I am working on a project to create a networked information and resource tool for web developers on our campus.  This is a real grassroots, distributed effort that aims to create a community owned and operated system.  Think self-organizing, organic, leaderless, spontaneous, emergent.  There is a general plan, an intended direction and we’re working to develop a shared vision.  I’ve made a couple of presentations to various groups, done a couple of small brainstorming sessions, and have a big presentation/workshop planned with the web developers roundtable next Tuesday, who make up our core group.  Here is a basic, rough-draft overview:

Who: Initially targeted at the needs campus people interested/involved with web information/application projects that utilize Drupal.  Eventual expansion beyond this group is an expectation.

Concept: The Campus Developers Network is a web-based information tool that allows individuals to store and access elements of their own work, find similar examples from other members, and engage in discussion and communication with the member community.

Goals:

• Encourage small, frequent contributions through multiple channels
• Easy to search/find my stuff and other people’s stuff
• Allow individuals to self-organize informal groups/ private conversations, but default behavior is to share community-wide

Through this process I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, research, and looking at other social/professional networks evolving at other campuses.  I’ve been looking at these as falling into two basic models — a top-down, help site type model, such as help.yahoo.com and a bottom-up, community type model such as developer.yahoo.com .   A more member-focused example in higher-ed can be seen in the faculty/grad student network at commons.gc.cuny.edu/ .  At MIT the new Hermes site is a help desk resource, making it feel more top-down, but it also allows end-user contributions which adds a community aspect.  Which makes me realize that this simple black-white, top down/bottom up view might be too simple.

A recent post on the PR-squared blog discussed three models — distributed, centralized and coordinated.  It is a useful way to think about the issue, but I don’t find it entirely satisfying.  The Coordinated still feels a little too centralized to me, but the Distributed is too chaotic.  So I propose a fourth model, Structured:

This model strives to harness the spontaneous energy of the distributed model, and provide a level of coordination while still retaining a de-centralized structure.  The elements of the model (in case you can’t read it) are de-centralized, connected, organic and emergent.  And that is the model we’re using as we move our professional network plans forward.

Social Media in Corporations: Pros & Cons of Organizational Models

Clearly the coordinated model in Jeremiah’s slide is the one to espouse. It’s beauty is that it is simple, reasonable and effective. Guidelines are set (simple). Monitoring and reporting mechanisms are deployed (reasonable). Everyone gets to play, but knows the rules-of-the-road (which will evolve as new lessons are learned), and also knows that there are consequences for derailing the company’s brand online (effective).

InYourClass.com – CUNY student network -

We wanted to do something different, something that isn’t the norm for online communities. Our mission is simple, create social value by simplifying the way information is processed.

Nercomp 2010 – Presentation Focusing on Hermes Knowledge Base (Hermes)

IT support providers and end users both want similar things: fast and easy access to up-to-date IT information and solutions. Why not contribute to and share the same IT knowledge resource? At MIT, we did just that. In 2008 a project was launched to broaden an existing Help Desk internal knowledge base to an Institute-wide IT help system

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For a good introduction to the community-building power of Drupal this book from Packt Publishing is terrific.

Drupal 6 Social Networking

Build a social or community web site, with friends lists, groups, custom user profiles, and much more

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An article on A List Apart on public speaking tips got me thinking on some of my hard-learned presentation lessons:

• Don’t try to do live software/website/application demos — If you are interfacing with an audience you can’t also interface with software — at least I can’t.   If you focus on the audience you mess up stuff in the application and vice-versa.  It is never as interesting for the audience as it seemed in your mind pre-talk.  Keep it simple:  take screen shots and have a scripted walk-through of what you want to show.
• Don’t start in Powerpoint when creating the presentation.  Outline your main points first — what you want to communicate with the talk.  I use a simple text editor — no formatting, no bullted, just thoughts.   Then order/organize and think through how you build your points.  Then think how best to visualize those points.  Finally open Powerpoint, Keynote or, even better, the open-source OpenOffice Impress.
• Avoid bullet pointed text-based lists.  If your presentation is based on bullet points it will be no worse than average — which means boring.  You are using a visual communication tool — don’t make people read.  Use strong visuals.  I like to search Flickr for creative commons licensed photos.  A couple of slides with text/bullets is OK where appropriate.  But make those the exception, not the rule.
• Expect the technology to fail.  Get to the room early, 30 minutes ahead if in unfamiliar territory.  Have your presentation on a usb thumb drive in ppt, pptx, pdf versions AND on your own laptop (remember the vga connectors if it is a MAC) AND posted on a web site in PDF form  AND a printed version — you get the idea.
• Use a wireless clicker.  This lets you get out from behind the laptop/podium, avoiding the distraction of the laptop keyboard (remember #1: minimize need to interface with software), and out in front, facing your audience.  It is a small thing that has a big impact.

Most important remember you are there to communicate with the audience.  Look at them, talk TO them (i.e. don’t read off your slides), kibbutz with them, entertain them, engage them.  If you do this your message will come across.  Don’t, and they’ll be asleep.  Remember how it feels when you’re snoozing yourself at yet another bullet-filled, text heavy, typical presentation.

