Communities

communities of interest and practice

From Cluetrain to Wirearchy

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In 1999 we had the Cluetrain Manifesto, with its 95 theses à la Gutenberg; the first ten being:

  1. Markets are conversations.
  2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
  3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
  4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
  5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
  6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
  7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
  8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
  9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
  10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

Many business executives do not realise the underlying reason of the Cluetrain Manifesto, and continue to build defensive walls between the company and their customers. They even use military terminology when referring to their markets. Get real folks, the customer is your lifeblood, and now has the tools to figure things out with or without you. Take thesis 7 – today we have more than just hyperlinks; we have peer-to-peer and Voice over IP to connect with anyone, anytime. Jon Husband, with his Wirearchy perspective, has developed his own 2005 manifesto on a similar theme [updated link]:

#1 Customers, employees and other stakeholders are all interconnected, and have access to most, if not all the information that everyone else has.
#2 The organization chart usually reflects power and politics in the organization … more often than not, customers and employees find work-arounds to create the experiences that delight.
#3 People interconnected by the Internet and software have ways of speaking to each other – and so they do that – all day long.
#4 Champion-and-Channel replaces Command-and-Control.
#5 Conversations are where information is shared, knowledge is created and are the basis for getting the right things done.
#6 Trust, Transparency and Authenticity are the glue that holds it all together.
#7 The Workplace of the Future will be more diverse – in terms of demographics, values, gender, race and language.
#8 New, integrated and sophisticated technologies are being developed and implemented – and the knowledge workers of tomorrow will be more interconnected than ever.
#9 We’re All In This Together
#10 There’s No Going Back to “Normal” – Permanent Whitewater is the New Normal.

Here are some ways that I can think of to develop a new company, based on Jon’s principles. You see, I always have to make things concrete – it’s in my nature ;-)

  • Build the company with an open connection to your customers, whether with the two-way web (e.g. blogs) or with a physical presence.
  • Develop your organisation chart based upon your customers needs, not your own. When I lived in Germany, what I found unique was that the bank tellers were the most senior people in the bank. Bank employees were not allowed to interact with customers until they knew how the entire system functioned. This meant excellent customer service.
  • Have all of your marketing material written by someone who can write in plain language. Maybe even pay your best customers to write it for you. In this way, it will reflect the customer, not you.

Please feel free to add your own …

Drupal for Learning

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Do you want to be in on the ground floor of the development of a new web-based learning system? Boris Mann sums up the activities of a lot of people who want to create a learning-oriented Drupal CMS. The time has come to get things going, and I know that Will already has a lot of ideas.

Having been on the inside of one proprietary LCMS, and having evaluated dozens of LMS/LCMS, I would like to see the creation of a much looser, but still learning-oriented, structure. I think that Scott Wilson’s graphic of a next generation virtual learning environment has some promise. I also believe that we should try to push the envelope and allow for different instructional strategies; something beyond testing through quizzes and questionaires. For example, Dave Jonassen has developed an instructional design methodology for problem-based learning and I know that he has been looking for someone to implement it on the web:

For the past few years, I have devoted most of my professional research and development to better understanding problem solving. Why? Primarily because the field of instructional design has largely ignored problem solving, so there is very little understanding of how humans solve problems or how to support learning, how to solve problems.

Does this sound like an interesting project for the Drupal community or anyone else?

Innovation in IT

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I attended the ITANS CEO Boot Camp in Halifax yesterday. It was geared to small & medium sized businesses in the IT sector. There were a few of us from New Brunswick as well as at least one person from Newfoundland in attendance. I decided to attend because of the great price – $75 and the presentation on e-Health in afternoon.

The morning started with a presentation from Michael O’Neil, Managing Director of IDC Canada. He talked about the various definitions of innovation and commercialisation, stating that commmercialisation should be the focus of any IT firm. I think that this is just quibbling over definitions. Many definitions of innovation include wealth creation. For an excellent, and non-mainstream, read on innovation and its underlying principles, read Dave Pollard’s 30 page – A Prescription for Business Innovation (2004) instead.

What I found the most useful part Michael’s presentation was his description of the typical growth curve of a company and how a company needs different kinds of partners, depending on where it is in its growth. For instance in the initial stage, IT product companies need sales partners, usually hired at great expense, to get those first product sales. In Stage 2, companies need services partners, with existing relationships in vertical markets, who can refer their products. Later, in Stage 3, companies need logistics partners, to smoothly handle customer service. Finally, in Stage 4, companies need to find hyper-efficient channel partners, such as Dell is for the computer hardware industry.

Michael also likened the typical IT company’s perspective toward its customers as wearing your suit jacket inside-out. Only the company can see the nice, finished fabric. He said that vendors have to stop considering themselves as the centre of their solar system, and put their customers at the centre. His presentation was then followed by two IT company representatives who rarely mentioned their customers, and one talked about the need to get the "message to the market" correct. An inside-out approach, I would say.

For small companies, there were a few more nuggets of wisdom during the morning, but you had to dig hard to find them. Many of the models shown would have worked well during the dot com bubble, but I’m not sure how well they will work today for a start-up tech company. For now, I’m sticking with Dave Pollard and his work on Natural Enterprises and Clayton Christensen’s theories on innovation.

Atlantic Wildlife Institute

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I have been volunteering at the Atlantic Wildilife Institute for just over two years. It started by helping with a funding proposal (I’ve written too many proposals to remember), and gradually I became the Director of Education. I help out with planning and fundraising when I have some spare time, but it hasn’t really been a hardship. On the other hand, Barry Rothfuss and Pam Novak, the founders, have dedicated their lives to the Institute. They often work 24 hours a day helping an animal in distress (as they did over the weekend with a moose), as well as the constant fund raising and operational issues to deal with. There are no full-time paid staff, so Pam and Barry have to take up all the slack, which they have been doing for the past nine years.

AWI is unique in that it is the only federally and provincially licensed facility in eastern Canada that can take in any and all types of wildlife. We have had moose, bears, seals, eagles and all other types of injured and orphaned animals. AWI is not just about saving these animals, as the hundreds of animals that pass through the facility are only a sampling of what is really happening in the environment. However, from the animals that arrive on our doorstep, AWI can identify key issues for public attention and response, such as animal-borne diseases and toxins in the environment. One wildlife care operation alone cannot address all of the distress factors affecting our wildlife, so AWI is also focused on education and community outreach. This is what attracted me to the organisation and keeps me with it.

To me, AWI represents how non-profit/charitable organisations can work to address issues that seem insurmountable. AWI does a lot of hands-on work with animals in distress, but it also provides an opportunity for veterinarians and vet techs to come on-site to learn more about wild animals. Veterinarians don’t see wildlife during their professional training and at AWI they get a chance to treat injured wild animals.

Our wildlife care services inform all of our work, but the critical part is in training and educating a growing network of supporters. This network includes environmentalists, businesses, resource companies, forestry workers, etc. There is no way that we can do all of this alone, and it’s not just about money – educating the public is the key. I think that this model, of action-based research and education, is a solid and sustainable model, and is what has kept the organisation going for the past nine years. Just addressing the symptoms of injured & orphaned wildlife, would not be enough.

At the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, I’ve been learning more than I’ve been teaching.

Blogs in Higher Ed

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Blogs in Higher Ed: Personal Voice as Part of Learning is a short article on four cases of blogs in higher education, including doctoral students, professionals, undergraduates and second language learners. The comments of the instructors and students make for a good read, and show the variety of reactions when a new technology is introduced into an older form (the university class). Some embrace it, some reject it and some learn to love it. However, the recommendations in the article miss the main point.

I think that the important lesson here is that good teaching and effective learning are the results of many factors. Blogs can be used to enhance the process, or they can distract from it. Missing from the recommendations are the links between the pedagogical framework, the instructors’ abilities, the learners’ capabilities and the technologies and tools available. I would suggest that if you wanted to increase self-reflection, and wanted to use blogs, then you might prepare the students with a framework, such as Marilyn Taylor’s learning cycle in formal learning – Disorientation, Exploration, Reorientation, Equilibrium (see page 53 of this PDF for more on Taylor’s model – Adult Learning from Theory to Practice).

Any technology will have effects (Enhance, Retrieve, Reverse, Obsolesce) on the learning process, and no technology is truly neutral. But we still need to base any formal learning environment on some pedagogical framework, or we will continue to just grab the next technology for no real reason.

Pedagogical Praxis – Shaffer

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David Williamson Shaffer’s paper on Pedagogical Praxis: The professions as models for post-industrial education provides a theoretical model, with case studies, on how educational institutions can better bridge the gap between learning in formal education and learning in the workplace. These three studies show how relatively easy it is to ground a learning program in a post-industrial workplace context, by using what are today quite cheap and accesible technologies.

Perhaps the power of new technologies to bring professional practices closer to the purview of middle and high school students provides an opportunity to move beyond disciplines derived from medieval scholarship constituted within schools developed in the industrial revolution. Learning environments such as
those described here, based on professional learning practices and deliberately
constituted outside the traditional structure of schooling, suggest a
way to move beyond current curricula based on the ways of knowing of
mathematics, science, history, and language arts.

These case studies include students working as biomedical negotiators, online journalists and architects using complex mathematics. These three stories make this academic paper a delight to read.

