Friday’s Finds

Here are some of things I learned via Twitter this past week [Friday’s Finds].

We need to save our tigers [follow link for ways to help] by @Sumeet_Moghe

“Do not cut down the  forest with its tigers and do not banish the tigers from the forest; the tiger perishes without the forest and the forest perishes without its tigers”  – Mahabharata, 400 BCE

“C’est avec la logique que nous prouvons mais c’est avec l’intuition que nous trouvons. [Henri Poincaré]” via @MichelleBlanc

@jmcgee “‘diligent laziness’ = DRY – don’t repeat yourself, = take advantage of what others know and share, = take/make time for reflection”

@snowded “Never try to excite a conservative with something novel or interesting (note to self)”

From information to conversation by @EskoKilpi

People often need to act and make decisions in situations in which causality is poorly understood, where there is considerable uncertainty and people hold different beliefs and have personal biases. However, people very reluctantly acknowledge that they face ambiguity at work. Problems in organizations tend to get labeled as lack of information. It feels more professional to try to solve a knowledge management problem that is called lack of information than a problem that is called confusion.

[SEED Magazine] “Critical slowing” as a threshold approaches could be a signal for collapses in complex systems. via @ViRAms

The practice of science has always been grounded in predicting outcomes. The hypothetico-deductive method—the due process of scientific inquiry—can be summed up by four basic steps: review data, make prediction, test, repeat. Now the ways in which we as a society are extracting information from large-scale events and systems, identifying patterns, and making predictions are clear examples of the analytical logic of science—what might be referred to as scientific thinking—transferring to the organizational principles of the public at large. In this way, scientific thinking is a nascent tool for policymaking, governance, and problem solving in general.

Foreign Policy: the “nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow”. via @ValdisKrebs

The first generations of Indian startups focused on selling IT services, and the Chinese developed copycat web technologies such as Baidu, China’s Google rival, and Sina, its Twitter clone. But they are going beyond that now. They are gaining the knowledge — and developing the confidence — to create innovative products, not only for domestic markets, but also for global ones.

Social Business planning: set up a process of discovery by @robpatrob

When I worked with NPR back in 2005 the question was “How will social media affect us and what should we do?”

The great thing then was that No One could know the answer to that question. And if by chance one of us did, no one else would just accept that answer.

So what we did was to set up a process of discovery where it was agreed at the outset that no one knew.

We then set off, nearly 1,000 people, on a number of test journeys where groups “Played” with creating stories about what the future might be.

Here are some of things I learned via Twitter this past week.

“I don’t do NDA’s” Implied Suspicion Versus Implied Trust – via @petervan

Overheard: “School is where young people go to watch old people work.” via @simfin @ScottElias @zecool

When I Grow Up (Video) – We Never Intended to Work This Way by @kevindjones

When I grow up, I want to stay until 5, even when I have nothing to do.

I want to suppress common sense for company policy.

Strive for mediocrity.

Learn not to take chances.

Not state the obvious because I fear retribution …. (cont)

State of Washington to Offer Online Materials, Instead of Textbooks, for 2-Year Colleges – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education via @cgreen

Mr. Green, of the state community-college board, says the Open Course Library is very much a work in progress, and may always be. Indeed, its success depends upon the academic community to continually review, revise, and improve the courses, and then post them back online for others. (The idea of freely sharing information, he concedes, might just be the more challenging cultural shift.)

But “getting there” is not in question, says Mr. Green. He says he’s been blunt with textbook publishers and has encouraged them to get on board if they can.

“You saw what happened with Craigslist and newspapers,” he says, referring to the free classified advertising that has helped force some newspapers out of business and required others to reinvent themselves. “We are going to get there with or without you.

Stephen Downes: ‘Connectivism’ and Connective Knowledge by @downes

Let me explain why we take this approach and what connectivism is. At its heart, connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks. Knowledge, therefore, is not acquired, as though it were a thing. It is not transmitted, as though it were some type of communication.

What we learn, what we know — these are literally the connections we form between neurons as a result of experience. The brain is composed of 100 billion neurons, and these form some 100 trillion connections and it is these connections that constitute everything we know, everything we believe, everything we imagine. And while it is convenient to talk as though knowledge and beliefs are composed of sentences and concepts that we somehow acquire and store, it is more accurate — and pedagogically more useful — to treat learning as the formation of connections.

EFF Celebrates 20th Anniversary With New Animation by Nina Paley

Onerous user agreements.
Tracking and surveillance online.
“Three Strikes” and copyright cops.

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

I modified my use of Twitter favourites for my Friday’s Finds selection this week. I switched my social bookmarking service from Delicious to Diigo and noticed that Diigo offered a method to save my favourites automatically. Instead of reviewing my favourites in Twitter, I went through the bookmarks on Diigo, deleting ones I no longer wanted to keep and updating and annotating those that I found more interesting. This redundancy will provide me with two ways to retrieve information, either from my blog or my bookmarks. It’s not much more effort and I think it will make my bookmarks more useful.

