Group items tagged

rationale for WLStudio as learning network from Seth Godin "The connected person is no different from you, they've merely made a generous choice, confronting their innate fear instead of hiding from it. The reward for overcoming this inertia belongs to the connector and to everyone she connects. It's easier than ever to convene, to organize, to create spaces where strangers will cease to be strangers and turn into allies and friends. Those that convene overcome their resistance just one time, and then benefit from the generosity they've delivered to the group. The only difference between a group of strangers and a group of friends is that the friends benefitted from someone willing to go first. When we weave together strangers and turn them into a tribe, we create real value, value that lasts."

"A comment on Joho's (Dave Weinberger) blog post--a memoir of blogging--bySuw Charman-Anderson, January 9, 2014. Excerpt: " I wonder too if my lack of blog writing is related to a lack of blog reading. My RSS reader became so clogged that I feared it, wouldn't open it, and ultimately, abandoned it. And then Twitter and now Zite arrived to provide me with random rewards for clicking and swiping, showing me stuff that I had no idea I wanted to read. Instead of following the writings of a small cadre of smart, lovely people whom I am proud to call my friends, I read random crap off the internet that some algorithm thinks I might be interested in, or that is recommended by the people I follow on Twitter. That may or may not be a good thing. We were all aware of the problems of homophily, and the random clickage does help combat that. But the problem with not following people's blogs closely is that there's no conversation anymore. My blogs used to host great conversations, and I would happily engage in fascinating discussions on other people's sites. You can't do that so easily with Twitter, and Facebook. Indeed, most of my interactions on Facebook, which are scarce as I loathe it, end up being pointless arguments with friends-of-friends who turn out to be idiots. I'd love to see a resurgence in blogging. I think, personally, I need to delete Zite from my ipad and find a good RSS reader so I can follow the blogs of those people that I really care about. Not the worthy blogs I ought to read, but the works of people who matter to me. And then I need to get back to commenting, like this, because there's nothing more encouraging than finding out that people care about what you write, that people appreciate it. And David, I really do appreciate your writing - you're as inspiring and fascinating now as you were back in 2001! "

Blog post introducing Marc Ensign as a speaker, blogger, and consultant. Includes "my more notable posts as determined by my readers" on 1. Why Keyword Research is a Waste of Time (and what you should be doing instead; 2. 10 Reasons Why I don't Want to Be Your Friend Anymore; 3. Me, Me, Me, I, I, I; 4. Stop Calling Yourself a Guru, Jedi, Rock Star and Ninja (unless you are a Guru, Jedi, Rock Star or Ninja), and so on. Entertaining. Will speak in Sarasota on 11/22/13. Friend/associate of Andre Kasberger.

article by Diane Stafford at Kansas City Star, 9/20/13 on whether to use Facebook for work connections. It is not a clear progression of tips. Nor does it start from the very first thing one should do: find out about the workplace policy on using social media. 1. Let your boss ask first (?? meaning don't initiate?) 2. Check out how co-workers link (makes sense) 3. Ask first (makes sense to ask workers f2f about connecting) 4. Review your profile (looking for professionally harmful information on pages--makes sense to do regardless of Facebook friends at work) 5. Set privacy settings (yes, good practice to set privacy settings)

interview with Randi Zuckerberg, Entrepreneur, December 22, 2014 Her formula: Work. Sleep. Family. Fitness. Friends. Pick three. Also offers a list of technologies that are useful as the parent of two young children, entrepreneur, careerwoman, etc.

A group of friends in Mexico, all entrepreneurs, started talking about their failed ventures. The conversation engendered such deep learning and reflection, they created a regular meeting where they modified the Japanese Petcha-Kutcha model of presenting slides for and narrating the slides for a very brief time. The Mexico group named these f2f thriving on failure group Fuck Up night. Others around the world began to hear about the FuckUp night via social media, and soon were asking the Mexico group if they could replicate the model. Now FuckUp nights are global, and the original group only asks that the model be followed, and any slides and videos of the presentations be shared with the world on the fuckup nights website.

