I Finally Get It – It’s Personalization, Not Publication in Social Media
Oct 21, 2009 I Finally Get It, RSS, Twitter, collaboration, why
Here is another ‘ah-ha’ moment for me. Again, it was something that I always knew, but the importance of it became even more glaringly obvious.
I was reading a ReadWriteWeb post from back in September on Personalization. To make their point, they quote Ken Fromm as saying,
“The Internet is shifting from discrete units of websites and Web pages to discrete units of information [...] organized in ways that are relevant and personal to each individual, using data gleaned from social graphs as well as recommendation and personalization services that allow users to set their preferences.”
Much of our focus is on sharing data.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: friendfeed, personalization, RSS, Twitter
Social vs. Not – Pictorally
Mar 10, 2009 Email, Implementation, RSS, Searching, Social Learning SIG, Verbs of Social Learning, Wiki, blogging, collaboration, social media
I don’t know who to credit this to, but I love it. It has been posted so many times that the originator is lost. But, THANK YOU! to whomever it was. (UPDATE: It is from Nasa. Thanks, Harold!)
What I love about this is that it is simple & direct. This got me thinking… Why don’t we have more of these? So I decided to create some more. And here they are…
Blog Advantages:
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RSS Advantages:
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Social Networking Advantages:
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Social Learning >> SlideShare
May 15, 2008 Learning 2.0, Podcast, RSS, SlideShare, Social Learning SIG, Wiki
In the tradition of “Meet Charlie” I have created “Meet the Trainers.”
TK08 – Tony Karrer and Implementation of Social Learning
Feb 27, 2008 Learning 2.0, Podcast, RSS, Searching, Wiki
I am in Tony Karrer’s session here at TK08 today entitled, eLearning 2.0 – Applications and Implications. It is a very large room and was intended to be more of a discussion, but oh well! This is going to be a 201 session – a follow up from this morning’s session (which I did not attend).
From the outset, it looks like his presentation will be similar to mine tomorrow morning, more along the lines of implementation.
He starts out by asking who is implementing this now. Only about six people raised their hands in about 250 people. I raised my hand and explained my situation very briefly.
Interestingly, he did a survey and the top way people want to use these technologies is “Alongside Formal Learning.” Yet EVERONE that mentioned that they are using it are NOT doing it alongside formal learning. This shows me that those who are using it doing think of it as an extension of training. It further proves to me that as people dive into this they divorce it from training. It is totally separate. Not that it cannot compliment or help, but it is not in the ‘learning plan.”
Things that get in the way?
· Firewalls
· IP
· Privacy
· Security
· Control of information by management
· Strict control over policies – Accuracy
· Liability / Discoverability / Compliance
· Change Management – Ready for it / Culture
· Management take it seriously – away from work
· Is it real work or not?
· Education of management
· Lack of resources – Mobile devices
· Pushback from workforce – adoption
What about the quality of the content? That is ALMOST a non-issue. Think about it – the information is getting out now, but it is over the phone, IM, email. But now it is recorded and easily accessible. But it is not really an issue once implemented.
Usually, at first, the moderation is more strict than a few months later. It relaxes. It just happens. Corporations like to limit authoring as well. WHY? There are some reasons and I can see, but for the reasons that I have heard it is a paranoia that goes away once they get comfortable. And limiting visibility? Again, there are reasons to do it, but at first more is locked down and then t opens up because people realize that it is OK for anyone to see it.
Tony cites the 90-9-1 rule where 90% of the community members are lurkers, 9% contribute a small amount and the 1% contribute the majority of the content.
(Honestly, this is almost frustrating being in the audience because I want to jump up and answer so many of these questions and help people realize that all the ‘issues’ they are bringing up seem like big issues, but they are, for a lot of them, non-issues. Oh well – I continue to listen and soak it all up. He is doing a great job of answering the questions. It is obvious he has good experience in it.)
Next, Tony talks about ways to get wiki adoptions, based off of www.wikipatterns.com. I have written before, but the writer of the Wiki Patterns book is doing some vodcasts. If you have questions about this, you should check these short videos out.
How do you measure the impact? He says the same way you do now, but with one caveat: You can’t correlate individual behaviors with individual results like you would an LMS. But you can in a more general way.
Convincing Management. He said that it is very difficult. It comes down to almost an ethnographic view – sharing stories of how it works integrated with cold hard numbers. Management is used to seeing numbers only. But one way to do it is to just do it yourself. Then get others to do it with you on projects or meetings or… (make sure it is all kosher within the org and that you are not going to get fired or prosecuted for doing it). Then others use it, start demanding it and then management sees that it is in use and see the benefit. But then their question is “OK, we see the need, how do we control it?” Kind of funny.
Great session. A lot of questions answered.
Updated Look – It’s About Time!
Jan 28, 2008 Implementation, RSS, Wiki, blogging, collaboration
I did surgery this weekend on this blog. Extreme Makeover. Although it is not totally complete, it is close. It needed one badly!
Speaking of updating looks, I am trying to customize the front page of our Social Learning solution internally. It has the default page which shows an aggregate of most recent content for all wikis, discussions and blog posts. (Trying to customize it has been difficult. A great great solution overall, but as with everything there are pros and cons.) The problem with that is that each of those three have different lives: 1) They are each created in different intervals; 2) they all have different relevancy lengths and 3) they have different audience contexts. Imagine three related but different people living under one roof (maybe you don’t need to imagine too hard…)
WIKI: The wiki, at least internally and in our stage of development, has a rapid creation cycle. We have many which are created each day. Thus, they dominate the ‘Most Recent Activity’ aggregate shown on the first page. Plus, so many are created with varying topics, that the list becomes irrelevant. Unlike RSS where you can pick and choose what you information you want to show, this page is like the newspaper. Rarely do you care about every story. You want information that relates to you, not EVERYTHING. The wiki’s active life is short. For the most part, it is created and not many are changed or added to immediately.
