Personal Blogs

Dion Hinchcliffe Social Enterprise networking thinking

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/the-promise-and-challenges-of-benioffs-social-enterprise-vision/1722?tag=search-results-rivers;item0

We each have our own metaphors.

For Facebook I go with a family weedding (family and friends).

For Twitter I go with a rain. Sometimes you need an umbrella.

Overused, overhyped, over-whelming noise. It depends on if you like going out in a thunderstorm on monsoon.

I've observed Twitter misused drown discussion groups (Oxford University) because it is being used like DIY direct mail or spam. Everyone sticking their heads out a window and blowing a trumpet about stuff that very few people have any interest in at all. So instead of being used as a way to talk with a niche audience, it is used as a way to spam millions.

For Google+ so far is a handful of OU students who happen to be studying the Masters in Open and Distance Education and are joining this lab together. Its appeal is obvious - control. Though nothing I don't recognise from Diaryland which has something called 'rings' and was live in September 1999. No such thing as a good idea then?

Just someone coming along and doing it better?

Linkedin is where the real networking occurs, between professional like-minds.

Not forgetting blogs, where a specialist interest or three is the best place to pull-together and associate with people whose comments and opinions you value.

We can make these platforms anything we want them to be, indeed turn the recieved thinking or common practice inside out if we wish.

Why not draw professional contacts to Facebook as a creative workout in a different context?

If Google+ replaces Facebook AND Twitter I'll be happy.

But the idea that I'll get used to Google+ over the next 18months and then need or want to change to something else fills me with dismay. It reminds me of how the privatisation of the bus services meant you could get three busses all arriving at the same time, each from a different operator, each wanting you to use their bus.

For the umpteenth time I am starting on a new venture on a new platform.

A decade ago I stuck to what I knew and wouldn't budge. I waved good-bye to contacts as I continued to blog in Diaryland while everyone else moved over to LiveJournal, Blogger and Wordpress. I even stuck with Friends Reunited and MySpace.

No more.

Everything I stumble upon I try.

Anything new I sign up.

Already I can imagine Google+ as a one-stop shop, a kind of Personal Learning Environment (PLE) even like the OU VLE in that is draws together so many of the services and tools I already use.

Managing and engaging with people according to their 'sphere of influence' rings true too. I've never felt comfortable with my several selves in Facebook.

Picasa I swear by for photos and screen grabs. The galleries here feed images into all my blogs.

I use but need to master dropbox.

I have a blogger blog, but I have become so engrossed in Wordpress I am truly reluctant to have to master another 'instrument' as it were.

It is not my desire to play every instrument in the orchestra, the wind section with a bit of piano and guitar for recreational purposes will do.

Conductor?

That's an interesting thought. But does Social Media have the equivalent of a score? I am not and never will be a programmer.

H800 wk23 a Activity 2

Stepping over the edge

'A key characteristic of these new technologies is "learning by doing" - users need to be immersed in and "play with" the affordances that these new digital environments offer, and hence over time get a sense of how they can change practice.' Conole (2011:403)

MY STUDENT BLOG AS A WORDLE

Whilst I may highlight and annotate, doing do on paper isn't the easiest way to share; using a screen reader is worse because I find myself not enjoying having the obvious affordances, such as cut and paste, disabled.

I have an iPad to learn from it and to share what I discover.

It is both the angle and the devil on my shoulder.

Does it super-size my mind?

It thrills and engages it, indulges and expands, but also risks loosing me in its labarynthine tangles.

Saved for now by a To Do list that I refresh and follow.

But then I find an idea from Conole (see above) that is key.

The internet is a trip to the sea, it is somewhere to play and discover.

We may require Lifeguards and laneropes but it remains largelly an environment that can only be understood through engagement.

You will get you face wet,you may get bitten by a crab.

To share this thinking I must go online, and cannot help myself.  For the last three months I click through Linkedin, reading and responding.

For the next three it may be Stumbleupon, which through tricks and traits I find increasingly insightful, feeding me like a favourite aunt or uncle , the weirdness of the www. 

Serendipity would be a better word for it. 

I am rewarded by 25 minutes of browsing with 'new finds' that becomes stuff that I recommend which in turn obliges me to update my profile, might I even say 'brand tag' the finds as 'mymindbursts'. (I need two days off to take stock and write up some ten ore more blog entries.

Draft I know will do, from my experience as a diarist, just enough to trigger a more expansive and reflecive entry)".

To remind myself:

Monday 11th

Livestream on Social Media Metrics from IET. Five presenters. All to write up from my notes and screengrabs, cushioned or suffocated by the 'official' word and slides that have since gone up.

Tuesday 12th

Picklejar Social Media for HE in which Tracy Payle shares insights from a number of Universites and through activities tips my thinking upside down and shakes it out onto the conference room table. I come away enlightened and as I had wanted, more confident if mot emboldened.

