Social media/Web 2.0 has reached rural New York so I can conclude that it is now sufficiently mainstream. The rest of you wrote about this in 2002. We all have our own ‘mainstream’  indicators - mine were: connecting with former high school classmates I haven’t talked to since high school connecting with fellow Moms (who set up their profile with pictures of their children rather than themselves (?)) connecting with family members who previously dismissed social networking services entirely the decision to-connect-or-not-to-connect with my own kids (DID because the invite came from them) my local newspaper and TV station are following me on Twitter various local seminars about social media and marketing are popping up I’m always thrilled to connect with old friends, other Moms, and family members (a trickle over the last year or two) but this new, "mainstream" wave felt DIFFERENT. This was like, all at once BOOM. Suddenly you expect to see pictures of old dance recitals and family trips to Disney. I guess what’s unique (as far as anything can be unique) is that non-business online connections are pretty much foreign territory for me. Suddenly it felt weird to be the Twitter elite of Podunk (so I changed my location to the rather generic "Upstate New York.") I guess I’m guarding my business identity because I don’t use social media like my new connections use social media. How did I react to this most recent mainstream adoption of social networking? I recoiled. Damned if I know why. I guess I feel awkward (and that says more about me than anyone else). So I’ve been cautious online lately and searching for a home. Kind of silly to be cautious NOW when I have a tendency to write without a filter. It’s not like every other person hasn’t thought about persona(s) and filtering. I’ve come to the conclusion that filtering is something a reader does. And, in the context of online learning, something a learner does (perhaps with our help). I’m beginning to see greater value in customized search engines, published guidelines, and taking a gardener approach to social networks at work.

Just finished up an online presentation, Using Social Medial to Improve Workplace Learning, slides below. I had uploaded my slides an hour early and took care of all the necessary details - shut off cell phone and house phone, banished children from my immediate area, let the dog out, shut the windows, and…special bonus this week…asked my contractor not to run the power saw or pound sheet rock from 1-2 pm. I forgot to tell him the part about me needing electricity and, of course, at 12:55 I lost power. I asked him "calmly" to put it back on and was presenting by 1:02 with a light sweat. Anyway, it went pretty good in my opinion (which doesn’t mean jack.) At the end of the presentation, I tried something different and shared Wordle so we could make a word cloud for two issues: what things make a bad  classroom training session and what an ideal online community would look like. I gathered up text from the chat box. This one is for "bad things." and this one "ideal online community": Le slides: Using Social Media Tools To Improve Workplace Learning Couple of additional notes from the presentation: Most of us reported a dramatic change in the way we communicate, collaborate, and interact at work over the last 10 years. 2/3’s didn’t have a strategy for social media Most of us reported moderate usage social media Some quotes and talking points: "Social learning technologies must be seen as the medium for relationship creation, not information exchange." (Digenti, 2000) "Learning is an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice." (Lave & Wenger, 1991) "We are moving toward a knowledge-era model of education with large-scale social networks involving complex communities and individual identify construction." (Wenger, 2004) "Social learning technologies can bring together and bridge the gap between training and knowledge management - linking knowledge and acquisition, development, and learning. A strong collaboration platform links continued knowledge acquisition, development, and learning." (Bruck, 2007) "It is within complex online communities and networks where social construction of understanding occurs." (Huberman, Romero, & Fang, 2008) References (because, ya know, I’m a researcher ; ) Bruck, P. (2008) Welcome and introduction to microlearning and capacity building. Microlearning and Capacity Building. Proceedings of the 4th International Microlearning 2008 Conference. Innsbruck, Austria. Digenti, D. (2000). Make Space for Informal Learning. ASTD Learning Circuits. Huberman, B.A., Romero, D.M. & Fang, W. (2008). Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope. Social Computing Lab, HP Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA and Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (You must buy this book!) Wenger, E. (2006). Learning for a small planet: a research agenda. Scientific project description.