DISCUSSIONS (forums): These have a shorter creation cycle. Currently, one is created only every few days. I expect that to pick up in the future. Their active life is usually short, but immediate. Ask a question, get an answer – a number of answers. The problem is that they are being burried by the wikis and unless you go specifically to the discussions, you would never know a new question has been asked.
BLOGS: The life of blogs can very depending on the person(s) writing them. For us, no one (almost) is using blogs because, again, they are getting buried unless the user specifically goes to check out the latest blog postings. Their active life is relatively short. When a post happens, usually comments follow pretty quickly. Then they taper off.
Putting all three together as a “Recent Activity” will usually not produce the results you want. And the results are usage. You want people in there using everything to share information. If information is shared and it is time sensitive (as usually forums and blogs are) you will want to make sure it has appropriate real estate for its life.
Social Learning SIG – Push vs. Pull and How RSS Changes Learning
Sep 26, 2007 RSS, Social Learning SIG
Let’s bring this meeting to order. Welcome everyone. Sit back and enjoy the Social Learning ride (of course, you do realize you will have to drive some, don’t you? Unless the car breaks down…)
Let’s say I was behind a car and you were in front of it. I pushed it and you pulled it. We get the same result, yet are doing two opposite things. So it depends on which side you are on. Let’s take it from the learning professional’s perspective.
You have spent months (plus) creating training curriculum. Now, you need results (RIO). So you pull people to your training. Haven’t we all been there? They sign up through an LMS. We market our offerings. We try to convince managers why their people should attend. We create training and the people it is intended for may not want /can’t attend or don’t feel the need. Rather they may feel forced to attend, or they don’t have enough time to make it, or they were just hit with an unexpected project or… often we pull them to the learning. They feel like they are being pushed into learning – not alway, but sometimes.
Let’s turn that around. What if we were able to push learning to them and they pulled what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted?
Now look at it from the learner’s perspective. You want to learn about (fill in the blank). You could go out there, pulling information to you. This is the traditional way of getting information, no matter what that information is. In the early days of the internet, as an example, for you to get the industry information you wanted you needed to visit your favorite sites. On each one you would look for the information you were interested in. This might take some time. You might also come across information you didn’t want and would skip over it. And some days when you went looking you didn’t find anything useful. Oh well. Keep looking…
Well break those shackles which bind you! You don’t have a lot of time in a day to search and not find anything. For you to go searching for the latest information and not find it is not acceptable.
Let it be sent to you. This is one of the the SEVEN requirements for Social Learning. Unfortunately, (cliff hanger approaching) that is for another time. But I bring this up for a very important reason: for us to learn from each other in this SIG we must be able to get the information when we want it. We must let the information be pushed to us. You don’t want to check the blog every day to see if there is a new post. WASTE OF TIME. Instead, let the blog inform you of when there is new information and then tell you what that information is. If you don’t have time to read it right then, you want it waiting for you when you do have the time.
In this context, it is called RSS. I have written about this before on this BlogCascadia post. The best explanation, if you don’t know what it is (and even if you do) is found in this video.
For you to feel a part of this SIG you must RSS yourself. Here is what you will need to do:
- Go get yourself an RSS Reader. Personally, I use two readers. The most useful to me is the web based Google Reader. I also use Feedreader - a little app for the desktop. Here are some more web-based and application readers. There are pros and cons to all.
- Go here, here, here, here and here. (Ha, that was fun!) Sign up for their RSS feeds. (How? Watch the video mentioned above.)
- From those, find some others and sign up. You can always drop some or add some as you read them.
- Comment on this post. Tell us a) what reader you chose and what you think about it and b) what other RSS feeds you signed up for. If you find one, share it – we want to know as well!
The heart of this SIG is #4 – sharing. Tell us all what you think. Don’t shrink at the task! Agree/Disagree. Have any questions? Comment. Let’s hear it!
E2.0 – RSS
Jun 21, 2007 Implementation, RSS, Uncategorized
RSS is a huge part of E2.0. One presenter showed the statistics that the average knowledge worker spends 9-10 hours a week searching for knowledge and is only 50% successful. But as I have talked with others about using RSS in an organization, the prevalent comment was that most people won’t want to use it. It is complicated to set up and they have to go back to check to see if there are updates. I could understand their arguments (I had similar concerns) but I didn’t understand RSS then. To be honest, I don’t understand it technically a ton right now, but I understand it better.
The way I know RSS it through 1)Google Reader, and online RSS app and 2) Feedreader, an app I downloaded and used for internal RSS feeds. But I would not hesitate to state that most readers/contributors would use one like this. I learned, however, that RSS can be in other forms.
- It can be a small alert box, much like an IM notification that quickly gets your attention and then quickly disappears. I believe, however, that it is a desktop widget that would need to be installed.
- It can be digest like, sending you information on updated or newly added information to your email.
- It can be fed to a portal page so that any time the user goes there (say a home page for an intranet) it will show the latest and greatest.
Even more, RSS feeds should be shared. Let’s say I have a feed I particularly like. I should be able to send it to someone else with similar likes. The user needs to be in as much control as they want – little or all. And it should be personalized. The user should have the ability to input what information he/she wants to see. The system should also recognize what the person has viewed and has an interest in and then give the user recommended feeds.
Doing this allows employees or customers to pick up on personalized and relevant information quickly and easily AND in the way they want to receive it. It pushes the information to them, rather than the user manually searching and pulling information to them. This is lifelong (or job long) learning – constant, timely, personalized.
