The SXSW keynote that went south (or not)

I was one of the few people who actually liked the SXSW keynote interview of Twitter CEO Evan Williams by Umair Haque. I watched it in an overflow room so I missed the mass exodus that occurred in the main keynote room. My thinking that the talk was pretty decent apparently was so rare that my #upvote earned a retweet:

TPapi: Voice of dissent RT @k1v1n: Keynote was interesting. Umair asked good questions. Excellent takeaways. Good mantra. #upvote #keynote #sxsw

Needless to say, there were a ton of conversations about the talk after the fact. People were so negative that I started to seriously wonder if we'd heard the same talk. Sure, the interview wasn't filled with earth-shattering new stuff, but it did provide a glimpse into the thinking of a person that helped to create and run one of social media's biggest hits. This is not something you get to hear everyday, and if you listened, really listened... there was plenty of substance. Umair and Evan talked about some very important concepts. The list is pretty much those things that organizations need to be doing to survive in this new networked landscape. Maybe everyone knew these things already. I doubt it. I have been living in this social media space as long as just about anyone, and I know I still have lots to learn. I'm guessing that those who walked might still have a fair bit to learn as well.

So where did the talk go wrong? Got me. Maybe people wanted to hear more about Twitter and less about what makes its founder tick. Not me. I'll choose insight into what drives a person any day. I want to know about the creator behind the product. I have very little interest in the product itself.

The talk did drag at times, but it never really lost me. There were plenty of nuggets of wisdom to be had. Umair summarizes the talk here: Twitter, SXSW, and Building a 21st Century Business. That's a very substantive list of takeaways. Learning requires listening. Too bad that many in the SXSW audience missed that lesson.

Education for Creatives, Solvers, and Makers Oh My!

I visited Ohio State University a couple of weeks back where I was involved in a number of interesting conversations. One of the discussions was a departmental seminar focused on the topic of educating the next generation of knowledge workers. (Used rather loosely.) The question was, how to we best prepare graduate students to enter the networked economy?

I gave this a great deal of thought and decided that the real issue isn't so much what is taught (though I do have some thoughts here) as it is attracting and retaining the right type of individuals to our programs in the first place. The culture of our graduate programs is not conducive to attracting the makers, solvers, and creatives that are the life-blood of the new economy.

Some background:

Makers - the DIY engineering crowd (DIY, maker, hacker movement recognized by the WSJ - video). A term popularized (if not coined) by Cory Doctorow in his book, Makers.

Creatives - Their primary job function is to be creative and innovative. “Along with problem solving, their work may entail problem finding”. They are the classic knowledge workers and include those working in healthcare, business and finance, the legal sector, and education. They “draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems” using higher degrees of education to do so. (The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida.)

Solvers - prize their independence as much as their intelligence and ingenuity. They have a unique combination of creativity, knowledge, work experience and life skills that allow them to see things a little differently than other people.

How do you change the culture of the academy to appeal to these highly independent and innovative people? I most definitely think there are things that higher education has to offer creatives, et al. I could make a long list, but to do so would be to focus on the wrong problem. Can higher education make the necessary transition to appeal to freerange learners?

Higher Education's Path Out of Its Budget Nightmares

The last few days I've been in a bit of a funk reading about the draconian cuts happening to higher education just about everywhere. The funk has been growing for some time. It's no secret that state budgets are in dire straits and they are starting to act to stem the bleeding. In spite of what a lot of people want to believe, this is not feeling anything like an ordinary budget deficit. What will be left in the aftermath is anyone's guess.

I was thinking about these budget cuts and wondering why someone isn't proposing radically different approaches? Instead of worrying about the business-end of higher education, I couldn't help but wonder who is looking out for the people end of things-- the whole reason the system of education exists in the first place. This was my mood when I came across this Umair Haque post: The Real Roots of the Crisis:

That means, of course, that tomorrow's organizations must do more than just sell stuff. They must not be economically full but culturally empty. They must culturally reboot the communities and societies which they're part of, helping them thrive and prosper in human terms.

So where's the leadership? Instead of worrying about buildings, and patents, and copyright and all sorts of business-end bullshit why are we not focusing on learning? On serving communities of learners? On having a higher purpose? Helping people to change their lives and the world for the better through discovery?

Somewhere along the way we lost our moral compass. Too many in higher education, especially public institutions, have forgotten why we exist. The values of the system are borked, and unfortunately too many have taken sides against the people we are here to serve. Higher education has become exactly what Umair claims, it is culturally empty. How do we fix that?

Maybe I'm an idealist (okay, I know I am), but I'm naive enough to believe that if we focus all of our energy on doing the right things the rest of this stuff will somehow manage to take care of itself. As Umair said,

Without care, there is no road back to prosperity — only an infinity of roads to decline.

It's time we get passionate about caring-- it's the only feasible path out of this current dilemma. The clock is running.