Thursday 20th

Faculty discussion on VLE and my experiences of The OU VLE to date. I take a look at the poster in the Post Room and discover a 'common room' I had been unaware of.

Settling down to some H800 reading at the end of an extraowrdinary week.

Monday 'attended, livestream conference from the Institue of Educational Technology.

Tweated through-out and got one question in either to Martin Weller or Andrew Laws.

Screen grabs and bllog notes all the way through.

Yet to digest but gripped by Weller's growing view that page views, links and friends for a stream of online writing may be gathered in time as evidence of scholarqship.

Also informed by Tony Hirst and the meaning behind Goodhart's Law in relation to analytics that cease to be a measure as we become skilled at warping/twisting the means by which the stats are generated.

Informed too by the notion of Open Learn content, understandably, as having a commercial as well as a public remit, to inform, but also translate into people signing up for courses.

If there was a Coast course I'd do it. All I've ever had is a fancy booklet.

That was Monday.

This is turnng into one of those weblog things. Now why am I not into all that reverse chronology posting thing? Its having something to say and the desire to say it.

Four entries one day, none for a while.

That's fine too.

P.S. Now that all this stuff is public facing and broadcast should there not be a dress code.

I find myself watching an event taking place in 2011 and being reminded of an OU Physics Lecture of the 1970s. (I often watched this stuff as a boy in the middle of the night. Hippy, beard, denim jacket, flaired-trousers and sandals.)

As a swimming coach I have taken Sunday evening sessions for the last three years.

I still work Sunday evenings covering all my social media bases as conversations at this time of the week a far more likely to be quasi-synchronous.

i.e Not obliging you to be present as in messaging, nor as abstract as an asynchronous forum or picking up comments in a blog such as this hours or days after the event.

Indeed I've been communicating with an OU MBA alumni Luke Firth Philidelphia on and off for the last couple of hours.

Odd how I can treat a TMA like an essay, research it to death and build towards an essay crisis. Having to write the TMA equivalent, a strategy paper on Social Media, I find I am a couple of days ahead with the first draft written, expectations of a meeting where expert colleagues will have input before finalising and presenting in a week.

Applied learning, or practice-based learning ... action learning, they're all the same idea that attracts a good deal of interest; it increasingly makes sense for people, especially if they are settled in a position that they enjoy and need, to study as the work, the learning occuring alongside what they do, rather than separetely from it.

In some respects this is the immersive learning that game-like learning environments are supposed to re-created; but why do that when you can have the real thing?

I had thought of creating it as a wiki, password protected for contributing stakeholders. As long as we're on the same wavelength from experience of doing this in the MAODE I'd trust the end result to be better as a result, the equivalent of lifting something from the 70% mark towards 85% and beyond.

Blogging here My Mind Bursts more than here, where the audiences have far more choice and haven't the focus of hear of learning with the OU.

Its been an interesting environment to hone some more advanced blogging habits and skills, not simply the generation of regular content, but how it is linked, where it is linked and the important of tags which I've used simply to identify content, but of course of seach engine optimisation purposes too.

If you have a moment and can put the right hat on, perhaps you're an Open University Faculty of Business and Law student anyway, then do please visit our website as I will be listening to all comers on valuable enhancements we can make here.

To 'blogify' is my mission.

Websites: Your “Link” to Future Opportunities Posted on May 29, 2011 by Wayne

Before I get to this week’s tip, I want to let you know about a couple opportunities for those of you in the Milwaukee area to catch me in action. On Tuesday morning, May 31st, I will be a guest on The Morning Blend television show on Channel 4 at 9:00 a.m. I plan to critique the LinkedIn profiles of the hosts and share some LinkedIn tips.

Should be fun.

In case you forget to set your DVR, you can catch the replay on their website.

Then at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 1st, I will be doing a book talk/signing at the Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon.

I look forward to sharing some of my latest LinkedIn tips as well as the details of my book-writing journey. Grab a friend and come on over to the book store.

This week’s tip is about using one of the most unique but underutilized sections on your profile to generate not only interest and increased credibility but business leads.

In the Websites section of your profile, you can enter three well-described website links.

This will encourage people to go directly from your LinkedIn profile to some other place on the Internet. It is amazing to see how many people either don’t use this section at all or list fewer than three websites.

Here is all you need to know about how to strategically use this critical part of your profile.

Websites:  Your “Link” to Future Opportunities

It is located in the all-important top box (blue summary section) of your profile. You can enter up to three separate URL addresses (Use them all!). You don’t have to include your LinkedIn URL as one of the entries. You can use up to 26 characters to describe these entries.

Putting these on your profile provides links to other sites, which helps you move up on not only a LinkedIn search but a Google search as well. That is the simple part. But then you need to decide what strategic places on the web you would like people to go to and do something because they were encouraged to click this link.

I also highly recommend as a best practice that you refer to these links in your Summary section and your Experience section.

If people see these links several times, they will be more likely to click them and move to some type of action.