Lisa Gualtieri, Editor-in-Chief, eLearn Magazine wrote an article called Learn from Rogue Tweeters: 7 Steps to Promoting Your Organization in Twitter. She writes that while organizations are trying to figure out how to use social media in a formalized ( more on that later) way, the rogue employee  just does it, "it" being participating in mutually beneficial dialogue about the company with the general public . You rogue-types know who you are (from the article: "Mark plans to continue tweeting until someone tells him "that’s not your job.")( I would add "or until he gets promoted or finds a sweeter gig.") Why does Mark  (the employee in the article) tweet for OMSHR (the company in the article) when it’s not in his job description? My guess is passion, greater good (it’s safety stuff), dedication, or if-not-me-who? (he’s in IT). Only he knows why but OMSHR is lucky to have him. He is concerned however, that policies may eventually constrain him…he believes the current informal process works because he is "conscientious and diligent." THE CURRENT INFORMAL PROCESS WORKS. So why formalize social media (in my mind a highly informal way to learn)? Or should we be saying "non-formal?" (And go me! for not tripping over that stack ‘o buzz words.) Let’s go on a little Google hunt. Back in 2005, Stephen Downes had some comments on formalizing informal learning based on a CLO article Of course, this [the writers had said that informal learning needs to be integrated into formal learning in the sense that it should be tied to measurable performance metrics] isn’t the point of informal learning at all - but I can see the point. It requires a very careful balance between respecting learner intentions, which in the end drive informal learning, and supporting corporate needs, which are addressed not through demand learning, but rather, by making appropriate informal learning resources usefully and widely available. Respect your learners intentions and make informal learning resources available and useful. Earlier this year Mark Oehlert, in response to a George Siemens post about "formally adopting" informal learning (vs. trying to make it formal…big diff), said: why does it bother me that people/organizations think that somehow they need to "adopt" this mysterious thing called "informal learning."? How about this…the principles of ID can’t handle it, IDs aren’t taught how to design with it, no one knows how to assess its impact and yet we feel compelled to somehow exert our control over something that largely grew up because we failed so miserably in other areas… [ID should] stay the hell out of it. Catherine Lombardozzi, also earlier this year, I think that creating an informal learning strategy in support of business learning needs is mostly about aggregating, organizing, and making available a variety of resources that can support learning on a specific topic, similar to how I’ve talked about learning environments in the past. The strategic part is making decisions about what resources we’ll deliberately support - we can’t possibly corral all possible informal learning resources, and we need to figure out where to start. Aggregate, organize, make available and decide what to deliberately support (formally adopt a strategy) And this, recently from Mike Prokopeak talking to Lance Dublin about a third domain: Formal learning typically refers to structured learning events and programs, while informal refers to unstructured learning that happens outside the bounds of traditional learning events, whether it’s over the water cooler, in the field or through a blog or discussion forum. "There is a third domain," Dublin said. "That’s the domain where you use all these informal tools but you use them with intention. You put enough structure around them so they have a purpose within the organization." [He calls this non-formal learning] The opportunity lies in defining the middle between the two poles, Dublin said. Non-formal learning is structured, but not formal, intentional but not directed. Structured, but not formal, intentional but not directed. Lastly, a conversation I’ve been having in comments with Karl Kapp in What are the Results of Following an Instructional Design Process? in which I’m disagreeing with the idea of Web 2.0 ‘design’ entirely. Karl mentions templates, simplified (read standardized) tagging,  guidelines, etc. As designers, we need to provide templates for meaningful contributions of one peer to another, perhaps a sample blog entry to use as a model, or a method of standardizing contributions, a list of key words so the folksonomy is limited, something that ties strategies to contributions to encourage learning and retention of the content contributed. These elements add structure to the contributions but still allow creativity. What’s your take? Ithink we need more Mark’s and OMSHR’s. Less meddling and a better understanding in the industry of what strategy is.

I enjoyed reading George Siemens "teaching as transparent learning". I think  it touches on the ‘work at learning, learning at work’ carnival theme Dave Ferguson initially started  and that Dave Wilkins, hosting the carnival this month, expanded on describing it as ‘the intersection between work and learning.‘ George writes about his experience as a transparent learner - ‘expressing half-formed ideas’ and receiving feedback. He says: Putting ideas out for discussion contrasts with formal "reach a conclusion and publish" model. I wish I would’ve read that  before I responded (and apologized) for my prior rant (directed at Saul Carliner) in response to an article he wrote for eLearn Magazine. Shame on me. I hate the regret that follows a rant. (Don’t read it though because it lacks punctuation due to a copy/paste malfunction and reads like one giant incoherent run-on sentence. And that makes me want to climb a mountain and scream because I can’t fix it.) And… just so you know, the reason I copy/paste a long response on that particular magazine is that their comment box is teeny tiny and I can’t see what I’m writing. Lesson learned, I won’t be writing anything long over there which is good news for anyone reading their great articles. End of digression. Anyway, the crux of my position is that blogging for work and blogging for personal learning do intersect and that means you should expect half-formed ideas. See, the eLearn article Mr. Sarliner wrote took issue with the erroneous, unverified information found on blogs. You will find opinion and unverified information on this blog. And I won’t start all posts with a ‘this is opinion’ or ‘this is fact’ statement. It’s all my opinion. My interpretation. My reflecting. I would expect you to filter and form your own opinions (and hopefully mine) on the information read. If I didn’t let learning and work overlap here, you’d see either marketing copy and quotes from others with no reflection or the equivalent of peer-reviewed journal articles (which have their own place in academic journals). Back to teaching as transparent learning…George gives an example of how his thinking has evolved by pointing to abandoned views. I think that very idea keeps some people from expressing opinions and ideas. I suspect some lurkers don’t make the jump to commenting or publishing because they don’t want to put ideas or opinions ‘out there’ that may be half-formed. George names some transparent learners - and I’m humbled that he named me - as examples of how watching others learn is an act of learning. I’ve certainly learn from watching others learn. What I’m actually studying now is something like that…I’ll be studying how people ‘learn to be’ kind of within what John Seely Brown call distributed learning milieus (specifically around microlearning/microcontent). Talk about half- baked. Here’s the quote from Brown that I like: Learning occurs in part through a form of reflective practicum, but in this case the reflection comes from being embedded in a social milieu supported by both a physical and virtual presence,  and by both the amateur and the professional practitioner. I’m interested in thinking deeper about what George wrote on the notion of lurking and  communities of practice research specifically as it relates to Lave & Wenger’s theory of legitimate peripheral participation. Thanks for that George. Always great to learn from you : ) I’ll close this out something else George said, My work on blogs, articles, handbooks, and so on is an invitation to engage in conversation, not a proclamation of what I absolutely know. I think I’ll borrow that and put it on my about page. It can be my disclaimer.