A group of friends in Mexico, all entrepreneurs, started talking about their failed ventures. The conversation engendered such deep learning and reflection, they created a regular meeting where they modified the Japanese Petcha-Kutcha model of presenting slides for and narrating the slides for a very brief time. The Mexico group named these f2f thriving on failure group Fuck Up night. Others around the world began to hear about the FuckUp night via social media, and soon were asking the Mexico group if they could replicate the model. Now FuckUp nights are global, and the original group only asks that the model be followed, and any slides and videos of the presentations be shared with the world on the fuckup nights website.

Blog post by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner on leadership groups within communities as act of service to lead group process. September 14, 2012 Need to do something like this in setting up Studio leadership roles that could be period specific, event specific, etc. See excerpt: The practice goes like this: everyone at a meeting belongs to a leadership group - and each group stewards one part of the learning process of the whole group. In this way leadership of the community meeting is distributed over the entire event. Leadership here is seen as an act of service, that is, not leadership in terms of telling others what to do, but helping the group develop itself as a learning partnership. We've seen these groups lead to some transformational turn-arounds in group dynamics and the learning potential. (Notwithstanding the times they flopped - which led us to learn a great deal!) We gave playful names to the groups in the spirit of making it a fun and inventive way of leading the process: agenda activists, community keepers, critical friends, social reporters, external messengers, value detectives. Over the years we've come to see that these groups can work well in lots of different contexts including group meetings, conferences, and long-term community development. Anywhere, that is, where there is an intention for collective learning.

blog post by Donston-Miller, June 4, 2012 on how social changes how we work 1. website home pages (home pages less of a destination, Facebook timeline becoming more important) 2. Email--with built-in IM systems on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, email less important. Google+ users get tight integration on communication tools 3. Help desk call centers--moving to discussion forms on social networking platforms 4. Resumes-- "Now, social networks are basically living resumes. Or, looked at another way, you are your resume; what you post, how you interact, what you share, who your friends and followers are, and more all combine to demonstrate your value to a company." 5. PBXes--enterprise wide phone systems are affected by Skype and online chat and messaging features

blog post on Mashable on how to create your online identity 5 tips 1. Google your name--see who you are competing against in terms of name recognition 2. Own your name--get LinkedIn profile and pictures to show up first by creating a name specific URL at LinkedIn 3. Block and tackle on social networks such as Facebook to only share certain info with the public or limit Facebook content to friends only. 4. Advance the ball forward--create some great content in the first page of results; some apps help with that--Brandyourself 5. Make your own plays--showcase your expertise in a blog post, answer a question on Quora or comment on an article.

Blog post by William Bowen, March 25, 2013, on movement towards online education. He would like more hard evidence to understand impact/success among other effects, tool kits (platforms), new mind-set to attempt online to reduce costs without adversely affecting educational outcomes, what we must retain in terms of central aspects of life on campus such as "minds rubbing against minds." Excerpts: "My plea is for the adoption of a portfolio approach to curricular development that provides a calibrated mix of instructional styles." ... "Their students, along with others of their generation, will expect to use digital resources-and to be trained in their use. And as technologies grow increasingly sophisticated, and we learn more about how students learn and what pedagogical methods work best in various fields, even top-tier institutions will stand to gain from the use of such technologies to improve student learning." Really like this comment for value of MOOCs for post-college graduates: "A quibble. I am intrigued by your comment about "minds rubbing against minds." While there is undeniable worthiness of the thought inside academic communities perhaps underestimated is the lack of such friction after graduation and how MOOCs can provide opportunities outside the alma maternal environments. To take courses at the local U. costs both in inconvenience of scheduling, transportation and monetary costs equivalent to constantly having a new Hyundai. Those requirements wind up as being unreasonable. Since January I have had the great pleasure of thinking about the thoughts of Dave Ward and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh and arguing about points in the forums. More recently, Michael Sandel on Justice from Boston. These opportunities are enormously better than nothing at all, clearly benefiting myself and probably also friends, colleagues and civil society. While these experiences do not provide the intensity of a post seminar argument in the Ree

article by Steve Daigneault, 2.15.2013 on what the Obama campaign staff learned from their fundraising and advocacy program in 2012. Excerpt: "Facebook app made a huge difference for their mobilization efforts. The app allowed the campaign to ask supporters to contact specific people on their friend list based on geography via Facebook. Toby and Marie estimated that millions of additional people were reached this way that weren't reachable via any other channel. Best performing appeals often had the highest unsubscribe rates. Turns out, evoking passion in supporters worked both ways, but ultimately the campaign decided the positive fundraising results were worth the increased unsubscribes. Even when considering retention, the conversion stats outweighed the downside of losing people."

