So Quora is blasting off right now. Some hyperbolic, breathless suggestions have it becoming bigger than Twitter. I don't know about that, I think that more people are interested in broadcasting than they are in participating in answering questions but I could be wrong. Regardless of where Quora ends up, either as the MySpace or the Facebook of the Q&A world, I think the rapid rise of this site and others, brings up a couple of powerful dynamics that largely go unnoticed...at least not so much noticed given their power (IMHO).  The first difference I see between the dynamic of Twitter and the way something like Quora works is in the Asymmetric Follow.   "Asymmetric Follow is a core pattern for Web 2.0, in which a social network user can have many people following them without a need for reciprocity. Assmmetric Follow is unlike email for example, which tends to be within small groups, with all users knowing each other (newsletters are a clear exception here). If you see a social network where someone has 5000 followers and only follows 150 back - that’s Asymmetric Follow." (James Governor, 2008) That kind of dynamic is fine if it occurs within a network that accepts modes like broadcasting as well as lurking. I think though that the Q&A dynamic demands reciprocity and active engagement. I have been getting dozens of notices in my Inbox that more and more people are following me on Quora. First I have to wonder why - I assume that like me they are following me because they have seen the questions I follow and we're sort of organically building a community of interests. Secondly though, I began to wonder how many people I wanted to follow back. While I follow over 2,000 people on Twitter and would probably follow more if I just took the time to dig through the wealth of really smart people out there to follow, Quora feels different.  I'm already feeling a limit to the number of people I want to follow...I think because I feel like that could be a lot of questions headed my way and people asking you questions feels like a more significant energy commitment than simply reading tweets and re-tweeting or even replying. So I wonder if Quora does become incredibly large, as an overall community, will it have people who operate at the same scale as Pete Cashmore and Robert Scoble or will it self-limit to smaller communities? ..but wait a sec, I'm just getting warmed up.  I also started wondering about the 'question' dynamic in itself. I mean from a historical/sociological/psychological/anthropological view...what's the Question all about? Turns out that down one avenue, this quickly gets you into discussions of intonation, if questions can exist outside of syntactic structures which leads to Chomsky and discussions of generative grammar and whether or not asking questions is an activity the one cognitive activity that distinguishes human cognition from the smartest of the animal world.  Great. One can of intellectual worms opened.  I'm not ready to put these particular worms back in the can yet though because I think this is important. So now I am looking for resources and I am asking questions: who is the leading writer/researcher/historian/anthropologist on questions? What are the cultural differences in how questions are regarded? What is the uptake of something like Quora in non-Western cultures? What drives humans to ask questions? Is there a Q&A-focused version of the Dunbar Number? Should we as people trying to architect moments of learning, be concerned about having a deeper understanding of this dynamic? How has asking questions as an activity changed over time? How do things like Mendeley and Zotero play in this space? What could we do with the data flowing into Quora et al if there was an open API like Twitter? Could design multiple apps for reaching into that data and displaying questions and answers in a huge variety of ways? So far I've got: Q & A Sites (I know there are more, feel free to add in comments)  Yahoo! Answers Aardvark LinkedIN Answers Formspring Articles on Quora, Questions, etc (I know there are more of these too :-)) Who asked the first question? Wikipedia entry on Question TechCrunch FAQ on Quora Quora Will Be Bigger Than Twitter Quora: A Social Network Built for Learning Generative Grammar Syntactic Structures My Quora Profile

Believe it or not, I find that image over there to the left to be offensive, on several levels. First, as a long-time (since like I was 9) comic book reader, I'm offended because it seems like the artist just gave up and didn't even draw Emma Frost but instead drew some kind of hooker/stripper avatar. Nothing to do with the story. Nothing to do with the character. Brilliant. Let me also tell you (entering second level of offended), I have an 11-year old son and I would love to get him reading comic books but I'm no about to hand him this issue of X-Men. So not only are they offending me, a current reader, they are losing out on a future potential reader. So what does a good cover look like? How about the one over here to the right? I like this one. Tension. Drama. Actually has something to do with the story. So please don't pander. It's not what got me reading comic books - its not what will bring the next generation to comic books.  And another thing, adopt tighter story arcs. You know when you never end a story, you don't prevent people from jumping off; you keep people from jumping on.  Oh and geez...enough with the one-shots - meaningless to the storyline.  And Holy Title Confusion...wanna know a real problem? These are the X-Men related titles shipping in MARCH: X-Men Origins, X-Men Legacy, X-Men, X-Factor, Wolverine, Uncanny X-Men, Uncanny X-Force....and I'm skipping around here. But you see what I mean? I mean which one do I get? Which ones are in the same continuity?  So yeah, Marvel & DC (w a little Dark Horse thrown in) you can continue to make Spider-Man 8 or Iron Man 5 - but don't forget where these characters came from  - they came from the pages of comic books and that audience that lines up to see those films? A lot of those people came from reading the books. So do something that shows you can actually remove your head from you collective publishing ass and do something to make this a vibrant publishing medium.  Thanks. Excelsior!    

