I just read a wonderful post by Jane Hart entitled “The Future Of Social Media In The Enterprise“. In it, she deftly describes an issue that I’ve been encountering often lately with potential clients who want to talk about using this game-changing paradigm-shifting bar-raising (insert your own favorite stupid marketing metaphor here) thing we call Social Media.
Her argument is quite elegant. If I may distill it, she feels that using Social Media tools only behind your firewall (not allowing employees to connect outside the company) is short-sighted. And that their real value is the cross-pollination and connection that comes from engaging across a discipline, around the world, and to people who see things in vastly different ways.
(I bet British Petroleum has a great internal forum to discuss how much time and money to spend when drilling really deep wells, and what to do when you get 700+ safety violations. But maybe, if they’d been more connected to reality, they wouldn’t have lost $17 BILLON DOLLARS and become the poster boy for dumb.)
I have to say, though, that I’m getting a little bit tired having this discussion with people who are extremely focused on keeping the fence up between their employees and the rest of the world. Stopping the dangers of Farmville, YouTube, and people randomly getting information they might use to improve their skills. It’s exhausting to keep having the same chat with the same network administrators. The same vendors who want to sell their custom “behind the firewall” solutions. The same tiny minds who think they have all sorts of special secrets about how they put their canned hams in the boxes and ship them out.
Would it make more sense for me to have a “pre-work” session, where there’s an assessment of some kind? And if the client is mostly focused on how to lock all the doors and bar all the windows — just smile and move along?
On Jane’s blog, I said it this way:
We try to run from or eradicate that which we do not understand. If we can’t kill it, we try to control it and limit the access of others.
Probably true with the first cave-person who found fire. Still true in corporate America today. I have to admit that I, personally, am actually getting a little tired of having this discussion with potential clients and people who ask for advice.
I want to just say “Whatever” and move on to someone who’s open to new ideas and things that might help them. (Kind of a lifeboat drill — if I’ve only got so many years left, do I spend them arguing with people about the VALUE of parachutes or just HAND OUT parachutes to as many people as possible before the crash?)
It’s actually kind of exhausting. Like trying to convince my mom that “unlimited long-distance” actually meant she could talk to me as long and as often as she liked.
Never won that one, either.
So what do you think? Do you want a parachute, or should we keep talking about the nuts and the in-flight movie?
If you’re a small business, you can’t out-spend the competition on marketing. But you can out-teach them. Here’s a great video with David Heinemeier Hansson (a partner in 37signals and the creator of Ruby on Rails).
He’s talking about how they’ve built a great audience through blogs, lectures, seminars and other teachable moments. Great stuff!
I’m facilitating a workshop this week for a bunch of Learning 2.0 folks in Las Vegas. (No, I have no plans to be “teaching” or “training” — thanks for asking.) The title I came up with is “Relax! Everything You Know About Content Is Wrong…”
Yeah, part of getting sessions accepted is a catchy title — but I really believe that most everything we’ve taught our students about content in their formal educational history is wrong. How we design it, how we deploy it, how they interact with it and how we judge if they’ve taken it in successfully.
So I spend a great deal of time nowadays talking to fellow learning designers about that, in the guise of showing them “new media tools” like Twitter and Facebook and NING and Wicker and Spooty and Fitzzle… (Points will be given for those of you who realize which of those are made up gibberish.)
In reality, these things are just tools. What we’re really doing is responding to the fact that there are better ways of dealing with today’s learners and their needs, and the existence of some of these new technologies is giving us a long overdue kick in the Kirkpatrick to encourage some change.
Here’s my list of what “old” content looks like:
I’m up HERE, you learners are out THERE
I know the answers. You’re supposed to take them in from me.
My answers are the right ones. Yours are not.
My content (the text book) is correct. Your experience or theories are not valid.
We measure success on how well you can parrot back to me what I said.
Old, gray heads make the best choices about what to learn, when, and how.
You start here. Then you do this, then this, then that. Then you stop.
If I want your input, I’ll ask for it. And then evaluate it.
You in the back — quit whispering. You’ll disturb others.
Here’s a list of work to do outside of class. I chose it.
These are the accepted resources and authorities. I chose them.
At the end, we’ll grade on a curve. There will be winners and losers.
If you’re louder, you get noticed. If you’re quiet, you don’t.
If you agree with my theories, you’ll get praised. If you don’t, you won’t.
You should highlight the stuff that I say is important — it will be on the test.
Name in the upper left-hand corner. Points given for neatness.
So — what did your classroom look like when you were in school? My workshop at TechKnowledge 2010 (TK10) in Las Vegas this week will break every single one of these rules, I hope.
One of my favorite evangelists in the Social Media space is Jeff Hurt (@JeffHurt on Twitter) the Director of Education and Events for the National Association of Dental Plans (NADP)– a small nonprofit headquartered in Dallas, TX.
You wouldn’t think of dental work and social media, but he’s done great work in getting a pretty stodgy group to use some really neat tools — and I ran across a great interview where he actually listed off all the tools that he and his staff use on a daily basis:
I ran across this amazing usability study of how “inline validation” helps visitors complete your web forms more easily and with a better experience from Luke Wroblewski at “A List Apart”.
(For those of you among the non-technical, it just means that as you type in your answer the software gives you feedback on whether or not it can accept that answer, or you have to say something else — rather than waiting until you answer all 25 questions and hit “submit” at the bottom.)
I’ve long railed at my developers to do this, and they keep whining about how hard it is and that they don’t want to do it. Now I’ve got the ammunition. Ha!
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Her argument is quite elegant. If I may distill it, she feels that using Social Media tools only behind your firewall (not allowing employees to connect outside the company) is short-sighted. And that their real value is the cross-pollination and connection that comes from engaging across a discipline, around the world, and to people who see things in vastly different ways.
Yeah, part of getting sessions accepted is a catchy title — but I really believe that most everything we’ve taught our students about content in their formal educational history is wrong. How we design it, how we deploy it, how they interact with it and how we judge if they’ve taken it in successfully.
You wouldn’t think of dental work and social media, but he’s done great work in getting a pretty stodgy group to use some really neat tools — and I ran across a 
All content written by Dick Carlson
We try to run from or eradicate that which we do not understand. If we can’t kill it, we try to control it and limit the access of others.
Probably true with the first cave-person who found fire. Still true in corporate America today. I have to admit that I, personally, am actually getting a little tired of having this discussion with potential clients and people who ask for advice.
I want to just say “Whatever” and move on to someone who’s open to new ideas and things that might help them. (Kind of a lifeboat drill — if I’ve only got so many years left, do I spend them arguing with people about the VALUE of parachutes or just HAND OUT parachutes to as many people as possible before the crash?)
It’s actually kind of exhausting. Like trying to convince my mom that “unlimited long-distance” actually meant she could talk to me as long and as often as she liked.
Never won that one, either.
So what do you think? Do you want a parachute, or should we keep talking about the nuts and the in-flight movie?
.