Group items tagged

1. Passion and purpose

2. Digital platform

3. Social proof

There are more platforms, more websites, more pat solutions to serious problems — here’s an app that can fix drug addiction! promote fiscal responsibility! advance childhood literacy!

The doors to start-up-dom have been thrown wide open. At Harvard, enrollment in the introductory computer-science course, CS50, has soared. Last semester, 39 percent of the students in the class were women, and 73 percent had never coded before.

I protested: “What about Facebook?” He looked at me, and I thought about it. No doubt, Facebook has changed the world. Facebook has made it easier to communicate, participate, pontificate, track down new contacts and vet romantic prospects. But in other moments, it has also made me nauseatingly jealous of my friends, even as I’m aware of its unreality. Everything on Facebook, like an Instagram photo, is experienced through a soft-glow filter. And for all the noise, the pinging notifications and flashing lights, you never really feel productive on Facebook.

“We talk to community managers all the time and we ask ‘What’s the thing you didn’t think was going to be part of your role? What’s the one component you were surprised how much time you were spending on it?’ It’s almost always evangelism and coaching,” said Jim Storer, principal and cofounder of The Community Roundtable, during a webinar earlier this month cohosted with community platform provider Higher Logic. Storer’s colleague and TheCR cofounder Rachel Happe added that the organization created a working group on the role of “becoming an internal consultant,” just to help TheCR members excel in that role.

TheCR report also notes that “best-in-class” online communities are more often managed by a staff team, rather than by a single person.

“Given what we now know about the complexity of—and potential for—sustained and productive engagement, the notion that a lone community manager can address all the strategic, operational, and tactical responsibilities is quickly fading,” the report states. “Implementing many of the processes and programs that are markers of maturity generally requires more resources, and best-in-class communities with bigger teams are able to prioritize community programming, advocacy programs, community management training, and other key community elements.”

For those that host online communities for their members, the new front-line staff may very well be the person managing the online community.

Wohlers is the lead staff manager for SPE Connect, a platform for SPE’s 141,000 members to meet and discuss their industry, and its multiple communities for various technical areas, subdisciplines, and association committees.

It’s almost always evangelism and coaching,” s

Tucked away in the pages of a new report by the U.S. General Accounting Office is a startling statistic: 40.4% of the U.S. workforce is now made up of contingent workers—that is, people who don’t have what we traditionally consider secure jobs.

It reinforces estimates of the independent workforce that have come from observers ranging from the Freelancers Union to Faith Popcorn

people in this workforce are struggling economically

WeWork is on a mission to create a global platform for people who want to express themselves through the work they do. Oh, and by the way, they also rent office space.

They are attempting to scale a new kind of culture – one that promises a quality workstyle, to be certain, but one that also celebrates who we are as people: we seek to find meaning in work, we seek a connection to a community where we both belong and contribute.

work-life integration, a relatively new phrase rising concurrent to the entrance of millennials in our workforce. But as he explained his support for the idea, I realized I’ve been working this way my entire life. It’s fundamental to the entrepreneurial lifestyle – Life is simply life, and if you’re passionate about what you do, then work is part of that life. As you plan your time, you prioritize everything in that life, and because work is no longer bound to one office space during one eight-hour period of time, you can mix and mingle all kinds of experiences – some work, some family, some personal – throughout your waking day. The flip side of this: If you adopt the philosophy of work-life integration, you must also adopt a philosophy of total individual responsibility. That means understanding how to prioritize things like exercise, nutrition, downtime, and family/friends into a demanding work life. It means that you are willing to be judged not on showing up or managing up, but on the work you deliver to your company. And it means you’ve joined a like-minded group who together have created a company that understands how to thrive in this new environment.

1. Make a digital home for projects in a learning management system (LMS). This type of digital organizer is somewhat similar to the tools, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, that PMs use in the work world. For class projects, an LMS can act as a container and organizer that supports team communication and collaboration, the project calendar, assignments, polls, journals or blogs, grading, and other resources and materials. The New Tech Network of PBL-focused schools uses a proprietary LMS called Echo. Another PBL-focused platform to consider is Project Foundry. More general LMSs include Schoology, Edmodo and Google Classroom. Chalkup has a rubric builder built into it. Or, if a minimal project organizer will do, consider constructing a wiki. A simple wiki site such as Google Sites or Wikispaces might be all a class needs.

And I think that’s probably a result of how it was initially rolled out. In some places it’s led to a lack of understanding around how everyone can make an ESN work for them – using it to meet their specific challenges and in a way that best suits each individual. It’s definitely not a question of trawling through a live feed to find something that may or may not be relevant to them, an ESN, used properly, is so much more than that. And it’s up to us in our team to really bring that story to life for each employee. A mammoth task with over 100,000 of us! 

One word: COLLABORATION. With our size, geographic scale and employee numbers an ESN, with all the opportunities for collaboration that it affords, is a game-changer.   

Tagging content as licensable via Creative Commons Ensuring content is easily downloadable for use in a variety of learning environments Eliminating cost barriers to participating in a course Eliminating technical barriers to participating in a course Opening courses to the public, so users don’t have to log in

experimenting with bringing social media into the workplace for years.

company-wide social network called Beehive, w

"enterprise social media" system called WaterCooler.

Myth 1: Social Learning is a New Fad

Myth 2: Social Learning Means Only One Thing

Myth 3: You Don’t Have to Be Social to Get Social

“online communities” – the thousands of discussion forums allowing like-minded people to find one another, keep in touch, and share information. Most often these online communities are started by one or two highly motivated and unpaid individuals (aided by the amazing availability of free platforms to host such groups), and participation by all subscribers is intentional and voluntary. They operate on the principle of exchange, since if everyone lurks and never posts, no helpful ideas can emerge.

I asked them about how they worked with online volunteers and at first they said they didn’t have any.  Naturally, I soon changed their perception. In fact, NTEN depends on the freely donated time and skills of its involved members.

Why is it important to recognize this quasi-invisible workforce? Because seeing and valuing the volunteer nature of this service will let you appreciate and strengthen it. Further, it’s possible to apply the principles of volunteer management to make such volunteer participation easier and more productive. For example: