Digital Dialogues

Global Summit - Sydney

I'm at the Global Summit in Sydney - the wireless network is up and running (yeah) and the ballroom is filling up - looks like around 200 people (from 11 countries).

I'm finding it a rather interesting experience - I worked here (ShangriLa Hotel) for 18 months when it was the ANA Hotel as part of the management pre-opening team and then as Manager on Duty for 12 months.... but that was about...oohhh 14 years ago now...
It feels like coming home after being away for a long time.... I know every nook and cranny of the place - including the ghost of the ballroom (wonder if he'll do anything today? - let's hope not... he's usually a little destructive!)

Looks like being an interesting couple of days - although I can only attend today (workload commitments) - just feels funny in a 5-star hotel ballroom - let's see what that does to the informal networking dialogues...

hmm - the opening has just required us to stand and sing the national anthem... don't think I've been to a conference before where this is expected... or is this something to do with a national image??

Now we have Clarence - the community education officer from the Botanical Gardens the traditional owners of the land - we are acknowledging the ancestral spirits of this area and we will walk lightly on their territory.... feels so much more appropriate and meaningful than the national anthem...(particularly for the international delegates!).

Tags: globalsummit06

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Swamps, Fog & Jetlag

I'm back in Sydney after an amazing 3 weeks in Europe - can't believe how fast it went and how much I packed into it....
However, I'm back... and I'm now wading through a swamp of emails - so if I take longer than usual to respond...sorry about that...
Then there's the fog....the jetlag fog.... it really is the most annoying part of travel... 38 hours after leaving my hotel in Vienna I arrived home in Sydney... and now the fog comes in.... My brain is just not adjusting to the timezone changes as quickly as I'd like it to... my sleep patterns are upside down - not to mention eating patterns... when you're awake you want to be asleep, and when you're asleep (or trying to) I keep waking up hungry...
I'm also forgetting to do things... no, it's not selective memory...it's jetlag fog... your brain just switches off sometimes...
It's the usual pattern - for every hour of time change you have 1 day to adjust - so I should be right in about 10 days.... or so.....
Apologies to anyone that has received some incoherent waffle from me....
There will be more posts relating to the conferences I attended soon - when I've waded through the swamp and the fog has cleared....

Suw Charman: BlogTalk Reloaded

Social Software in Business - An adoption strategy:
Installing social software in a variety of companies - as a consultant...
As a social software consultant Suw goes into organisations to fix "socially broken" social software applications - how to get people to use it.
Trojan mouse method - bottom up approach...
Top down adoption..
Neither of the above strategies actually work on their own...

Need to consider more carefully about how to use the software - a series of steps to go through in organisations towards effective implementation:
1) Understand who your users are... identify specific user groups, common tasks eg. PAs doing lots of information organisation - mainly in email.... how can you pull it off email and put it into a wiki or blog. Find people who are capable of learning and prepared to change - willing to take a risk. Main block is accidental, fear of social humiliation.
2) How are you going to introduce them to the software: short ad hoc, f2f training sessions. Ah hoc support network to ask dumb questions - simple and easy - saves them from public humiliation (chat channel) or something similar. These people now become evangelists (super nodes) ...and future trainers...
3) Getting management buy in - focused on fear of loss of data... buy in from colleagues as well.

 "Eat your own dog food!"

Adoption is not a goal in and of itself.
Parts of the organisation get in your way eg. IT, Marketing, Legal.

9 months after wiki installed - took 6 months to cover all the questions.

It's refreshing to hear that Suw's experiences and process link very closely to my practices and experiences in the organisational learning context and the use of social software as alternative learning process to augment the formal learning (or training). The barriers Suw cites replicate the inhibitors to organisational learning I presented in my paper at the DREAM conference in Denmark.
Tags: blogtalkreloaded

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Lee Bryant - BlogTalk Reloaded

Lee has just shared a case study application of social software in a large global legal firm - the underlying philosophies and principles....don't push the "happy, clappy" sharing philosophies....talk about information flow and efficiencies....