"It is an extraordinary era in which we live. It is altogether new. The world has seen nothing like it before. I will not pretend, no one can pretend, to discern then end; but every body knows that the age is remarkable for scientific research into the heavens, the earth, and what is beneath the earth; and perhaps more remarkable still for the application of this scientific research to the pursuits of life. The ancients saw nothing like it. The moderns have seen nothing like it till the present generation… We see the ocean navigated and the solid land traversed by steam power, and intelligence communicated by electricity. Truly this is almost a miraculous era. What is before us, no one can say, what is upon us, no one can hardly realize. The progress of this age has almost outstripped human belief; the future is known only to Omniscisence." Daniel Webster, 1847

Do you work with humans? OK...then read this book. Clear? Awesome.  You want people to use your systems? Your courses? Your learning experiences? Then read this book. This book won't do it all for you but it goes a long way. I think it also addresses user interaction in a way that we don't usually think of when designing courses. I'm just sitting here looking at the cover of this book and seeing that humans are pretty apparent in the title (hint: social means human)...then I think about something like "Instructional Systems Design" and it's a little less easy to see where humans fit in.  When is the last time you thought about the flow that you create for students when they sign up for a course? Did you even think about it at all? These folks did. They worked for companies like Yahoo! where people would vote with their mouse button if the flow of an experience on a site wasn't compelling or welcoming.  The authors talk about social user experience patterns and describe a pattern here as: "A pattern describes an optimal solution to a common problem within a specific context. A pattern is not a finished piece of code or design. Rather, it reflects the sum total of a community's knowledge and experience or expertise in a given domain." Now social media and or social learning is all the rage but unless we want to turn this powerful moment into something approaching our grand e-learning design concepts like which corner do we put the Next button in, then we need to get smarter on design. Design that's like Soylent Green - about people. So read the book. Visit the Wiki. Let's figure out how to design systems for humans, not just systems that include humans. 

So "FOUO"  = "For Official Use Only". Here is a link to detailed explanation of the term, turns out its a document classification, not a security level. That link in part defines it as: "This designation is used by Department of Defense and a number of other federal agencies to identify information or material which, although unclassified, may not be appropriate for public release." The interesting part is the one where I see a story come across Twitter about something that is not only in my professional area but a personal one as well. I click on the link (no, I'm not providing it here) and I go to a story on the Website of a widely-known tech magazine. There on the story page is an image that clearly has "FOUO" stamped on it.  I think that policy is pretty clear here. I don't think I can link to or use that image. We found out when Wikileaks hit, that just because something is now publically available, doesn't mean that its classification has changed - so this image is public but still FOUO. As a govt. employee, I think my options are clear - don't link to it or use it. I just find this really interesting - kinda doing some mental disection on what this feels like.  What would you do if you saw come across Twitter that was really juicy but contained proprietary information about or from your company? Would you RT it?  

So I wrote this little blog post last year about an email I got concerning an awards program. My problem was the cost associated with entering the contest and the utter lack of transparency and the fact that empty contests like this demean our industry and our efforts. Small problems right? I was actually alerted to this contest by someone in my network but I also just got the email announcing it myself.  Last year the cost to be in this fine "contest" (pls use airquotes when reading aloud), was over $800 - I guess the economic downturn has hit everyone  and the cost is now down to $575.  Let me say again - this is the "Brandon Hall Excellence Awards". Now I should say, like I did last year, that I admire not only the some of the work that BHR does but a lot of the people that are analysts there. Really do....BUT.... ...awards like these just cheapen and demean our industry. Any awards program that is administered and run by a for-profit company is suspect by nature. Why can't we forge some non-commercial group that will ajudicate an awards program - that would be cool and helpful. One that is not associated with any one conference, publication or company - what about an awards program that is associated with our industry? Here is one truth - that won't happen on one level because awards programs like this are money makers. Pure and simple. I think another truth is that our industry is just too fractured. We have designers, developers, consultants, academics, 'legends', edupunks and more - how do we bring that group together? So I'm sorry BHR, I won't be paying the $575 to "get the recognition I deserve"....I hope that will come from my peers, my clients and my stakeholders. 

I found some great images on Flickr in the "Great Diagrams in Anthropology, Linguistics, and Social Theory" group and one of them referenced the book "Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory" by Alfred Gell.  Seems like an awesome book...the reviews all regard it well...so looking at Amazon...there it is for...WHOA! $70!? Are you kidding? Oh wait, its been used as a textbook - so that makes it ok. Now get this...this book was written in 1998 and was published posthumously...that's right...the author is dead so that means copyright will only apply to this work for like another 120 years. Reasonable right? Judas, I mean really. We are so messed up as a society. I did find the book on Questia...great..except its also locked behind a paywall. So I hope Alfred Gell never wrote anything useful to a lot of people because they will never see it. Ever. Seriously you dopes, brokers from banks that had to use government money to bail themselves out are getting bonuses. BP has only disperesed about $4 billion of the $20 billion its dedicated to help the people in the Gulf. On and on. And we're gonna lock this work up behind some paywalls and here is the thing...if you charged ONE DOLLAR for this book, the publisher would make more money than the current price. Its just so damn stupid all the way around. No one is making money and nothing is getting read. Beautiful. 

So I heard this story on NPR this morning about how Joplin was dealing with the horrific toll from the tornado that destroyed 1/3 of the town and killed 162 people. I can't imagine what that must be like. The closest I get is 9/11. Horrible. Tragic. The story talked about all the increases in alcohol abuse, sexual trauma to children, increase in gambling, and so on. It also mentioned how kids will ask if the tornado is coming back when something innocent like the wind blowing storngly happens. The answer to the little girl's question is of course yes, the tornado is coming back. Every year. Count on it. Roll of the dice if it hits the town again. This is what gets me - if you live in the Southeast (where I grew up) or Tornado Alley - the tornados are coming. If you live on a beach, erosion will eventually take your land if a hurricane doesn't get to you first. Oh, also, if you live on a hill, you shold probabaly be aware of earthquakes, mud slides and for pete's sake, watch out for wildfires. I'm not an ad for anti-depressants - I'm just saying let's be realistic. I'm fascinated by the way we anthropomorphize storms and nature in general. The cruel truth is that nature doesn't care about us. There are no "viscious" storms, or "cruel" winds...those are human judgements that we put on a non-human entity. (another pet peeve: reporting that someone lost their battle against cancer - they didn't lose - the cancer wasn't playing, it was just doing what it does - I hate the way that saying makes it seem like some people just didn't fight hard enough) So what's my point? My point is that nature won't change...fires will burn, tornados will come, floods will happen...the key is that WE, the humans in the picture, CAN adapt...what's fascinating is when we don't. I rant about putting wires back on poles so they can be knocked down again instead of burying them...people rant back telling me about the cost but I ask (and never get an answer) how many times can you pay to put them back on poles before the cost levels out? ...but back to the tornados... Humans have this remarkable ability to adapt. We walk upright. Have opposable thumbs. Binocular vision. We adapt. We change. We also have an amazing capacity to face tragedy and come back and I think what's happened is maybe the wires got crossed...did we confuse adapting with a lack of courage? So here's what I think...if you live in tornado alley, have you thought about an underground home? They can be beautiful, energy efficient and they could give a crap about high winds. If you live at the beach, poles. Hills prone to mudslides, earthquakes and/or wildfires? Get used to no insurance.  I'm sorry but I'm just amazed that we who have descended from Australopithecus afarensis, have refused our heritage. have refused to adapt. So yes, to those folks in Joplin, to my families living in Kansas and Georgia, to dear friends living in California and Oregon and Washington, to more family lving in Florida - those tornados are coming back - they can't adapt - can we?