The Oxford English Dictionary has a fine description of how to hunker: "squat, with the haunches, knees, and ankles acutely bent, so as to bring the hams near the heels, and throw the whole weight upon the fore part of the feet". The advantage of this position is that you’re not only crouched close to the ground, so presenting a small target for whatever the universe chooses to throw at you, but you’re also ready to move at a moment’s notice. - World Wide Words: Hunker down I think when the economy went to shit, many took a hunker-down, back-to-basics approach to their jobs. I have absolutely no hard data on this but suspect that many people went out and bought rapid e-learning development software (or learned to use what they had) to crank out some elearning. I don’t actually develop e-learning anymore but I went out and bought a long overdue new PC so that I could more efficiently crank. out. more. work. I also took on volunteered for some new tasks and rediscovered by love of interface design and took a no less nonsense approach to school this semester. I hunkered down. I’m not really a hunker down kind of gal though. True, I am a ’small target existing close to the ground’ but I’m much more comfortable avoiding the universe’s debris while bouncing on a trampoline or dodging dodgeballs or something vs. squatting out of site like in a game of hide-n-seek. Guess I’m trying to find my way back. Naturally, the new stuff I wanted to try came with a learning curve so I had to cut back a bit on writing here. I’ve pretty much been getting work done via Twitter but that has come at a price. As a result of not writing and reflecting here on the blog, I’ve got a lot of debris in the brain. I have not yet had a change to write about the unsocial nature of social media or the recoiling reaction I had to an influx of non-business connections on my networks. I didn’t even write much about how everything is getting smaller (album, single song, ringtone…) and what I think it means to our field. Must stand up…

Do you say: Web 2 DOT O ("Oh") Web 2 DOT 0 (ZERO) Web 2 POINT O ("Oh") Web 2 POINT 0 (ZERO) I would never say ‘point com’ over ‘dot com’ but always use ‘point o’ (’oh’) when talking about web 2.0  or e-learning 2.0, etc. Just wondering….what do you prefer to use? Why?

Brandon Hall Research November 5, 2009 "Janet what the heck is cloud computing?" This is a great question and much better than an anonymous question I received via my chat widget, "what is the current state of e-learning?" Seriously. And, to which I responded…let’s try to break that down a bit… First, let me point to some existing definitions cloud computing. I always start with the definitions. Otherwise, it’s all fuzzy. Which it actually it is. Clouds, if nothing else, are ‘fuzzy.’ "Cloud Service and Deployment Models" Workplace Learning Today November 5, 2009 Embracing e-learning and online training in the face of the flu, the recession November 9 at 11:00 AM PT | 2:00 PM ET, Stream 57 is hosting a live webcast from Times Square on the top Embracing e-learning and online training in the face of the flu, the recession, and the demand for better education. The panel includes Anthony Allen — Director of Digital Media, ASTD (American Society for Training & Development), Rick Housler — Office of The Chief Learning Officer, The World Bank, Brian O’Donnell — Associate Director, Department of Medical Education, Centocor Ortho Biotech Services LLC, Andrej Petroski — Director of Learning Technologies, Harrisburg University, and Mark Sharp — Vice President, Atlantic Link Global. Registration here. Follow on Twitter #s57chat. Embracing e-learning and online training in the face of the flu, the recession and the demand for better education. | A Crucial Curriculum | Stream 57

