary

Bryan Chapman – an expert in his field and a gentleman to work with

I’ve worked with a lot of companies, but we freelancers share many of the same issues and values, and I feel a certain camaraderie with them.

I also look forward to increasing this list over the next five years, especially with our newly-formed Le Café (Jay Cross; Dave Gray; Jane Hart; Clark Quinn and George Siemens).

Photo by mpd

Time Out

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Time is used to measure a lot of things in my professional world. Many people bill by the hour or the day. I have a daily consulting rate but I prefer a fixed fee linked to deliverables. In the e-learning field there is always talk about an “hour of courseware”, though no one has ever figured out how to measure it. Instead, we just merrily go along in this fantasy time zone as if we knew what we were measuring. After all, most people have bought into the notion of the industrial “person day”.

Michele Martin thinks it’s time to move away from this focus on time, and I agree.

What I find really interesting is that we finally have technology that makes it possible for us to do most work anytime, anywhere, yet we continue to stick with our same old paradigms of working in a particular location during certain hours. We also stick by our belief that time is the best measure of what we do, rather than results.

Shifting away from time and focusing on results is relatively easy for a consultant. However, I still have clients who want work described in days of effort, not results. Making this change for salaried employees would be a major workplace cultural shift and I’m not sure that it will ever happen. Salaries, working hours, and time & motion studies are part of the industrial economy’s DNA. Trying to change this would be difficult, if not impossible.

I think that a Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE) is not really possible in a workplace that is built on industrial management models. ROWE may be possible in pre-or post industrial work but not in hierarchical organisations. You can see it in a film production, with major actors getting paid by the film, not by the hour. You also have ROWE in piece work, reminiscent of pre-industrial cottage industries. I cannot see ROWE where you have more than one or two levels of management, but that is the structure in most medium and large businesses, bureaucracies and non-profits. On the other hand, I’m sure a change to ROWE will come to many more fields of work as generations shift and time on task is seen as largely irrelevant.

An ecosystem of knowledge

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Jon Husband dragged up an older post about blogging, that concludes:

Finally, an ecosystem of knowledge can develop that consists of the aggregated sets of links and content the participants in a blogalogue create. And this “body of knowledge” and understanding remains online, available to anyone who cares to become involved.

Advocates of blogging know how valuable our blog knowledge base is for our work and learning. I have over a thousand posts, several thousand comments and connections with hundreds of other blogs on a wide variety of subjects of professional interest ranging from schooling to the semantic web. The value of having a blog, reading other blogs, using a feed aggregator and making my bookmarks social and searchable has very tangible benefits. I’m actually more productive.

In spite of the obvious benefits, it’s still a challenge to get adoption of these tools and techniques with non-blogging professionals. Unfortunately, it takes more than a few blog posts to see how these can become a knowledge base or how they enable you to connect with others. The benefits take a while before they’re “obvious”.

After my first workshops on Personal Knowledge Management (using social bookmarks, aggregators, blogs etc., to make sense of digital information flows) I saw about 1% of participants actually try to adopt some of these tools. Perhaps three or four tools are too much at once, and any move to co-creating knowledge should start with the basics and only proceed to the next tool once there is a level of comfort. Here’s an idea/suggestion:

  1. Move your Bookmarks online using Social Bookmarks and some common tags for your group/team (1 – 3 months).
  2. Set up an aggregator for each worker, with a few pre-selected sites and have people Tag any posts of interest, using the Social Bookmarks that they now use (3 – 6 months).
  3. Create company or team multi-user blog focused on one area of interest or practice. Something like external training activities may be a safe place to start, with comments on how pertinent these were for those who attended (give it a year).

Your valued opinion on work and life in the 21st Century

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Nine Shift

One of my favourite blogs is Nine Shift and the book of the same title is still worth reading, even after being in publication since 2003. Bill & Julie have recently been asking several questions that warrant comments, so I’m linking to them here:

What you are doing in response to expensive gas.

If you have a feature special to you in your home office.

Whether students should be penalized for late work.

Whether you think the web will help close the gender pay gap.

Here’s a snippet from the book:

As we will see, the Internet is behaving exactly in the same way as the automobile did 100 years ago in its impact on society. The auto is not used here as an “analogy”, which is defined as something “somewhat similar”. Instead the influence of the Internet on our lives is exactly a replay, a mirror, of the influence of the auto on society 100 years ago. The outcomes will be different of course, but the forces and how these forces interact and change our lives, are the same.

This book is not really about the Internet. It is more about the consequences and changes of the Internet, about how the Internet is changing how we work, live and learn in this century.