Trust is a strange and capricious emotion. Its composition is built on experience from the moment of birth. The bonding between parent and child is a fabric woven out of the intimacy and trust within that relationship.It manifests itself in the early school years when relationships are fashioned within groups of children. A child’s learning is influenced by the trust placed in the teacher, and likewise the trust the teacher has for the learner. A foundation of partnerships:Trust is the foundation of partnerships, whether in friendship, marriage, business, or trade and exchange. The lack of it can preclude the formation of any of those alliances and can lead to disputes, fights, battles and wars.People in business, and in sales in particular, are aware of the reliance of success on trust between vendor and client, or between agents in partnerships. Britt Watwood’s post, The Trust Factor, discusses trust from the point of view of trustworthiness as a quotient. At that time he had been introduced to a web device designed to assess a trust quotient.Trust in blogs:Recently, interest has been centred on people’s trust in blogs, and particularly though not exclusively in company blogs, fuelled by the latest report by Forrester Research Inc.Tony Karrer’s recent post, No Trust, is a reflective take on this, and the opinions expressed by others. I left a comment, and he responded:Often we don't have time to get to know someone. Rather we have to make snap judgements based on little pieces of information. There are lots of great resources from libraries about this problem of evaluation. Most of us have our patterns figured out. But what's interesting is to hear other people's likely patterns. Oh, this is a blog by someone I don't know - I don't trust this information.Tony is right, of course. Often there is no time to form a trust of a situation or of a person. But with a blog, there are other emotions that can arise within the reader. Time is less urgently associated with the decision-making.The power of the blog:There is a complex mix of emotions, conceptions, misconceptions and beliefs that may well lead to diversity in how people view blogs. The wonderful thing about blogs for unprejudiced minds is that they can permit discussions to unfold.Our discussion brought us to a consensus, and demonstrated the power that the blog post has to bring about accord. Isn’t that what it’s all about? I’d like to think so. I am grateful to Tony, and to blogging, for the opportunity to share our opinions across the globe.My comment to Tony was much along the following lines:There may well be a need to distinguish between not trusting a person/company/blog and saying that person/company/blog is untrustworthy.I am clearly not going to 'trust' a person that I've never met before (why should I trust them?) BUT it would be libel for me here to say that person is untrustworthy. My experience is that some people cannot tell the difference between not trusting, and untrustworthy.Distrust in blogs:I can understand the distrust that readers have when they come across a blog for the first time. I believe it's a similar emotion that prevents a lot of people from ever putting a comment on a post. Some people just 'don't trust' the Internet. They may even think that it's untrustworthy.There are many examples of this (type of) distrust. For instance, when telephone banking was first introduced, people distrusted that system.When Internet banking became a reality, people distrusted it for the same reason - they needed time to gather more information about it, to hear of successful use, to meet people they knew who used it successfully. What would not reinforce their trust in the systems would be reports of Internet fraud or other things going wrong.A mix of emotions:There is a mix of emotions that most people experience when they have to put their trust in something or in someone. The transactional analysis of such a situation indicates that the would-be-participant has a degree of lack of confidence that explains their unwillingness to trust.So I’d say that it is logical for someone to say, "Oh, this is a blog by someone I don't know - I don't trust this information."Acquiring trust is a process:The process of gaining trust is cyclical, with an indeterminate period. Observations are checked against a list of criteria. The list may be a defined checklist or it may simply be a list of doubts in the mind of the observer. In most instances it’s a list of doubts.People who are duped by a person/company/blog have not utilised their cognitive abilities to the best, and some would just say that they were "too trusting".The snap decision:In business circles, snap decisions are being made all the time - you will know this. Sometimes the decisions made, purportedly based on trust, are the wrong ones. I would say that in any snap decision, there is not sufficient time for it to be based on trust, for it takes time for the iterative cycle to permit trust to be established.So when a person comes across a person/company/blog for the first time, they make a snap decision based on what they know. It requires an analytical mind to know what to do to validate their first formed opinion, to verify their doubts.A few home truths:Let me share a few home truths with you, for I am the most trusting person I know. :-)If my experience was that I was often duped through interaction with people/companies/blogs, or I’d heard of the same happening among my friends, I might be disinclined to have anything to do with people/companies/blogs. I’m not like that of course.Some would say that I was a very distrusting person. I’d tend to refute that statement and say that I am discerning and analytical.I try to verify, almost unequivocally, any first formed opinion that I may have (of trust OR distrust) before I make any significant decision, other than transactional ones.Unfortunately (either for me or others) most people aren’t like me. It's probably why I’m in the minority sector of society who reads blog posts and comments on them, never mind blogging about it.related posts - >> ( 4 ) ( 3 ) ( 2 ) ( 1 )

