The long tail of employment: Media version

Great read in the NY Times this morning: The Fall and Rise of Media. It tells the story of the collapse of big media:

Few of us could have conceived that in the next decade some of the reigning titans of media would be routed. Profligate dot-com ad money that had fattened print went away in a digital wipeout, and when digital media came back, it was to dine on the mainstream media rather than engorge it. After 2000, jobs in traditional media industries declined at a rate of about 2.5 percent annually and then went into a dive in 2008 or so.

And about the young upstarts that are finding their way through this new landscape:

For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.

I suspect that this is a story fixed to play itself out over and over again. Media just happened to be one of the early casualties. There is zero reason to believe that this same scenario isn't unfolding for all formerly closed enterprises, and if you think your enterprise is still closed you're just hiding your head in the sand. It's going to require very different skills to survive in a world where employment is just another Pareto Distribution.

HighTouch Book Club next read: Makers

I know I'm only four chapters into our current read, Total Engagement, but I wanted to announce the next HightTouch book club read a little earlier. I'll be reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. This is a return to fiction, which I know I've said I've given-up reading, but I'm making this exception as I think Makers will stretch my thinking on freeranging. A review from Publishers Weekly:

In this tour de force, Doctorow (Little Brother) uses the contradictions of two overused SF themes—the decline and fall of America and the boundless optimism of open source/hacker culture—to draw one of the most brilliant reimaginings of the near future since cyberpunk wore out its mirror shades. Perry Gibbons and Lester Banks, typical brilliant geeks in a garage, are trash-hackers who find inspiration in the growing pile of technical junk. Attracting the attention of suits and smart reporter Suzanne Church, the duo soon get involved with cheap and easy 3D printing, a cure for obesity and crowd-sourced theme parks. The result is bitingly realistic and miraculously avoids cliché or predictability. While dates and details occasionally contradict one another, Doctorow's combination of business strategy, brilliant product ideas and laugh-out-loud moments of insight will keep readers powering through this quick-moving tale. (Nov.)

Makers is available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 1.0 license: Cory Doctorow Makers

There's a dangerous group of anti-copyright activists out there who pose a clear and present danger to the future of authors and publishing. They have no respect for property or laws. What's more, they're powerful and organized, and have the ears of lawmakers and the press.


I'm speaking, of course, of the legal departments at ebook publishers...

Please consider purchasing a copy for a deserving school library. Here's how: A word to professors, librarians, and people who want to donate money to me

The ideal university social media educator

Image via Wikipedia

This is the story of Andrea, a faculty member at a major public university. She isn't real. She's a hybrid that I created with the help of several other people. Very few faculty are expected to have an appointment that splits equally across the three major functions (though they do exist). What is described, however, are real examples that some progressive educators are doing every day. I was inspired to write this after attending a meeting where a real person doing many of these social media things was heaped with praise.

Andrea is an Associate Professor at a large public university who is totally engaged in her job. She's a model for using social media to connect with the people she touches every day. She was recently recognized for being the perfect example of a progressive educator. Her provost remarked at a national meeting, "I wish we had a thousand more just like her." Everyone nodded their heads in agreement.

So what is it that Andrea does that makes her such a shining star? First, she has an interesting appointment. It is split between teaching, research, and outreach. This brings her in continuous contact with students, the scientific community, and the public who supports her research efforts. She has an active and vibrant social network.

Her students love that she is so very accessible. They can find her at most hours of the day or night via chat or SMS. She still uses email but nowhere near as much as she once did. She follows her students on Twitter and will often respond to their tweets. During class her students have an active Twitter back-channel where the sharing of questions and perspectives is encouraged. Some of her students collaboratively write course notes in real time using Google Wave. She sends out reminders about assignments and other learning opportunities via tweets. Her own version of her class notes are placed on drop.io. Captured audio and video from her classes are made available to everyone on YouTube. She uses open-content text books that she helps to write on Wikibooks. She's concerned about the ever increasing cost of a university education, and doesn't want to add additional expenses to her students' debt loads. She believes in working in the open. Her content is made available through a Creative Commons 3.0 license so that others are free to use, remix, and otherwise extend it for other purposes. She has no problem with others using the content that she has participated in creating. She knows this is how learning happens.

Andrea is just as open when it comes to her research. She practices open notebook science with a totally transparent form of research where her design, data, notes, and results are open for all to see. Even her failed and seemingly insignificant experiments are available for deconstruction and discussion. She publishes her research through the open-access/open-content Public Library of Science (PLoS). She invites the aspiring next generation of scientists from high schools to share in her laboratory experience. They often will download her datasets and participate in analyzing data. She holds frequent web conferences with these students so they can learn from being actively engaged in the scientific process. The learning is a two-way street. They stretch her thinking in unanticipated ways.

