Social Media 101: Destination Website Fail

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The ReadWriteWeb has an interesting article on people's lack of interest in the Obama Administration's open government initiative. It highlights the paltry participation numbers:

An Open Government Directive page for a drafting phase has now been extended until July 3. Although the OSTP blog states that "well over 100 drafts of open government recommendations" were submitted by users, contributors number just 201 users, and fewer than 1,000 ratings have been registered by the site.

For example, what should have been a hot topic (enabling citizens' participation in government using new media) on the wiki-like MixedInk site only had 18 contributors.

It then speculates as to some possible reasons for the failure:

Do you think the U.S. government did an adequate job of publicizing its Open Government efforts? Do you think political and technology bloggers with a critical mass of traffic should have done more to spread the word and encourage user participation, much in the way that music television channels consistently harass youngsters to "rock the vote"?

Do you think that trends of citizen apathy have finally peaked to a point that - even when tools for participation are free and available via a simple Internet connection - no one cares enough to weigh in?

Of course, the correct answer is none-of-the-above. All that has been proven, once again, is that it is extremely difficult to build destination Web sites. It doesn't matter who you are-- even the President of the United States with a community of 306 million. If you build it they won't come.

The failure says nothing about the people's penchant for open and participatory government, but everything about how the Internet is changing. If you want to engage with people you have to go to them. How many times must this failure be repeated before people get it?

Federal Government to Develop Free Online Courses

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An interesting bit of news: U.S. Push for Free Online Courses:

Community colleges and high schools would receive federal funds to create free, online courses in a program that is in the final stages of being drafted by the Obama administration.

Targeted at the community college system? Okay, I buy that. If your primary interest is in job skills for the largest number of people then this makes total sense. What doesn't make sense is the proposal's old economy emphasis on face-to-face learning to the tune of $18.5 billion while supporting online learning with a paltry $500 million ($50m a year x 10 years). The goal for this $50 million is to produce 20-25 "high quality" courses a year. Wow, $2 million per course? I wonder what little goodies are buried in this proposal that have little to do with learning?

Then there was this little gem about the Federal Government "owning" the courses:

The courses would be owned by the government and would be free for anyone to take.

That can't possibly be right? If it is, this would represent a major shift in policy. Things produced with the people's money go into the public domain. Period. That has been the law since forever. Surely the people behind this proposal are smart enough to know that? Any attempt to change the Federal Government's approach to intellectual property in such a draconian fashion must be resisted. I'd rather nothing be done than for it do be done so wrong.

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• Supply and Demand in Higher Education (timesunion.com)

Yes it's about speed but don't forget the process

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We all have those people in our lives, you know, the ones who say something and you know immediately that the opposite is true. Recently my certain someone proclaimed that Twitter had peaked and was soooooooooo dead. Hehe.

Personally, I think Twitter is irrelevant. Twitter is just an application. It is what people are doing with Twitter that matters, and that is anything but irrelevant. It's the future. Twitter is changing the world because it's changing the way we communicate. It's changing our expectations in regard to: timeliness, transparency, flatness, engagement, and even the way that knowledge is constructed. Hint: it's a social process.

This talk by Marc Benioff has been receiving a lot of attention: The future of computing looks like Twitter:

Any concept of batch or delay in development or execution, I think, will not be tolerated by customers anymore. Even in development, customers are demanding now that they want to be able to build in that sandbox and deploy immediately, instantly, no delay.

The Marketing Pilgrim picked up on this meme and elaborated, The Reality of Real Time Hits Real Hard :

What is more important is a real sea change that is occurring which shows that in business it’s real time or it’s no time. While it may not be practical or even possible to have true real time for everything, most companies should be tapped into some form of real time availability of information that occurs outside their four walls. If not, they stand a real chance of being left behind.

I'm in complete agreement that expectations around timeliness are accelerating. It's no longer acceptable to make them wait. Focusing on speed alone, however, misses the most important trend-- people expect to be an integral part of the process.