I was signed up to go to WordCamp NYC last weekend but was too much of a lightweight to take the red eye from California directly to WordCamp NYC after the DevLearn conference. Instead, I went home and removed the lint from the dryer vent because, you know, that’s really important. One of the main reasons I wanted to go was to hear Matt Mullenweg. He’s the 25-year old founder of WordPress. Here’s the next best thing I guess…he was interviewed on "This Week in Startups" with Jason Calacanis and Joel Spolsky. Did you know 1 in 3 people online in the US visit a WordPress blog (even though many are not actually used as blogs)? (This blog, in fact, is a WordPress blog.) Random factoid: He went to the same school Beyonce went to (High School for the Performing and Visual Arts). Love this question… Interviewer to Matt: Did you think at some point, Jesus Christ, I’m a fraud, I’m getting myself in over my head. All these guys think it’s going to be a big thing…putting millions of dollars into the company…I’ve got dozens of people working here. Did you ever have that doubt…this can’t be real or this is going to end badly or did you always think it was going straight up? Matt’s answer …I’ve always been careful not to…I’m kind of antihype, anti over-promising so I kind of managed the expectations at a very low level. So saying…who knows how this is going to go. He’s so down to earth. And he’s got a beautiful website and awesome URL. I had to check if it’s WordPress ( I KNEW it would be.)  Here’s what it says: "This page took 0.205 seconds of computer labor to produce. This blog was formerly known as Photo Matt, and lived at photomatt.net. Proudly powered by WordPress. Also powered by ramen noodles, XFN, Ping-O-Matic, and love. Designed by Julien Morel | Joolz.fr" Ramen noodles. Gotta love that.

Below is a brief summary of Progressive’s social media strategy from Insurance & Technology. Progressive Insurance Tool: Twitter Started: 2008 Usage: Listening mechanism, quick feedback loop, reach out to customers when timeliness is of importance such as during catastrophe events. Progressive uses its hashtag function to drive traffic to ProgressiveResponds.com, a Web site on which the carrier posts information when responding to catastrophe events. They use it as a real-time communications mechanism. Monitor what customers are saying about them and what issues they’re having with products and services, including what people are thinking about the industry in general as well as competitors. They thank individuals who use Twitter to share positive experiences they had with the carrier. Reaches out to Twitterers who complain about the company or inquire about its products and services. Directs complaints to customer service when needed. Measurement: They were able to track very closely the spikes in hits to the site and to the information, and could attribute it pretty closely to Twitter (during catastrophe events). Social media strategy: Listen and react to customers and prospects over various social media channels and then provide various levels of customer service or acquisition . Executes the strategy differently for different channels. Focus on Twitter is personalization. Doesn’t refer customers to sales unless asked. Other Web 2.0 tools: Facebook, YouTube (more sales-driven) Resources: Team monitoring. Audit of responses. Third party Twitter apps: TweetDeck, considering CoTweet (San Francisco) and Invoke Media’s (Vancouver) HootSuite Contact: Matt Lehman, Progressive’s Web experience director

I co-wrote an article with Venkatesh Rao, a Web technology researcher with Xerox Innovation Group and author of ribbonfarm.com, for Elearning! Magazine. Enterprise 2.0: A Parallel to Meritocracy starts (and ends) with a story of the "2.0″ worker that might as well be our own story because I ‘met’ Venkatesh via conversations in Twitter and through his blog and authored collaboratively with him on the Web. We never met physically and never even talked on the phone. We worked on the article via Google docs. Such is the nature of work for more and more people. from the article, on the traditional model of instructor and expert and the emergence of a parallel meritocracy… …your company’s best source of knowledge on widget maintenance might not be the instructor of the official course on widget maintenance. It might be a de facto opinion leader on a discussion forum. It might not even be an employee but a passionate customer operating in prosumer mode, enjoying and actively cultivating her status as an expert in the user community. Formal "communities of practice"with recognized "subject-matter experts" from the knowledge-management era could well face obsolescence given the rise of open, informal models of knowledge sharing. The article is about emergent collaboration and disruption and what that means to workplace learning. (JC) Enterprise 2.0: A Parallel Meritocracy | Elearning! | Venkatesh Rao and Janet Clarey | 9 December 2009

