The Community Gold Rush

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Social Networks have become quite popular on the Web, with services such as MySpace and Facebook commanding billions of investment dollars. Social Networks are the new public spaces, though they’re no longer owned by the government. We’re moving from the town square to the online community. What makes online public spaces different from physical ones is that in the online world what you say will remain there for a long time; the conversations are searchable and can be be copied; and we may never know who has viewed what we have said or written. Each of these facets can be seen in a positive or a negative light, depending upon your perspective.

With the huge rise in popularity of Facebook, we are beginning to see a backlash on the social networking system, that tends to mundane and frivolous aspects of our lives. Facebook and MySpace have been banned for public employees in the US, Canada and Australia, as well as in many schools. While it is true that Facebook conversations seem to be primarily focused on friends and family, business uses are on the upswing. Facebook is becoming a business platform that allows workers to let their friends know who they work for and maybe what they’re selling, so companies can leverage this as a viral marketing tool.

One of the limitations of Facebook is that the data are stored on someone else’s server, and the rules can change without notice. Skype, a free voice over IP service, had a recent outage for several days, leaving millions of users without communications. Depending on these free services for business may not be a wise decision and at this time it may be best to use web-based services in addition to other communication and networking tools. Another option would be to build your own service.

In contrast to the casual and chatty tone of Facebook, some niche business social networks are starting to mark out their own, but smaller, territory online. These include Sermo for physicians; E-Factor for European entrepreneurs and Emerald InTouch which supports collaboration for researchers subscribing to Emerald’s professional journals.

The Emerald service is built upon Elgg, an open source platform developed and serviced by Curverider of the UK. Emerald has taken the free software construction code of Elgg and created a niche network focused on research, extending Emerald’s basic offering of online journals.

Given the backlash against social networks once they reach a certain level of success, businesses may opt for smaller, controlled gateways to further online social networking. Since networking has always been an important aspect of business, it’s doubtful that these tools will be ignored by the majority of businesses. The trick will be to remain as open as possible to attract members, allow users to control who and what they connect with and offer a valid business reason to remain a member and invite others.

The competition to become the prime community for your niche market may be heating up and we may see another Internet real estate gold rush, as in the first Dot Com era.

Opting-in

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Now that we’re inundated with information, e-mail and invitations to the next great Web 2.0 thing, pull is looking a lot better than push. Pull means that the individual decides what to read or who to talk to. I wrote about this earlier, in Please don’t push my learning.

One reason that I have been such a fan of Elgg is that this open source, social learning platform has at its core the concept that the individual has to decide to opt in, whether it be to connect with an instructor, a learner, a community or a group. According to Time, the growth of Facebook is due to its basic premise of opting in:

Maybe that’s why Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic consists of people 35 or older: they’re refugees from the uncouth wider Web. Every community must negotiate the imperatives of individual freedom and collective social order, and Facebook constitutes a critical rebalancing of the Internet’s founding vision of unfettered electronic liberty. Of course, it is possible to misbehave on Facebook–it’s just self-defeating. Unlike the Internet, Facebook is structured around an opt-in philosophy; people have to consent to have contact with or even see others on the network. If you’re annoying folks, you’ll essentially cease to exist, as those you annoy drop you off the grid.

The huge success of Facebook may be an indicator that it’s time to reconsider push business models, push marketing and even push learning.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

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This is my first turn to host the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. I tried to focus on environmental themes, and I got a couple, but most importantly, all of these blogs come to you from Canada.

  1. First off is Robert Paterson of Prince Edward Island. Rob has been involved in many nonprofit organisations, from helping to create the Queen Street Commons to his work with National Public Radio. There’s a lot to pick from, but I would recommend his recent post on the Food Trust of PEI, which is focused on informing consumers of food what it is that they’re really eating.
  2. Next is Dave Pollard of How to Save the World. Dave’s posts usually address some deep subjects and there’s a wealth of practical information too. His recent post on the Essential Capacities for Communities is worth a read for any nonprofit consultant.
  3. Chris Corrigan from the west coast is quite experienced with open space technology and this week talks about More on Presence, Circles and Granola.
  4. Another west coaster, Jon Husband, shares his experience at Wirearchy. Read Jon’s recent post on how games are becoming mainstream workplace learning fare, at Playing Games at Work.
  5. Joan Vinall-Cox works in higher education and seems to be a natural blogger. Check out her Top Ten Tools for work and learning.
  6. Dave Cormier is currently working at the University of PEI and also co-founded Worldbridges, a unique nonprofit business. Dave recently posted An Introduction to my blog – Two years in review.
  7. I would be remiss if I didn’t include the photo blog created by one of our summer students at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute. Mark has just finished his term but I hope to continue to post some photos during the year, in my capacity as Director of Education. There are great photos and explanations about a wide variety of North American wildlife.

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Keep track of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, no matter which blog is hosting, by subscribing to the Carnival feed.

Face to Virtual

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Earlier this year I ran a workshop on informal learning in the workplace for about 25 people. This followed a year of web-based sessions with Jay Cross & Judy Brown, in which we used various technologies to connect with people around the world.

As much as I enjoyed the face-to-face session, I found it rather limiting. For instance, there was no back channel of text-based IM conversation going on simultaneously, nor could I pop a link or file to everyone while I continued the conversation. I found that face-to-face was a tad too  linear and not as productive as some of our virtual sessions.

Jay Deragon [who has an excellent blog worth subscribing to] talks about the increased productivity that virtual work can drive.

The number one reason that professionals want to participate in virtual teams more frequently is simple: increased productivity.  As the size of the virtual workforce in America today is growing, so is the likely impact on productivity and profitability for organizations. More than 90 percent of those surveyed agree (35%) or strongly agree (56%) that virtual meetings save time and money. We used to think that meeting face-to-face was the only way to build trust and teamwork. Armed with new technology and new best practices, we’re learning new ways to connect on a human level with people anywhere, anytime, said Dr. Jaclyn Kostner, author of Virtual Leadership.

Virtual work significantly reduces useless meetings, eliminates commuting time and helps each worker focus on what is important. Because you can’t watch each person and tell them how to do everything, the organisation must come up with real performance measurements, and that in itself will increase productivity.

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On effective teaching

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School is on in some parts of the world, like Texas, where Christian Long is returning to teaching. Our kids don’t go back to school until September 4th, but I was going through some saved RSS feeds and I came across these guideline on a post from last year titled Why we still need teachers, and it just seemed appropriate:

Rather than a minimally-guided problem-based learning approach, we see effective teaching when …

  • The goals of teaching include facts, principles, process, and application
  • Learning is interactive and not one-sided (wholly teacher- or student-focused)
  • Learning from example and problem-based learning are not mutually exclusive
  • The ties between theoretical and practical knowledge are explicitly looked for and taught if students don’t get them.
  • The limits and assumptions of information and subjects are considered, and applications to the real world, constantly reinforced.
  • Teachers are taught to be very aware of working memory demands of material – so they are able to provide organization or scaffolding for students unable to assimilate information or problem-solving steps.
  • Finally, practice and instruction in problem-solving are given, so students don’t get all A’s, but later flunk life.

I wish all returning teachers and students good luck in the coming year and may you be passionate in your teaching and learning, because that is what really counts.

Are our small towns ready for the next economy?

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Is it a trend when more US citizens move to Canada, hitting a 30 year high last year? I like to think that as we all become interconnected that it will be easier to choose where we live and how we do our work, making obligatory daily commutes a thing of the past. Much as I want that, most people don’t have that option and few employers are willing to offer it. Rob Paterson notes that some professionals are moving to PEI for the lifestyle and bringing their work with them.

I’m now in my fifth year as an independent consultant working out of a very small town. There are several others choosing to work from the home office and doing business anywhere. We’re still the minority though. The big question is whether this will become a trend and develop into the norm – people choosing where they live first. If it becomes the norm then there will be some fundamental societal and economic shifts; perhaps nine shifts.

Small towns are attractive to certain  types of people. I think that they appeal to young families as well as the newly retired or semi-retired, who want a slower pace of life. The challenge for small towns will be to offer what these folks really find important.  High-speed internet or even free municipal WiFi may be important. Access to a good passenger train service (with wireless Internet) may also be important.

There is an opportunity for small towns to position themselves as preferred locations for an Internet economy but the race may get fierce, as communities see their tax base leaving for greener pastures. The Canadian Maritime provinces need to establish the infrastructure that will attract knowledge workers and keep them here.  Companies like FatKat Animation in Miramichi are setting the example. However, our communities will also need good restaurants, multi-cultural experiences, openness to alternative lifestyles and all those other things that educated folks seek out.

It will be a big challenge to move from our not so distant agrarian economy to a knowledge economy, but if we miss the boat, we’ll end up as an economic backwater. What would attract you to move to a small town in Atlantic Canada? [by international standards, there are only small towns in Atlantic Canada]

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants Coming to Town

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I’ll be hosting the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants next week (27 Aug) . This will be an open call but special consideration will be given to environmental themes (due to my work with AWI) as well as any fellow Canadian bloggers. Drop me a note if you have something of interest and want to be one of the required 7 (no more & no less) highlighted posts.

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If you’re not familiar with the Carnival, the hosts change from week to week but you can subscribe to the feed. This week’s post is by Michele Martin on her Bamboo Project Blog with several interesting links.

A new business model for online learning

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The learning management system has become the de facto delivery vehicle in the online training and education world. It is popular because it tracks learner activities, manages classes, controls testing activities and allows instructors some level of control. One of the primary limitations of the LMS/LCMS is that learners only use it when they are registered and cannot take their artifacts with them. Another is that the LMS environment does not connect with the learners’ other online environments; like Social Networking Systems, News, Photo Sharing or Blogs. As more learners use the Web for other work and social activities, the walled garden of the LMS becomes less relevant.

I’ve previously discussed why I don’t think that content is king in the online learning world and that community and context are critical in developing learning environments. Well the context sure has changed over the past decade and LMS vendors should start considering how to stay relevant in their field. First of all, there are many competitive open source LMS available for no licensing fees. One way to compete with open source would be to launch a FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) campaign, but this will only work for a certain period of time. You could also lock in your clients with your technology but you need lots of clients in the first place. Or you could sue your competitors, but this requires deep pockets and might even backfire.

A better option is to create your own ecosystem, as Linux has done rather successfully. Another, more pertinent, example is IBM’s Eclipse project which is a collaboration between several proprietary software vendors to create a common development environment.

So what if several LMS vendors got together on a basic open source learning environment and then they competed on adding high-value applications around this open core? Could this create a more sustainable position for future development, without the fear of vendor lock-in, but still providing a profit motive for the private sector? Maybe it’s time to think outside of the box.

Friday Reflection

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I’ve decided to stop at Step 3 for the series of small steps for knowledge resilience this week, but if there was a fourth, I would say that it should be to reflect.

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As I mentioned on Monday’s post, many organisational workers are so busy running around that they don’t have a chance to ask why. There is a time for action and a time for reflection. The tools that I’ve mentioned this week can be used for either, but you have to take the time to reflect. Review your old bookmarks, re-read comments and look at posts with new eyes.

I decided to use a single theme for the week on the advice of Bill Fitzgerald. It takes more concentration but in some ways is easier because of the self-imposed constraints. As an aside, with WordPress you can write all of your posts at the same time and then edit the timestamp so that they publish in order on consecutive days. This is handy if you’re going to be away but want to keep publishing.

Step 3: Converse

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The idea behind these last few posts has been to look at pragmatic ways to employ some tools to build resilience into organisations as they get swept by the third wave. Jon Husband describes the new organisational structure for the networked knowledge economy as a wirearchy. An important aspect of working in a networked structure is that every node (person) can now influence the entire network; quite different from a hierarchical, industrial organisation, with mostly up and down information flows.

In third wave economies knowledge workers are valued for their individual talents and the networks that they belong to. Titles and positions blur when the work requires creativity. Third wave organisations have to be creative because the second wave economies are already taking the cookie-cutter jobs and going to the cheapest possible labour pool.

A third wave workplace is more like this:

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A workplace where everyone can connect with anyone else makes each node important and means that no one can hide in the corner office, especially when the proverbial sh*t hits the fan. That is why conversation is becoming very important. Conversations help people make meaning, whether it’s between co-workers, with potential employees, customers or suppliers. These roles are also blurring, so each conversation has to be at a human level to value each individual. For instance, treating a customer as just another “consumer” can backfire when that customer is also a blogger with an audience of millions.

We learn through conversations and the Web gives us all kinds of options. Your organisation can let those with experience write about it (blogs) or you can record professional development events for use later (podcasts). If podcasts are way too technical for your group, then burn them on a CD and leave them at the door for the commute home. You can let everyone into the conversation while creating new procedures (wikis) or you can record events as pictures and videos and let people continue to talk about them (e.g. Flickr or YouTube).

As our societies changed into democracies, they became noisier. So too will the third wave workplace. However, that noise will be sound of knowledge resilience.