I've mentioned this fairly frequently, but The Cluetrain Manifesto said it first--markets are conversations.
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.
But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about "listening to customers." They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.
Or, in broader online terms--the web is a conversation. Sure, e-commerce makes things convenient and quick and available. But the 'energy' applications (those things that people contribute their energy to rather than demanding energy from) on the web are centered around interaction. Most of the most successful e-commerce operations (Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo) promote conversation and community.
At the ACE conference last week, I attended a session on characterizing an online audience. The presenters, who were from Oregon State, said that with the deployment of their new website, they began to get questions to the web master about any and all subjects--farming and dog training and wild animals in suburbia--that were covered somewhere on their website. Why? Why didn't people just go to the web pages and get the information?
Because people want conversation.
Or, as the presenters at the conference said, because they want contact. They want an interaction--to build relationships, to process information, to learn, and to build both their own capacity and the capacity of the organization they're interacting with.
Weblogs are generally conversational in tone, provide links to other experts, provide space for comments, and have some capacity for trackbacks (conversations and connections that spread across several web sites). Weblogs can update information quickly, respond to comments as they come, and even to lurkers, they can give the flavor of an ongoing, interested and enthusiastic conversation about things of interest to the people who visit. Weblogs, even group weblogs, can easily make it clear that there are real people with real ideas, opinions and conversational styles behind the large organizational website.
Dan Bricklin has released ListGarden an RSS feed generator program. Features include:
Check out The RSS Wishlist at the RSS Weblog:
It may seem obvious to readers of this particular blog that just about anything on the web that changes, whether frequently or infrequently, should have an associated feed. Readers all over rejoice when a major publication decides to hop onboard the syndication freight train. And beyond your typical publications, there are hundreds of innovative services that are just waiting to be remixed with some RSS flavor.
So, what would you like to read with a feed?
Some info about RSS in Safari and the coming integration of RSS into Microsoft's Longhorn, as well as other stuff.
...via The Shifted Librarian
It's been common knowledge among bloggers for awhile that blog posts will generally rank high on Google in any particular topic area. And it's generally acknowledged by most everyone that if you want to be seen online, you want to be seen on Google.
What makes blog posts so attractive to the Google search engine? Several things, which are laid out well in this Microcontent article from way back in 2002: Google Loves Weblogs: How Weblogs Influence A Billion Google Searches a Week
According to the article there are two primary reasons that Google loves weblogs:
Weblogs are an interesting combination of freshness and persistance. The 'front page' of a weblog changes everyday as new information is added, but the automatic archives provided by most weblog software ensures that earlier posts persist. In many ways this is ideal for a search engine--fresh content and links that don't rot.
At the ACE conference I attended last week, it occurred to me that I didn't hear people talk about Google page rank as a marketing tool (there may have been talk, but I didn't hear it). And I think Google page rank is important. Not to the point of obsession, but if we want Extension to be the 'go to' place for educational content and information on certain topics, they we have to be the 'find it' place when people go searching for that educational content and information.
If you think maybe this isn't a good enough reason for weblogs in Extension all on its own. That's okay. I have 4 more reasons to offer over the next couple of days....
...as part of an overall communications plan
As I mentioned just below, my article on 'Weblogs as a Disruptive Technology for Extension,' was published this month at the Journal of Extension.
Not only are weblogs disruptive--as in, they have the potential to change the way we do things whether we're prepared for the change or not--but they're good for Extension in a number of ways. Over the next couple of days I'm planning to talk about several reasons that weblogs are good for Extension and for what Extension is trying to do.
Probably most people who read here are familiar with the Cooperative Extension Service (or in Iowa State's case, University Extension), but if you're not, you might go here for more information.
Next: Reason one: Google loves weblogs
My commentary for the June, 2004 issue of the Journal of Extension, Weblogs as a Disruptive Technology for Extension, is now online. Check it out:
Weblogs are everywhere. Technorati watches over 1.2 million weblogs every day. Blogcount estimates 2.4 to 2.9 million currently active weblogs. Weblogs influence journalism, technology transfer, knowledge filtering, research, and business-to-customer communication. In the fashion of disruptive technologies, weblogs underperform by traditional measures, but they also create brand-new possibilities and eventually change the measures entirely.
I've been a bad blogger in not reporting back about the ACE conference where Blair Fannin, Ray Kimsey and I did a couple of panels on weblogs. The first panel was an introduction to RSS--what is it, why use it, how to get started. And the second panel was more technical, covering the history of RSS, web services for content, and how to set up an RSS feed.
We had great attendance for both sessions--more people in the first panel, as expected. We got lots of good questions and generated some interest in using RSS in extension.
Things to remember about RSS: it really is simple, it's free or nearly so to get started, even you can generate an RSS feed for a dynamic web page, it's easy (these days anyway) to setup dynamic web pages.
For more info on the material we covered at ACE, check out the RSS at ACE weblog.
Here's a link to a new tool called Amplify, which looks like it provides a way for you to create custom 'favorites' pages for yourself or to share with others.
Cory Doctorow puts up the transcript of a talk on digital rights management (DRM) that he gave recently at Microsoft:
I'm here today to talk to you about copyright, technology and DRM, I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright stuff (mostly), and I live in London. I'm not a lawyer -- I'm a kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM.I lead a double life: I'm also a science fiction writer. That means I've got a dog in this fight, because I've been dreaming of making my living from writing since I was 12 years old. Admittedly, my IP-based biz isn't as big as yours, but I guarantee you that it's every bit as important to me as yours is to you.