via itunes.apple.com So this is interesting..gotta say I'm impressed with the look and feel and game play so far..let's design one of these to teach people how to change their default password settings :-)

So that's my Asus tablet over there. Had it now a couple of months. First tablet I've had and first device I've had running any flavor of Android. Just a couple of thoughts:  -Its got freaking amazing battery life -I use it so much for note-taking that I've almost quit writing in my Moleskine (lil sad about that. Actually like the act of writing/drawing and tablets don't even get close to that yet) -Funny that I immediately strapped a keyboard to it. Makes text entry a breeze but also kills the ability to treat it like a tablet. Humans are weird.  -The Android market REALLY needs to step up the number of apps optimized for the tablet. Apple is killing them here.  -The price point is spot on. Judas that iPad is expensive. Might as well get a laptop. After my experience with this tablet I keep wondering if I could justify the cost of the iPad and an iPhone. -I love the form factor...thin...light...but I do miss the full-featured nature of a laptop running a full-on OS. -This is awesome for reading...better Kindle than the Kindle -I'm still figuring out my way around the OS -I do not have 3G on this model so at my office, w/ no WiFi, this feels really disconnected in a way that a laptop never really did. This really is a creature of the 'net. -I am feeling the pains of leaving Apple's Walled Garden...looking at apps that run on both and thinking "I already paid for this once.." ....my music is still 'over there'..... Anyway I think the idea is - have a firm idea in mind for what you want to use a tablet for...I think I've used a laptop for so long, I'm going through some kind of transition (first joker to start the "laptop natives" and "tablet immigrants" meme is gonna get it!) ....I think browsers and tablet/phone OSs still have a way to go before they replace a full OS of any flavor.   

  (photo by Virpi Oinonen)  Check out the post just below this one...pretty cool...embedded the Conference Wish List stickie board on this blog...and it works...you can add notes to the board right from this blog AND guess what!? ...You can grab the embed code too (see that semi-transparent box in the upper right-hand corner w the blank notes? Click on the lower case "i" and you should get a drop down box with them embed code available)!!   That means that this Conference Wish List really isn't mine...kinda is, I started it but we can all use it... I have certain interests...learning, mobile, training, anthropology, history, technology, government, enterprise 2.0, game design and development, serious games, social business, etc...but we don't need to limit the Wish List to those topics - in fact, I'd rather we didn't - I think while each of these areas have tremendous conferences focused on those domains - I also think its incredibly valuable to spread our conference wings a bit and travel outside our domains (I even think that the things we see at other conferences can come back to and benefit our 'home' conferences, e.g. new ideas for speakers, sessions, activities).  So this isn't a plea for self-promotion on my part - I want to know where the best face-2-face experiences are to be had in the respective domains and I happen to think this is pretty cool format to do that in or through...so jump in and add your favs. Thanks! (from everyone)

We have been at war for over a decade. Afghanistan. Iraq. Multiple deployments. PTSD. IEDs. mTBI. Our men and women of the armed forces have been stressed to greater degrees than any other generation of American fighting forces. Greater OPTEMPO..battles with no front lines...enemies with no uniforms...all of these things have combined to stress not only our warriors but our ability to serve them when they come home.  The Wounded Warrior Project is one of the many efforts that has stepped into that gap: "To foster the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded service members in our nation's history." The WWP can always use your help and now you have an easy way to do it.  I'm running in an event in September called the "Tough Mudder." You can go here to see the course description of the one I'm running in. Its about 12 miles long and features everything from balance beam crossings to ice-cold pits of water to a flame-lined, smoke-filled path and even the potential of electro shock! Yeah, its a bit crazy - it should be - it was designed by British Special Forces. Hopefully I make it through! Now Tough Mudder has already raised almost $3 million for WWP and I want to help add to that. If you go to this link, you'll be able to make a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project...you'll be helping a great program that serves people who have fought for our freedom and safety. Thanks everybody...even if you don't make a donation...please spread the word. That helps too....and if you feel so inclined, there are still slots available for the event! 