I’ve just set up our new computer. Hooray! It’s taken me most of my spare time yesterday and a good few hours today sorting out Net connections (again), getting email started, setting up Firefox, sorting set-ups etc - and there’s still a bit to get done, and how.I’m really pleased with the replacement. We had a rather world weary PC with Windows 2000 on it with an equally world weary 13 inch CRT monitor. I must say that we were nevertheless grateful for the machine, a gift from my son, and the good service it gave to the family over the years - it has done its dash.Shiny new machine:But now we have a brand new HP 2 Duo CPU E4700 @ 2.60 GHz with a 19 inch LCD. The family think it’s rather swish, and I must admit that, apart from the extremely tinny audio from the screen (which can be easily rectified with some decent speakers) it all has a good feel to it. Fast as, I can get writing a blog post within 30 seconds of switching it on. I just love the automatic spell checking when writing a post or comment.With the help of a good friend, I have been using Winternals to lift some of the files off our dead machine. Images are all fine. Word files - no problem. Even a few old educational games (.exe files) that my daughters still enjoy, carried across and work well, including some of Grey Olltwit’s brilliant creations, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare in an easy to use search and find suite.Cut the losses:There are a few losses though. I can’t retrieve the PhotoShop software, which is to be expected, as well as some other proprietary software including PowerPoint. Nothing to complain about there. I'll miss the PhotoShop until I can get it replaced.But the software packages that we had on CD and that should have been useful cannot be installed or run on Vista. These include a suite of SIMS, and Sid Meier’s Civilization III. All the software was gifted by my son as it happens.UPDATE 11 April: I have since located dll files that are absent in Vista and that are required for several installations to function as well as an extraordinary fix on CIV III involving an unwanted file to do with fonts of all things. We now have CIV III installed and running on Vista. The Outlook pst files that are intact and carry our archived email, though transferable, cannot be accessed on the new machine. They remain 150 Mb of impenetrable, inaccessible data. It appears that such files die with the machine, for even if our old machine was still operable there is little that can be done to transfer the emails across in any useful form, other than by taking text dumps of the individual files.Considering the need for fortitude and resourcefulness in these days of a strained global economy, I can’t help feeling that there are several lessons to be learnt here.When I’ve completed the retrieval of all that can be salvaged from our old PC, I shall take great care to ensure that, dead though it may be, it is appropriately recycled along with its twentieth century monitor. I'm into green computing.

Change has come up a lot in the blogosphere recently.Andrea Hernandez prompted me to write one of my post-type comments against her recent post on agents of change:Seeds, Serendipity, Sustainability.I thank her for the opportunity for that reflection. Part of my comment to her ran something like this:Always, when I learn about change being brought about, I ask questions. I ask why we are changing and I listen. The reply I get allows me to decide whether the change that's proposed is something I'd support.If I am confronted with the question, "Don't you support change?" my knee-jerk reaction is always to ask again, "What change or changes am I being asked to support?"If I get back nothing but an argument on change, I become suspicious that the goal of the agent for change is simply to change, without recourse to why, how, or if a proposed change is for a real benefit.There is always the possibility that change could mean a retrograde shift - moving back to what was - or moving to situations that are of no real benefit or worse. Yet it is always assumed that 'change' is good and that it means moving forward.Why do I think like this?Much of the change that I have been coerced into accepting in education over many years has not been thought through beforehand. It is only years, months or even weeks later, when in hindsight, it's seen that the enacted change was not needed, or was falsely initiated, or that there was a political agenda.So it was for me with the introduction of unit standards to New Zealand secondary education in the mid-90s and with the introduction of NCEA this century.When I heard of the proposed introduction of national standards to primary education in New Zealand, I experienced powerful déjà vu.I had a dizzy sinking feeling, and something inside my head shouted, "Here we go again!"When I hear John Hattie speak about the introduction of national standards, I think, "John! You’ve got it right mate!"Video - John Hattie, Education Leaders Forum, Rotorua, October 2009