At one time I didn’t really have true "relationships" with business customers. I had some good relationships, but they weren’t initiated by me. Someone would ask a question, I’d answer it and sometimes, it would turn out to be the catalyst for a new relationship. Sometimes. The focus seemed wrong - it was more about finding people to have relationships with vs. initiating and building relationships. This post, by the VP of Social Media and Community at Dell, is about recognizing that a business is only as successful as its relationships with customers. From Manish Mehta: "So if you are wondering about how to leverage Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, and the company Web site to achieve your organization’s goals, perhaps you are starting from the wrong point. As with the corner store, if your business uses social media to engage in conversations on a human level, you strengthen your business and allow your strategy — both corporate and social media — to evolve based on customer feedback. Like Dell, I jumped into the social media space just three years ago (in a much, much smaller way). I started an individual corporate blog, started writing for a group corporate blog, started maintaining a corporate news blog, created and managed company Facebook and LinkedIn Groups, and joined the conversation on Twitter.  I also started niche social networks around specific events, like conferences. All of a sudden, I felt like the "Mom" in Mom & Pop. Relationships are richer and I’m only as good as those relationships. I’m better for it. So where to go next? Going forward, Dell’s social media presence "boils down to "a few key strategies": Streamline presence in social media networks Create meaningful content for customers Continue to increase connections with customers in those places Focus on building a tighter integration between the organization’s other sites with the presence in social networks Continue our focus on scaling support of social media initiatives into business units In Mom & Pop terms this looks a lot like greeting people at the door, having a strong presence in the community, catering to customers’ specific requests, working with others within the  community to strengthen the community as a whole, and focusing on all areas of the business. A good plan for 2010. Graphic by Adam Howling

Crosspost You know one of those brief tweets or status updates that can easily be lifted from bigger, continuous conversations you’re having with online friends and followers? Out of context stuff. Or, it’s a user’s name that’s exploited, like this from NBC news anchor Brian Williams: "There’s no way of knowing if the incoming text from partygirl99 is being written from Tehran or Texas." Poor partygirl99. Williams’ statement is very true. It is hard for traditional media to vet information coming from the public in a form they’ve never seen. It’s the AND part of the job. This AND that. Reporting, fact checking, AND now monitoring & participating in worldwide network of "on the street" de facto reporters. <digression>… another interesting tidbit from Mr. Williams, below, is worthy of its own post) "The belief that "social media" only feeds our national self-obsession and that the often-used phrase "online community" is, in fact, an oxymoron." (from here) Wha??? Oxymoron? (to be continued…) </digression) Anyway, this is one of the silly comments used in an attempt to illustrate Twitter’s (in)significance - David Letterman’s first tweets: What’s lifted is usually day-to-day snark or silliness that fuels a community. The stuff that can become an "inside joke" down the road. I’m always aware of that when I’m silly, snarky, or even stupid. Like recently. I’ll try to keep this short and eventually get to my point. But first…in case you’re not up to speed on Twitter hashtags, here’s a little explanation. Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait. (Elevator music) K. Ready? It started with this: What followed was a bunch of #whackamole tweets that eventually started to show up in a search for the game "Whack-a-Mole" on Google (Whack-a-Mole was the answer to my question). During all this #whackamole business, I had brief exchange on Twitter with @susank about monitoring social media activity for your company. Susan is Senior PR Manager at Mzinga who communicates with all sorts of people on Twitter. Like me, part of her daily work includes having conversations on Twitter. Our exchange… Me: "i hope my employer is not monitoring what i’m tweeting. oh wait. i’m the one that monitors." That statement is a joke…snark…totally a problem if lifted by an employer with no sense of humor and/or who doesn’t get it. See, spending 10 minutes on whack-a-mole is (for a virtual worker) about the same as an inside joke in the physical office. Now monitoring a company on Twitter is real-time customer service to me. It’s my "AND" job. Researcher/Analyst AND "all the social media stuff." At Brandon Hall Research, we’re all responsible in some way for social media but I guess you could say I "own" that. These dueling roles have created a persona issue for me. A local community college asked me to teach some classes about social media (for businesses) in the evening…i.e., teaching about my "AND" role. A friend of a friend asked if I can give some advice on how to use social media for his new venture. A member of the local Chamber of Commerce (I’m also a member) contacted me about using social media to support a book he’s writing. These are all related to my "AND" role. I was all like, "how do I deal with this?" What I do is no secret but it’s getting confusing. You can teach people instructional design without having an instructional design blog but I don’t think it’s as easy to teach people ‘business 2.0′ when you don’t have an online identity about that. It’s an identity thing. A credibility thing. And, it’s a transparency thing for Brandon Hall. I’ve got information to share about both roles. I’m still learning. And here’s how I’m dealing with it: A separate website for the business side of social media. It doesn’t make much sense to write about the "AND" role stuff here and it doesn’t make much sense to teach others about it when I only write about e-learning related topics here. It’s confusing. Separate accounts for some social networking sites to keep topics organized. So, I’m sticking to e-learning research here with some "AND" writing on the side about the business side of things. Because that’s the way I learn best. Write about it. Talk about it. Write about it some more. One last thing about this conflicting persona / subject matter thing…a video from a panel Mark Oehlert led at DevLearn09 with Michelle Lentz and Aaron Silvers about reputation, authenticity, and credibility. Very smart people documenting their work and becoming more knowledgeable. Just not all mixed up in one place.