   FAIR WARNING: The video embedded here is safe for work but does contain a good bit of me talking. Please proceed with caution!  My view of technology is greatly informed by a concern for the humans at the user end of it. What does it do for you? How does it make your day better? So I tend to look at what existing human dynamics new technologies either support, extend or both. That view got a big kick in the pants (in a good way) about six years ago (Gasp! Yes, right after I got out of high school ;-))  - I had the enviable task of getting the smartest people I knew and/or could find together in a room to talk about blog/wikis (we didn't even have 2.0 back then) and how they impact the enterprise. My first call was to @jaycross who in short order, helped me to hook up with folks like @jerrymichalski , @marciamarcia , @eekim , @Ross , @cshirky , @dweinberger , and @timoreilly (although he couldn't make it...stupid calendar). Anyway, I was star-struck then by assembled brainpower and am even moreso today. What a huge gift that was. Well much like VH1, I'm trying to get the old band back together...I think the big lesson for me that came out of those sessions was that conversations are incredibly powerful (especially for learning) and the technologies of social media grant them unheard of scale and speed. I also think that those same dynamics are still at play today and that bringing back the human might be a good way to get people to understand what I see as so powerful about social media.  So this video is the first attempt at that. @jerrymichalski has access to a cool new G+ feature that allows us to record our Hangout and broadcast it via YouTube. We plan on producing a book out of all this and maybe some other items but what better way to start off looking at conversations than with a conversation. PLEASE feel free to comment with suggested resources, people we should talk to (already have a pretty good list working) and any comments or suggestions you have. We plan to do this a few times and I'll let you know when we do. Thanks and I look forward to talking to you all. 

I just finished reading the hashtag flows from the likes of #TED, #GDC, #SXSW, #LSCON, and #IAS12 - sheesh - talk about wishing to be able to have a superpower to transport from one awesome conference to the next and then instantly synthesize all the data coming out of those sessions into some insanely powerful new discipline that could sweep across multiple communities and problem sets like some benign Eye of Sauron leaving nothing but solved problems, renewed relationships and powerful new connections in its wake.  I feel like though we all go to these conferences and lament how we hate silos and then fail to tear down those silos in terms of the scope of the domain that we operate in. Think different yes! but also think more broadly! Take a look at this ridiculously small sample of tweets from these events.  The best plenary #GDC keynotes have been the ones from outside the industry. Ron Moore, and even Ray Kurzweil despite the latter's insanity. (link) RT @tedxbraam: "Doodling is considered to be anti-intellectual and counter to serious learning." — Sunni Brown http://t.co/t5yvlOq0 #TED (link) Social learning is not what you make people do (as in training) but something that happens naturally and spontaneously #lscon (link) Whoa! RT @theRab #sxsw tagged photos on instagram are growing at a rate of about 10-12k per day, casual observation (link)  "@ejaeson: Flashy polish means nothing if a user wanders in and breaks your design doing something unexpected but totally natural. #ias12" (link) Maybe conference organizers (hey @guildmeister and @hfisktwit et al, looking at you, w much <3 of course :-)) - need to think differently about their events. Maybe instead of professional development moments we need to think of them as professional exposure opportunities (no, not like that! ;-)) ...in the sense of new ideas and new domains. Its not like the speakers aren't good (they are) or that they're not saying smart things (they are) but they're saying them to same people. Maybe what we need is to swap the job of designing the schedule for the next conference with a different conference organizer.  Yes! What do you think it would look like if #GDC were designed by folks from #IAS12? What if #LSCON had its next program built by the folks who run #TED? And what if #SXSW organizers built the next #LSCON and #DEVLEARN programs? I swear if we just did that once - think of the absolutely SICK cross-polination that would go on and that would reverberate for years in our respective domains. 

Working through this book again and I thought I'd use this as a space to capture what I think are some of the most salient points from this really important book. Please feel free to chime in with you thoughts, comments, suggestions.  Chapter 1: The Ionian Enchantment  Einstein writing to Marcel Grossman "It is a wonderful feeling to recognize the unity of a complex of phenomena that to direct obeservation appear to be quite separate things" p5  "The first step to wisdom, as the Chinese say, is getting things by their right names."p4 Chapter 2: The Great Branches of Learning  Science is.."driven by the faith that if we dream, press to discover, explain, and dream again, thereby plunging repeatedly into new terrain, the world will somehow come clearer and we will grasp the true strangeness of the Universe. And the strangeness will all prove to be connected and make sense." p12  "We are approaching a new age of synthesis, when the testing of consilience is the greatest of all intellectual challenges" p12 Sherrington...the brain as "enchanted loom" ..."weaving a picture of the extrernal world, tearing down and reweaving, inventing other worlds, creating a miniature universe"P13 "while the average number of undergraduate courses per institution doubled, the percentage of mandatory courses in general education dropped by more than half.." p.13 "Every college student should be able to answer the following question: What is the relation between science and the humanities and how is it important for human welfare?" p.13 Chapter 3: The Enlightenment p. 16 - Rousseau and the idea of "general will" used by Robespierre as justification for the Reign of Terror "savage coercion" p.17 the story of  Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet the "dark-angelic flaw" of the Enlightenment describes the Enlightenment as "a lacework of deltaic streams working their way along twisted channels"p.23 "but what counts most in the long haul of history is seminality not sentiment" p.24 Francis Bacon as the Enlightenment thinker who's spirit "most endures" p.24 Bacon observed that "the mind, hastily and without choice, imbibes and treasures up the first notices of things, from whence all the rest proceed, errors must forever prevail, and remain uncorrected" ....thus knowledge is not well constructed but "resembles a magnificient structure that has no foundation" p.25 the "buccinator novi temporis" ...Trumpeter of New Times p.25 "The repeated testing of knowledge by experiment, he [Bacon] insisted, is the cutting edge of learning" p.28 Bacon as "Father of Induction" p28 "...Bacon advised us to use aphorisms, illustrations, stories, fables, analogies-anything that conveys truth from the discoverer to the readers as clearly as a picture." p29 Bacon's "Idols of the Mind" (tribe, marketplace, theater) p29 "Descartes' overarching vision was one of knowledge as a system of intercoonected truths that can be ultimately abstracted into mathematics" p31 "Descartes insisted upon systemiatic doubt as the first principle of learning"p31 "He allowed himself only one undeniable premise, captured in his celebrated phrase 'Cogito Ergo Sum'...." p31 "The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind......Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution." p34 dual sword of Enlightenment thought could free mankind or enslave it Romantic backlash "If the constraining universe of matter and energy cannot be denied, at least it can be ignored with splendid contempt." p38 "Rousseau, while often listed as an Enlightenment philosophe, was really the founder and most extreme visionary of the Romantic philosophical movement....For him, learning and social order are the enemies of humanity." p38 "His [Rousseau] utopia is a minimalist state in which people abandon books and other accoutrements of intellect in order to cultivate enjoyment of the senses and good health." p38 "In America, German philosophical Romanticism was mirrored in New England transcendentalism...." p39      