A Baker’s Dozen: Principles of Value Networks | ValueNetworks.com by @vernaallee

The true shape and nature of collaboration is not the social network – it is the value network. Value networks are purposeful groups of people who come together in designated roles to take action or produce an outcome. Only through the power of value networks can we address our complex issues – together – and create a more hopeful future.

Five surprising changes in 2010 by @lemire

We are replacing physical objects and processes by bits and software faster than I would have predicted at the beginning of the year. We are also becoming a civilization of autodidacts. Scholarship is being fundamentally reshaped under our noses without anyone noticing. I think that much of the establishment is greatly underestimating the amplitude and significance of these changes. The proof is how badly prepared the American government was with respect to Wikileaks.

Mark Federman: What is the (Next) Message?: Death of the Liberal Class

My own position (at the 4 minute point in the video) is simple to state: the constructs that gave us corporatism, capitalism, the liberal class, and modernity itself are now obsolesced, and we need a new framework in which to observe, theorize, understand, and undo the dysfunctions that we have clearly visited upon ourselves, and the wider world …

What is not acceptable in a contemporary context is the penchant of the fogey generation – men like Reihan Salam and Tony Keller – to continue to apply 19th and 20th century principles to the analysis of our 21st century reality.

My Three Words for 2011: Seek, Sense, and Share | Beth’s Blog by @kanter

Jarche defines networked learning as  “an individual, disciplined process by which we make sense of information, observations and ideas.”    He further suggests that networked learning is the solution (in part) to information overload (not the cause!).   For networked learning to be beneficial, it requires an open attitude toward learning and finding new things.   In addition, each person needs to develop individualized processes of filing, classifying and annotating digital information for later retrieval.  His conceptual model include the three words:  seek, sense, and share.

My sense is that becoming a master at networked learning helps you improve what you are doing in world that is changing so fast and is so complex.

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

“In this day and age, if you’re not confused, you’re not thinking clearly.” ~ Burt Mannis – via @mariogastaldi

“I don’t have to attend every argument I’m invited to. ~Author Unknown” via @denniscallahan

@vernaalle: “Good luck = accident. Good management = control (yeah right!). Good fortune means working with what is emerging in a way you can succeed.”

“Downsizing is a sign of management’s failure … passing it along to people who tried to execute management’s flawed strategy” ~ Geoffrey James – via @ajaypangarkar

A Self-sufficient Organization: We spend a lot of time developing leaders and then we rely on them to run our organizations.

(1) By creating leaders, we sometimes diminish others.

(2) By creating leaders, we create followers. We focus on developing leaders but not as much on developing followers. But followers need to develop as well.

(3) Followers distance themselves from leaders. This removes a certain level of trust, communications, and performance from followers. Dominant voices and group think destroy team work.

(4) Leadership creates the hunger for power and power can corrupt people. Corrupted people often make the wrong decisions.

Connectivism: “Basically, networks underpin life & human existence” – “Knowledge in any moderately complex task or activity is networked” by @gsiemens

@jhagel: “Are we hard-wired for hierarchy? Bad news for the kumbaya crowd . . . ”

When participants experienced an outcome that could increase their status and have them become superior players, activity increased in circuitry at the top front of the brain that controls the intention to do something, suggesting that rising in a hierarchy makes one more action-oriented.

My comment to @jhagel: “Perhaps we need to follow our passions to be happy & reinforce what we’re good at. Could mean less stress in hierarchies” [Would be interesting to compare people who work in hierarchical relationships and those who don’t.]

Wakeup call for employers: 84% of workers want to quit! by @stevedenning

When 84% of workers are unhappy in their work and can’t find any reasonable alternative, while a sizable slice of the workforce is either unemployed, underemployed or on the cusp of losing their job, the potential for social and political unrest is significant.

The message for employers, employees and politicians is clear: we need to revolutionize the workplace.

UN-OAS: “information regarding human rights violations should not be considered secret or classified – via @oscarberg

December 21, 2010 – In light of ongoing developments related to the release of diplomatic cables by the organization Wikileaks, and the publication of information contained in those cables by mainstream news organizations, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression see fit to recall a number of international legal principles. The rapporteurs call upon States and other relevant actors to keep these principles in mind when responding to the aforementioned developments.

“Gandhi’s conviction on sedition … Priceless !!!!” via @kunalkapoor

The only course open to you, the judge, is either to resign your post, and thus dissociate yourself from evil if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict upon me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to the public weal.

*This is my 85th Friday’s Finds, the last for 2010. See you next year.

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

Business is nothing but “Social Networks” by @sig

Adding “social” as a layer onto a rigid structure created pre-IT will never do it. E 2.0 or it’s new name, “social business”, is commendable but a blind alley, you have to focus on bettering the core mechanism instead. The core mechanism that allows and executes “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end by working with someone to produce or create something”. (That was the definition of Process and Collaboration baked into one sentence.)