The latest OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) result is that computers don't help student learning.In a recent paper by Peter Evans-Greenwood, Kitty O’Leary, Peter Williams, Deloitte, 18 Sept 2015, the authors write, "(E)ducators need to turn their attention to creating environments and platforms where students can learn what they need to learn when they need to, and instilling in them the habits of mind, attitudes and behaviours that will enable them to thrive in today’s (and tomorrow’s) knowledge-rich environment."Food for thought?

I'm reading this article by Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson in Forbes drawn from their book and they are saying some good things. "A powerful tool to help reach this goal is online learning technology, which offers students the ability to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in the places and at the pace they prefer. But with the shift to student-centric learning, assessment--the art and science of testing children to determine what they have learned--can and should change, as well."OK. I'm good with that, in fact right on!Then there is this: "When students learn through student-centered online technology, assessment and individualized assistance can be interactive and woven into the instruction rather than tacked on at the end of the process. Software makers can also use the feedback loop to learn how to improve their products for different kinds of learners."Sure. You bet. Now I'm thinking though that I need to read the book - the article jumps back and forth between a corporate training example and how K-12 online assessment could change and that left me a bit confused. I also want to see if the book says anything about game-based learning because the feedback loop that they describe and the constancy and immediacy of feedback could have come from a game design textbook.

So I spent most of last week at the LETSI/SCORM 2.0 Workshop in Pensacola, FL. I used CoverItLive to do a running set of notes of the workshop and that's available here. I don't want to go over all the stuff in my notes but I did want to be sure and point out that the workshop developed and is currently refining about 30 use cases for SCORM 2.0. This is in addition to the 100+ white papers that have been written and submitted to LETSI on SCORM 2.0 topics. All that tells me is that there is considerable intellectual firepower being directed at this issue of what SCORM should/would or could be in the future. It also tells me that the LETSI leadership is serious about creating an open and transparent process and being as inclusive as possible. Kudos.  It doesn't tell me if the efforts will be successful -I think that a large part of that success will depend on how well LETSI can research, evaluate and leverage existing work being done in terms of SOAs, Web services and so on...and how fast LETSI can move....and how the market reacts to LETSI's biz model. I just had this thought - could LETSI be hamstrung by the market it serves? What I mean is that the e-learning industry - or whatever you want to call it - over the past ten years, hasn't exactly been keeping pace with the pace of tech advances...I think KM has probably done better but still not great...but services that have their own conferences like ECM (enterprise content management) have also been progressing but as an industry, I don't think e-learning has exactly done a great job at integrating the advances in these other areas. I wonder if part of this is due in part to an out-moded model of instructional design than is focused on industrial-era units of learning like courses and isn't built from an architectural standpoint, to handle the idea of people actually learning vis systems like IM, wikis, blogs, etc. I will say this...whether or not LETSI or SCORM 2.0 succeeds or not - it will not be because it lacks great, dedicated people. I met a lot of great folks like "Hey I think I'm drinking with Robert Scoble" look-alike Lang Holloman, or my new Twitter-based best friend and brother from another mother Aaron Silvers, Dapper Dan Young, Angelo "Have I told you about the flood" Panar, Tom "former guy who really ran Macromedia" King, Av "The Host with the Most" Barr, Allyn "G'day mate" Radford, Eric "Socrates was an idiot and I taught Piaget everything he knew" Roberts, Mike "BAQON Bits" Rustici, Nina "The Hammer" Pasini Diebler, Ellen "The Maestro" Meiselman and a cast of dozens. I should also thanks to the IHMC for a TERRIFIC hosting job and a great chef. So let's get out there and get all mavericky and see if we can see Russia from our house or maybe just a way forward.