So I've had this story in my tabs for like a week now and I haven't known what to do with it. The story is about a student who went to Dartmouth and who subsequently reported on the hazing and alcohol abuse he saw there and that he participated in.  Fair warning - the story recounts some pretty horrific practices. There's lot of drinking. Vomiting. Physical violence. Sexual harassment. Sexual assault. And on it goes. Now like ti says in the title, I'm in a fraternity. Not the one mentioned in the story but still. I've been in it for decades and am one of those people who don't see it as something you leave although I have been fairly inactive for a number of years. Before that though, I held numerous chapter offices, national offices and worked for our national headquarters for 2 years then served on our national board of directors. I wish deeply that I could tell you that the stories that the subject of the story lays out sound totally foreign to me and that I could never imagine humans doing things like that other humans voluntarily and certainly not when those humans happen to be college students. Sadly, the stories are all too familiar.  I will say I haven't seen abuse to the extreme and at the scale that is described in the story but then I haven't been a college undergrad for a couple of years. I will say this - that if those kind of problems exist at one chapter on a campus, they probably exist to some degree in all the chapters on that campus and probably with the band and football team as well. I'm not trying to widen the blame circle, I'm just stating that in my travels, I've observed that the attitdudes that allow this type of abuse to flourish are rooted in local traditions and mores. I should also say that hazing isn't restricted to fraternities and/or sororities. If its on campus, its kinda like an STD, you never know who has it and some of the folks who do will shock you.  I'll also say that I went through a transformative moment on this topic while in school. You go through this process and yoru first thought after it is - if I went through, so will the next people. Thank God that something my parents did, or divine intervention or something snapped inside me and that feeling lasted only about one term. I then spent the rest of my time as an undergrad, grad student house father, travelling consultant, national board member - fighting against this awful blight. I also want to say that I have seen amazing things on the positive side. I had two fraternity brothers stabbed while I was in school. One died. I've never seen a group of young men come together and support each other like we did then. I lost my mom to an anuerism while I was in school. I had no car and was in Georgia and she was in North Carolina. It was finals week but I turned to a brother while still on the phone with the doctor and asked him to drive me the 5 hours to NC - he only asked when I wanted to leave. I'm also a historian. At one point, I was the National Historian for my fraternity and so I've seen stories both good and bad stretching back over the entire span of our existence.  I'll also say that our ritual which does feature things like robes and candles, is no more threatening when done right, than the Masonic rituals from which it (and about 90% of all fraternities rituals) are drawn (most of our founders were Masons after all). Actually there are some quite beautiful parts in there and I wish deeply that we did not keep our ritual secret for two reasons - 1. I'd like to share it with you and 2. I'd like everyone to know what the letters that I wear stand for and to hold me to that brave and enduring motto.  So let me close this rambling post by saying that I have a 12 year old son. When he goes off to college, I'll tell him that he should go through rush and see if there is a chapter of a fraternity at his school that he likes (if its not mine, that's ok - although that would be cool). I'll also urger him to take with him a strong sense of self and a strong conviction not to belong to any group that asks him to violate his own personal values (things I think all people should carry with them). I may also visit campus and talk to the Greek advisor. I'll also go to bed every night as I do now after reading that story and having these thoughts all come flooding back - wishing and hoping that fraternities and the young men in them, will understand that they belong to organizations founded on the highest aspirations of man and not ones that should in any way be focused instead on the basest degradations of the human spirit. 

I read my browser tabs like tea leaves I think. I look across the top row there and I try to discern what the tabs are telling me. Is there something bubbling up? What's gaining heat or buzz? I'm not saying my tabs are richer than others or more aromatic, its just one way I try to make sense of some of this stuff (I would also read actual tea leaves but they're so hard to find these days).   commodify; specifically : to render (a good or service) widely available and interchangeable with one provided by another company The latest group of tabs to catch my eye include the following: Training Sites Lynda.com:  CodeAcademy:  Udacity:  Treehouse:  Udemy:  Stand-alone marketplace Open Sesame:  Web-based tools Bloomfire:  Udutu:  Higher Ed MITx: Academic Earth:  OCW:  Mobile App production Appmkr: BuildanApp: SWebApps: iBuildApp: iGenApps: build the app right on your own phone Now this list isn't mean to be exhaustive, there are other tech triggers that I have listed in my little Watch List. The list above is just what's open in my tabs right now and it has me thinking.  The first five sites commoditize training on a range of technical topics. Why in the world do I need to buy a library of training from SkillSoft (just an example) when I can just cherry pick the training I want to pay for (for me or my people) right from here? Open Sesame provides a commodity marketplace for training courses.  Now Bloomfire and Udutu are emblematic of a class of offerings that commoditize services that used to be huge enterprise purchases...I can literally turn on an LMS or a production platform like I turn on any other utility.  The higher ed stuff is also really interesting. I can take a Game Theory course from Yale (actually took it - really good), download the course materials and join a live study group on Visualizing Cultures from MIT (note to self: do this), and even get a certificate for completing Circuits and Electronics from MITx.  The last group of sites are all tools that are designed to allow users to easily create mobile apps, including one which lets you do that on a mobile device itself. So now even these tools, representing a class of functionality that even 2 years ago you'd have to go out and hire a firm to provide, are commodities - widely available, economically and functionally similar and eay to use.  So we can move from education to training to means of production for either free or something that is so low cost as compared to what the cost would've been 5 or 10 years ago that the price appears at least to be trending to the free.  So where does that leave us? Where does that leave you big training content company? Where does that leave you institution of higher education? Where does that leave you vendors with traditional (and by that I mean old) business models? Where does that leave the learning and training industry? Do you pray that you VP never finds out about the ability to buy compliance training like they buy coffee for the break room? Or do you do everything you can to make them understand why they should do that and use you and your talents for more meaningful work? I'd argue that DESIGN in this environment becomes critical differentiator. No, not just instructional design although that has its place. UX. Game design. Organizational design and change management. Designing for the social or the mobile. The content is here people. The tools are here. What will make the GRAND difference is our knowledge of how to use all these commodities. I'll just ASSUME that everyone has seen a 1st season episode of Star Trek (the original) known as "the Arena." What made the difference in that epsiode (even moreso than Kirk's rugged good looks) was the fact that he knew how to build something useful out of the elements that he found (they were actually placed there by the other aliens) laying around. Look around you....there are all these elements laying about...do have the relevenat design skills to make use of them? Are we teaching the generation behind us the right design skills to make use of them? Are our professional conferences focused on these issues? Do our publications and sites echo with design discussions?  Wanna become a commodity?

