Forward Progress

I finally finished the last few pages of Groundswell today. I'm not sure what took me so long to get it done; I guess other priorities kept slipping in there.

Yesterday I attended a meeting that included our executive in charge of our Internet presence and strategy. I was reassured to learn that his team is working on deploying some external social media tools in order to better get in touch with our customers, and that he thinks building an internal social community is a terrific idea. Someone from our team (probably me) is going to start having regular conversations with his social media program manager in January. Although our projects have separate intents, and will very likely use separate platforms, we need to make sure that we are aligned wherever possible, and be able to share ideas. This is an exciting step.

What Audience?

I'm spending part of the morning catching up on reading my favorite blogs after taking the day off yesterday. One of the first posts I had to read was this one, about the blogger's audience. It made me think about how I've been writing my posts, and who exactly it is that I'm addressing them to.

The answer is that I don't really know. I don't believe that anyone actually reads my blog on a semi-regular basis. A couple of my co-workers have read the posts about my DevLearn experience, but I think that's it. There was a guy who tapped me on the shoulder after Dan Roam's keynote speech at DevLearn (on day 2) to let me know he had read my blog the day before, but again I assume he was just reading what I had to say about DevLearn specifically.

In the end I guess I am writing this as if my primary audience is the co-workers of mine who happen to stumble in here on occasion. Until I can prove my audience is anything else I'm just going to go with that.

In case you missed it

This, simply put, is one of the most important reason why learning technology must change, and is changing. As our population of workers changes, we will absolutely have to provide them with methods of learning that are familiar to them and integrated with the way they live their lives. In case you missed it, this video very nicely illustrates the point.

On Social Networking

My wife is a big fan of MySpace and Facebook. She spends a good couple hours or more on them each day, mostly on the latter of the two. When I chide her about this, she usually gets a little defensive and tells me she's networking in an effort to drum up new clients (she is a financial planner). I don't doubt that this is true - to an extent - and I don't doubt that it will eventually produce a few clients. However, what she doesn't realize is that I don't care.

Insensitive? Harsh? A bit hasty? Not at all.

I don't care what her excuse is because I believe that social networking is a healthy activity. Interacting with other adults, catching up with friends, making or rebuilding connections with people in other fields - all of these things are productive activities. I think it's great that she is reconnecting with all of these people whom she hasn't spoken with in years, even the ex-boyfriends.

Now, that said, I must also make a confession: I am not a fan of Facebook or MySpace. It's nothing against the service they provide, or what they represent, I just don't like to use them. If I'm going to engage in social networking activities, I prefer it to be on more focused sites. To me, Facebook and MySpace (especially MySpace) represent a shotgun blast of noise, clutter, and junk that I have to sift through in order to find something valuable. This is not to say that I never use them, but I only just recently created a Facebook account, and as of this writing I only have one friend (I'm sure you can guess who it is).

I have heard several arguments against implementing social networking platforms in a corporate environment. Opponents often cite Facebook and MySpace as examples of the chaos that is sure to ensue. To this, I say pish, posh. Chaos only ensues if you allow it to. A carefully worded AUP, a little behind-the-scenes monitoring, and thoughtful planning can prevent this sort of outcome. Employees must be allowed to interact with one another freely. This improves communication and the flow of ideas, enables employees to find experts or others with similar interests, and just simply makes them feel more connected and comfortable in their work environment. The ROI on something like that may be difficult to calculate, but it's there.

Workplace communities don't have to be all flashy and noisy like MySpace. They can have a simpler, cleaner interface with less bells and whistles, and still be effective. IntroNetworks is one of several examples of this; Socialtext is another. This is the kind of thing I am hoping to implement at AAA, and the kind of thing that I look for in a social network that I want to participate in.

Time Management

Not exactly one of my strengths, which is why I haven't posted in several days. There have been a lot of developments since the last one. I shall try to sum up.

I have been pounding through the book Groundswell. A really terrific read, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is thinking about implementing any sort of social media tools in their organization.

In a startling repeat performance, only one person showed up to the most recent meeting of our internal Web 2.0 project team. Must be time to rally the troops again.

I met with the director of aaaU again the other day, and provided her with a rough timeline of how myself and the project team (or at least the active participant) believe we should roll out the available tools. She seemed pleased with it, but I confess that I wasn't real happy with it myself. The pace at which this project is proceeding is frustrating to me, and there is a lot of information and guidance that simply isn't available to me yet.

Last week I had a conversation with another executive about social learning and social media in general, and the value they could bring to our organization. I bounced some ideas off of him in an effort to get a little more feedback and direction. His perspective and insight was extremely valuable, and it gave me some new avenues to try for garnering support - particularly of the financial variety.

One of the questions that is banging around in my head right now is this: who is going to manage this thing once we get it up and running? I don't mean maintaining it on the back end - that's IT's job. I mean, who is going to work to keep things organized, spot check content, help train users, rally the support of executives and employees, prepare for the future? Is that one person's job, or is it five people? Who will they report to? I suspect that at first it won't be a full-time job, but it will become one by early 2010 at the latest. Hell, it's nearly a full-time job right now. This, I think, will be the topic of discussion at the next project team meeting.