 **Please use W-A-S-D keys to move through this post, mouse to look around, space bar to jump and left-click to fire. And be sure to check-in and maybe you can become Mayor of this post. (In the picture, they're mechanics, get it? Like game mechanics. You get it right?)**  **Update at end of post.... I have a problem with tabs. Seriously. Its an issue. I usually keep about 100 or so of them open at a time. I know. I see myself ending up on some browser-based version of Hoarders. There is a method to my madness here. I collect all these tabs and then start to sort them to see what shakes out - what is common and and what is different - kinda like panning for gold but without the backache. So it turns out I've been looking a lot of sites and articles about using game dynamics outside the magic circle of games. Now I want to run down the tabs that I have open but I also wanted to say that there is something troubling to me about the use of game mechanics or this trend of gamificiation. I don't know exactly what it is but maybe it smells to me a bit like how "e" was gonna change everything in the learning/training field. Maybe its the idea that what I see is not only the use of game mechanics outside of games but outside of game design as well. That bothers me. Its like watching teenagers drive without the benefit of experience. They can go fast but the potential there for doing serious damage is great as well. Maybe its this leftover bitter taste I have in my mouth from last year's GDC in which it seemed every other presentation was how to 'Monetize User Behavior Through Game Mechanics' or any number of sessions that I remember as being titled 'How to be the Next Farmville in 3 Easy Steps.'  There is a quote by Gary Gygax (and no, I'm not putting a link to his bio or anything. If you're interested in games or game mechanics and you don't know who he is - get thee to Google and hang your head as you do) at the start of one of the essays in Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen's amazing book, The Game Design Reader: "Knowing the rules of a game is not nearly as simple as committing the relevant passages to memory, because memorization does not bring understanding. It is not only important to know what is written in the rules but also to perceive how the parts of the rules fit together and work in harmony with each other. The latter task is certainly achievable but it is not easy." Maybe that's it. Its that even if you can separate out certain game mechanics from true games, you still need to know how they all work together to create a compelling user experience. Maybe I'm wrong. But first, to the tabs... The first tab that I have open is a post from Gabe Zichermann and is entitled "Game Thinking is the Core of Gamification" (damn. looks like I took too long to write this post and I can't find that post any more, well we'll plunge ahead anyway)...sounds like a good start place right? Looks like Gabe has a vested interest in this dynamic (not that that's a bad thing, just is what it is). He also runs the Gamification blog (which looks like it used to be the funware blog), its associated GamificationCo and is producing the Gamification Summit (January 2011, in SFO, brrrrr). I note that Amy Jo Kim (you should watch this video of Amy Jo Kim - one of my favs) is now listed here as a "gamification guru" - I guess that's when you know you've arrived as a new niche - when you have your first gurus. Its also worth noting that Jane McGonigal is also keynoting at the Gamification Summit (you should probably watch this TED video of Jane talking about how Gaming Can Change the World and maybe even take a look at Urgent Evoke or World without Oil) - I think that while Amy Jo Kim may fit into the gamification dynamic, I think that Jane is talking about not severing individual dynamics of games but about stretching the magic circle of a game to cover not only new dynamics but new content material as well.  There is also a TEDBoston presentation from Seth Priebatsch on the "game layer" or game dynamics that can be used in the 'real world.' Things like the Appointment Dynamic, The Influence and Status Dynamic, the Progression dynamic and the Communal Discovery Dynamic. Its a good talk and makes some interesting points.  One tab was a blog post by Alex Manchester - that while I sense was written with good intentions, continues a common problem that I wanted to mention if only in an effort help clear it up. Game Theory - the subject of A Beautiful Mind and a discussion of which Alex includes at the start of his post - really has nothing to do with game design or game mechanics although it very well has something to do with behavioral economics (all of which was pointed out in a comment by Simon Bostock. If you are still interested in game theory though, you can actually take/audit/whatever you call it the course on this from Yale (its actually really good). Speaking of behavioral economics (don't hear that every day do ya?) - there is this very fine presentation (PDF) on the relationship between game mechanics and user behavior from Bunchball Nitro.   