I read Julie Brink's recent article  on Game-based Learning for the Corporate World, and I just wanted to add to what I think Julie was trying to do - which is promote game0based learning as a viable and powerful option. This post is in no way intended to be snarky or derisive and I'm actually thankful to Julie for getting me off my butt and actually spitting out something on a topic I really believe in. I'm perfectly in line with what I think the goal of this article is..to convince people that games represent a powerful medium for learning in a range of environments, including the corporate sphere. You bet. Spot on. Couldn't agree more. The article however falls into some predictable traps that even supporters trigger and that actually end up weakening the very case they seek to make.  The very first listing of games, Yahtzee, Monopoly, Scrabble...immediately goes to a popular sort of game but what about Chess? Go? Games that have been around for centuries; or even making the point with games like poker and lacrosse and bowling - that games are games and that people need to get past this bias of the "gamer" name only referring to computer/console games.   The stats on the growth of the gaming market and the changing demographic of gamers is also interesting but I think of more interest to folks in the corporate space would be some admittedly dated stats now from Beck & Wade's 2004 book, Got Game? How the Gamer Generation is reshaping business forever: The gaming generation makes up 90 million individuals from the US alone. Approximately 56 million of these individuals are already saturating the workforce, from employees to upper management positions. About 12% are said to be managers already. In 2003, around 92% of kids age 2 through 17 in the United States access games on a daily basis.Of this 92%, only 80% are know to have home computers or some form of Internet access. Beck and Wade also make some really interesting points about this "gamer generation;" for example that gamers believe that winning matters (counter to the stereotypical slacker image), that they place a high value on competence-on the being the expert, that they are risk takers and believers in open communication and creative problem solving. These kind of points I think loom very large (or should) in the minds of corporate trainers who think they will just be able to provide the same old training to a generation raised on games - but I know we were talking about games as learning vehicles and not as bifurcators of generations. So let's get into comparing "gaming" to e-learning. First, comparing "gaming" to "traditional e-learning" is at best an apples to oranges comparison. Games require absolutely no technology. The dynamics that are inherent in games, including learning (see Raph Koster in Theory of Fun, Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens, or Man, Play and Games by Roger Caillois for some background on the rich history of humankind and games), are in games played purely with human bodies and imagination as they are in games that require the absolute latest in computer hardware and broadband connections. e-Learning is by definition a technologically mediated delivery mechanism...its not even a stand-alone set of principles  On the theoretical front, we really need to get Skinner out of there. As one accessible example, if you read Donald Clark's recent post on Skinner (part of Donald's amazing learning theorists marathon) if really a weak frontman for the power of game-based learning and really makes it seem as nothing much deeper than stimulus-response is at work and that games are somehow graphically enhanced Skinner boxes. There are any number of better advocates for the power of game-based learning but two that leap to mind are James Paul Gee (eg What Video Games Can teach Us About Learning and Literacy) and David Williamson Shaffer (How Computer Games Help Children Learn and his work on pedagogical praxis) leap to mind...along with Eric Zimmerman, Katie Salen, and a host of others...the point being, there is an incredibly rich and growing body of work focused specifically on the power of games as mechanisms for creating incredibly rich opportunities...we should probably just leave Skinner to his mice.  The authors about can also make the point better than I as to the differences between designing games for learning or training purposes and designing e-learning. The short answer is however that the gulf is enormous. Game design is a whole other skill set that starts from a different place theoretically and is informed by a radically different view of the user/learner/player than is e-learning design. Read Theory of Fun by Koster - very accessible and probably the single best explanation of how game design enshrines learning in a way that traditional ISD does not.  The topic of when games are not the best tool is also a logical and valid point for discussion but hardly for the reasons mentioned in the article. Games are great at parsing out large amounts of information is contexts that actually allow people to remember it. Think back, how did you learn your alphabet? Numbers? Huge amounts of very basic data was transmitted either through games or play (which are related but are not the same)....games, I'd argue are actually much better vehicles than the NEXT BUTTON for transmitting data...it all comes down to design. As to the question of whether some content is to sensitive or personal to be played in game - depends on I think, if you really want to deal with the topic or just check the box. Let's look at some: Darfur is Dying: a game that teaches about the horror of genocide Foor Force: a game that teaches about famine relief Fat World: a game that teaches about nutrition and obesity There are examples after examples of incredibly personal topics being taught with sensitivity and care via games. I'd argue again that games can provide a richer, more nuanced context to these sensitive topics than traditional learning.  I think I've already touched on the demographics of the gaming population above and that's a great point - I'd argue again that we need to make that point relative to gaming in general and not act like all "gaming" is a video game.  The cost front is also a moving target. The basic truth is that you can spend as little or as much as you want to build a game but by no means will price ensure quality; only good design will do that. My recommednation and its one that people have heard me make before, is head over to Kongregate. All the games there (as of 5/15/2010 there were 57,000 free games) are all built on Flash and represent an incredible array of designs and game elements that will give you a broader perspective on the possibilities - of course that means you'll have to play a lot of games. Sorry. ;-) I also just want to ask, where is the point about the social aspect of gaming? That aspect is the one driving everything from Farmville to the new wave of 'gamification'...this is actually a key dynamic that has been granted new import due to the scale and reach afforded by technology - this aspect is one that could be particularly powerful in a globally dispersed yet integrated community like a corporation.   In closing (finally right?), thanks to Julie for writing her article or else I wouldn't have written this one and I like being reminded of the power of games to inspire and teach and I hope this post is taken in the spirit intended; one of amplification and pushing forward and not argumentative or snarky. 

