E-Learning Learning Curve

A 21st century corporation needs a different kind of organisational structure from the old command and control mechanisms that built the world’s biggest companies. Many people say they want to create learning organisations, but how do they make them happen without commanding and controlling?

Some notes jotted down during listening to the podcast, so you see if it’s worth your time (I enjoyed it, partly because of the distinguished english tone of language …)

– communication tools in the enterprise become more social, organizations may at last become learning organizations as envisioned
– social software supported training is claimed to be more efficient and effective too (and we better move, ageing workforce, rapidly changing environments, …)
– British Telecom (BT) is featured as an early adopter (JP if you’re reading this, there’s a Peter Butler, Head of Learning, getting interviewed in the podcast)
– Sun Microsystems is another case (peer-based learning, knowledge transfer, …)
– some remarks about the history and track record of e-learning – and insights into the real processes that govern learning (content is not an issue, people are learning from other individuals, it’s the dialogue that counts, …)
– during the Sabre case some corporate fears are voiced (loss of control of content, loss of certainty and growing needs for adaptivity, …)

Usability is another topic that gets touched (“don’t let the system look too corporate”, allow for the emergence of community generated solutions, …)

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Socialtext Enterprise Microblogging Presentation

More at Ross’ blog and at Read-Write Web, where a thoughtful Aaron Fulkerson weighs in on the question of RESTful APIs et al.

Much remains to be tested and evaluated, albeit it sounds promising – Oliver Marks blogs:

“The ‘unbundling’ of the microblogging appliance is possible because of Socialtext’s web oriented architecture; the presentation layer is built on their REST api using javascript but can be uncoupled to allow modularization. Extensive customization of the entire suite to meet an enterprise’s specific needs is possible because of the same api and presentation layer logic.”

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Enterprise 2.0 – Join the bandwagon (and the rollercoaster …)

These are the slides I used yesterday at a workshop talk at T-Systems SI in Stuttgart. I got invited to talk about the potentials of Web 2.0 for corporate uses, Enterprise 2.0 and implementation. Turned out to be a great event with +30 people listening and discussing vividly – thanks.

Well, when I initially met with T-System SI’s Franz Binder and Marcus Dreher for arranging the get-together I promised (or threatened them …) a helter-skelter ride through the field. Now, after some fiddling it turned out to be both an invitation to join the bandwagon (and T-Systems they are, I wish the team all the best with QBase) and a half-joking warning about ill-fated past knowledge management efforts and some related implementation tasks (and pitfalls) to understand if one wants to enjoy the ride.

Slides can be downloaded at slideshare, or embedded like here:

Howard Rheingold on essential media literacies

21st century media literacies from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

“Increasingly I think the digital divide is less about access to technology and more about the difference between those who know how and those who don’t know how,” he said. He’s convinced that what’s most important is not access to the Internet — we have more than a billion people on the Internet now and there are 4 billion phones out there — but access to knowledge and literacies for the digital age. “The ability to know has suddenly become the ability to search and the ability to sift” and discern. “Skill plus social” is the key.

“the difference between those who know how and those who don’t know how” – this is ringing a bell also for the corporate setting (granted, we need this more when thinking about knowledge workers working in ad-hoc and informal multi-project work settings than on the automated shop floor).

For Enterprise 2.0 it’s always less about providing the tools but about helping people evolve and develop the methods they need to do their job better (sounds like the real job of the Enterprise 2.0 change management consultant, huh?). And if that helps improve “day to daycorporate life” all the better.

Notice also the essential skills (literacies, I call them media competencies):

  • Attention (we need attention management ..)
  • Participation (and empathy I say)
  • Collaboration
  • Critical consumption (having a well-tuned internal crap detector)

Update: There’s also a video of Howard Rheingold’s talk on 21st century literacies at the Reboot Britain conference (40 min in totl) here

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Getting Started with Social Media – Euan Semple at GuruOnline

This is a nice set of interviews, well rather short one question one answer dialogues with my friend Euan Semple.

Euan is a very thoughtful person and – obvious with his experience on the use of social media within organisations – the fifteen questions get good answers. And I like his little remarks (like social media being so un-business like from the outside, how it helps to keep the I small in RoI).

Right, to get involved with the social web both inside and outside of an enterprise does not present an immediately obvious ROI like process automation of old did. But it can empower organisations to become more adaptive and able at learning, ie. improving knowledge retention, creating collaborative environments, and encouraging a knowledge sharing culture.

Unluckily the player can’t be embedded (well, embedding 15 videos is a drag anyway) so you have to got to guruonline to watch them.

In this exclusive interview, social media expert Euan Semple breaks social media down into easy to understand terms and explains not only why every business should at least have a look at social media but also how they can make a start without the need of employing expensive agencies and IT professionals.

Euan explains how most companies are starting to feel pressured to jump head first into social media because everyone is talking about it, although it would be imperative for most businesses to at least investigate social media, throwing too much at it isn’t necessarily going to help.

Euan also acknowledges that social media can be perceived as being a tool for the younger generation, but that generation is now starting to work within your organisation and with them they will bring the tools which they’re used to using on a day to day basis. This doesn’t mean you need to ban social networking sites like Face Book and MySpace in your office, it means you need to encourage these staff to use these tools in a manor that can benefit your business and you need to trust them to do this. Euan justifies this by pointing out that they may be more likely to ask their existing peers within that network if they encounter a problem rather than going through the usual time consuming channels. This example is not just limited to the more junior employees; encouraging staff to participate in social media can speed up trouble shooting and enable any solutions found to be shared.

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Wiki While You Work

This is just a short mental note for me that James Matheson is inviting us to collaborate on a wiki book called “Wiki while you work”claiming hoping that in the end we’ll have “a logical path for the successful deployment of wiki technology in […] organisations […].

It’s licensed under a Creative Commons license – CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

A well-received addition (competitive or complementary) to the WikiPatterns wiki that was initiated by Stewart Mader.

Oh, and you may search my frogpond blog for more posts re: wiki patterns et al.

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