Now there is this awesome post by Pascal Rettig (and I say awesome not just because my last name used to be Rettig) about the game mechanics hype cycle. I really wish that we had had more writing like this back in ye olde early days of e-learning. One of the great points that Pascal makes is that these elements really aren't game mechanics but are actually "meta-game mechanics" (which is also what I talk about below wrt Kongregate). His point being (I think) that we need to be careful to maintain the focus of these mechanics on the core behavior we're looking to drive and make sure that those mechanics don't become the entire reason for people to engage with whatever content we're focusing on...badges on foursquare are meta to the reason we "play" - finding other people and the location-based tips...let's keep an eye on the social and not just the media.  Pascal points to a presentation by Sachin Agarwall that argues in part that we should look for "viral mechanics" as opposed to game mechanics. I think this is important if you're out there in the commercial sector trying to build to the next F'ville...but I wonder about its importance inside the enterprise..I think we really want to focus on dynamics that drive engagement with the content and not necessarily getting the content to go viral.  Pascal also points (seriously, read Pascal's post, it's crazy loaded w good thoughts and resources) to "Game Mechanics - The New Black" by Jon Carder. Jon makes a nice point that really frequent flyer programs have been using game mechanics for years. He also argues that some of the most common elements in this category include: Must Haves: Action Goal Scoreboard/Feedback Reward Nice-to-Haves: Competition Countdown timer Social Be sure to read his whole post on the topic for greater detail but I think its interesting to watch as people flesh out these dynamics (see earlier mention of Bunchball paper) and along those lines, there is a post by Shane Snow over at Mashable on HOW TO: Use Game Mechanics to Power your Business. I think one of Shane's really important points is to start with your vision and work backwards through Behaviors and then through supporting mechanics.  I guess one of the seminal pieces in this still forming cannon of gamification is Jesse Schell's DICE 2010 talk. Jesse does a great job at describing the "elastic velvet rope" - how WebKinz brought the magical creatures that live inside children's stuffed animals to life and made $12 = $20. One of the important kernels in Jesse's talk is that games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, Club Penguin - are all intruding on our reality - using our real friends and our real money. Imagine linking training to reality - oh shush Mark - now you're just talking crazy.  Now here is where the update comes in. I just spent almost a whole week at DevLearn 2010. In short, if you don't go to DevLearn, you should. Brent Schlenker (the Main Man of the Show), David Holcombe, Heidi Fisk and the rest of the eLearning Guild put on an amazing show. So I did a workshop on social learning and a little Social Learning Camp throughout the conference. The audience was awesome and stayed super-engaged the whole time. As part of that workshop and camp, I talked a lot about one of my fav web sites, Kongregate. If you've known me for longer than 5 minutes, I've probably brought this site up. I want to bring it up here too (shocker).  I think the way Kongregate is architected, offers us a way to think about using game mechanics and a game layer to add some social context to existing content. I think this may be a way for us to get 'feet wet' in terms of gamification without taking a big chomp out of the hype cycle. Go to the site. Click on any game - doesn't matter. Now see where the game is? Imagine your content there. There's a profile w/ an avatar, points for non-game related behavior (think about the dynamics you want to drive in your users/learners), comments, ratings, suggestions for related content and so on. In short, there are a lot of options for us to just take existing content and place it into a social/gaming context. As we do this though, we need to keep Pascal's warning in mind that the layer around the game is a meta-game and maintaining that layer's focus on the behaviors that you wish to reinforce requires serious design thinking.  What I really really hope is that this whole movement isn't born out of a lot of what I saw at last year's GDC - that was endless, repetitive sessions on how to be the next Farmville. Please. I don't care about your farm.  ***Double Update Alert: Look at the answers on Quora to the question: Why are so many game developers opposed to gamification?