Most people understand Andrea's teaching and research responsibilities. They are less familiar with her responsibilites related to outreach. Andrea works at a Land-grant university where part of her job entails working with citizens, organizations, and businesses to apply the university's research findings to everyday problems. She presents, consults, writes articles for publication by the university, and creates educational media on issues where she has unique expertise. In a nutshell, her official responsibilities address issues of life long learning. She engages with the public using many new media tools. She converses with them via Twitter, and writes regularly to her blog. She has been the primary author of several Wikipedia articles, and regularly contributes to a host of others.. She also puts her presentations on YouTube and Slideshare. She does everything she can to ensure that her educational efforts are shared as broadly as possible with the public.

Andrea sounds wonderful. Seriously, we could use thousands more just like her. So why does Andrea's department chair need to see her ASAP, and why has the Office of Legal Affairs taken such a keen interest in her work?

More after the jump...

Wave: All those other collaboration strategies...

We all have our red flags. Those things that make us sit up and take notice. For me, one of my biggest red flags is when people say, "I don't get it!" When I hear that, I almost always translate it to, "Holy crap, there's something really big going on here."

Peep: What new and interesting thing are you playing with?

Me: Google Wave. It's amazing.

Peep: I got an invite and tried it, but it was just a time suck and way too confusing.

Me: How long were you in there?

Peep: A few hours, but I haven't been back in a long time. How about you?

Me: I'm in Wave pretty much all day long. It's where I work.

Peep: Seriously? I just didn't get it!

If you are working any collaboration strategies other than Wave you're just wasting your time. Seriously, it's going to be huge. I still have some invites if you'd like to give it a try.

Gina Trapani from the Web 2.0 Expo on Google Wave:

Faceless Facebook and other organizational social media strategies

Image via Wikipedia

I've spent a fair amount of time reading university social media policies over the past few weeks. Here's an example that is representative of how most universities are approaching it:

University Officially Recognized Social Media Accounts

The University has established an application process for groups to be recognized by the University as official social media accounts.

The policy only applies to social media accounts created to represent groups, departments, programs, entities, etc. and does not apply to private individual accounts.

In other words, you're only allowed to participate as a department or some other organizational entity. No personal identities allowed. If you're using your real name you're on your own. Do not speak for the university. Don't even think about wearing your university hat.

This is sad. It's the old industrial era concept of a work and personal life. Like we're naturally schizophrenic? We all know this is a total myth. These attempts to remove the person from their social media strategies (and that's what they are, strategies) are doomed to fail.

I found the whole exercise of looking at the policies a bit depressing. So when I saw this blog post by Andrew Douglas it spoke to me: B2B's Big Hurdle: Developing a personality in social media:

Know what doesn't work in social media? Twitter or blog posts by nameless corporations. And that's going to be the biggest hurdle for people like me who do B2B public relations.

The rules of successful social media engagement -- frequent updates, transparency, engagement with other users, personality -- don't mesh with corporate PR 1.0.

Or university PR 1.0. The approaches the universities are taking to social media are not going to work. They are not designed to be engaging, conversational, or transparent. They will lead to the old push, broadcast, sterile world of old. This is not what the people are wanting. You can't get real while hiding behind an organizational facade.

So here's my advice. Dump the policies. They aren't going to work anyway. Turn your faculty and staff loose. Tell them they represent the university 24x7. Just like they represent themselves 24x7. The only policy required is common sense.

HighTouch Book Club reading: Total Engagement

I'm a little late in posting about the next read for the HighTouch book club. I've already begun reading Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete by Byron Reeves & J. Leighton Read (Harvard Business Press, 2009.):

Imagine the value if you could transfer the excitement and focus found in great games to the office. What if your employees could solve customer problems, design new software, or configure better shipping routes working inside a game environment at work?

This isn't just possible, say Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read; it's inevitable. As employee productivity and engagement become more critical, the user experience provided by game technology offers a tantalizing solution for business. This is far more than a quaint metaphor or a twist on e-learning. Game design elements can address a host of business problems with morale, communication, and alignment while honing skills like data analysis, teamwork, leadership, and more.

I've finished chapter 1 and will begin the discussion thread later today. If you'd like to join the discussion please join me in Google Wave. Otherwise, you can follow the discussion by choosing the Total Engagement link on the book club's Waverz page.

HighTouch Book Club to Wave

I have moved the HighTouch Book Club off of FriendFeed and over to Google Wave. You can see it outside of Wave here: HighTouch Book Club. This is done through Waverz which is a very cool service, btw.

If you'd like to participate in the book club through posting and commenting you'll need to do that in Wave. If you have a Wave account you can get to it here: HighTouch Book Club wave.

If you're not in Wave and would like to participate I have a few invites left. Let me know if you are interested.

Is Wave IMS compliant? BWHAHAHAHAHA!!!

     curiouslee via Flickr

I found this amusing: Google Uses Educause Meeting as Focus Group for Wave.  Here's the big moment:

At one point, a college leader asked the panel from Google if Wave would be compatible with IMS Global standards, which helps education software from various vendors work together.

Let me rephrase the question:

Is this going to eliminate my job bottling knowledge? Will faculty be able to engage students in learning without using our million dollar Learning Management System? Are we going to need some policies that will keep faculty from using this? Just saying, cause this would be really bad for our budget and my job security.

