Survey says: JIVE
Oct 11, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, collaboration
After a period of time that rivals most modern eras and after a long search we have finally decided to purchase and use Jive Software’s ClearspaceX for our internal Social Learning, projects, collaboration, knowledge base, communication, etc…
We looked at a number of worthy options, all of which had strong points. In the end we felt that ClearspaceX had the best all around feature set, function, flow, price and would best be able to deliver the kind of customer experience we were looking for.
Now, it is play time! We have had it loaded for some time for the evaluation, but they only give you 5 licenses for free which was perfect to play with. But now it is time to load it out and get it going.
This should be fun!
The Value of Learning Connections
Oct 8, 2007 Social Learning SIG, collaboration
I posted this post regarding ROI on Social Learning on BlogCascadia as well. Karen Pierson added this comment:
What I find especially intriguing about the article you referenced is the idea that social computing (or learning in our case) is about relationships. And, you can’t quantify the value of what is learned in the context of interacting with others.
In a related article the author discusses the idea of measuring “social capital” or the number of connections between people. So does that mean the more “connections” I have on LinkedIn, the more valuable I am? Or is it what is implied in those connections (e.g. people who actually have information or knowledge that is meaningful to me)?
Great question. And, while writing up a response, this is what I came up with:
A ‘Connection’, in and of itself, does not mean anything except possibilities. If you think of a screwed in lightbulb, there is a connection there. At that point it is only worth the possibility. The real value comes when the connection is used, through electricity, and the light functions.
I see three tiers of values assigned to connections:
1) The CASUAL connection (aka a ‘friend’ on a social network): You do not understand, and very possibly not intend to use, the value of this connection. But, if needed, you can, for example, blast a question away to a whole lot of these connections and hope you get a valuable answer.
2) The VALUED connection: You understand the value of this connection. Although maybe not formal or used every day, this connection might hold some information / skill / pathway into an area you are interested in or may be in the future.
3) The VALUABLE connection: This connection was either a CASUAL or VALUED connection used and thus it becomes VALUABLE.Given that, if you don’t have the Casual connections it is more difficult to have Valuable connections.
There are some people who have a TON of Casual connections and have always casually wondered if they were any good. When I finally decided to think about it, that is what I came up with. What do you think? What is the real value of connections?
Light and Fluffy Mumbo Jumbo Learning
Oct 4, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, collaboration
This is sort of a follow up to yesterday’s post on ROI. I have heard it before many times “The ’social’ part of all of this new movement is really too much.” “Actually, what good is all this. Can it be proven?” “This is a fad that will pass or will burst like Internet 1.0.”
Could all of this be overvalued? Possibly I must admit. Life changing remenents from Internte 1.0, however, still exist and has been the framework for part of what modern society is like today. So shall this be, in the least (I personally believe it will be more rather than less).
One of my favorites to read, Andrew McAfee, recently posted information that really rung true for me. One question I had was “Do all these loose connections between people really add up to better information, more learning, better business execution?” From his thoughts I have to answer, “Yes.” It comes in the form of “The Strength of Weak Ties.”
The strong ties we have with each can produce powerful ideas, concepts, products, etc. But strong ties generally won’t help us much when we need to get out of what we all know into something that we don’t know. For example, let’s say we all know about E-Learning and we can talk a lot about it, becoming more and more proficient in this area. Think of a magazine focusing there, brining in experts. We all learn from each other and pat each other on the back. But what if we need new information that is outside of our knowledge or path of future knowledge? What do we do then? That is where our weak connections come in.
Those weak connections allow us to bridge the community gap. If I have a lot of weak connections I am able to step into another community, glean some information and be the better for it. These weak ties foster innovation and learning.
From Andrew’s Post:
A tidy summary of SWT’s conclusion is that strong ties are unlikely to be bridges between networks, while weak ties are good bridges. Bridges help solve problems, gather information, and import unfamiliar ideas. They help get work done quicker and better. The ideal network for a knowledge worker probably consists of a core of strong ties and a large periphery of weak ones. Because weak ties by definition don’t require a lot of effort to maintain, there’s no reason not to form a lot of them (as long as they don’t come at the expense of strong ties).
Subsequent research has explored whether Granovetter’s hypotheses and conclusions apply within companies, and they appear to be quite robust. My former HBS colleague Morton Hansen, for example, found that weak ties helped product development groups accomplish projects faster. Hansen, Marie Louise Mors and Bjorn Lovas further showed that weak ties helped by reducing information search costs. And Daniel Levin and Rob Cross found that the benefits of weak ties were amplified if knowledge seekers trusted that information sources were competent in their fields.
We develop a greater potential for learning when we create more weak ties.
How are you creating weak ties? What kinds of tools are you using to do this?
The ROI of Social Learning
Oct 3, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, Social Learning SIG
I write this as I am formulating my thoughts.
There is a debate about how to do ROI on Social Learning and technologies or even if there should be an ROI at all. Can it even be done? My answer is NO. Not in the traditional sense of the definition of ROI. There are efforts to measure using the traditional ROI. I have not seen anything widely successful (although I have not looked really hard either). But what I do know is that many people have tried and have come up with some great case studies instead.
ROI is “Return On Investment.” But the return of what? Value. How do you measure value? Using a philanthropic example, I could say that an employee of mine has a certain ROI and I could calculate that fairly easily. So what is the ROI of a baby who is born with Down’s Syndrome? Through this little person’s life, they will probably never produce more than they consume - in terms of money. But they have a high ROI in other ways. How is that measured?
An extreme example, I know. But this shows that some things in which we invest resources can have an intrinsic value (having value by its very nature) and not a hard measurable number to define its value (there is a word there that I am not finding to describe this…). Yet we know they are valuable.
How do we prove that? How do we prove that Social Learning is valuable? Maybe it is in a new type of ROI, one that shows a value measurement of some other type.
I don’t have the answer, but it is certainly worth looking into more.
Giveaway of the Day
I collect videos. They are a great tool in trying to help people understand a topic, to get them engaged, liven up and open those droopy eyelids during trainings.
Recently I stumbled upon the “Giveaway of the Day,” where companies give away their software for free, but only for a limited time. I have found a few things in here which have been helpful to me to help others to learn. The one today is another.
It is a program called “Web Stream Recorder Pro.” Record anything that streams to your computer. Handy for capturing those hard to get videos. Of course, it should always be used for legal purposes only - need I say?
BUT, you must get it NOW. It needs to be downloaded AND installed within about 15 hours of this post. So go now!
BTW - if you have a good resource for videos - to download, or on the web or otherwise - please share. THX!
