Engaged Learning

DevLearn Day 1 - 3 T’s: Twitter, Tim O’Reilly and Tired

Nov 13, 2008 Social Learning SIG

Image via CrunchBase

Phew!  At the end of today I thought it was two days.  Here are some thoughts:

Twitter has been great.  I know B.J. Schone only from Twitter, until last night I finally met him in person.  Same with Michelle Lentz, Clark Quinn and others.  I couldn’t get connected to wireless from my laptop.  I threw the question out and Tony Karrer and Brent Schlenker responded immediately.  We organized dinners through it.  Told each other of what sessions were good and which ones to stay away from.   Good stuff.  I have never twittered so much.  I swear I have twittered more today alone than in the last few months.

Tim O’Reilly was the keynote this morning.  A couple things from that.  WWGD= What Would Google Do.  Think about that next time you have a bright idea.  Build against the data.  He showed how Flickr made the default person icon ugly which, compared to 37signals.com, had many more people switch it to a personalized one.  I think I am going to put a frowny face on the default faceless man at work.  Then this one intrigued me, “The skill of writing is to create context in which other people can think.” He quoted that from somewhere else, not sure who, though.  But chew on that one. Too often we come from different perspectives - the wrong perspectives.  Also, what I have been preaching with the WHY series (as slow as it is going…) “You sell them based upon what they (the tools) mean, not what they do.”  (Cheers)  Follow the pioneers.  One of my favorite quotes that I put on Twitter: “You don’t incent them to use it, you just make them do it.“  Too true.

Other sessions I attended were good.  No other Aha! moments.  But I did get to meet some great new people, share some content with them for their future presentations, start a group centered around measurement, and watch David Wilkins show that he gets it. It was refreshing to see.  His speaking style and passion for it all reminded me of mine.  It was also great to see that mZinga gets it.  One of the only ones (or maybe only one?) that does.  I need to dive more into their product.  I have done basic research on it before, but need to dive deeper. David offered to do a webinar for the Social Learning SIG in January.  That will be the next one.

Good day - tired as I should be.  Ready for another day tomorrow.

UPDATE:

Another great review (admittedly better): B.J. Schone