A List Apart: Articles: Training the Butterflies: Interview with Scott Berkun

I strongly recommend working on paper or a whiteboard, any non-digital media where you can work freely. Make a list of the points you want to make, or key ideas/feelings/questions you want your audience to leave with, and develop those first.

Speaker Confessions

Scott Berkun is the best selling author of The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School | Brain Rules |

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge?

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What is the continuing role of electronic portfolios?  An article in Campus Technology reviews the issues related to ownership of the content, and what happens when the student graduates.  A student-centered approach seems most logical to me — effective use comes when the student feels ownership of the content and  sees a practical use for its existence (like getting a job).  If they find the portfolio tool useful after graduation it seems short-sighted for the school to terminate the relationship.  If the institution accepts that the student ‘owns’ the content, and that the school simply provides a service — just like facebook or any other such service — then this relationship, and any risks, should be clear.  You have an acceptable use policy, and if users abuse the policy their accounts get shut off.  But this also means accepting some institutionally uncomfortable, or at least potentially uncomfortable, situations.  Welcome to the world of user-centric content!

LaaN vs. Social Constructivism ~ Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes

According to Chatti, “learning as a Network (LaaN) differs from social constructivism in four different ways:
- In LaaN, knowledge is a personal network rather than an object that can be constructed.

Here, There, & Everywhere — Campus Technology

the current debate on the future of ePortfolios: How are they evolving with the growth of Web 2.0? What are the right tools to create them? And do they have a role beyond the academic setting as part of a person’s lifelong learning endeavors?

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I  co-presented on e-portfolio use at our school yesterday, joined by Sarah Stevens-Morling from the drama school and Monica Reed from the music school.  Here is the official description:

What is an e-Portfolio?  As with many evolving technologies the term can mean different things to different people.  For students at the schools of Drama and Music, with a need to showcase their professional work on the internet, the meaning is clear.  It is a platform that allows them to quickly and easily organize, publish and share content with fellow students, faculty and professionals outside of Yale.  In Fall 2009 both schools launched an e-portfolio service to their students.  In this talk we will describe how the service is delivered, review current use patterns, and reveal what has worked well, and not so well, in our first year.

Presenters:

• Monica Ong Reed, Design Manager, School of Music
• Sarah Stevens-Morling, Online Communications and Print Advertising Manager, School of Drama
• Randall Rode, Information Technology Director, School of Drama

And our presentation slides — some of the transitions are a little garbled in the transition to SlideShare format, but most of it is readable.

Collaborative Learning Center » Blog Archive » TwTT E-Portfolios

TwTT E-Portfolios
February 16th, 2010
11:00 am
Bass Library, L01

Digication e-portfolio solutions

Hear from one of our users:
“Digication provided students an amazing opportunity to showcase and share their experience with the entire school community, as well as future classes. Many students immediately said, ‘I can do this’ or ‘I like this’ and were excited by the opportunity to incorporate their personality into their e-Portfolio.”

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Innovation is hard.  Sure it sounds like a good idea in the abstract — but when the everyday pressures of cost, time and keeping people happy come into play, the old familiar solutions normally win out.   I fall into this trap myself more often than I care to admit.  For instance lately I’ve been shopping around a really cool idea — a complete game changer for one of our key web sites.  We’d replace a bunch of custom web programing with Drupal, integrated with our CRM system making content updates much easier, quicker, and distributed across more staff.   We found two organizations doing something similar who would even share their custom modules.

But when it comes to applying this to an actual project we consider trying this potential new approach, but keep ending up sticking with the status quo.   What we need is an opportunity to experiment with technology-driven solutions to problems outside the confines of project time lines — without the demands of a normal workday — in a forum where failure is an option.  In short we need an technology innovation barn-raising/quilting bee/ideas forum.  Modeled after the Hack Day concept,  here is how it might work as a motivator for development of new, untried ideas across the entire company:

• The convention itself would take place over two days in a meeting facility.  Participants work in teams to crank out a technology-based application that creates value for the company and can be taken from idea to prototype in two days.
• 3 months before the event employees would be invited to propose ideas/problems/opportunities to be addressed.  Any and all ideas from the community would be welcome.  Maybe a series of idea workshops would be held — with the added goal to help publicize the idea and market participation.
• People interested in participating in the event would troll the idea forum, find something of interest, and organize a team to come up with some solution.  Cross-functional, cross-departmental groups encouraged.  Teams cold advertise on the forum to recruit others with specific skills or experience.  The team would put together a short proposal with a rough approach and what technologies would be used.  The proposals would be reviewed by the innovation convention committee.
• A proposed idea like ‘make event schedules more accessible’ might be answered by a group proposing to build a location-aware iPhone app that shows a map of all the day’s events on a map centered around the users current location.
• Selection criteria for proposals could include elements such as relevance, maturity of the idea, quality of the approach, use of existing resources, low implementation cost and the likelihood of the team completing a prototype within the time frame.  Technology support might include access to server resources or sample data sets — existing resources.  Participants would bring their own laptops, software, etc.
• On the day of the event teams would gather in a conference type facility.  They’d be provided with technical support (server access, networking, etc.) based on their proposal requirements.  Snacks, lunch and all that good type of stuff would also be provided.  The days would run “officially” run from  9 – 5 but teams work as long and as late as they need.
• On the 2nd day all activity would stop by 1pm.  After lunch each team would hold a presentation of their work.  Everyone attending would submit an evaluation of each of the presentation, with final selection of winners made by the innovation committee.
• Prizes would be awarded for most innovative solution(s), maybe in a range of categories.