Allow me to take a stab at answering this question around IMS Global standards. Please dear God no! I'm sure if you wanted to write a gadget to collect all of the required metadata to turn Wave into a last decade Learning Management System that you could. It would keep many IT people employed for decades to come.  It will have as massive of impact on learning as IMS has had in the past 14 years, which of course is none.

The person asking the question was a very astute observer. They cut straight to the chase. They could see the threat of Google Wave and thought, "We better get this under control before it eliminates our reason for existance." We can only hope.

All this money being spent on these silly control-freak standards could be much better spent cutting tuition costs. When was the last time you heard a university leader talk about cutting costs and making their institutions more affordable? There are plenty of places where costs could be cut. Learning Management Systems would be a good place to start.

Freeranging Profile: Jason Fried of 37Signals

Great read in Inc: The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals:

We don't have big, long-term plans, because they're scary -- and they're usually wrong. Making massive decisions keeps people up at night -- I don't like to make those. The closer you can get to understanding what that next moment might be, the less worried you are. Most of the decisions we make are in the moment, on the fly, as we go.

 Great stuff! Freeranging in action.

I'm looking for more stories just like this. I'm not living under any illusion that there will be lots of these stories, but that's the way emergent practices are. If there were lots then they wouldn't be interesting. Your pointers to more stories would be most appreciated.

Added a Google Friend Connect Widget

Image via CrunchBase

Google has added new features to Friend Connect that look very interesting: Google Friend Connect, now more personalized.

Visitors to your site can get to know each other better by sharing details about themselves that are relevant to the site they're on....

The enhancements intrigue me enough that I want to take a closer look. So, I've added a new widget for Friend Connect, and hope you'll join me in testing. I know that not many people actually visit this site, and instead subscribe to the feeds, but I'm interested in kicking the tires on this for other reasons. If you'd like to help me see what this is all about please consider joining.

Why Research Universities Should Be Led by Top Scholars

Socrates in the Boardroom: Why Research Universities Should Be Led by Top Scholars. Amanda Goodall, 2009. Experts, not managers, make the best leaders

I think I will take the contrarian view. Maybe looking backwards it might have made sense, but I'm not so sure looking forward. Experts (scientists) are not the best for dealing with complexity. Increasingly the issues facing higher education are complex not complicated. I will agree, however, that we don't need managers either.

How about leaders who sense that the world is changing, and have the guts to try bold new experiments in response.

Posted via web from Kevin's posterous

Three Ways to Thrive in the Age of Streams

via feedproxy.google.com

This is your wake-up call. The world has changed dramatically in just the last three years.

Posted via web from Kevin's posterous

Copyrighting government produced information

The State of Oregon claiming copyright over their laws: Oregon Tries Claiming Copyright Over Gov't Materials Again:

But, again, can anyone provide any good reason why any government document should be covered by copyright?

I've been waiting for an answer to this question for a long time. Declaring all-rights-reserved copyright... Anyone?

Facebook and the network effect

Image via CrunchBase

I was having lunch with some colleagues this past week when I mentioned this Louis Gray post from earlier in the week: There Is No "Osborne Effect" In Web Services. The Osborne Effect basically states that buyers will wait to purchase something if they know a better or newer alternative is right around the corner. This causes a decline in sales of the current product, and in the case of Osborne Computer was cited as the reason for the company's failure.

I commented, "We should be so lucky as to have an Osborne Effect. Waiting is good. That's not the threat. The danger is that we have a network effect and what is going on around Facebook is not only scary it's also very dangerous." This comment brought on a look of confusion, and a demand for clarification. It was then that I mentioned this other recent piece of news, Google Vs. Facebook

In the UK, Facebook accounts for 15% of the total pageviews (or 1 in 7). In the US Facebook accounts for, now get this, 1 in every 4 or 25% of our total pageviews. Unbelievable!

ONE IN FOUR PAGE VIEWS! This is what happens when we have a network effect in social media. A single site, in essence, has become the Internet for a majority of people. They go to this single site and they never come out. It has becomes the only lens through which they view their world.

Network effects do have some beneficial uses, for example, having a phone that doesn't connect to any other phones is for the most part useless. When it comes to the Internet, however, a network effect is extremely dangerous. Why? Let me make a list:

• It kills off innovation. No one will invest their time or money in something different that stands little hope for garnering the public's attention. Doing it on Facebook becomes everyone's default.
• The kingpin gobbles up their competition. They purchase or otherwise destroy innovators that demonstrate any sort of threat, e.g. Facebook's recent purchase of FriendFeed.
• They use their monopoly position to destroy competitors through illegal means, e.g. Microsoft and Netscape.
• They lock-in your data, your very lifestream, so that the penalties for leaving are severe. See roach motel. They do this because they can.
  

Of course, when people go all-in at Facebook they aren't thinking about these sorts of things. They don't even consider that they are giving their entire in-the-flow life experiences to a private company that will keep it forever, and won't let you take it anywhere else. All they think about is that they are connecting with that old friend from high school. The evil aspects won't sink-in until many years later, and then it will be too late.