from Fast Company.com Explanation of Mightybell and interview with Gina Bianchini about why she created it. Again, the focus is on groups. "Today, the number of social networks available to us means there's a surfeit of places to come together online--we share aspirational photos on Pinterest, photos from our lives on Instagram, news on Google+, Internet happenings on Tumblr, and everything else on Facebook. But with so many channels to work with (waste time on?), the things we want to say are easily drowned out in noise, making it hard to establish genuine, intimate relationships with groups of people who aren't close friends and family. Sure, you can like a photo or retweet a clever one-liner as gestures of social solidarity, but they don't go far in making connections that count. Which is why Gina Bianchini, founder of new social network Mightybell, thinks it's time for an AOL chat room renaissance. Collaboration and action in intimate circles could be her competitive advantage."

More on Mightybell

blog post by Clay Johnson, Information Diet author, Lifehacker, Excerpt: "First, let's define notification. In the context of our discussion, a notification is something that comes from a service that the service deems worthy of your attention: The scarlet box at the top of every Google page notifying you of things happening in Google+. The messages you get from Twitter telling you that you have a new message. The email icon that shows up in your system tray telling you that you have a new email. Facebook letting you know what you're missing out on Facebook. Your sister's latest move in Words with Friends." Besides being disrespectful to your attention, notifications like this do something else that's much more nefarious: they train you to be a passive consumer of information rather than an active one. If we don't control the notifications we're receiving, we're forced to react to them: from Google's big red box, to Living Social's notification for a deal on backwaxing." Besides being disrespectful to your attention, notifications like this do something else that's much more nefarious: they train you to be a passive consumer of information rather than an active one. If we don't control the notifications we're receiving, we're forced to react to them: from Google's big red box, to Living Social's notification for a deal on backwaxing."

Blog post by Suzie Mitchell, November 6, 2012, on how her desire to have a more satisfying relationship with her son led to learning about technology and using online tools to build her knowledge, which in turn led to a new career and more satisfying life. Wonderful justification for Studio IMO enriching one's life in the short-term and how opportunities came to her for work, etc. Excerpt: ""Google is your friend, Mom. Use it whenever you don't understand something." OK, duh!, but those words set me free. I could ramp up my learning all by myself. I dived headfirst into the tech world, got a smartphone and started downloading apps on every topic that interested me: health and wellness, fitness, recipes, news and, yes, shopping. Soon Justin and I were exchanging emails about apps, articles and websites. It felt great; my son-buddy was coming back into the fold. There was a lot I didn't understand, but I embraced the "fake it until you make it" approach. Before long he was sending me links he thought would appeal to me. Some I really liked, but others were hard to comprehend. They offered products and services that boomers would supposedly appreciate - but I couldn't figure out how to navigate the site, or I didn't understand what was so "amazing" about the "revolutionary" product."

Excellent video on why 20s are critical adult forming period--brain is fully formed for adulthood; "Plan and not quite enough time to do great things"--Leonard Bernstein Musical chair relationships and fear of not being able to sit down at age 30 with partner for life can cause bad decision making Post millennial crisis is not having the career that you want, or family that you want Story of Emma--at age 25--"having an identity crisis". Thought she might want to work in art or entertainment. Lived with boyfriend who displayed temper more than ambition. Head in lap, and sobbed for hour. In case of emergency, please call. who will be there for me? Told her three things that all 20 somethings need to hear: 1. Get identity capital--investment in who you might want to be next. Identity capital begets identity capital. Discounting exploration is not supposed to count when it is procrastination. 2. New piece of capital or person to date comes from weak ties--half of 20 somethings are underemployed, and half of them are not--reaching out to weak ties is how you connect; 3. You can't pick your family but you can pick your friends. You can pick your family and the time is now. The best time to work on your marriage is before you are married. Consciously choosing what you want. Found an old roommate's cousin who helped her get a job; married and has plenty of emergency contacts. One good conversation, one good Ted Talk can have an enormous impact. "Thirty is not the new 20, claim your adulthood, get your identity capital, reach out to weak ties to make your family.

