by flattop341
Tips for Delivering a Successful Online Experience:
[Via eLearn Magazine]

Standing in front of an audience is no easy task, as any talk show host or comedian would attest. Unfortunately when a seminar moves into the virtual world, capturing the attention of your audience can be even more difficult. How can you keep everyone engaged and informed? Richard Watson has several helpful techniques which constitute a major improvement over picturing the audience naked.
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As increasing numbers of our collaborations take place online, these sorts of events will become even more common. These tips can be really useful, such as getting a high quality headset rather than use speaker phone. Not only will they sound better but they will be less likely to yell into the speaker with the misguided notion that others will not hear you otherwise.

Now if we could just modify the speaker spider found in many conference rooms – the one with multiple speakers for several people. They never get placed where everyone can both be heard and hear what others say from the speakers.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

by yusunkwon
Best. Freshmen. Evar.:
[Via Unqualified Offerings]

By Thoreau

I decided to give my freshmen a taste of real physics. I offered extra credit to anybody who could give me a useful critique of my grant proposal. Amazingly enough, two of my students actually rose to the occasion. Although they couldn’t really dissect the science, they could tell that I wasn’t really explaining why this would be significant for the field, and they told me what I’d need to say to convince them of the significance. (I guess some people just can’t appreciate the inherent AWESOMENESS of simulating a new technique for optical nanolithography and identifying the necessary molecular parameters.) They earned themselves some extra credit points for the upcoming midterm. Prior to this these students flew under my radar, but if this grant gets funded, they’ll be the first ones that I consider for research assistantships.

I don’t know many researchers who would do this but Thoreau accomplished something very useful. Not only were several deficiencies in the grant identified but the students may have lined up some nice work for themselves. A nice win-win situation.

Obviously there are barriers to overcome (e.g. proprietary information) but I wonder?

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Science, Web 2.0

by corazón girl
Examples of re-purposing email:
[Via Library clips]

In a past post I talked about Re-purposing email, and after that I was going to give some examples, but I got sidetracked on what blogs an enterprise would have when it would come to communications, see Enterprise blog channels for communications.

If these examples seem universal, then perhaps we can start a”Re-purposing email wiki” I’m sure Luis Suarez would agree.

Emails are not just about communications, sometimes they are about collanoration, tasks, sharing tips, etc…

This post is not just focusing on communication type blog posts, in fact it’s not focusing on blogs at all. It’s going through example emails and proposing how that email could be re-purposed.

What I have done is listed the email under the social tool it could of been delivered in.
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Some very good examples of what type of emails can be moved to other spots using Web 2.0 approaches. This not only makes the information much more accessible but also helps lessen email overload.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0

by soylentgreen23
Is There Still A Chasm?:
[Via SmoothSpan Blog]

An interesting post by Leigh has popped up on Techmeme. She wonders, as I have, whether the fundamental notion of Moore’s Chasm has changed. Leigh’s question is whether the generation that grew up on Technology still even thinks of it as early adoption, or if the behaviour has become so widespread that there really is no Chasm any longer.

It’s an interesting question, but I believe there will always be a Chasm of some sort. My question is whether the Early Adopter crowd is now so large, and the Internet so effective at reaching them, that perhaps it is possible to build a business without the painful dislocation that is Crossing the Chasm. Perhaps there are enough on the Early Adopter side to make a tidy business after all.

[I'm working on a more extended form of this comment I left at SmoothSpan. I hope to have it posted soon.]

If I remember correctly, the original adoption curve came from observations of the acceptance rates of new varieties of hybrid corn. So the curve itself describes a social phenomenon, not a technical one. I’m not convinced that there are really more early adopters than before. But, the rapid rate of change presented by new technologies may alter things. The rate of diffusion of technological change through the different groups may not be able to keep up with the furious rate of the change itself.

My feeling is that the problem is not what percentage are in the early adopter segment or not. There are really four chasms between each of the five groups. Up to now, the most noticeable was between the early adopter set and the early majority. Crossing this chasm would result in a narrow majority that had adopted the new technology.

But new technologies move so rapidly that each of the four chasms may now be much wider, not just the early adopter-early majority. The early adopters can move so far ahead of those a little slower that the gap looks huge. (I’m going through this with Twitter. I almost do not want to start because those who have been using it for even a short time seem so much more advanced and are doing so many ‘magical’ things that I fear I will never catch up. And I am an early adopter of technology).

So, my feeling is that there is a greater need for those who can span the chasm and help increase the rate of diffusion. It is just more like holding a tiger’s tail, since the rate of change seems to be accelerating also.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Web 2.0

by meyshanworld
How to Motivate Your Students:
[Via eLearn Magazine]

You can’t be a cheerleader every moment, but you can present your course so that the material becomes understandable, real, and exciting! Once this happens, students will suddenly take notice because they have discovered that the subject of your course talks to and about them. Here’s how.
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Many of these are applicable in any situation where you are teaching somebody something. Be enthusiastic. Be honest. Make it personal. Be humorous.

Essentially, act as a human being with something interesting to teach, rather than as a stern task master. This makes a difference even if the teaching is occurring online.

If people would follow many of these principles, they would not have to worry about laptops in the classroom.

Technorati Tags: Education, Social media, Web 2.0

by eye of einstein
Enterprise blog channels for communications:
[Via Library clips]

This post is an idea, thinking out loud, something to build upon, or perhaps something that is a bad idea…see what you think.

This is a follow-up to my post, Re-purposing email meme, which explained the email problem (overload, siloed) and how a “re-purposing email” idea with social tools can help reduce the anxiety and act as a catalyst for an open, collaborative, conversational and emergent social enterprise.

One thing to note is that you don’t save or waste time, you spend the same amount of time, only spread across various tools…what you are doing is spending your time more wisely (social productivity).

The focus of a future post will be examples of emails, and in what way they can be re-purposed.

But for now I want to examine exactly how blog communication is going to replace email, except emails for private or sensitive one-to-one correspondence.

This post is only about one type of blog use, and that is “communications“.
This is an In-the-Flow usage scenario as the concept is to use blogs instead of email for something we are already doing…this is not an extra thing we have to do, it’s substituting a tool.
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Another long but interesting post that begins a conversation about uses for blogs that are in the flow. These are business uses that are part of your normal daily work. Substituting ‘in the flow’ work using email with work using a blog.

There are some very interesting ideas here since a blog is often seen for ‘out of the flow’ work – comments, ideas, works in progress. While this post is a work in progress and therefore can be seen as out of the flow, it addresses some ideas that could impact in the flow work habits.

Some things to think about.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

by Just-Us-3
Re-purposing email meme:
[Via Library clips]

What actually is the email inbox?

It can be the latest private correspondence, news, questions, announcements, conversations, document collaboration, tasks, notifications etc.

This is a lot of different types of content coming into the one stream, where it’s hard to sort out priority, and also hard to organise what you’ve done, what the status is on what your doing, and where to find what your working on.

My post, Instead of sending an email, poses that a better way is to receive this content in context
eg. IM for quick questions, forums for discussion, blogs for know-how and communications, wikis for collaboration, RSS for notifications, etc.

Now you have various places to go to do your work- email can be used for one-to-one private correspondence and for invite links
eg. you are invited to collaborate on this wiki, here is the link

Instead of getting an email about project status, a new forum topic, I check my RSS Reader where I subscribe to blogs and forums.

This has split my email inbox stream into various other services, and most of the time I can reply or take part within these other services.

And of course this content is in the open for all to benefit from, for conversation to evolve the content, and I can discover people, connect and learn.

Email stress is something that is relevant to everyone, but what are people doing about it besides re-appropriating content elsewhere as I have suggested above?

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Lots of good stuff here. Email was really the first online social tool. But we forget how long it took for people to really get its usefulness.

When email was first introduced at Immunex in the early 90s, people were not certain what it was good for and there were no gurus to show people how to use it. Consequently, it took almost 2 years before you could be certain that if you sent an email, it would get read that day! Often you would send an email then walk down the hall to ask someone if they had gotten it.

Its usefulness, over the immediacy of the phone and voice mail, was not obvious. Now its use if ubiquitous. It is great for one-to-one communication of short, bursty messages. But now it is used for everything – messages to entire groups, long discussions between groups, requests for information, collaborations, etc. Many inboxes
are out of control, not because of spam but because of the huge influx of social requests from email.

As this article discusses, much of this can be relieved by new social tools, such as wikis, blogs, RSS, IM and forums. There is still the same problem I saw with email adoption – people need to be shown how to use the new tools. They need to know why it is worth their time to learn a new way of doing something.

I like the idea of using email to help. Gently remind them that this information could be put on a wiki page rather than in an email, that this question would be more likely to be answered if it was on a forum.

Use email to drive traffic to the new tools. Use the bursty, one-to-one aspects of email to move information to the one-to-many approaches of blogs, or the many-to-many approaches of wikis.

Then maybe the inbox will shrink to more manageable size.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

Louis Vuitton gets Brand-Jacked, Collateral Damage in Anti-Genocide Campaign:
[Via Web Strategy by Jeremiah]

The article is not only about what happens when a brand is hijacked. It is also a great example of how a organization could use a community it created in order to help itself.

Left Image: An impoverished Darfur child is shown holding an LV-like purse, image sold as a T-shirt from artist, now being sued, see Hi-Res version.

Thanks to Søren Storm Hansen for bringing this to my attention.

It could have been your brand
It could have been Rolex, Lexus, Gucci, or even your brand, sadly for LV, it was theirs.

A 26 year old artist named Nadia Plesner has been sued by Louis Vuitton for brand jacking their famous purses in a anti-genocide campaign.

The artist was trying to make a point that the media cares more for Paris Hilton extravaganzas more than the genocide in the nation of Darfur.

Now Louis Vuitton lawyers did what they are paid to do – protect the brand. Use the law against the artist. But this will also have negative effects on the brand.

What to do? Jeremiah asks his community and they come up with some great ideas, ones that create win-win solutions and actually could help the brand.

LV has two a few options
Here’s my take, from what I can tell, Louis Vuitton (and the dog) have nothing to do with Darfur, and their brand is being dragged through the African mud. Their response is pretty standard and expected, to protect the image and brand that they’ve been working to build. I’m sympathetic to them getting brand jacked, as they’ve not done anything to occur this unwanted attention.Option 1: Continue legal path: Continue this path and settle with Nadia, given the many lawyers they have access to and resources, they will likely win a copyright infringement for the design being on another paid product.

Option 2: Join the campaign: They could drop the suit, and work with the Save Dafur organization to help raise funds by doing events, creating a specific product, or help promote the cause. This too has it’s downsides, the brand will be brought into the human rights spotlight, and if they have any dirt in this arena (perhaps oversees manufacturing) they’ll be in turn scrutinized. Secondly, this would be a nod to activitists everywhere to brand jack major brands in order to get support and funding, the cycle will continue.

Option 3: Redirect focus on issues: Submitted by John Bell. I enjoyed John’s option so much, that I’ve embedded it here on the post as an update. “What they could do is work with Nadia and other artists to host discussions about media focus. They could partner with a neutral party like my friends at ifocos.org to steward the conversation. Keep the discussion away from luxury brands (which is not Nadia’s point anyhow). LV can become part of teh solution without taking on the brunt of an issue they do not own.”

Option 4: Walk away: Submitted by Alison Byrne Fields: “Drop the suit. Walk away and wait for the dust to settle. This little hullabaloo will have no long term negative impact on their brand.”

Originally there were only 2 options. But the community came up with others that were better in many ways. In particular, by following the third option, LV can not only help their brand, they can extend their community and enhance their brand. It would show that they listen to their community and try to find solutions rather than pay lawyers.

The artist wants media to look at the genocide. LV could use its high profile to help do exactly this. It would not drive away their luxury market and could expand it.

A very nice example how a diverse community can propose solutions to difficult problems when Web 2.0 technologies permit online conversations to take place.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0

by cogdogblog
Business Whitepapers:
[Via pbwiki.]

How Wikis Enable Enterprise Collaboration
The Five Keys to Enterprise-Grade Security and Infrastructure for On-Demand Wikis
Seven Wiki Essentials: The Must-Have Elements of Every Successful Wiki Initiative
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Some very nice whitepapers discussing not only pbwiki and hosted systems but also why wikis are useful in an organization. There are also some very helpful case studies. Some people like to host wikis in-house but this requires a much larger measure of support and attention than a hosted site.

Many of these hosted sites have a lot of security measures to protect the integrity of the data. They also handle backups and hardware. They can often make a big difference with small companies. Particularly those that can not easily provide the time to support an in-house option.

Technorati Tags: Education, Social media, Web 2.0

by aussiegall
Building Your Blogging Corps:
[Via A Journey In Social Media]

Most of these posts have been around how we’re rolling out the platform, getting communities to form, justifying, and so on.

And, as I was thinking about things the other day, I realized I hadn’t exposed all of you to another major theme of what we’ve been working on — building a corps of proficient, outside-the-firewall bloggers doing so on behalf of the corporation.

And, once again, I think we’ve hit upon a pretty good approach — one that I don’t see being employed too much by other companies.

So — let me share.
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And what he shares is very valuable. One of the key points is that good bloggers are not picked by the organization. They pick themselves. The key to having a group of excellent bloggers is to find those people who are excited by the approach and getting them onboard.

He also makes the point that the fear of bad things happening is overblown in his experience, particularly when compared to the good things that happen. The best approach may be to set a few guidelines and let the group work it out.

Most people are self-regulating here because it is open and people can see what they write. A light touch by the corporation seems to work best.

Another novel idea is to use in-house blogging as a sandbox to allow people to learn how to become better bloggers before giving them the opportunity to blog externally. They can learn without having the pressure of millions of people possibly reading them. They can get useful and focussed feedback this way.

Then there is this point, something I have also heard and makes absolute sense:

The other view is at the individual level: everyone who’s blogging for the company will say — unequivocally — that it’s helped them dramatically in their careers.

Everyone knows who they are. Their points of view are widely known and acknowledged. They find that the practice of blogging not only makes them better communicators, but they have far more to say than before.

It’s that Big Career Promotion you do for yourself …

Many people do things to help that are invisible. Answering someone’s question or pointing someone in the right direction may have a huge impact but is often not recognized by the organization. But a blog is pretty public and the help provided by it is much easier to document. It really can be a Win-Win for everyone involved.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0