HighTouch Book Club:The Power of Pull

The next read for the book club is: The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion. This is a new book by John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison. The reviews of the book promise a healthy dose of insight into knowledge flows. I have read and followed these authors for sometime so I'm definitely looking forward to this read. As before, notes will go in Google Wave. It's public. Search for the tag HighTouch Book Club. The notes will also be published on the open web here: HighTouch Book Club on Waverz.

The world has changed profoundly, and the old tools that led to success in the world of Push won’t work anymore. Pull helps us understand the shift we’re experiencing and provides us with a new understanding of the implications of how our digital world really works—and what we can do to thrive in an environment dominated by the forces of pull.

Drawing on pioneering research, Pull reveals how you can access people and resources when you need them, attract people and resources you didn’t even know existed, and achieve potential with less time and more impact than you imagined possible. Few of us are systematic in how we use the tools available to us. And no institutions are effectively dealing with the startling changes wrought by these technologies and the attitudes they encourage. Pull will change all that.

I very much enjoyed our last read, Rework. It was a quick and easy read, but chock full of practical advise about keeping it real. If you've been thinking of starting something/anything I'd highly encourage you to read this book. I'm giving copies of this book to several of my loved ones. It's a no bullshit guide to getting stuff done. Advice which I have taken to heart. (I'm back into my book work.)

Since finishing Rework I have also read Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks and Six Degrees: The Secrets of a Connected Age by Duncan Watts. Both of these books dealt with the amazing similarities seen in all networked systems. Being that these were older books I didn't include them as book club reads, but I would definitely recommend them to anyone wanting to understand social networking from a more scientific perspective.

That said, I do hope you will join me in the new read. I'm anticipating that it will be quite profound.

If you build it they won't come...

Image via Wikipedia

The day of just putting some content up on the web and expecting people to consume it in any significant numbers is over. I was reminded of this recently when dealing with some concern over an informal online course that had no takers. A little over a year ago I wrote the following email to the course creators in response to their query over what I thought of the course:

Dear {name redacted},

Good questions. I'll try not to ramble. :)

I find most online courses sort of boring. I remember asking when we first met back in May how many of you had taken an online course. They are really hard to do well. That said, as far as online courses go this one is certainly better than most. The best? Not sure I've seen one that I would call the best-- one that really caught my attention as being very innovative and engaging.

That said, here's what will most likely make the course a winner. It has almost nothing to do with the content and everything to do with what social interactions we engineer around the course materials. When we met in Washington there was some discussion about an online portion of {project name redacted} and they talked about some single digit (%) completion numbers. That's not atypical. It was also mentioned that one of the primary benefits that participants got from {project name redacted} was the opportunity to meet and converse with people in similar situations to theirs. The {project name redacted} course materials became a social object around which people gathered. The course became the excuse for the gathering.

Moodle has all sorts of provisions to allow course participants to interact: forums, wikis, chatting... I haven't heard a lot of discussion around what activities will take place as people take the course. What opportunities will people have to interact with other learners, with the instructors, with other {redacted}, or guests?

I read this Chris Brogan blog post this morning and it seemed relevant: The Goal is the Interaction. Here's a quote if you don't want to read the whole thing.

..."which face are you showing through your online presence? Are you the live and participatory, the sharing and thoughtful, or are you a one way street?"

Now that the social object (the course) is nearing completion it seems that the next level of conversation needs to be around how that object will be used to better foster engagement.

My $.02.

Kevin

Of course, the engagement never happened with this course. The days of "if you build it they will come" ended with Field of Dreams (1989). If you're too busy to spend time engaging with the learners who might find your content of interest, then you shouldn't waste your time doing the content in the first place.

HighTouch Book Club: Rework

The next read for the book club is Rework by 37signal's Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hannson. With this read we return to non-fiction. I really have been reading Makers since December. It took me forever to get through that book. I just finished it on Thursday. I did like the book but just couldn't sink my teeth into any serious page clicking. I started reading Rework yesterday, and am already a third of the way through.

The synopsis:

From the founders of the trailblazing software company 37signals, here is a different kind of business book – one that explores a new reality. Today, anyone can be in business. Tools that used to be out of reach are now easily accessible. Technology that cost thousands is now just a few bucks or even free. Stuff that was impossible just a few years ago is now simple...

As before, my notes for the book and any discussion will take place in the HighTouch Book Club wave. If you need an invite to Wave let me know. The publically available discussion can be found on Waverz.com: HighTouch Book Club.

My initial reaction after reading the first third of the book is that isn't the freeranging thought piece I was expecting. I'll be pointing out the differences in my notes. That said, the book has a bunch of very quotable ideas that I will be highlighting in my notes and on Google Buzz.