How the Golden Years Disappeared by Marc Freedman, Salon, April 2, 2012. This is an excerpt from the Big Shift, a book written by Marc Freedman, the man who started Civic Ventures about 10 years ago. Perhaps the WLStudio takes on this social imperative and this is how we get funding? "The new migration is across time and the life course, as tens of millions (8,000 a day, one every ten seconds, are turning sixty) reach the spot where middle age used to end and old age once began, the new territory where a resurgent purpose gap, and gulf in identity, stands. Opportunity is there as well. The surge of people into this new stage of life is one of the most important social phenomena of the new century. Never before have so many people had so much experience and the time and the capacity to do something significant with it. That's the gift of longevity, the great potential payoff on all the progress we've made in extending lives. Realizing these possibilities will require the courage to break from old and familiar patterns that once were our friends but just don't work any longer. It means considering ideas like "gap years" for grown ups, new kinds of internships and fellowships for Americans moving beyond midlife, remodelling higher education to help retrain people who have been working for 40 or 50 years, even the creation of new kinds of investment accounts to help cover the costs of transitioning to new careers. What we're facing is not a solo matter; it's a social imperative, an urgent one that must be solved as the great midlife migration gathers scale and momentum."

WSJ/Digits by Courtney Banks, January 21, 2011 Quote: ""Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it. I would argue that implanting things in your brain is beyond the creepy line. At least for the moment, until the technology gets better."" 6. In an August 2010 interview published in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Schmidt posited that someday people would need to be able to change their names on reaching adulthood, in order to avoid embarassing information about them recorded on their friends' social-networking sites: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time … I mean we really have to think about these things as a society." 5. Speaking on a panel at the Techonomy conference in August 2010, Mr. Schmidt touted how Google image-search technology could be used to identify people: "If you have 14 pictures on the Internet, within a 95% confidence interval we can predict who you are. You say you don't have 14 pictures? You have Facebook pictures, so there."

Article on web 2.0 marketing to millennials by Strategic Enrollment Management February 2009. "Although we are not going to dedicate our article to a recap of millennial marketing, we do want to reinforce the importance of understanding the millennial mindset before you begin to build your Web 2.0 plan. Consider that 64 percent of your audience (teens 12 to 17 years old) are reported to engage in at least one type of online content creation, up from 57 percent just four years ago. Understanding what they are doing online allows our plans to be more comprehensive and effective and fully integrated into a successful enrollment plan. There is even an emerging classification of teenagers using a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging and e-mail. These "super communicators" represent about 28 percent of the entire teen population (Guess 2008). And possibly the most interesting statistic to watch comes out of Noel-Levitz's "E-Expectations: The Class of 2007" report, which claims that 43 percent of high school juniors have a profile page designed for use in researching colleges (Lenhart & Madden 2007). This all means that if you are not already participating in an active use of online marketing you are overlooking a large group of your audience. Frankly, they are keenly aware of marketing, and as marketers we need to understand their mindset to build effective plans to reach and educate them. We cannot expect that they will conform to marketing as it has been done in a traditional way. Tools of the Trade: Components to Consider The goal of any Web 2.0 is to inform and connect. Simply stated, the tools you choose should work to reinforce that goal and integrate with the other tools of the trade you are using. Enrollment managers who know their audience understand the need to consider a variety of marketing options, from traditional adve

From Inc. by Christina Desmarais, August 14, 2013. Good advice about dealing with family members, friends, other phone calls while using a home office. Also, names some tools to help keep up with collaborative projects and work teams: Hipchat for group chatting, Trello or Asana for project management, Expensify for tracking expenses and submitting expense reports, and Sqwiggle which keeps your webcam on so co-workers can see you work.

Top 100 websites for women at end of 2012 Did a call in from Forbes groups to identify sites with "informative and compelling content, smart navigable design, engaged communities, and a voice that speaks to and for the female reader that's kept fresh, timely, and in-the-know by savvy staffers and impassioned writers. ... Does it have that amorphous and often indefinable quality that inspires us to share--with out social networks and in e-mails and conversations with our moms, sisters, friends and colleagues."