Social doesn’t just mean friends — it means society; by @umairh

Think of the “social” in social media the way economists use the word: to represent society. The right function of “social” tools is to give yesterday’s creaking, rusting institutions social — as in societal — significance. Social doesn’t just mean friends — it means society.”

@rdeis “RT @OPENForum Why I Was Wrong About Twitter – Very Good summary of what Twitter does really well.”

Back then, when Ashton Kutcher was trying to get a million followers and the news was all atwitter about Twitter, like many others, I thought Twitter was nothing more than a gossipy, truncated, silly platform for, as I put it, learning about what someone was doing “at 3:47 tomorrow afternoon.”

How the app phenomenon is changing economics; by @rbgayle

This rapid adaption to what customers want requires a very different organizational structure than at many companies. It must be able to adapt rapidly to new information and it must move that information around rapidly.

Staying engaged and being adaptive – the successful companies will have both of these attributes.

Leadersheep:

Leadersheep are a species in the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are most likely descended from the wild mouflon. Leadersheep are raised by some B-schools and a culture of impatience/short-termism for good looks, fast wins, fleece and milk. Leadersheep can be manipulative and self-absorbed, but are usually not dangerous and often mean well. If you are one or see one, teach it to become less important.

@charlesjennings “Transport for London ‘lorry blind spots’ film – why cyclists get crushed (daughter did research for this)” – None of the cyclists along the side of the lorry in this video can be seen from the driver’s seat inside the lorry cab.

Also: augmented reality version

@charlesjennings “@edavidove just pointed out that this is the ideal male performance support ‘tool’ (@hjarche photo at Schiphol)”

It was a busy week, so I didn’t learn a lot via Twitter, though much through conversation with some interesting people.

BRP (Barely Repeatable Processes) ‘Social Learning & Exception Handling‘ @lirons via @jonhusband

We know that most learning in the workplace is informal. Most observers put it at around 80%. Recently, John Hagel and John Seeley Brown contended that ”as much as two-thirds of headcount time in major enterprise functions like marketing, manufacturing and supply chain management is spent on exception handling.” Of course, that fact is a result of the successes of process automation over the past few decades. Yet, still,The Barely Repeatable Process (BRP) persists as an organizational challenge for business.

Reuters: 5 lessons businesses can learn from WikiLeaks, via @michelleblanc

1. There are no completely secure systems
2. Weigh the risks of a data breach
3. Segment your data
4. Understand the maturity of your staff
5. There are right ways and wrong ways to handle an embarrassing data breach

@tonzylstra – “Keeping your own employees away from info anyone else has access to, including when your employees are at home … bureaucratic logic at its best.”

and now I head across the Atlantic ….

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

@JayCross : “You can’t manage things that you can’t mention.”

“A person grows as a person in connection with another person, and in no other way” — Teilhard de Chardin; via @technoshaman

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” — Hannah Arendt; via @jennifersertl

@hypergogue : “The future of workplace learning (or, saying goodbye to all that rhizome nonsense)”

As an example, if you speak to informed Training & Development strategy people they will all say that we’re seeing a trend towards ‘performance support’ and away from learning. Actually, though, trainers have always worked in ‘performance support’. Trainers have always known they’re there to ‘help people learn’. But many of them failed to spot the hidden end of that sentence – trainers help people to learn how to use performance support systems. ‘Teachers’, by the way, are no different in this respect.

Skype learning – 7 great benefits; by @donaldclark

You can always spot a fabulous technology when it can be used as a verb, like email, text, tweet. I’ll ‘Skype’ you, is one of those wonderful verbs. Over the last two years I’ve been doing voluntary Maths and Science tuition for kids that find these subjects difficult. It’s been a mix of face-to-face and Skype. So what follows is a short comparison between these two techniques.

From facts to data to commons; by @dweinberger

In a world too big to know™, our basic strategy has been to filter, reduce, and fragment knowledge. This was true all the way through the Information Age. Our fear of information overload now seems antiquated. Not only is there “no such thing as information overload, only filter failure” Clay Shirky, natch, in the digital age, the nature of filters change. On the Net, we do not filter out. We filter forward. That is, on the Net, a filter merely shortens the number of clicks it takes to get to an object; all the other objects remain accessible.

“analogy making is at the core of all cognition” Eide Neurolearning

Hofstadter believes that analogy making is at the core of all cognition, and what is especially interesting is how frequently analogies seem to occur in everyday experiences and how complex the parallels can be when suddenly we have a flash of insight, “That’s just like…(something else)”.

Henry Mintzberg on coaching ourselves & learning at HR 2010 World Congress; via @jonhusband

Highlights from these excellent videos:

• “The Inflated Sense of the CEO” – hero worship is horrible for organizations
• All MBA grads [without previous experience] should be stamped on the forehead with a skull & crossbones warning: “Not Prepared to Manage”
• The role of Human Resources (HR) is to be a fifth column in the organization
• The first thing HR can do is to get rid of the “R” [people are not resources]