Harold Jarche

The end of content-centric business models

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Fewer people believe that “content is king” in the online learning world. However, many e-learning business models are built on some aspect of content creation. Community and context are the two critical factors in developing e-learning environments. For example:

  • Courses online; Community = your cohort; Context = a relevant (to you) credential
  • Performance support; Community = your peers; Context = current need
  • Knowledge Management (especially PKM) ; Community = those with shared interests; Context = Maslow’s higher needs of esteem and self-actualization.

These thoughts were triggered by Rob Paterson’s post that Getting paid for content is over:

All business models must be based on something that is legitimately scarce. Today, no matter how expensive it is to make, content will become freely available quickly. So much music is free that you cannot legitimately charge much for a song. So much film is free that you cannot charge much for a move. So much information is free, that you cannot charge much for it (Britannica). This is a reality – so you have to get over it and find another area that is legitimately scarce where you can find value. So where is it?

What happens to e-learning business models when content declines in value? Will it be more profitable to a have a learning content management system or a people connecting (e.g. Facebook) system? If the best lectures & videos are available online for free, why build mediocre substitutes? What will happen to custom content development?

I’m not saying that these changes will happen immediately, but there does seem to be a trend toward free and ubiquitous digital media. Isn’t it just a matter of time before it hits the e-learning field?

The knowledge economy is the trust economy

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From the Creative Class blog is part of a WSJ article on telecommuting:

“When companies allow employees to work remotely or from home, they are explicitly communicating to them that ‘I trust you to be dedicated to the accomplishment of the work, even if I’m not able to observe you doing it,’ ” says Jack Wiley, executive director of the institute, which is in Minneapolis. “It boils down to respect,” he says. “I respect you and I have confidence in your commitment to the work — to do this under the conditions and at the time you feel will be most productive for you.”

Lack of trust is a major barrier to using decentralized methods and processes that enhance information sharing and collaboration, two factors for success in a knowledge economy. However, many of our industrial organisations are not exactly jumping on the telecommuting bandwagon. Articles in the main stream press are indicators that the status quo may not last.

As I’ve been working on my own for several years now, I see first hand the advantages of distance work. It’s good for the environment, cheaper, and I’m happier and more productive when I’m in control of my schedule. Meetings are less frequent and usually more focused. I’ve noted before that collaborating at a distance is sometimes more effective than being in the same room.

Trust is the glue that holds knowledge organisations together, not rules and regulations.  It’s something to consider when developing a recruitment and retention strategy.

e-Learning Bootcamp Next Week

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Join Me at The Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference Community!

This is my “quick connect card” for the Innovations in Learning Conference. One week from today, Janet Clarey and I will be conducting a workshop [a.k.a. Bootcamp] on e-learning. We’ve had a chance to talk to some of the participants and the final outline is shaping up. We’re planning on using a flexible framework and hope to run it more like an unconference.

Themes so far include e-learning today & tomorrow,  case studies, networks & informal learning and personal learning environments. There are still a few places left if you’re interested in this pre-conference workshop on 24 September in Santa Clara, California.

Green4Generations

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Update: Green4Generations has its own website.

Saturday was the first Green4Generations festival and trade fair in Sackville, organised by Wanderlust outfitters. Many groups came out to show what can be done locally to reduce our environmental impact. The day ended with a presentation by Peter Corbyn of The Inconvenient Truth slideshow, which was worth seeing a second time for me. For a town of 5,000 people we have a lot going on, from a solar heating company to recycled art and a green builders cooperative.

One of the newest groups is our community supported agriculture (CSA) association which launched its first local vegetable service this Summer. The main driver behind this initiative, in addition to local demand, is a young family that has decided to create a better world by growing food in a sustainable way. Kent and Ruth run Nature’s Route Farm just outside of town and have been supplying weekly food baskets to 20 families. This is expected to grow to 60 families for next year, and the produce includes local vegetables as well as eggs. The Sackville CSA also sources organic flour from Speerville Mill and other seasonal delicacies.

To really combat global warming, we all have to get involved, politically and locally. Here is Kent at the Fair, and his reason for involvement is pretty obvious:

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Blogging in the Public Sector

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Several people have already mentioned the report by David Wyld on, The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0. This is a US-centric report that not only covers the public sector and elected officials but has a fairly comprehensive section on the history of blogging. For anyone not engaged and wanting to get up to speed, this report would be a good addition to the book Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.

It’s too bad that Wyld’s report is only available as a 7.2 MB PDF, but it’s suitable for those who prefer to read from paper (maybe on an airplane). From the report is a quick review on why you should blog (something that is still asked a lot):

Yet, the most important part of blogging may not be obvious to the blogger himself, as the very exercise of writing the blog raises one’s self-awareness. And by virtue of its being in the public sphere, “these fragments, pieced together over months, can provide an unexpectedly intimate view of what it is to be a particular individual in a particular place at a particular time” (Blood, 2000, n.p.). According to a recent survey of bloggers, approximately half of them view their blogging activity as a form of therapy (eMarketer, 2005b). Indeed, writing has been shown to be an extremely powerful activity; the more one writes, the better one thinks (Manjoo, 2002b). This can be an important method of self-development for everyone. For executives or public officials, this means they can use the blog as a means of self-analysis; at the same time, the organization’s stakeholders can gain a better awareness of the individual in the office. In the view of Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, a blog can be looked upon as “the record of the exhaust of a person’s attention stream over time.” He continued, “You actually feel like you know the person. You see their style, the words they use, their kids, whatever there is” (quoted in Penenberg, 2005, n.p.).