I was just thinking this morning about "mobile learning" - those of you that know me, know that those are air quotes - I don't consider mobile learning or "e-learning" to exist except as a way to label a product...you're not really selling learning; you're selling performance support or training or an environment...anyway.  Just thinking this morning that we always talk about "mobile learning" from the POV of the end user - they're the ones that are mobile - I don't think I've ever seen a discussion about mobile learning from the production side. I'm just wondering if this is about still thinking about the production of "learning content" coming out of a training department and not as an organizational capability. We want to spread the capability to access content across the org but what about spreading the production of content? That led me to thinking about where do we draw this line between collaboration - which we all give passionate lip service to as being important - I have this impression that collaboration is still seen as going only so far and then it hits the boundary of a training department and then it becomes the production of content...is that an issue of trust? Control?  More to consider here but needed more than 140 characters to get it out....

We're going to leave the debates behind for the moment about is 'gamification' is BS or not - not that they're not important but they're not focused on the end user.  Here is what the end user wants: They want to know what they're supposed to do when. Draw clear lines. If the lines happen to have badges along the way, then fine, just make sure they really point to where I need to be.  They want good UX/UI design. They're busy, they've got three bosses. They're reports are due THIS MORNING. Make life easy on them. Think about the UX/UI design from the perspective of the work they have to accomplish using it  - not about what your design sense tells you in best.  They would not mind a sense of humor. Work is tough. People are busy but your system doesn't have to come across like one of those film strips from middle school. Remember, these folks are humans - talk to them like that - crack a joke - congratulate them - do something that makes them feel like there was a human being on the other end of this system.  Don't underestimate their intelligence. The same company that you work for (or that hired your company) hired these people. Pretty good chance they are smart and savvy. Don't bs them. Don't overlay your goals, levels, badges, leaderboards, etc - on them without understanding them and linking those mechanics to things that actually matter to them.  They want to see their bosses doing it. If your system is for everyone BUT the C Suite, you're just pissing people off. It puts the lie to how important your system is if everyone isn't using it.  I'd love to hear other things that end users want. Maybe just maybe, approaching it from their standpoint can get us to systems that people want to use (or at least don't mind using).  That'd be a win. 

    My friend Jay Cross died this weekend. That's a rough start I know but I didn't want to be cute or clever here. Just not feeling that.     I met Jay years and years ago and just to be clear - for most of the time that I knew Jay, we lived on opposite sides of the country (MD & CA) and my interactions with him were mainly at conferences or online - with the super infrequent visit to his lovely home. That will come across wrong though - Jay interacted so much online, through blogs, video chats, audio blogs and Twitter - that to say "only online" sells short how well Jay understood and embraced the Internet and the Web.      I don't remember if it was the first time I met Jay but early on, he and I were at a conference at Disney. Somehow we ended up hanging out together and I remember being a little star struck that someone of Jay's stature was hanging out with a nobody like me. That was Jay though - infinitely welcoming, friendly and curious.  At one of the events during that conference, Jay won a little stuffed turtle. I think I had mentioned that I had a young son at the time and Jay gave it to me for him. I remember coming home and saying "Jay Cross gave this to me for you, so take care of it." 14 years, 3 moves and 2 states later and my son still has the turtle.       Jay has over 32,000 photos up on Flickr. I used to race to conferences early to get what I called the "Jay Cross shot" - the registration lines ready but with no one in them. Jay took pictures of everything and everyone - he always had that little camera with him. I think that really says something about his boundless curiosity and interest in the world.       I also thank and remember Jay for introducing me to some other folks whose work has been really impactful for me. I got a call when I was working at Booz Allen to gather the smartest people I could to talk about blogs and wikis (yes kids, before Web 2.0 and social media). My first and most important call was to Jay. In short order and with Jay recommending it - we had Marcia Conner, Jerry Michalski, Eugene Eric Kim, Clay Shirky and David Weinberger all sitting in a room talking to analysts from the CIA.      The question is always - how do you remember someone like Jay? Well my recommendation is that you first dedicate yourself to being open to people and new experiences and value curiosity always.  Take lots of pictures and share them. Then find people who are also curious and work with them and find new ways to do things and never be satisfied by the status quo. Put a dent in the universe. Jay would like that.     