A got my panties in a bunch last week over the Human Capital Institute’s (HCI) use of content from my other blog on their site. So I took a more open, less reactionary view of the Human Capital League, (not to be confused with the Human Capital Institute). The Human Capital League, like HCI (an association), is a syndication site (an "online community") for workforce management content. Bloggers can voluntarily add their blog to the site and it is automatically syndicated. Posts link to the blogger’s original post but you can also, like HCI, post comments directly on the Human Capital League site or, you can post something original (presumably if you don’t have a blog elsewhere). I saw some featured bloggers I recognized so did some investigating. The best I can tell, Jerry Bowles created the Human Capital League blog community in November 2009. Based on his LinkedIn profile, he was previously co-founder and "Chief Content Office" at Social Media Today LLC (I think that’s a typo and he meant "Chief Content Officer"). So, Bowles is a business-to-business (b2b) community site creator and manager. A content curator. If you want to take a peak at the possible future of the Human Capital League, you can look at Social Media Today. It has as a long list of social media bloggers, some very well known.  If you look at how they make their money you’ll see that it’s through targeted b2b marketing. The new marketing. Social Media Today has content moderators responsible for managing sites, curating content, "cleaning up" posts, moderating comments, corresponding with members and bloggers, promotion, and blogger recruitment. There are other communities like it, for example the Content Management Connection a "hyper-syndicator" of which Social Media Today is a contributor. All of these communities are powered by WordFrame and many are also aggregated on Alltop. You can also see some of Bowles other communities like Sequenza 21, a Contemporary Classical Music Community, and the Social Web School (now part of the Human Capital League). BTW, Bowles thinks Twittering is for birdbrains. A ballsy position to take considering he makes money from other people’s "get over yourself" content. This reminds me of a training community curmudgeon and his recent rant (criticizing informal learning yet making money from downloads for papers about informal learning). The Twitter feed running on a widget on the sight aggregates all #workplace hashtags mostly fron Kenya McCullum, SF Workplace Communication Examiner for the Examiner and, looking at her account, a professional hashtagger. Adding your blog feed or posting to the Human Capital League site means "you are giving us your unrestricted but non-exclusive permission to use your content on this site." Gee thanks. So I’ve connected some dots. Now what? The advantages of adding your blog to an online aggregating site are many: your content reaches a larger audience your content reaches a more targeted audience sheer volume improves your search results it makes massive amounts of information more accessible for everyone The disadvantages: you give unrestricted use of your content you make no money from your content (although indirectly you may, through new business) I think content curation is the wave of the future. Along with some people I respect, I’m adding my sites to B2B communities and feel somewhat comfortable knowing that I did so voluntarily and have the ability to respond to any comments and remove myself if I chose.

I’ve been @jclarey on Twitter for probably two years or so. I mostly share e-learning stuff. Perhaps an 80/20 split of e-learning and snarky comments. I treasure the people I follow and have worked hard at keeping it valuable. I recently started @janetclarey to share content specific to the social web, specifically marketing. I decided to follow some of Mashable’s lists to get started. Lists are a great way to find people writing about stuff that interests you. As a result of my new account I’ve got a bunch of new people to get to know and a keen sense of things that make me not want to follow or follow someone back. I am less likely to follow you if: your content does not match my interests you are a bot and your content is bad all of your tweets are inspirational quotes you are a professional hash tagger you only *ask* questions you have no tweets you have no profile information and I can’t tell what type of information you really share your profile is not personal (info is a marketing blurb) (exception: big and niche brands) you just want to meet men you only send impersonal marketing messages most of your tweets are about Twitter you are a social media charlatan you send impersonal  auto DMs (exception: big brands) you are a fake celebrity or really boring real celebrity you primarily tweet in a language that I don’t know you are primarily directing me to another space I don’t want to be part of you are only trying to sell me something you are not authentic These markers help me manage my network  and improve productivity. It’s how I keep things meaningful. What about  you?

Aliza Sherman asks why social media presences get ignored and why they are not always integrated into other forms of marketing communications. Some of reasons she suggests…the learning curve, the adaption curve, the added work, and the measurement factor. "What can you do to bring marketing tools and tactics into the marketing and communications mix…?" she asks. She lists a few: avoid hype, educate others, support marketing, and be persistent. I’d add that it helps to get the people actually using the tools. I think that’s really how things jelled for our company. You really won’t get it until you use it. I can’t imagine being in marketing and communications today and not knowing about social media. When you wake up in the morning and see Facebook and Twitter icons on your cereal box, you’ll know it’s not going away. Just for the heck of it, I checked…I don’t see any social media references on my box of Special K. I don’t see anything on the Kellogg main page. They do have a Facebook fan page, Kellogg Cares. I don’t see anything on "The Victory Project" page for the Special K challenge. They are called a social media star here though. It’s a big brand and they’re certainly involved but I still had to look and I know what I’m looking for. I think it’s a missed opportunity, at least for people like me…40s & carrying a few extra pounds from the Thanksgiving-to-New Year eating festival. I mean everyone reads the box don’t they? Seeing the icons on the box would’ve supported the other efforts nicely. Just sayin. Why Social Media Marketing is Still a Red-headed Stepchild | WebWorkerDaily | Aliza Sherman | January 6, 2010

It can get very confusing and cumbersome to manage more than one Twitter account. At least for me it can. I have followed lists for social media under my e-learning account and it sucks. Too much and all mixed up. Sometimes a good link can be shared on more than one account, other times it only makes sense to share it for a particular account. I think that’s a courtesy and service for people who choose to follow you based on the area of expertise you list in your profile. I tend to be all over the place so I’m probably not the best example for keeping things neat and orderly but still…I think it’s important. I’m trying to do a better job of that. I am currently using TweetDeck to follow multiple accounts. Here’s what the multiple accounts look like. You can click on as many or few as you want. So typing something and click on all accounts will send the tweet everywhere. I rarely have used the @MVCowork account. It’s a pet project I simply don’t have time for but if I come across something good about coworking, I’d like to be able to share it. The @jclarey is my primary account. The@ janetclarey is new and is my effort to separate the marketing-type stuff from e-learning (same purpose as this blog). I rarely send updates to Facebook via TweetDeck because Facebook is an entirely different group of people for me. Finally, @BHallResearch is kind of a news account for  I post to. It normally includes webinars, workshops, blog posts, announcements, etc. I’ve also made columns on TweetDeck for both accounts. It’s gettting more manageable. I did a Google search for "multiple Twitter accounts."  Here’s a few links that look good: 25 Twitter Apps to Manage Multiple Accounts Managing Multiple Twitter Accounts for Your Nonprofit Managing Multiple Twitter Accounts Is Easier Than You Think If you have multiple accounts what are you using?

Jay Deragon hears a stampede. A social media stampede. And that’s not a good thing. I don’t know of any good stampedes. Deragon says, Following the behavior of others reflects a pack mentality. Pack behavior is how individuals in a group can act together without planned direction. The term pertains to human conduct during activities, such as using social media, and even everyday decision making, judgment and opinion forming. Unless we stop and think about the implications of what we do and how we do it we can find ourselves following the crowd over the cliff. Not thinking and following a crowd nowhere is the first indication of ignorance. He’s exactly right. Open any newspaper, turn on the TV, visit the grocery store, or go to your local cafe. What do you see?  Facebook and Twitter icons. They’re everywhere. I wonder how many are just following the crowd. I wonder how many have a purpose other than "engagement." How many can answer the question "for what purpose?" Deragon goes on to say, "…social media..represents a "systemic shift" in how markets behave and will operate in the future. When a system shifts it creates a "gaping void" in knowledge of its meaning, value and intent because the "bandwagon effect" creates a stampede of interest, usage and mostly without a defined purpose or intent. Thus many, if not most, will run off the cliff and into the "river of destructive forces" and drown in their ignorance. But I wouldn’t recommend running away. Rather, I’m thinking of "marinating on the edge;" what John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas wrote about in The Gamer Disposition. For most players, the fun of the game lies in learning how to overcome obstacles. The game world provides all the tools to do this. For gamers, play amounts to assembling and combining tools and resources that will help them learn. The reward is converting new knowledge into action and recognizing that current successes are resources for solving future problems. They marinate on the ‘edge.’ Finally, gamers often explore radical alternatives and innovative strategies for completing tasks, quests, and challenges. Even when common solutions are known, the gamer disposition demands a better way, a more original response to the problem. It’d be rather easy to take an "I told you so" stance right now. I know some  curmudgeonly types rubbing their hands together just waiting to say "I told you so." The winners here won’t be those folks. The winners (for all concerned) are the people "marinating on the edge" and trying to solve future problems.

