Harold Jarche

Conversations create markets

by

Markets are conversations and conversations create markets.

What follows is a case study that shows how important conversations are in the marketplace and especially in our ubiquitously connected world.

I have been using SmartDraw for several years and made my first post about this diagramming software in May 2004. I was approached by the company and asked to write a testimonial, which I did for free. I later became an affiliate which meant that I could place “click-through” ads on my site and I would get a commission on any subsequent sales.

This year I downloaded the new version, SD2007, and checked it out. I liked the look and feel and found it easy to use. The company had changed the free trial period from 30 days to 7 days, so I didn’t have a lot of time to test it. I decided to wait before purchasing SD2007. I posted my opinions on this blog on 31 October.

What followed were a number of questions and comments, mostly negative. I tried to help out those who commented and personally replied to some of them. This post became the unofficial SmartDraw complaint site, because there was no public forum offered by the company. In the course of the last month and a half, traffic to this post has been steady:

  • Searches containing word SmartDraw (mostly Google) that came to this site since 31 October – 211
  • Visits to my blog post on SmartDraw since 31 October – 411 (this doesn’t include any views from RSS aggregators)
  • Click-throughs to the SmartDraw download page:
    • November (negative comments began in mid-November) – 22 Clicks and 12 Downloads.
    • December to date – 3 Clicks and 2 Downloads.

Someone also set up a wikipedia page on SmartDraw, though its commercialism was in question, and even decided to link to my post. The link to my site is currently not there, perhaps because of the negative comments (5) on my post.

I signed up as a SmartDraw affiliate as an experiment with online advertising. I liked the product and felt comfortable endorsing it. The SmartDraw ad was not as “in your face” as Google Ads, so I thought it would be better for my viewers. During the course of over two years I’ve earned about $150 in commissions. I noticed that of the people who clicked-through this year, 70% downloaded the software but only 4% actually purchased it. Given the negative comments I’ve received and the lack of company response to the issues raised, I doubt that I will purchase SD2007 in the near future.

Let’s go back to the Cluetrain Manifesto, from which we get the initial thesis that markets are conversations. In this case, I think that theses 11 and 12 are much more pertinent:

11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

SmartDraw is a small business, not some multinational corporation, and I’m sure that they’re trying to do the right thing. However, at this time SmartDraw is not engaging its customers in real conversations. Instead, customers are venting on my site, because there is no other place to go. A company blog, or an evangelist who knows what’s going on inside the company, would be quite helpful right now.

Staying quiet and letting others carry the conversation is not in the best interest of SmartDraw. It’s not in the best interest of any company. With blogs and powerful search engines, anyone can find out who is talking about your company. If your company doesn’t make it easy for customers to converse on your website, then they’ll find somewhere else to do it.

The Cluetrain left the station a long time ago; 1999 to be exact.

Update: Paul Stannard, CEO of SmartDraw has added a detailed comment on the evolution of the product to my original post.

sd8_box_suite.jpg

When oligopolies win, people lose

by

Warning: Rant Ahead

Windows does it again. This evening I rented a DVD from our local movie store. I decided to watch it on my PC, a Dell XPS M1210, which I recently purchased for almost $2K. I had already watched a movie on it and had used Dell’s CinePlayer, which worked well.

On loading the movie (an older movie: Memphis Belle), I couldn’t get it to run in CinePlayer, Creative’s Media Center, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. Here was one of the messages:

Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because a problem occurred with digital copyright protection.

Basically, I was locked out by my software. I put the the DVD on my older Windows PC and it played like a charm.

So; I can rent a legal version of a movie and my software can decide that I cannot play it. Who are the pirates here? The oligoplolists who try to control every aspect of our lives with usurous “End User Licence Agreements” and copyright protection that protects everyone but the paying customer? I say bring on the “pirates” and bring down the big media oligopoly! Let’s keel-haul the bilge rats.

Informal Learning on the Road

by

informl_member.jpg
I’m heading out on the road in 2007. I will be giving a one day workshop on informal learning in Ottawa on January 30th, through CSTD. Time and location will be posted early in January. If you plan on attending, please feel free to contact me with your preferences or issues you’d like to explore. After three online unworkshops, I’m excited about trying out this new face-to-face technology ;-)

Immediately after the Ottawa workshop I’m jumping on a plane for ASTD TechKnowlege in Las Vegas. Jay, Judy and I will be presenting on informal learning on February 1st.

I’m really looking forward to seeing old and new faces and engaging in some good corridor discussions. The informal stuff is always the best.

Shaping versus Modelling

by

Dr. Clare Brant was the first Aboriginal psychiatrist in Canada and a professor of Psychiatry at University of Western Ontario. In 1982 he presented Mi’kmaq Ethics & Principles, which included an examination of the differences in teaching between native and non-native cultures.

Now the Teaching; Shaping Vs. Modelling

This is a more technical kind of thing. The white people use this method of teaching their children – it’s called ‘shaping’. Whereas the Indians use ‘modelling’. Shaping is B.F. Skinner’s ‘Operant Conditioning”, if you want to look into that one. Say a white person is teaching a white kid how to dress – he uses the shaping method, one way being “rewarding successive approximations” of the behaviour he wants. Some are really complicated; for instance, if a white woman wants to teach her kid how to dress, she puts his sock on halfway and encourages him to pull it up, finishes dressing him and says he’s a good boy having done that much. The next day he learns to pull the whole sock on, then the other sock. Now that process takes about six weeks. But the white mother who does not have all that much to do can take that time to do that sort of thing every morning to teach her kid how to dress. So in this group that we ran, with these young Native people in London, we started to sniff this out, and there is nothing random about this, as a matter of fact. I asked Mary, a Native person, how she taught her kid to dress and she said, “I didn’t, he just did it.” And I said, “Well, what do you mean?” It came to me that she did it until he was four or five years old, and then one day when the kid felt competent, he took over and did it himself. He did it then ever after, unless he was sick or regressed in some way.

Brant concludes this section by stating:

I’ve been having some collaboration with a professor of education, and he says that modelling is the best way to teach people. But shaping is the method that has to be used because there is so much information that has to be imparted in the system that you cannot use modelling. I suppose that the ultimate method would be for the teacher to go up to the blackboard and do algebraic equations for 7 or 8 months and invite one of the kids to come join him and do one with him. and maybe if one of the kids got interested, or knew how to do it, he could start solving the algebraic equation. But that’s not going to happen in the school system. There’s just not enough time.

I think that our industrial society has come full circle and in a McLuhanesque reversal we are overwhelmed by information. No longer can we use shaping but we have to reverse back to modelling. Shaping worked when our environment was complicated, but it is now complex. As knowledge expands and new information is constantly added, who has the base knowledge to do the shaping anyway? In our internetworked world, modelling how to learn is a better strategy than shaping on a pre-defined curriculum.

As can be seen by Dr. Brant’s examples, with modelling the learner is in control and with shaping the teacher is in control. This takes me back to something we were told about toilet training children.

Q: How long will it take if you train (shape) them?

A: About 3 months.

Q: How long will it take if you let them learn (model) by themselves?

A: About a quarter of a year.

Gracian on Learning

by

I dusted off the cover of a book I bought many years ago, and found some words of wisdom. The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658) to be exact. I found several that relate to informal learning in organisations.

Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than through grave teaching.

The wisdom passed along in conversation has meant more to some than the seven arts, no matter how liberal.

Much of our lives is spent gathering information. We see few things for ourselves, and live trusting others.

A shortcut to becoming a true person: put the right people beside you.

Nothing bewitches like service to others, and the best way to win friends is to act like one. The most and best we have depends on others.

The art of conversation is the measure of a true person. No human activity calls for so much discretion, for none is more common. It is here that we win or lose.

monk.jpg

Pre-Christmas Spam Sale?

by

I’ve been averaging 200 – 300 comment spam per day over the past few months. Today, my comment spam has bounded like twelve lords a leaping to over 1,500 in the past 24 hours. Luckily, all of the comment spam has been caught by the Akismet spam plug-in for WordPress. According to the Akismet site, “93% of all comments are spam”, and my own stats confirm that.

Thank you, Akismet. You are doing the world a great service.

Centre for Learning Technologies – Lessons Learnt

by

As I was going through some old reports I came across an article I had written about the CLT. My first job out of the military was as Project Manager (Learning & Performance Systems) at the CLT. This was probably the best job I ever had and much of what we did has formed the basis of my current consulting practice.

Today, many higher education institutions are creating innovation centres that are outwardly focused and revenue-generating, so in the spirit of learning from our experiences, I’m posting the article here.

Overview

The Centre for Learning Technologies (CLT) was an applied research, consulting and resource centre for the use of new media in learning, knowledge management, and workplace performance support. Bridging the gap between research and practice, the CLT aimed to link learning theory, business practices and research to real-world, organizational challenges and applications. Clients included private corporations, public organizations and higher education institutions. The specialized consultants and researchers were located at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB.

The Centre offered an objective source of resources and services through four market offerings, each with projects focused on learning, knowledge management, and performance support. The four market offerings were:

  1. Innovation Practices
  2. Professional Services
  3. The Learning Community
  4. Usability, Human Factors Specialty Center

These areas had been identified as gaps during an industry assessment conducted by the CLT with the support of the New Brunswick Government’s department of economic development. The four areas above were identified as niche areas, with no other organizations in the region offering these services at the time. The project areas: learning, knowledge management and performance support were identified as growth areas in the Organizational and Performance Improvement fields and corresponded to the expertise available at the CLT.

History

The Centre for Learning Technologies was established in 1996 at Mount Allison University. The Centre was created through the support of several private and public organizations, with the majority of the funding coming from ACOA. Assistance came in many forms including start-up operational funding, capital financing and business guidance. Funding for capital costs, such as the new building, was in the range of $3.5M while operating capital was approximately $200K.

Contributing partners included:

  • NBTel (now Bell Aliant)
  • Digital Equipment Corporation (later Compaq – HP)
  • Andersen Consulting (now Accenture)
  • Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA)
  • Federal Government Infrastructure Program
  • Royal Bank of Canada
  • Bragg Communications
  • Mount Allison University
  • Weston Foundation

One of these contributions, the secondment of a business development officer, spanned a period of two years. The original concept for the CLT was as a multimedia Centre of Excellence with a mandate to help the university and organizations across Canada in the area of new media learning. The mandate and focus of the CLT changed as it developed, moving to a focus on bridging the gap between applied research and practice in workplace performance. The main rationale for this move was the requirement to become revenue-generating and self-sustaining after its first year.

During its five years in operation (1996-2001) the CLT generated about 85% of its costs. The remaining 15% was covered by the university. By its last year, the CLT was closing this gap. The university’s administration decided to close the CLT in the Spring of 2001, citing lack of profit and little alignment with the university’s main business of undergraduate education as reasons for closure.

Observations and Lessons Learnt

  • The lack of operating capital (barely enough for Year 1) forced the CLT into a business model that pushed it away from the university’s core mission, thus alienating the Centre from any potential internal supporters.
  • The CLT was not aligned with a specific academic department. The original intent was to have the CLT work with the Education Faculty, but this department was closed just as the CLT was created.
  • The revenue-generation mandate forced the CLT to focus on external clients and strong relationships with internal university departments did not develop. There were few internal champions of the CLT at Mount Allison University.
  • The original proposal for the CLT spoke of considerable potential revenues and profits. These unrealistic expectations did not help in seeking funds to offset revenue shortfalls.
  • It took five years for the CLT to develop a professional reputation and a client base. By 2001, clients were approaching the Center directly.

Communities of Practice – Patented

by

I see that Jay Cross has been having a conversation about the term Community of Practice (CoP) and in response to Nick’s question, wrote:

>Why do you want to change the term ‘communities of practice’?

Nick, in Denver this October, quizzical faces peered at me when I used the term Communities of Practice. There were only thirty to forty people in my audience. I asked “How many of you are familiar with the term Community of Practice?” No one raised a hand.

I don’t buy your argument that ‘any really useful concept should be initially opaque’. Instead, a new concept should at least relate to its origins. Horseless carriage, wireless phone.

Writing ‘your wish to change the name: dynamic guild misconstrues what I meant. I wrote that “we didn’t find what we were looking for”. The best we could do was not good enough. I’m still searching.

CoP are too important to be stuck with a label that takes time to understand. Let’s not permit semantic conservatism to block progress. This is not the first time this has come up nor will it be the last. See “How about an Order of Slimehead?” at http://internettime.com/?p=693

Well, it may be that we’ll have to pay to use the term CoP anyway. From Dave Pollard, I’ve learned that one more ridiculous patent (#7127440) has been issued by the US Patent & Trademark Office:

A method is provided for establishing a community of practice including a plurality of users, one or more experts, and one or more community of practice managers. A need for a community of practice is identified. The roles and responsibilities of participants in the community of practice are identified. One or more goals are identified for the community of practice based on the identified need. A plurality of the participants in the community of practice collaborate to achieve the identified goals.

Inventors: Jeanblanc; Anne H. (Galva, IL), Coffey; James M. (Peoria, IL)
Assignee: Caterpillar Inc. (Peoria, IL)
Appl. No.: 09/995,822
Filed: November 29, 2001

I remember a sign that was posted in the Officers’ Mess in Wainwright, Alberta. It said, “Let not common sense become so rare that it is mistaken for genius”. Perhaps this sign should be shipped to the USPTO.

Informal economy; informal learning

by

I’ve read most of the Toffler’s books over the years, including Future Shock, The Third Wave and Powershift; and have yet to read Revolutionary Wealth. I agree with Lawrence Fisher (S+B) that the value in their work is not crystal ball gazing but making sense of various patterns:

In retrospect, Mr. Toffler was less a reliable prophet than a brilliant synthesist. Future Shock and its successors, The Third Wave (Morrow, 1980) and Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century (Bantam, 1990) were at their best not when predicting what would happen, but when drawing from a vast array of disciplines – science, technology, sociology, and religion – to explain the circumstances of the world at large.

Their latest book says that we are seeing huge growth in the informal economy, “According to the Tofflers, countless other industries and institutions face waves of “prosumers”, who produce and consume products and services outside the monetary economy. This is a historic change in the way wealth is created, the Tofflers write, spearheaded (for now, at least) by the United States.”

Here are some thoughts on education from the interview:

S+B: In the book, you write of education’s failure to move from the industrial age to the knowledge economy. Is homeschooling a prosumer response to this crisis?
TOFFLER: Yes, now that you mention it. It is an important and growing form of prosuming. The parents do it themselves, because the market does not supply what they want or need, or for that matter what the market needs.

Think about how we learned to use personal computers. PC use went from zero to hundreds of millions of people who know and use PCs routinely, and nobody went to school to learn how.

Instead, chances are you found a guru, and a guru was anyone who bought his PC a week before you bought yours. And there were user groups – volunteers passing valuable knowledge back and forth. If you agree that the PC has had an impact on productivity in the money economy, then the fact that people taught each other how to use this thing without money changing hands is another example of what a big impact prosumers can have on the money economy. Add these things together — homeschooling, teaching how to use PCs, Linux, etc. – and you begin to understand this big invisible economic force. People have written about each of these pieces, but haven’t seen them as part of a huge nonmoney economy interacting with the money economy.

It’s not just parents, but knowledge workers inside and outside of organisations, who are taking learning into their own hands. As the non-money economy is affecting the measured economy, informal learning is affecting education. More and more, we can do it ourselves, whether it be printing our own photographs or learning a new skill. Homeschooling is getting easier with the Internet and so is learning for yourself. Formal training and education (one size fits nobody) can’t react quick enough to our changing needs and expanding fields knowledge.

That’s where I see the importance of understanding informal learning within organisations. It’s happening anyway, and at an accelerating rate. Organisations should look at tapping informal learning, not controlling it. The more free-thinkers and independent learners that an organisation has, the more resilient it will be in times of change. This of course is subversive thinking for any command and control organisation, so perhaps we really need new organisational models. The film crew is an example.

Formal education exploded as we moved into the industrial age one hundred years ago, with larger organisations demanding Taylorist job functions. As the industrial age gives way to a networked age, there is less need for well-defined, cookie-cutter jobs. With fewer standardized jobs, why do we need standardized education, or even standardized training? [I know that there are exceptions to this statement, but they are becoming fewer]