Here are some examples:

“Be sure to sign up for our email newsletter by clicking the ‘Sign up for our email’ link in the Website section above” or “You can get a copy of our industry trends white paper by clicking ‘Real Estate White Paper’ in the Website section above.”

Here are a few ideas for using these important links:

The home page of your company website. Of course, this should be first. (Change description from “My Company” to something more descriptive, like your company name or tag line) Your company’s e-mail signup page on your website. This is a good way to build your database.

Any articles, customer testimonials, case studies, and/or white papers that are on your company website.

The LinkedIn profile is all about showing your expertise. This is a great way to show it. Signup for an upcoming company sponsored event.

Videos that you have posted on your company website, other websites or YouTube showing products, presentations, testimonials.

Video is really hot and getting hotter.

Get your Flip Camera and get going. People love seeing and hearing other people. Link to either a completed survey of industry matters or an ongoing survey for which you need more opinions. People love data and being a part of the data group. Websites of related organizations, associations, industry groups.

You can promote your involvement and at the same time help that group as well.

Your blog.

If you are writing content that is important to some of your Linkedin audience, this is really a “power tool” in your journey to be the most credible person in your space. Your Facebook, MySpace, Flickr or other social media accounts. This is great as long as you continue to follow a similar professional level of content and feel. Don’t waste one of your slots with your Twitter account. There is a separate spot for that just below this section. The website of your favorite charitable organization. This shows people what you are interested in and at the same time helps promote a group you really care about.

One additional tip.

Once you have figured out the best websites/pages to link people to, consider using a URL shortener (Budurl, bitly, tinyurl, etc.) so you can count the number of times that someone actually follows the link. This allows you to tell whether it is working or ...

There's no science behind any expression of how we learn or how we communicate - how this occurs online can be hijacked by a myriad of metaphors from leaves to digital oceans.

All I'm trying to do here is share with others my take on social media and a simplistic impression of how it is different from 'old media' in that the communications comes from within an organisation lopping off the middle men and the hierarchies that can get in the way.

Here's another one I tried

Do please say what you think or other a sketch of your own.

A week ago I was clearing out the shed and came across a Diablo ... a Bowtie-like shape. It struck me that this could be a way to represent the traditional relationship between an organisation and the public, the messages are funnelled through a spot.

I've done various drawings on this theme

Each stage represents the spreading of the 'word' at and from a variety of 'touch points' in an organisation, gradually increasing so that dialogue between people inside and outside an organisation have increased greatly to their mutual benefit.

Then I say this, the light from a small vase on a table.

If I could visually double this up as a mirror image then I'd be getting some sense of the dynamism that is still a vital part of communications, as inventive as always, and usually all the IT tools at its disposal to create, share and respond,

Social Media isn't replacement anything ... it is easy, convenient and of the age. It suits and comes out of the direct way we've learnt to communicate through email and messaging.

All I visualise are these lines of 'activity' spreading between an institution and its public to create something that might resemble a funnel.

The same thinking applies to education, that the realtionship used to be funnel through a teacher to a student in a classroom who belong to a cohort, or through a lecturer into a lecture hall. The opportunity to create (or the necessity to permit) a broader breadth and depth of two way communication is permitted by social media.

These lines of communication are personal, and one to one.

They are forged through links in websites, links in print and from TV, links offered up through Twitter and blogs. They are conversations that are picked up in Linkedin or Facebook.

The expression 'old news keeps like fish' can no longer apply ... far from going off, the write message, insight or assistance is kept alive and made even more meaningful as it is shared and stored and linked to.

Rather than feeling that I am entering the blog domain to write this I ought to be able to cyndicate/allocate or aggregate this as or after I have wrote it by clicking on one of three buttons:

Eportfolio

Wiki

Blog

At my behest I am therefore deciding that this is a moment to be shared (but not tampered with), evidence or information that I wish to store/collate (ideally by themes of my choosing), and/or a chunk of information (or offering) as wiki content (initiated or an edit insert).

Simplified and disengenious, but a starting point.

And on reflection, perhaps, how good learning works: it starts with simple ideas that can be grasped and works outwards. E-learning doesn't simply work outwards though, it spreads in directions of the learner's choosing (ideally), like fractals, like a mind-map, as a result of, enabled and speeded up through myelination.

Were I writing a video script on eportfolios, wiki and blogs this might be how I begin, either animating this or going out and filming various traffic lights. I may paint this with water-paints onto laminate card and drop it into an aquarium and film it. My enduring analogy being that whatever we do online are but zeros and ones in a digital ocean, all programming does is remove the chaos and worthlessness of trillions of unconnected binary numbers.

Perhaps I've just convinced myself too of the value of Open Source.

And this is only the first idea of the morning. Something must have been breing in my sleep.

Though yet to do justice here to the Opinion piece in the New Scientist something struck me about  the Cover Story on epigentic changes and their relevance to evolution.

DEFINITION

Q. What is Myelin?