I really have grown to like the format of the group blog I write for. I’m going to try following that format here because frankly, it’s a nice way to keep up-to-date. I find writing original posts about the work I’m doing an incredible learning experience (but very time consuming making posting few and far between). I’ll continue to post original work. My process for writing daily commentary: Scan ~100 blogs in my reader "Star" those I find interesting Post and schedule them to post at a particular time each day I find that this process and schedule keeps me disciplined. I’ll be posting my choice daily finding and will be scheduling them for late-in-the-day publication. I’ve created multiple folders in Google Reader to make this manageable. I think there’s a real need for content curation such as this. Enjoy! I welcome feedback.

I’ve presented on the topic of the micro movement as it pertains to learning. Microlearning shows up as fragmented and smaller courses and conversations that are getting smaller, faster, "more." This micro movement happens in nearly all industries - music and mass media are two that come to mind. I generally start my microlearning presentation with a music example: Albums> Singles > Remixes and Ringtones. Here’s a couple of examples of humorous photo micro niche site. The first is the The "Blog" of  "Unnecessary" Quotation Markets. The second, a blog about the People of  Wal-Mart. The third, a blog called My Parents Were Awesome. All of these sites use submitted content from others. (Another trend.) Yup, a blog that features photos of instances where unnecessary quotation marks, a blog that features bizarre people in Wal-Mart stores, and a blog with photos of  parents being awesome. Brace yourself for the second one because it is downright disturbing. You’ve been warned : )  Enjoy! Photo 1: The "blog of "unnecessary" quotation marks Photo 2: People of Wal-Mart Photo 3: My Parents Were Awesome fake degrees | the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks | Bethany Keely | January 18 2010 and I thought I told you to stay in the truck | People of Wal-Mart | January 18 2010 and Minda My Parents Were Awesome Submitted by Adina January 18, 2010

First of all, I love AJ Leon’s hair. Second, I have not yet seen George Clooney’s "Up in the Air."  What do these two things have in common? Nothing really (because I don’t have much to say about George Clooney’s hair). However, AJ’s review of TripIt makes me think that if George Clooney’s character wasn’t using TripIt, he should have been. How’s that for a tie in? Frankly, I always felt a little creepy seeing someone’s TripIt update on LinkedIn or where ever. Very stalkish I thought. Maybe that’s just my lame paranoia associated with seeing media stories about women traveling alone. Tripit App Review from AJ Leon on Vimeo. Organizing Your Travel with TripIt | workshifting.com | AJ Leon | January 18 2010

I agree with Jason Falls that Twitter is mainly a conversational platform. I market as a ‘conversationalist’ sometimes even going to the left of that to a spot maybe called ‘you can really do it wrong.’ : ) He gives some great examples (real people and brands) so if you’re wondering what to say and how to say it without being an asshole, you could study their styles and find one you (and you company) are comfortable with. Four Styles of Marketing on Twitter | Social Media Explorer | Jason Falls | January 18 2010

James Urquhart shares a paper by David A. Couillard that addresses the fourth amendment and cloud computing. The paper is a concise but thorough outline of where we stand with respect to the application of Fourth Amendment law to Internet computing. It finishes by introducing a highly logical framework for evaluating the application of the Fourth Amendment to cases involving cloud-based data. Couillard’s framework: [T]he service provider has a copy of the keys to a user’s cloud "storage unit," much like a landlord or storage locker owner has keys to a tenant’s space, a bank has the keys to a safe deposit box, and a postal carrier has the keys to a mailbox. Yet that does not give law enforcement the authority to use those third parties as a means to enter a private space. The same rationale should apply to the cloud. In some circumstances, such as search engine queries, the third party is clearly an interested party to the communication. But when content data, passwords, or URLs are maintained by a service provider in a relationship more akin to that of landlord-tenant, such as private Google accounts, any such data that the provider is not directly interested in should not be understood to be open to search via consent or a waiver of Fourth Amendment protection. Does the Fourth Amendment cover ‘the cloud’? The Wisdom of Clouds James Urquhart January 17, 2009 (via Mike Gotta)

First, you’ll need to view this on full screen so click on it and open full screen in Slideshare. 10 essays of ideas and thought starters from a global assortment of Edelman executives. The 10 essays: Disruption-Proof Business,  The Valley of Abandonment, ‘Location, Location, Location, ‘ Asian Mobile Marketing Goes Off the Hook, Be Now or You Will Never Be, The New Morning Paper, Converging Divergence, Journalism Strikes Back, and The Data Decade. Great reading. 10 Ideas For The New Decade View more documents from David Armano. 10 Ideas For The New Decade | Logic + Emotion | David Armano | January 19 2010