File this under Tip of the Iceberg Dept: I saw an email this morning about "measuring Learning 2.0." I've also seen a Learning 3.0 conference and is it me or does it seem that the semantic train is getting a bit far out of the station. Keep in mind, when Tim O'Reilly coined the term "web 2.0" he was describing not a technical leap so much but a break in way we had done business...that is, we were entering a new mode of doing things. So from that standpoint, I'm not really sure what all the 2.0/3.0 talk is about. I have more of a glimmer what all the web 2.0, 3.0 talk is about since those leaps are at least tangentially tied to technical leaps like social media, semantic web and so on. What is all the Learning iteration tied to? How is learning 2.0 different from 3.0? Are people learning differently? If not, then are we doing business differently? If not, then are the iterations tied to technical leaps? If not, then what the hell are we talking about? As they tell the kids in elementary school, words are important and are using ours badly....again I love Jay Cross dearly and love what he's done in terms of informal learning but I think he'd admit that the term "e-learning" has proved to be an inelegant beast at best. We categorically underestimate the "e" and don't change our design to incorporate or even acknolwedge it and its not actually "learning" - its training or education or content but learning is a personal construct. I'll stop saying that as soon as someone can sell me some learning.  So could we just stop the hype please. That's what it really is. Everyone wants to be appear edgy and cool and if we did 2.0 last year we MUST do 3.0 this year. Shut up about it for a year, how about that? How about realize that a term like "2.0" is a literary tesseract - it is capable of holding so much content and change and by racing by it on our way to 3 and 4 and 5...we are once again missing the power and potential as we chase after the shiny. 

So I've spoken openly before about my Tab Problem. Not the 70's-80's diet drink, the fact that I have 58 tabs that open up when I start Chrome...the number is a little troubling but more so is the age of some of these tabs...I need a Chrome extension that re-arranges my tabs every day like a 30/60/90 accounts payable system...I need to know how long I've had some of this tab inventory. Anybody wanna go ahead and code that, just lemme know when you're done. Until then, I'm going to put some of that tab info right here so I can maybe free up a couple of cycles on the CPU...  CryptoCat: instant, web-based, secure chat Pledge Music: kickstarter but for music Find this book: Marshall McLuhan: G.K. Chesterton: a practical mystic By Marshall McLuhan, W. Terrence Gordon, Barrington Nevitt, Harold Adams Innis PlaySay: "An iPhone game that connects language learners so they can have real conversation with pronunciation feedback." WorkFlowy: need to try The Anatomy of an Experience Map: should be part of ISD training Videos from Adaptive Path's 2012 Managing Experience (MX): Watch all these AirCover: mobile security The Future of Apps and Web: Pew Report DIY USB Battery Charger: Build with son DIY Solar Charger: Build with son New lecture series by Ted Nelson (updated): Watch all these The Future of Gamification: read Pew Report Pearltrees: an organizer The 3 Main Obstacles in the Way of Education Reform: read

Why are sites/services like Coursera, edX, Udacity, Academic Earth, TED-Ed and Khan Academy (feel free to comment and add all the ones that I've left out) really important? World-changing content? Maybe. Stunning new technology? Um, no. Then what is it? They are cracks in the dam. They are canaries in the mine. Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody, wrote in part, "...We are plainly witnessing a restructuring of the music and newspaper businesses, but their suffering isn’t unique, it’s prophetic." Spot on Clay. Higher education, take note, its your turn. Oh, to all the folks in corporate learning and training who just breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't their turn...you need to keep reading. Ever hear of  Common Craft? Lynda.com or Stormwind? How about Bloomfire? Code Academy? Quora? Snapguide? Instructables? Open Sesame? No? Look 'em up. Why? Well, I talk a lot about how we can look to the consumer market for features that will be included in our enterprise systems in the future....well look to the consumer market for new business models and production models too. Do you remember Fletch? Of course you do. Everyone loves that movie. Remember the scene in the doctor's office? No, not that part, the part where the dialog goes like this: Dr. Joseph Dolan: You know, it's a shame about Ed.Fletch: Oh, it was. Yeah, it was really a shame. To go so suddenly like that.Dr. Joseph Dolan: Ahh, he was dying for years.Fletch: Sure, but... the end was really... very sudden.Dr. Joseph Dolan: He was in intensive care for eight weeks!Fletch: Yeah, but I mean the very end, when he actually died. That was extremely sudden. That's what where we are headed. Everyone keeps cranking out instructional content based on seat time and levels of interactivity EXCEPT anyone not already in the industry. Those folks are the ones finding alternative models. Why? I believe its because the logic that once held that system together is breaking down.  Waaaaay back in 2005, Bill Gates gave a speech to the National Governor's Association. Part of what he said was: America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded - though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools - even when they’re working exactly as designed - cannot teach our kids what they need to know today. Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times. Our high schools were designed fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting - even ruining - the lives of millions of Americans every year. I believe he was spot on. Summers off? Built for an agricultural society. Desks in rows and columns? A factory model of control and surveilance not education. You can't fix it though because it's not broken. Its an outdated design.  Wonder why all the companies I mentioned above are popping up? Why institutions like Harvard, MIT, Stanford and so on are even experimenting? They feel the problems in the model. Do we? We keep pushing ADDIE like its some kind of magic charm. What happens though when we deploy a social media system first - that would make the "I" first...and we do that before any analysis because you can't analyze something that you have no data for...and then we tweak the design...whoa...now we're all out of order. I don't know if ADDIE is right or wrong but I know its too rigid. We don't operate in linear fashion we operate in a realm of simultaneity. Now what's your design concept look like? 30, 60 90, days to develop an hour of instruction? Really?  I'm sure the folks at the Rocky Mountain News, which started in 1859, thought they would continue on forever too. I'm not here with all the answers, just trying to remind people that we need to be asking these questions now.   

