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"Australian-based collaboration design specialist Matt Cooperrider has begun to explore an idea that I think the GeekDad readership is more than well positioned to help with. As well as being one of those out-of-the-box thinkers and generally smart guys, Matt is also a role-player and geek at heart. He has begun a new project called Play to Decide which will research how role-playing games can be used to support organizations and communities in democratic decision-making and the collaboration that follows. "

Alec Baldwin received a surprise apology from American Airlines over his ejection from one of its flights -- delivered by none other than Alec Baldwin. Dropping in on "Saturday Night Live"'s "Weekend Update," the most frequent "SNL" host in the show's history played the role of Capt. Steve Rogers, supposedly the pilot of the flight delayed by Baldwin playing "Words With Friends," or being a general nuisance, depending on who's account you believe.

Thanks to super-fast reactions, at least three brands were able to "newsjack" the power outage that hit the Super Bowl early in the third quarter of today's game. With the Ravens up by a score of 28-6, and a 49ers third-down play just about to begin, the lights inside the stadium went out, causing a somewhat lengthy delay that's still ongoing as I type this. Several brands saw the power outage as a chance to market themselves in clever ways on Twitter, which is no doubt experiencing new, all-time usage levels for a sporting event.

Timeline of Super Bowl events and Twitter usage for SB 46, by Colle + McVoy

Centuries before Twitter, Facebook and the enthusiasm for hyperlocal journalism, social media was enjoying popularity in a British colony across the Atlantic. And the bearers of this media revolution were, of course, newspapers. Tom Standage, digital editor of The Economist, points out in a Medium post that one of the United States' founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, played a part in social media's history.

Two new reports released from Forrester explore the state of video in the enterprise. "Information Workers Are Not Quite Ready For Desktop Videoconferencing" tells us that most workers polled do not want to use desktop video conferencing. Meanwhile, the "TechRadar For Content & Collaboration Professionals: Enterprise Video, Q1 2011" report looks at video in general across the enterprise. "Although video hasn't yet taken hold as the way we communicate or work, it will play an important role in connecting the increasingly distributed workforce," says the Radar report. The reports authors cite research showing that 46% of information workers are expected to be telecommuters by 1016.

The MacSerial Community meltdown has some big lessons, particularly in the context of these days of "Web 2.0″ and "user-generated content". It also speaks loudly to the questions raised, debated and debated again in the wake of the events leading to Kathy Sierra's decision to stop blogging. It involves cyberbullying and power plays, and in the best human tradition, reads like a soap opera. But this meltdown is distinctive - it was over two years in the making and involved trusted volunteers. The genesis of the conflict appears to begin two years ago, when two moderators came into conflict with each other. One was ready to strip the other of their mod powers when they withdrew to their own server, voluntarily resigning mod powers. However, the underlying conflict was not resolved and was driven farther underground. The lessons learned for community creators include: Visibly manage volunteers; Stay active and visible in the community; Don't let resentments fester; and, Define community boundaries, communicate them, and enforce the rules.

Though this study is informative and interesting, there are some serious limitations that should be taken into account if we are to generalize its results to all situations of collective action (like organizations). We may do a longer writeup some time in the future, but here are a few questions that it raises: Oh, and here is a link to the original paper: http://ow.ly/3VaS4 -----Is this a problem of the technology, or of fluency with the technology?---- "This is the danger with lean media, and is especially frustrating because it implies that if a willingness to cooperate can be effectively conveyed to other group members-perhaps an easier problem to fix than curing opportunistic intent-the problems of non-cooperation..they just did not know if they could rely on others to reciprocate." (p. 119) These conclusions suggest that fluency with a medium and the norms of communication through that medium may play a significant role in trust. In other words, if i am not good at communicating my intent to cooperate within the limitations of any medium (including face-to-face speech), i will have a hard time building trust. ----Are all digital media still as "lean" as email was in 2005?--- This study bases its concept of "media richness" on 1986 work by Daft and Lengel which suggested a continuum of media richness that contains face-to-face on the "rich" end and things like reports on the "lean" end. The assumption that social media, MMORPG's, digital collaboration platforms, etc are also at the lower end with email is very, very questionable.  ----Can we generalize the behavior of business students to all situations of collective action?---- The participants were all upper-level business students from the early 2000's, who are socialized and train to deal with colle

----Norms of anonymity may have changed since 2005---- There seems to have been an increase in people using digital technologies (especially social media) as a way to build their identity, rather than anonymize it. In fact, services have sprung up to provide people with personal landing pages (http://lifehacker.com/#!5534456/five-best-personal-landing-pages). If this is true, then there is likely a corresponding pressure to build and maintain trust in a world of digital trails and easy search.

The Army has a well-established history of using television commercials to reach possible recruits. The Times quotes the simply impossibly named Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley on the motivation for the new direction in recruiting. "We're working hard to increase our social media. We fully recognize that young people TiVo over commercials or are multitasking on their smartphones when the commercials come on...We have to reach out in forms like we're discussing to get them to want to know more, to join us in social media and extend the dialog." The branding message remains consistent, if not terribly clear to me: "Army Strong." It plays out across a number of properties, including a website, Army Strong Stories, and a Go Army Facebook page (complete with exclusive X-Men movie footage).

Previous studies have shown that customer satisfaction plays a key role in the health and future success of any company. When customers are satisfied, they keep coming back to the same store and invite their friends to do the same. Now, a new study from the University of Missouri has found that CEOs who pay attention to employees' job satisfaction are able to boost both customer satisfaction and "repurchase intentions," or the number of customers that intend to purchase products from the store.

The White House began their "office hours" today at 2 p.m. EST. They asked Twitter followers to submit questions about the debt debate using the hashtag #WHChat. As their last response, they took the opportunity to play the internet's oldest practical joke on a user (and catching the rest of us in the wake).

According to an article that appeared in the Tennessean, two members of the Perry County Vikings - brothers Rodney and Ryan Belasic - were ruled ineligible by the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association because of residency issues. The reason questions about where the two brothers' eligibility came about from Facebook posts made by their mother. To play football for a county high school in Tennessee, the entire family must reside within the county lines, and thanks to complaints about the brothers not cleaning their room while visiting their mother in Henry County, something she complained about on Facebook. This, naturally, caught the eye of interested parties, opening the door for the TSSAA's eligibility investigation. It was believed that entire family had moved counties, but the mother's Facebook chatter revealed that wasn't the case

HR and IT are not working together in ways the workforce needs, and L&D professionals are hard pressed to demonstrate the impact of their efforts on individual performance and bottom-line results. The professionals of the incoming generation, Gen Y, are demanding a complete overhaul of how you connect with them, coach them and teach them, but only about one-quarter of new managers get the effective coaching or training they need when assuming their new role. What do your learners find outside of your company? They find that IT and training play together quite well. For example, Apple's store has over 300,000 apps, thousands of which deliver on-the-fly tutorials plus developmental and assessment tools tailored to every need, many of which are free.

"Creativity is not a talent, it is a way of operating." John Cleese talks about research surrounding creativity, and the factors to consider to facilitate being creative.

IBM has a vested interest in all organizations using digital technologies to "become social," but they are also an interesting case study in using these technologies (and practices) themselves.