This innovation forum falls somewhere between something like New York City’s recent data apps contest, Yahoo Hack Days and Google’s 20% dedication to new ideas.  The cost is low — two days with the participants released from normal work — a couple of meals — access to existing technical resources.  And the potential benefits are pretty high — working prototypes of innovative solutions to common problems around the organization.  Not bad from the cost/benefit ratio perspective, and a pretty good morale booster too.  So what do you think?  Would employees participate?  Would the administration support it?  Would it work?

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Nercomp recently opened registration for the upcoming WordPress University workshop on April 8 in Norwood, MA.  And people are already signing up (thanks Pat!)  It is going to be a great day with fabulous speakers and lots of good networking opportunities.  I’m also planning some type of WordPress meet-up at Nercomp’s annual conference coming to Providence, RI March 8-10.  More on that coming soon.

NERCOMP – Northeast Regional Computing Program

Date/Time:
Thursday, April 08, 2010
9:00am – 3:00pm

Location:
Four Points Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center
1125 Boston Providence Turnpike
Norwood, MA

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Gobal Ignite Week is coming March 1 – 5 — and it looks like there may be events here in New Haven.  Could be fun — I’m following the twitter feed.  Could be fun.

Speakers- Ignite New Haven

If you think you have what it takes to Ignite a crowd, here’s your chance – But remember, you only have 5 minutes! We’re not accepting proposals just yet, but we want you to start thinking about your topic – A topic that is entirely up to you.

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How is the information technology department viewed in your organization?  Too expensive, too slow, always say no, better to outsource?  If any of these sound familiar then it might be time to take some lessons from The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value.  Overall the book is excellent — clearly presented with plenty of real examples to illustrate the various points.  I found it tough to keep my attention focused on the book, not because is was boring, but because the ideas rang so true I found myself thinking through how I might employ them in my own workplace.

I’ll only touch on a couple of ideas from the book.  The first section touches on value traps — commonly held ideas that are not only wrong, but hold the It organization back from real effectiveness.  For instance the notion that IT’s purpose is to deliver quality technology.  Technology is not an end in itself, but rather a means to a more effective organization.  IT needs to deliver solutions, not just a service.  Another value trap goes along the lines of “follow our rules or we can’t guarantee it will work.”  Engineers like certainty, but business leaders are often happy to settle for close enough if it gets the job done.  And they will find ways to end-run IT regulations that are seen as obstructing progress and see IT as a barrier rather than enabler of progress. What IT does need to do is measure and benchmark its projects in terms of business effectiveness, and communicate that information throughout the business.  The big trick is to stop thinking like a service unit and become integral the process of creating new value for the organization.  Improving IT is not so much about making the IT department better, but utilizing IT to make the entire organization better.   As the authors conclude:

” A small but growing group of CIOs has figured out how to show value and deliver increasing value in terms that are utterly convincing to their enterprises.”

And the lessons described in the book look to be a pretty effective place to start.

The Real Business of IT: a real value to IT executives book review

The Real Business of IT is a clear and focused look at the issue of IT value and the approaches to capture, communicate and increase that value. This book is unique in several respects. It is a book written for CIOs largely based on the experience of CIOs.

The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value – Harvard Business Review

In The Real Business of IT, Richard Hunter and George Westerman reveal that the cost mind-set stems from IT leaders’ inability to communicate about the business value they create-so CIOs get stuck discussing budgets rather than their contributions to the organization.

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Confused by what Google Wave might be useful for?  Here is a nicely demonstrated scenario going through a business process modeling project.    I like the example of new members re-playing the Wave to catch up on the team’s progress — very efficient.  It seems to me that a workplace effort to encourage this type of Google Wave use would need some type of kick-off/introduction workshop.  Get a big group together, have some scripted collaborative tasks, and have them use wave to accomplish those tasks.  You’d teach the tool and also work on the general topic of effective collaboration/team work.

Using Gravity to collaborate on processes

Google Wave has been around for a few months now and though the hype is fading away we are seeing more and more practical use-cases in the enterprise. One excellent example is SAP’s Business Process Modelling tool gone collaborative; Gravity. We have been fortunate to work with a prototype version of Gravity with access to the minds behind the concept. Gravity is a Business Process Modeling tool which can be accessed as a gadget in the Google Wave client. This integration in Google Wave allows for collaboration over time and / or near real time, on business processes. This model is exportable to Netweaver BPM via BPMN 2.0 XML, thus making it a fully integrable modelling tool for use in an SAP landscape. Still puzzled? check this video with an explanatory example:

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