OK kids...The Wounded Warrior Project...understand that we are living in a time during which the U.S. is home to the greatest number of combat veterans in our country's history. The WWP is doing some amazing work helping those veterans adjust both mentally and physically and they've got some amazing results. Now as it turns out, I'm running in this little race called the Tough Mudder that so far has donated about $3.5 million to the WWP. I'm trying to help them kick in a little more. If you go here you can easily (and anonymously if you want) donate to the WWP. I'd appreciate it and we all know these folks who have given so much, deserve it. If you can't give, that's cool too, please feel free to share this and pass it along. Thanks and now back to our regular programming.

Look, social media likes you a lot. Really. I know you have feelings for social media too. The harsh truth though is that social media is not just going to see you exclusively and you shouldn't kid yourself into thinking you'd  be able to handle SoMe on your own anyway, they're too much for you.  I mean think about it, you can't even handle your email. There's no way you can stand up to Twitter. So stop thinking its you against the world. Get some Zen. Go with the flow...feel the Force...be the ball....focus on building your network.  You don't have a 1:1 relationship with social media - what you should be building is a many to many relationship. Social media is a network and you need to respond to the output of that network with your own network. I've got a strong network that kinda looks like a patchwork quilt.  Part of it looks for #socbiz. Part of it watches #swchat and #lrnchat. (shhh part of it even looks for mentions of my name). Pat of it looks for UX and part looks for jokes that are, frankly, NSFW and so on. It's my responsibility to architect the right network. The cool thing? Me and my network are also part of other people's networks - at absolutely zero incremental cost to any of us.  This is what can move us past the Tragedy of the Commons. So stop thinking like a subject-matter expert and start thinking like a Subject-Matter Network. 

I've seen some other arguments about why video games are not "art" but this column from Jonathan Jones is just stupid. There have been lots of comments on the Guardian's own site and on Kotaku and I'm sure, in countless other places and I might not add anything ground-breaking to the discussion but I just had to get a few ideas down here.  I'll get to Jones' contention that video games aren't art but let's not let his first assertion slip by unnoticed - that there is some combination of age and intellectual development past which, people should not praise video games nor should they be playing them.  I don't really have a crtique of this argument past the fact that given that, one could quite reading Jones' article there since his bias is so clear we know which way this article is going to go. You know what? That's OK - it's his column and he is entitled to his opinion and he is certainly entitled to not play any games - it's just that I feel sad for him. I don't think everyone should play games all the time but I do agree with people like Jane McGonigal about the positive impact of games, and with other studies that detail both the positive cognitive and motor skill improvements that acrue from game-playing (not to mention the social benefits as well).  So I'll hope that perhaps someone will get Jones' a couple games for the holidays and that maybe he'll take some time and play a little - it's a brighter world on the other side.  An interesting note is that Jones' disagrees with MoMA's decision to display video games as art. The interesting part is that his column in no way talks about the process that MoMA went through to arrive at that decision. Nor does he address in any way, how whatever collection of what I can only assume are suprememly qualified judges of art at MoMA have arrived at a decision that someone like Jones' can so clearly see is wrong.  Finally we come to the heart of Jones' argument - I think it goes that because games are a collective product, they can not reflect a personal vision  - no one "owns the games" so there is no artist. "A work of art is one person's reaction to life." -Jonathan Jones This argument confuses me to such an extent that I have to shake my head a bit at first. I want to ask Jones what he considers art? Clearly paintings - he references those. Sculpture? Music? Film? Photography? (I won't EVEN bring up comic books - I can only imagine how Jones feels about those!) How many people can be involved in the production process before it becomes non-art?  Jones also argues that even the greatest chess player in the world wasn't an artist. Again, this argument much like his cognitive/age cutoff for playing games - just makes me sad. To be able to watch Bobby Fisher play chess without recognizing that as art, well it just makes me think that Jones' world is a dim place indeed.  Why only one person? Why can art not be a collective reaction to life? Why the solitary aspect? To be sure, there have been great artists who were so possessed by incredibly strong personal visions that they made some great art but I utterly reject the notion that art BY DEFINITION requires some hermetic-like solitary act of creation. I reject that because I reject the idea that there IS a solitary act of creation. Van Gogh's reaction to life was a deeply personal one to be sure but one intimately colored and affected by interactions with others. He did not cut an ear off because he was an island unto himself.  Every artist is part of a collective. A collective of experiences. I collective of the production process. Art is by my definition, a social product in that it is mediated through one's own experiences with others. To deny that is to deny that humans are social creatures. To call out video games as non-art because their collective nature is more transparent than some other art forms is just plain wrong.