I loved the change in focus away from email dependency and interoffice email spam to RSS / subscription that controls the flow of information - not the email inbox overload...!

Organisational challenges such as IT departments [as many learning & development practitioners know all to well] has to become an enabling function  rather than a controlling barrier ... [yes, please - bring it on!]

A question from the audience focused on the issues of publishing and sharing information and policies to manage "inappropriate" behaviour - Lee commented that incorporating social software into organisations is fundamentally not different to the use of email - the publishing, organisational rules, employment contracts still apply! [In other words - think before you post!]

This is probably one of the early case studies in the organisational application of social software and it's exciting to see how successfully embraced it has been - Lee mentioned that the pilot study actually never stopped - it has continued and is expanding!
So - come on learning professionals - stop waiting for someone else to do it - the time is NOW!

PS. Watch out for an exciting project that Lee & I are going to work on in Australia ... more on that soon!
Tags: blogtalkreloaded

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Danah Boyd - BlogTalk Reloaded

The Significance of Social Software:
Danah raised the issue that we have already been talking about at BarCamp Vienna ... how can web.20 applications still be beta?
One of the response is that Beta means it's still not profitable... OK - so that's a new take on it!
And then there's the angle that the open source applications gain additional features that are just hacked into these applications based on what people want...
The QA aspect becomes based on watching what people do - if it breaks, the developers fix it...if people want it, they build it.... Quite a reversal of traditional QA processes....
Consistent values across social software aps: hack it up, get it out there; learn from your users, evolve the system with them; make your presence known, invite feedback; Monetization: Include a few ads here and there...

How social software shifts cultural behaviour...initially interest driven - activity or information centred with organic growth...your friends/contacts will that drive the context....

Questions/issues as social software moves forward -
Designers:  what design innovations are needed?
Researchers: new types of social organisation - what implications does this have?
Business: monetization and growth - efforts to push this may cause distabilisaion ...

That's pretty much the key points that I picked up - but of course we have the Google Video available through the BlogTalk site...
http://www.danah.org

Tags: blogtalkreloaded

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BlogTalk Re-loaded kicks off!

It's raining in Vienna...but not cold (so I still have a suitcase full of boots & jackets that will come back to Australia unworn!!)...

Good to see the audience mix has evened out somewhat! Elmine & I have been noting all weekend how few women have been represented so far (actually - there was just the 2 of us ...)! Now it's about 30% - go girls!

We're going to try out different formats for presentations - kind of open space... flipcharts with questions from the speakers - the speaker then presents for 10 mins, poses their questions, then hangs out around their flipcharts with post-it notes for participants to raise issues and expand the discussion. These will be collected and then posted to the wiki..(I think).
Some people were quite engaged - some people were not - to me this is similar to learners who like structured classroom sessions versus the open constructivist learning spaces where discourse evolves from within the group...

There are Google Videos of the presentations - all the presentations have been recorded and are now available from the BlogTalk site - go to the Program then click on the presentation topic.

We still seem to be struggling as a group about how to get dialogue happening.....! The audience seems rather... passive... I guess I haven't actually been jumping and asking questions myself! The IRC back channel is quite busy - so I'm  told - I just can't get on to it yet!

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Guess-The-Google Game

Some of the BarCamp guys were playing this game last night - Guess-The-Google - this is a really engaging concept and while I was actively playing along with the group, I couldn't help thinking of all the learning applications that could be embedded in the concept....

BlogTalk Reloaded - Vienna

I'm finally in Vienna for BlogTalk Reloaded - weather is stunning (so all those jackets & boots I've dragged half way around the world look like going home untouched..!) and it feels great to be back in Vienna to re-connect with people I met here in 2004 and meet new people and all the exchanges that occur in-between!

BarCamp Vienna was yesterday and I managed to get there later in the afternoon than I had planned (the usual travellers challenges!) to meet up with Sebastian - Ton & Elmine were there too and we had a fun dinner!!

Today involves some sightseeing, some preparation for BlogTalk, and some catching up on outstanding work/emails ...