For a more academic review, see this eLearning Review.

Update: Link fixed :-)

International Partnering

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My town, Sackville, is looking to create a long-term partnership with a a tsunami-stricken Indian town of the same size. This seems to be a better strategy than just raising money (though that is important), and I’ll keep an eye on this. Maybe even get involved if it makes sense.

Here is the full CBC post, as they tend to take them down after a while:

NB town to adopt tsunami-stricken community

WebPosted Jan 13 2005 01:16 PM AST
CBC NewsSACKVILLE



The town of Sackville, New Brunswick wants to adopt a town in India that’s been affected by the tsunami disaster.

Sackville town counsellor Virgil Hammock suggested the idea of partnering up with an Asian community. He says other aid efforts are helpful, but he’s worried that the campaigns won’t last .

“You know, six months to a year from now, people will have forgotten about this. They’ll have some other catastrophe to deal with,” said Hammock.

Hammock says the town hasn’t decided which Indian community they’ll support, but he says it’s likely that it will be a town in one the Indian islands that were hit worst by tsunamis.

“I looked at a town called Malacca, and that’s a town about the size of Sackville. But I haven’t been able to contact anyone there yet because this town was utterly destroyed.”

Hammock says the town will work with the local Rotary Club over the next few months to make a connection with an Indian community that needs aid.

Once the groundwork is laid out, Hammock says the people of Sackville will decide what kinds of projects they want to work on in the adopted Indian community. Hammock says the idea behind the partnership is to provide long-term support for people in Asia.

“We want to give them something they actually need, that we can buy or install, instead of just sending money. Then we can have sort of a longterm relationship with them.”

I’ll suggest to our town council that we all take a look at the SEA-EAT Blog, which includes a “Help Needed” section for the region hit by the tsunami.

Public Service Announcement – Missing Children

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A local mother here in New Brunswick, Canada has appealed to the general public to help her find her two boys, who were abducted by their father on December 31st. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have the basic information on this site.

The mother, Nicole Gallant, has also sent this link to additional photos of Sage & Ovila. Here is the press release.

Update: 19 January, and both boys are still missing.

Update 10 February: "Police in Louisiana have found two New Brunswick children who have been the subject of an international search for more than a month." :-)

Thinking longer

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Via Jay Cross, are these comments from some of the most interesting and thought-provoking people in the world, through Edge: the World Question Center. The comments of Esther Dyson really struck a chord:

We’re living longer, and thinking shorter.
Unfortunately, this carries over into how we think and plan: Businesses focus on short-term results; politicians focus on elections; school systems focus on test results; most of us focus on the weather rather than the climate. Everyone knows about the big problems, but their behavior focuses on the here and now.

As a consultant, you are often called in as a last resort, and asked to come up with a quick and pragmatic solution. Don’t bother us with details and an analysis, just get the job done. However, getting down to the root causes of a messy problem may take some time. Fixing systemic problems takes even more time and effort.

We have to learn how to slow down. This can be through regular time for spirituality, exercise, reading or socialising. Organisations should incorporate slow time into their workflow. I once read that in Japan it was OK to sit at your desk and read, whereas in North America we take that as a sign of having nothing better to do. As Socrates said, “The unreflected life is not worth living”. I will take “thinking longer” as a new year’s resolution.

A Bridge from Nowhere

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Robert Paterson has taken the chasm analogy and applied it the population of PEI. He even has a new curve to show how the Island rates. New Brunswick and many other rural regions are not much different from what Rob describes.

I said yesterday that my work focused on bridging the gap between innovators/early adopters and the pragmatic majority. Rob’s premise is that government panders to the majority and ignores the innovative. Given that innovation is the current buzzword of bureaucrats and politicians, you would think it isn’t so. To take the analogy further, PEI (and many other regions) are so focused on the pragmatic (and visionless) majority that they have forgotten that ALL of the innovation comes from the left side of the curve. It’s not just bridges across the chasm that are needed, but something has to be there to get across. Kind of scary when you think about all of the innovators leaving for places that rate higher on the Creativity Index.

Rob’s solution – “If I was King, my Population Strategy would be to build the cultural container to attract the creative to come here and to keep our best young here as well.”

If I was King …

I would limit the centralized control of departments of education, and allow for independent solutions. The government should get out of the education delivery business, and get into the supporting learning business. Let people decide the best way that they want to learn. Learning and experimenting, not Education, will breed innovation.

But I’m not King; so I guess on a local level we have to support innovative, small companies that can attract and retain a few good people. One graduate, one dropout, one entrepreneur, one SME, and one new venture at a time. Let’s continue to help these folks and that will help all of us.