Netiquette 2.0

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I recently received another request for information about blogging. It could have been e-learning, Web 2.0 or some other area, but a freelance writer found me online and asked for my input for an upcoming article. For the past several years I have given free advice and comments to anyone who asks. Here are two examples:

  1. A few months back I received a well-worded request for an interview from Joe Horne, as part of a graduate class project of his. I consented to the interview, at a time of my choosing, and we had a great discussion. Joe followed-up with a handwritten thank you card. I must say that Joe’s extra effort was really appreciated.
  2. This week I answered a series of questions that had been e-mailed to me by a freelance writer for a business magazine, without any previous contact. There was an additional request that I respond within two days. I answered the questions almost immediately and sent off my response. So far, not even a thank-you in return.

After four years in the free information business I wonder if I should have a policy on being a source. I have no hesitation in helping any bloggers who also make their information available. I also don’t mind helping researchers and students who are disseminating their findings. However, I’m starting to feel used in providing free (and synthesized) information or advice to someone who is being paid to collect it.

This issue has reminded me of a story that I previously reported, in Good manners are still important. It was about an uninvited “professional” dropping in on some bloggers and expecting to be treated as an equal, or even a celebrity. This uninvited guest assumed, incorrectly, that the corporate hierarchy prevailed.

In a wirearchy, your position means much less than your value to the network. For instance, everything on this site is free and licensed for sharing and all of the content is searchable. This adds a certain amount of value to the overall network.

A few years back, Netiquette was about “NOT ALL CAPS” and enhancing communications. Netiquette 2.0 should focus on sharing and enhancing the network, not just drawing from it.

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Local Industry and Researchers Gather

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Last night was the monthly gathering of the Moncton area knowledge and IT industry, hosted by Mount Allison University’s research services. I really enjoyed Bruce Robertson’s presentation on his work with the semantic web, and more specifically the Historical Event Markup and Linking Project. It’s great to know a professor of Classics who also runs his own Linux server.

Another event of note that was announced last night is the free Ruby on Rails workshop to be held in Moncton on 10 Oct 2007, to be followed by a two-day training session. The host, Spheric, is a local company that has embraced open source development applications in order to better grow its business and offer enterprise-level software.

Web tools for critical thinking

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A few years back, Dave Pollard wrote a post on critical thinking and it’s one that I’ve referred to a few times since. I think that real critical thinking is a key survival skill in our global, digital surround.

What I think really needs to be taught is critical thinking as a defensive skill. We all think logically, but we can be fooled. Inadvertently or maliciously. If I were to design a Critical Thinking course it would quickly cover the basic cognitive skills, and provide some exercises for students to get these muscles working, and would then focus entirely on learning to challenge intellectual deception.

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Almost every interest group in the world is now on an information & marketing offensive. It’s what Seth Godin calls a Marketing War, and if every corporate, government and special interest group masters it, we had all better watch out. To fight this war, we now have a few new tools at our disposal to help us question assumptions, including our own.

Looking at several web tools from the perspective of critical thinking, and the processes described by Dave, shows something similar to a personal learning environment (PLE). You could call it a PLE with an attitude, or PKM, and educators can start with the book, “Teaching Defiance“.

PLE’s et al

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“But it’s alright now, I’ve learned my lesson well.
“You see, you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself” Ricky Nelson

I’ve been getting some questions about personal learning environments and of course hearing and reading lots about them in the past few months. If I thought about the PLE, it was a concept around the use of tools and processes to be a better learner. The PLE was akin to the process of personal knowledge management (PKM), in that it was a sense-making effort.

Some of the discussions around PLE’s seem to be going in the direction of PLE-as-platform, like a learning management system (LMS).  Having a “PLE in a box” might please everyone, but learners have to please themselves.

Tom Haskins has been adding excellent insight into this conversation, first with The LMS vs PLE Debate and then  Growing PLE’s from Seed and now PLE’s come in sizes :

When we think of Personal Learning Environments as things, we are on the same page as construction workers, factory stewards and warehouse operators. We are dealing with the components to assemble a PLE. We describe the PLE as “what we’ve got in it” like Web 2.0 tools and archives of our own creations.

When we think of PLE’s as processes, we’re on the same page as designers of architecture, software interfaces and customer experiences. We’re dealing with what components do, how they function, what purpose they serve, and which difference they make. These intangible qualities are more difficult to visualize.

It’s like electricity, which can be thought of as particles or as a current. PLE’s, in their current free-form, are what individuals are putting together because the tools are cheap and available. The processes are drawn from many fields – knowledge management, cognitive science, information architecture, etc. These processes, with newer tools every day, are fairly ill-defined.

Who knows where the PLE will go, but let’s give it a chance to grow first. Seeing how various artists use some kind of PLE would be fascinating and much more informative for our field than any standard PLE format selected by company ABC for all of its employees.