independentman
Getting Conversation Ready:

[Via Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

Holly Ross wrote a good reflection piece about public conversations on blogs and how to get your audience ready for that conversation. She makes the point:

What I am saying is that your audience may not be ready to have the conversation that social media enables. That’s because social media does not just enable conversations.It enables PUBLIC conversations.

I think we have to remember that it takes time build the community to have the conversation and that it doesn’t happen right away. You have to be ready as conversation facilitator. Alexandra Samuel did a workshop called “Bringing Your Community to Life” at Netsquared and offered some terrific practical advice about you get the conversation started.

Some key points:

Key points to encourage participation:

Focus on promoting conversation

Make it happen, don’t wait for it

Connect like-minded participants

Connect complimentary threads

Plan pro-actively, implement reactively

by Shutr
Doctors Say ‘I’m Sorry’ Before ‘See You in Court’ :
[Via New York Times]

In 40 years as a highly regarded cancer surgeon, Dr. Tapas K. Das Gupta had never made a mistake like this.

As with any doctor, there had been occasional errors in diagnosis or judgment. But never, he said, had he opened up a patient and removed the wrong sliver of tissue, in this case a segment of the eighth rib instead of the ninth.

Once an X-ray provided proof in black and white, Dr. Das Gupta, the 74-year-old chairman of surgical oncology at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, did something that normally would make hospital lawyers cringe: he acknowledged his mistake to his patient’s face, and told her he was deeply sorry.

Think about what might happen if the lawyers took a lower profile and the doctors admitted their mistakes, if they were open with their patients. Turns out, something significant happens. Most people accept the apology and forgive the doctor.

This approach directly contradicts what most lawyers advise.

For decades, malpractice lawyers and insurers have counseled doctors and hospitals to “deny and defend.” Many still warn clients that any admission of fault, or even expression of regret, is likely to invite litigation and imperil careers.

But with providers choking on malpractice costs and consumers demanding action against medical errors, a handful of prominent academic medical centers, like Johns Hopkins and Stanford, are trying a disarming approach.

People get really angry when they find out the error was concealed and that it might happen again. As with political scandals, it is the coverup that causes the problems.

So what happens if the doctors and hospitals are open with their patients?

At the University of Michigan Health System, one of the first to experiment with full disclosure, existing claims and lawsuits dropped to 83 in August 2007 from 262 in August 2001, said Richard C. Boothman, the medical center’s chief risk officer.

“Improving patient safety and patient communication is more likely to cure the malpractice crisis than defensiveness and denial,” Mr. Boothman said.

Mr. Boothman emphasized that he could not know whether the decline was due to disclosure or safer medicine, or both. But the hospital’s legal defense costs and the money it must set aside to pay claims have each been cut by two-thirds, he said. The time taken to dispose of cases has been halved.

The number of malpractice filings against the University of Illinois has dropped by half since it started its program just over two years ago, said Dr. Timothy B. McDonald, the hospital’s chief safety and risk officer. In the 37 cases where the hospital acknowledged a preventable error and apologized, only one patient has filed suit. Only six settlements have exceeded the hospital’s medical and related expenses.

From 262 to 83 in 6 years. Defense costs down by two-thirds. Malpractice cut in half. These are game changing numbers, in the completely opposite direction from what lawyers said would happen.

The hospitals have also taken to following up the apology with fair compensation. This has had the effect of changing the behavior of malpractice attorneys.

There also has been an attitudinal shift among plaintiff’s lawyers who recognize that injured clients benefit when they are compensated quickly, even if for less. That is particularly true now that most states have placed limits on non-economic damages.

In Michigan, trial lawyers have come to understand that Mr. Boothman will offer prompt and fair compensation for real negligence but will give no quarter in defending doctors when the hospital believes that the care was appropriate.

“The filing of a lawsuit at the University of Michigan is now the last option, whereas with other hospitals it tends to be the first and only option,” said Norman D. Tucker, a trial lawyer in Southfield, Mich. “We might give cases a second look before filing because if it’s not going to settle quickly, tighten up your cinch. It’s probably going to be a long ride.

In all likelihood, more money ends up in the patient’s pocket and less in lawyer fees. As long as the awards are also open, so that the hospitals can not manipulate the settlements too much, and people can really see that they are not committing the same errors again and again, the beneficial cycle of this should not only drive malpractice suits lower but also help care in the hospitals.

Quality improvement committees openly examine cases that once would have vanished into sealed courthouse files. Errors become teaching opportunities rather than badges of shame.

“I think this is the key to patient safety in the country,” Dr. McDonald said. “If you do this with a transparent point of view, you’re more likely to figure out what’s wrong and put processes in place to improve it.”

For instance, he said, a sponge left inside an patient led the hospital to start X-raying patients during and after surgery. Eight objects have been found, one of them an electrode that dislodged from a baby’s scalp during a Caesarian section in 2006.

This looks like a program that could have huge effects across the country. By admitting their errors and treating the patients like rational human beings, the doctors remove themselves from antagonistic relationships, the hospitals spend less money on lawsuits and the standard of care goes up.

All by showing a little openness and transparency.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science, Sustainability

Our slow rollout over the last few weeks has been very successful. Thank you to everyone who made a comment. They were all helpful.

We will be expanding the rollout over the next week and hope to have a lot more traffic. So, hello to our new visitors. Read about us by following this blog or reading some of our white papers.

We plan to add some more reading material shortly. These are very exciting times and we look forward to discussing them with some of you shortly.

by Joi

[Update: after thinking about it overnight, the main take away I got from Shirky's talk was examining media in a different fashion. It is too easy to just look at Web 2.0 as just normal media taken online. But the Web is not TV and will have its own way of connecting  people.  In the end, it will be the people in a community that determine the network's utility/importance, not the media and not corporations. So listen to what the community wants, not what the hype says.]

Just got back from Shirky’s talk. He is a very engaging speaker. No slides. Just very different points of view that require you to alter your perspective. There has been some discussion of Shirky’s new book ‘Here Comes Everybody’ at Bench Marks that invites some thought.

Interestingly, he directly answered the ‘people with too much time’ meme. His point was that one of the huge aspects of the last 50 years is that almost everyone has too much time. It has been spent watching TV and consuming.

He stated that 100 million hours of human thought produced Wikipedia. We spend 100 million hours every weekend just watching ads on TV. Which one wastes the most time?

According to Shirky, those who say Web 2.0 approaches as being used by people with too much time ignore the fact that virtually everyone has too much time today. That is, there is a culture-wide cognitive surplus that, until recently, was filled by TV and consumerism. What happens if some of this is harnessed?

Shirky mentioned the inability of modern media to accurately describe what is happening. It sees anyone who is not watching mass media or consuming as a waste. But TV is really the waste.

New technologies now allow people to also produce and to share. He stated that even if a very small fraction of the total amount of time spent watching TV, say 10%, was utilized, it could result in 10,000 wikipedia sized projects a year. His point here was that even if people are playing World of Warcraft that it is a better use of their time than watching TV.

Now, according to Sturgeon’s law, 90% of the stuff produced and shared will be crud, because 90% of everything is crud. But to throw out that 10% because the rest is hype or echo chamber is a mistake. That is still about 1,000 wikipedia-sized projects a year.

Just as we had to get through My Mother the Car to finally see Battlestar Galactica, we may have to deal with some online crud. But, a social network will not gain much unless it serves the needs of the community. So echo chamber blogs will not really have much impact as they seal themselves away from anything that breaks the echo. Blogs as cults will not be very sustainable nor have much impact.

On re-reading the article by Brabazon, I think she is concentrating on something that was not at all the focus of Shirky’s book. If so, that is somewhat unfair. Or perhaps she found a blind spot in his discussions. But that may not invalidate what he has to say. What her article and Shirky’s talk have accomplished is that I may have to read the book to figure it out for myself. Score another victory for consumerism.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0

by Jef Poskanzer

I’m traveling to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Over 8000 people attended the first one last year. I hope to have some interesting things to say about the meeting. I have been to several put on by O’Reilly and they are uniformly excellent.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0

Well, Science 2.0 must be the next full release after Science 1.5.b13, right? Not quite. It takes its lead from applying Web 2.0 approaches to scientific research. So, what is Web 2.0?

In 2005, Tim O’Reilly described in detail what he meant by Web 2.0. Since then, there has been a lot of discussion on just what this means, if anything. So, I am going to add my own two bits to the mix. There really are not many technical differences between Web 1.0 and 2.0. The differences come from how they are used, and how usable they are.

Web 1.0 is static. Web 2.0 is dynamic.

As mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Web 2.0, Web 1.0 was about displaying information. Web 2.0 is about conversations, about participation in the flow of information.

Web 2.0 uses many new approaches for dealing with information including wikis, weblogs, syndication, aggregators, RSS, podcasts, forums and mashups. These often require the active participation of users. They have been used to create hugely popular social media sites, such as Facebook and YouTube, where the very content seen by all is created totally by the users. User-generated content.
(more…)

by aussiegall
Web 2.0: Building the New Library
[Via Ariadne]

Paul Miller wrote this over 2 years ago but it amply describes the effects of new approaches will have on an area that lives by dispersing information. It is not the technology that will make a difference. It is an attitude, one that is almost as old as humankind.

Sharing helps the entire team, tribe or town. The collective intelligence of the group is only strong when the umber of information chokepoints is low.

Paul’s Principles of Web 2.0, as discussed here, still apply in almost any endeavor that must deal with information to succeed. Here they are:

• Web 2.0 presages a freeing of data, allowing it to be exposed, discovered and manipulated in a variety of ways distinct from the purpose of the application originally used to gain access.
• Web 2.0 permits the building of virtual applications, drawing data and functionality from a number of different sources as appropriate.
• Web 2.0 is participative.
• Web 2.0 applications work for the user.
• Web 2.0 applications are modular, with developers and users able to pick and choose from a set of interoperating components in order to build something that meets their needs.
• Web 2.0 is about sharing: code, content, ideas.
• Web 2.0 is about communication and facilitating community.
• Web 2.0 is about remix.
• Web 2.0 is smart.
• Web 2.0 opens up the Long Tail.
• Web 2.0 is built upon Trust.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Technology, Web 2.0

TGIF: Davidson Seamount:

[Via Deep Sea News]

I’ve been fiddling around with the formatting for the YouTube videos. Looks like it is working.

This is an excellent example of what can be done to spread science around. Nice graphics and an interesting story.

Technorati Tags: General, Science

by jeffpearce
Progress toward Public Access to Science:
[Via PLoS Biology: New Articles]

PLoS Chairman of the Board Harold Varmus applauds the newly enacted NIH public access policy as a positive step toward ensuring greater access to and better use of the scientific literature.

This very nicely discusses some of the recent changes that are making Open Access to scientific information a going concern. Anyone receiving money from NIH has to deposit the accepted manuscripts into PubMed Central and allow freely available viewing within 12 months.

He also mentions the continuing problem of copyright. Many journals require the authors to turn over all rights to the journal in order to have the paper published. This is becoming a problem in the Web 2.0 world, since the concerns of the author do not often match those of the publisher.

As Varmus writes:

Finally, unless authors modify their copyright agreements with journals before publication—something they are urged to do—journals will continue to retain inappropriate control over the use of their articles, which is currently confined largely to reading online for most articles in PMC.

Harvard has recently addressed this. Faculty members must grant a non-exclusive license to the University for it to post on a website it maintains, one that is open and free. Faculty can opt out of this on a case by case basis if the journal will not permit this.
Varmus comments:

Moreover, the nuisance of writing to the Provost every time a desired journal refuses to conform to the Harvard policy may cause faculty members to rethink their choice of venue, thereby minimizing use of the “opt-out” option.

The journals make their reputation based on the reputations of its author scientists. If a journal has a restrictive copyright policy, these scientists may go elsewhere, putting pressure on the journal to adopt more open access.

This story is not over yet. But it has the potential to revolutionize scientific publishing. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: Education, Science, Web 2.0

by Vik Nanda

Rethinking Outreach: Teaching the Process of Science through Modeling:
[Via PLoS Biology: New Articles]

How can we get high school students interested in science? Here is a program that matches students with researchers, with the purpose of building a physical model of the protein being investigated in the lab.
What an outstanding idea! Not only did these students learn a great deal about how research is actually done but they also were instrumental in helping the researcher have some of the tools he needed.

These sorts of interactions will always be needed. Humans like to interact personally with others. But, Web 2.0 technologies can make it easier for these sorts of interactions to take place. Meetup is a great example of this.

There are already hints that scientific meetings may take a similar path. Again, not to replace the conferences already taking place but as an adjunct.

Update: Of course, Web 2.0 approaches can also expand the reach of teaching and communications. A great example was the recent EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Online Focus Session.

Technorati Tags: Education, General, Open Access, Technology