Bottling knowledge for later consumption is an industrial era model. Knowledge is not something that you package and put on the shelf. It's not something to be found at the end of a Google search string. Knowledge construction is a process. It's a conversation, thinking-out-loud, learning. It's a journey that people embark on together.

In the future (which is now) if you're going to survive, the artificial walls you've constructed around your organization are going to have to fall. The sooner you realize this and start tearing them down the better your long term prospects for survival.

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Balls and strikes or strikes and balls

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I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop this morning (The Royal Bean in Raleigh) fooling with my iPhone, and I overheard the most interesting conversation. It was between a woman and her SO, and it was obvious she was not happy. The conversation went something like this:

HER: I have my (inaudible) fundraiser this Thursday.

HIM: I'm doing a game that night.

HER: What time does it start?

HIM: Six o'clock.

HER: The fundraiser starts at eight.

HIM: I'd be hard pressed to be there before 8:30, but I am behind the plate.

HER: What difference does that make?

HIM: I can make a bigger strike zone, and speed up the game considerably.

HER: That's terrible!!!

HIM: Nah, they love it when you make them hit.

The moral of the story? Got me. Anyone?

The Heisenberg principle and education

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This is one of the best blog posts I have read in a long time: Competing With Competition? It is about competition and how it destroys cooperation in organizations. It describes the Heisenberg uncertainty principle:

In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known.

Then it applies this principle to organizations:

So what happens when we compete with each other? What are the consequences when we decimate each other? What happens when one departments competes with another department in the same company? What happens when one person competes with another for a salary and bonuses? What happens when society competes with Wall Street for their 401K? What happens when the competition is already lost – do we continue competing or do we then cooperate?

Which is exactly why adding extrinsic incentives totally borks the conditions which make peer-production systems work. People who don't understand how these principles work, well meaning people, try to incent what can't be incented, and they totally break it in the process.

It's the same thing with education. Want to improve education tomorrow? Then stop this competition madness immediately. Throw-out that which destroys learning: competition. Recognize that most learning is socially constructed, and do everything in your power to promote those social elements.

I saw a wonderful one-person play this week about the life of George Washington Carver, Listening to the Still Small Voice played by Paxton Williams. He had a take-away line that would be a perfect mantra for education, Lift as you climb. You can't lift when you're devoting your energy to finishing on top.

U.S. News and World Report: University rankings and gaming the system

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The Charlotte Observer reports on Clemson's gaming of the U.S. News and World Report university ranking system: Staffer: Clemson manipulated rankings

A rogue Clemson University staffer has accused the South Carolina school of manipulating its U.S. News & World Report ranking – reviving a debate over what critics call the pernicious influence of the magazine's annual college ratings.

That someone would game this ranking system totally rocks! Of course, it is completely to be expected. The already high respect I had for Clemson University just went up ten-fold. These rankings are nothing short of evil. They are worse than meaningless, and that parents and students buy this crap is really sad.

The best way to deal with trying to measure things that have no business being measured is to totally destroy their credibility. My hope is that every school games these ratings to no-end, and that it drives a stake through the heart of the whole sordid mess.

Facebook begins support for OpenID

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I've been critical of Facebook's lack of openness in the past so I need to give them a massive shoutout now: Facebook’s OpenID Goes Live

Later today Facebook will officially become an OpenID relying party. What does that mean? It that if you wish to register for Facebook using another OpenID provider, you can. Initially the service will not be completely open though. As Facebook will post later today, “To start, new users can now register for Facebook with their Gmail accounts, and existing users can link their Facebook accounts with any OpenID provider to connect with friends and eliminate the need for multiple sign-ins.

This is really big news. I'd pretty much backed completely out of Facebook over their closed nature. This move brings me back. The hiatus is over.

That Facebook was the first of the really big players to accept OpenID from third parties is huge. May the remaining dominoes begin to fall. Thank you Facebook!

UPDATE: It was there just like them promised. I set it up, and it works totally sweet. This is most excellent!!!