"I love winning. I love the fans, but the bottom line is that I still love the game" 2009, July 26, Quotes of the week. The Straits Times, p.30. This quote has all the 3 parts that I always assign to a job: Dedication to work (skills & knowledge) Dedication to clients (service & attitude) Dedication to profession (giving back, adding to the body of knowledge)

Introduction to metadata Tony Gill, Anne J. Gilliland, Maureen Whalen, and Mary S. Woodley Edited by Murtha Baca An online publication devoted to metadata, its types and uses, and how it can improve access to digital resources. I was about to purchase this book when I stumbled upon this online version (free of course). Here is the TOC Introduction Setting the Stage Metadata and the Web Crosswalks, Metadata Harvesting, Federated Searching, Metasearching Rights Metadata Made Simple Practical Principles for Metadata Creation and Maintenance

Nice collection of accessibility and web development tools. "Ever wonder how usable your site appears to someone with a disability, slower connection, or different setup? This list of tools highlights some of the most useful tools and extensions for making your website more usable."

Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox "Social software is not a trend that can be ignored. It's affecting fundamental change in how people expect to communicate, both with each other and the companies they do business with. And companies can't just draw a line in the sand and say it's okay for employees to use Web 2.0 to communicate with customers, but it's not okay to use it when communicating with each other."

Donna Spencer has written a simple yet comforting piece on how she thinks through the draft IA for a small website. "When you have made something up - and I don’t care whether you do it on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet or in your head - then start thinking about whether it will work for the users, and whether it will work for the content. Revise and play with your idea until these things start to fall together."

I stumbled upon this site by the Australian Government's Department of Finance & Deregulation. They have a comprehensive collection of guides and checklists for managing their online properties. The collection covers IA to content strategy to intranets to KM. Cool!

An article from the New Scientist has Palo Alto Research Center in California warning that Wikipedia's growth is tailing off and extreme governance could be behind it. "Chi thinks that Wikipedia now includes so much information that some editors have turned from creating new articles to improving existing ones, resulting in more disputes about edits. Such disputes are not a level playing field because established editors sometimes draw on extensive knowledge of Wikipedia's guidelines to overwhelm opposition in a practice dubbed 'wikilawyering."

Jean Hollis Weber wrote this article in 2007 but it's still relevant today given the recent focus on content strategy. "This article provides information that will help you in planning and developing a style guide. You’ll find information about the purposes of a style guide and guidelines for what should (and should not) be included, whether to develop one or more style guides, and how detailed the style guide should be. At the end of the article, you’ll find a sample style guide outline (in PDF format) that illustrates many of the details discussed in this article."

Jeff Cram has written about 3 types of content management system projects. The technical migration The visual design The strategic redesign I think this captures a lot of projects I've done over the years. However, I'd like to add 'The politically motivated' to the list. These are projects that make you wonder why they are "on" in the first place. [Via ColumnTwo]

J.Boye has published an article that lists "[CMS] vendors you should examine closer and potentially send your RFP to? Interestingly J.Boye is a vendor neutral consulting firm, so this list might turn out to be quite influential.

Eric Reiss shares web writing tips that he has gathered over the years. It sems that George Orwell’s rules are a must-have in any such list. George Orwell, the English author of 1984, Animal Farm and other classics, has six rules of writing. Here they are - they’re all gems: 1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print. 2) Never use a long word where a short one will do. 3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. 4) Never use the passive voice when you can use the active 5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday equivalent. 6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous!