| Stepping Stones

I have finally found a straightforward explanation for web 2.0 that I can use with my colleagues and friends. My discovery comes from gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”. I tried explaining the cartoon drawing to a few friends and I discovered that I need to fine tune (practice) my delivery somewhat. The cartoon drawing presents a simple analogy but it brings into play so many variables that illustrate web 2.0 impacts.

the porous membrane: why corporate (and non profit) blogging works.

The other day somebody asked me to explain why corporate blogging works. Sure, we know it’s the hot new thing and people are paying attention to it (including big media)… but why?

Why does it work? Seriously.

So I drew the diagram above.

1. In Cluetrain parlance, we say “markets are conversations”. So the diagram above represents your market, or “The Conversation”. That is demarkated by the outer circle “y”.

2. There is a smaller, inner circle “x”.

3. So the entire market, the “conversation” is seperated into two distinct parts, the inner area “A” and the outer area “B”.

4. Area “A” represents your company, the people supplying the market. We call that “The Internal Conversation”.

5. Area “B” represents the people in the market who are not making, but buying. Otherwise know as the customers. We call that “The External Conversation”.

6. So each market from a corporate point of view has an internal and external conversation. What seperates the two is a membrane, otherwise known as “x”.

7. Every company’s membrane is different, and controlled by a host of different technical and cultural factors.

8. Ideally, you want A and B to be identical as possible, or at least, in sync. The things that A is passionate about, B should also be passionate about. This we call “alignment”. A good example would be Apple. The people at Apple think the iPod is cool, and so do their customers. They are aligned.

9. When A and B are no longer aligned is when the company starts getting into trouble. When A starts saying their gizmo is great and B is telling everybody it sucks, then you have serious misalignment.

10. So how do you keep misalignment from happening?

11. The answer lies in “x”, the membrane that seperates A from B. The more porous the membrane, the easier it is for conversations between A and B, the internal and external, to happen. The easier for the conversations on both side of membrane “x” to adjust to the other, to become like the other.

12. And nothing, and I do mean nothing, pokes holes in the membrane better than blogs. You want porous? You got porous. Blogs punch holes in membranes like like it was Swiss cheese.

13. The more porous your membrane (”x”), the easier it is for the internal conversation to inform and align with the external conversation, and vice versa.

14. Not to mention it makes misalignment, if it happens, a lot easier to repair.

15. Of course this begs the question, why have a membrane “x” at all? Why bother with such a hierarchy? But that’s another story.

[AFTERTHOUGHT:] And yes, this works with internal blogs as well, poking holes in the membranes that seperate people within a corporate culture; aligning “the conversation” internally etc.

The other advantage of internal blogging is that it organises conversation into a long-term manageable form. Two people sharing ideas via blogs is a lot more permanent, viral and useful for the company than two people sharing the same information over by the watercooler.

Brent Business, Education Business, marketing, web2.0

This excerpt from Jay Cross’s post is bang on. In my non profit world, learning is the lowest priority amongst the list of daily tasks. It’s sink or swim, get or you don’t, and on and on..

Home of Jay Cross and Internet Time Blog — Internet Time Blog

In a knowledge society, work and learning are the same thing. Sun and ILA are developing what I call learnscapes. A learnscape is the platform where knowledge workers collaborate, solve problems, converse, share ideas, brainstorm, conceptualize, tell stories, help one another, teach, keep up to date, forge partnerships, build communities, and distribute information. Learnscapes are where and how modern work is performed – including workplace learning.

Back to those Twittering, Facebooking, always-on college students. Our challenge is not to design overlays and alternatives to accommodate them. Instead, we should be developing ways for them to take advantage of their approaches to the world to make our businesses more effective.

While we’re at it, we’ve got to drop the us-versus-them stance. They’re adept at keeping up with torrents of information, volatile situations, extreme flexibility, and real-time responsiveness. The oldsters are not.

Brent Business, Education jaycross, knowledge, Learning Community, work

Virtual Distance : Laleh Shahidi’s Blog

This is so relevant to my interests in working with students and NPO staff. Her data is reinforcing my own experience working with social media (albeit in more smaller contexts). I can use this to reinforce the outcomes of using social media in business settings. It’s a motivator for managers who need to see the ROI and certainly the front line practitioners who need to understand the importance of commanding your own ongoing learning experiences.

Sept. 23
Virtual Distance

Filed Under Learning Communities, Virtual Worlds

Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski the author of the book “Uniting The Virtual Workforce” defines Virtual Distance as the perceived distance between two or more individuals, groups, or organizations that is brought on by the use of electronic versus face-to-face communications. The greater the Virtual Distance among the members of a team, the more problems team members will experience. Among them: miscommunication, lack of clearly defined roles, and even personal and cultural conflicts. It does not matter whether team members are widely distributed or collocated; every team is potentially subject to the risks of Virtual Distance.

The results of the research in the area of virtual distance from the Virtual Distance International indicates organizations that have managed virtual distances well report:

Innovation behavior increase by 93%
Trust improves by 83%
Job satisfaction is better by 80%
Role and goal clarity rise by 62%
On-time, on-budget performance is better by 50%
Helping behaviors go up by almost 50%

By Laleh Shahidi, PhD

Brent Business, Education, Research, purpose enterprise, Learning Community, Research

From Presentation Zen comes this great post about pitching your idea in a crucial moment that you must do right. Here are 10 tips from a pro who raises millions of dollars pitching to venture capitalists.

Brent Presentation coaching, presentations

I’m fine tuning the community engagement tool we are using with the PhotoVoice Project. We plan on having Exhibit visitors do live blogging, but I won’t tell them that up front, of their feedback after viewing the photos. This is the text and picture we are using. To get the full sense of the engagement tool you need to go to Voice Thread and enter your feedback.

Brent Learning Community, Presentation

Yammer – promising new collaborative tool

If you’re assembling a far-flung collaborative team or bringing together a community of practice, here’s a way to help people stay connected. Yammer is like a private Twitter. Instead of Twitter’s question, “What are you doing?”, Yammer asks “What are you working on?”

As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced.

Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. The basic Yammer service is free. Companies can pay to claim and administer their network.

Brent Services collaboration, cop, tool, yammer

A more current explanation of users of the Internet has arrived in this post by TALL blog. It’s about students using the web however you can see how it really is applicable for any Internet travelers. I like it a lot as the digital vs. native term was so black and white when in fact the fluid nature of how people are visiting then taking up residence is far more accurate in my estimation.

TALL blog » Blog Archive » Not ‘Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’

Not ‘Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’

As part of the JISC funded Isthmus project we have been taking a close look not at what technologies our students use but at how our they use them. We found that our students could not be usefully categorised as Digital Natives or Digital Immigrants. I.e. This distinction does not help guide the implementation of technologies it simply provides the excuse that “some people ‘just don’t get it’ which is why your new approach has failed so badly…”

Anyway, our students appropriation of online services did not seem to follow a simple pattern based on skill level. It seemed to depend on if they saw the web as a ‘place to live’ or as a collection of useful tools. This underlying motivation led us to outline two main categories of distance learning student.

Brent Learning Community learners onlinelearning

What a great post for me as I strike out on my own.. I need a grounding in the basics if I’m going to survive so this post is very timely.

The BasicsSeptember 20, 2008 Gary Vaynerchuk and Deb Schultz Social media “stuff” is hot right now. It’s almost a bubble. And yet, several companies are seeking to learn more about how to use these tools and strategies to build business relationships, deliver new customers, solve customer service education issues, and more.

This post is intended for the aspiring social media types.Part of my energy around this post comes from a great speech by mister Gary Vaynerchuk I attended yesterday. Gary is nothing if not passionate, clear about his plan, and focused on his next steps.You MUST do the basics.

If You Are A Business

1. Be as professional as you can be. If you’re looking to help these businesses, realize that they need you to be reliable (something I wish I could do better). They need you to be there.

2. Educate people from their side of the fence. If you’re providing advice and training, don’t talk about your tool knowledge. Talk about their business challenges.

3. Study the market. Don’t just do your own thing. Learn how other people are selling. Learn how other people are marketing. Learn how other people are educating.

4. Know your price. Know how much you need to make to do business. This is so important. It also relates to how people value you. Be sure you value you.

5. Be clean and clear about selling. If you’re selling something, like consulting, like a service, like design work, whatever, be really open and clear about what you sell.

6. Ask. Ask for referrals. Ask for the sale. Ask for advice from lots of people. Make sure that asking is part of your DNA.

7. Be personal. Be real. Be who you are. It won’t last long if you try to be other people, or try to be something you’re not. This includes admitting when you’re wrong.

8. Know what’s next. Always have a plan. Always have a sense of where you’re going in your business, and what you need.Why are these the basics? Because this is the baseline price for entry to doing this work. It’s what people are expecting from you, especially when you get the opportunity to work with them.What have I missed? What do you know about?

The Basics | chrisbrogan.com

Brent purpose smtwl business

What a sweet little story that explains the new reality of marketing. It’s all over baby blue…

Brent Uncategorized conversation, social media/tech, socialmedia

I liked this video as the teacher spoke clearly about what knowledge is about within the context of connectivism thinking. I especially liked how he ended his talk on a positive note when he described a world where anyone can contribute to changes, solutions and innovations. The post came from a blogger who is attending the CCK08 course.

His blog is called Where Old Meets New.

Brent Education, Learning Community cck08, network knowledge