Here's what I'm here to convince you of:
- That DRM systems don't work
- That DRM systems are bad for society
- That DRM systems are bad for business
- That DRM systems are bad for artists
- That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
We've posted more resources at the RSS for ACE weblog, including the presentations for both panels. Check it out.
Stowe Boyd writes in Darwin Magazine about The State of Social Tools. Among the things he talks about is the tendency of applications to tend toward converegence (if I use this app for this, then I also want to use it for this and this and this). Boyd says that there are basically four features of social tools:
Communication: instant messaging, e-mail, Web conferencing, streaming video and voice tools, and other messaging solutionsCoordination: calendaring, task and project management, contact management, and related technologies
Collaboration: file and application sharing, discussion, wikis, blogs and other shared-space technologies
Community: social networking, swarmth (digital reputation, also called karma or whuffie), group decision and other explicit community supports.
At Digital Web Magazine, Didier Hilhorst talks about the Apples and Oranges of user research and design.
User research--such as usability testing--is, without a doubt, imperative, but it certainly isn' design. It identifies problems, but doesn't, except maybe at the most detailed level, suggest adequate solutions. Designers have to visualize and refine broad and detailed solutions, while user researchers supposedly extract facts from identified situations. The two fields quarrel when, rather than representing or reporting facts, user researchers put forward solutions....
Designers have to deal with an assortment of constraints, such as what the technology will allow or the time frame in which they receive information. Similarly, user researchers may be aware of the role of design, but in effect fail to understand the constraints designers have to work with. Therefore the problem seems to be of a structural nature, rather than rooted exclusively in stubbornness or disrespect.
One way for me (neither a designer nor a user researcher) to relate to this is through short story writing. I write a story, polish it and make it shine (so I hope). I give it to a group of intelligent readers who will give me feedback. They can identify places in the story that they had problems (didn't convince me, hated this character, have no idea what's going on here) and they can even suggest solutions, but the 'real' solution to the issues they uncover must be mine. Like the designers, I know the constraints I'm dealing with and ultimately what I'm trying to do.
...there is sometimes an absence of, or limited attention to, design in the early stages of the process. Let me say this loud and clear: design is not optional. Design is not simply retro-fitting elements of style and aesthetics. More often than not design seems to be closer to reverse engineering than actually being an integral part of the process. Failing to acknowledge design in early stages is not taking your product, customers or business seriously.
Related to the quote above, one thing that's puzzled me for years is how songwriting teams work. I can't imagine, though I've tried, how the words and the music can be separated such that one person can write the words and one the tune. To me, they can't exist, one without the other. And yet they do. Creating songs and words is an intricate collaborative project which requires communication and trust. It's most successful when tune is not privileged over words and vice versa. In the same way, even though user research seems safely 'objective' and therefore easier to elevate to a position of greater importance, design can't be neglected or tacked on later. The result is stronger when it is integral to usability, content, and focus.
I'm on two panels, along with Blair Fannin from Texas A&M and Ray Kimsey from NCSU, about RSS at the ACE 2004 conference in Lake Tahoe, NV. ACE is the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Lfe and Human Sciences. The panels will discuss what RSS is, how it's used, what RSS can do for content providers, and how to create RSS feeds for your content.
I've set up a weblog for the panel to plan the presentation and to post references and links. Matt Heerema did the design work, which is awesome!
I'll be posting my part of the presentation and, I hope, links to the rest once they're done.
So you've got your aggregator and you're getting news and blog updates and other cool stuff delivered right to your desktop and you can't help but wonder...what else can I do?
The Shifted Librarian, Jenny Levine, points out sites that are delivering books via RSS, a page or a few pages a day.
You can get Samuel Pepy's diary, the notebooks of Leonardo daVinci, and now (or starting on June 16th if you want to celebrate the 100th anniversary) James Joyce's Ulysses.
Fast Company says design matters.
Why?
Design is about emotion, the first visceral impact of a new product. Good design tells you what a product is, what it stands for and why you want it.
So who are the Masters of Design?
Fast Company lists 20 people they consider tops in the field, dividing the group into Peak Performers, Impact Players, Game Changers, Collaborators, and Next Generation.
The Masters, in turn, provide five lessons or ideas for incorporating design principles:
From CIO Magazine and article by Jerry Gregoire on The Vanishing IT Department:
There are three immutable and unpleasant truths about information technology staffing and retention that make outsourcing the dodge of choice for the incompetent and lazy: 1. Turnover is expensive; 2. Retention rate is the most accurate indicator of leadership quality; and 3. Recruiting is the hardest job an IT manager has.It is far easier to "order" a programmer, as one might order in a pizza so as not to have to cook, than to sell someone on joining the organization. We pay dearly for outsourcers and consultants that arrest the development of our organizations' internal capabilities and cause us to place the future well-being of our company in the hands of people who have no emotional stake or connection to our business.
So, what kind of IT organization do you aspire to have? If you yearn for adequate results on vanilla systems in pursuit of dial-tone regularity, forget about talent shortages and go find yourself a good contract lawyer. If, on the other hand, you still believe IT can make a competitive difference and that even the more mundane tasks can be a channel of competitive advantage given a little creative effort, then developing and retaining a professional organization should be your number-one goal. If it is, I thank you and wish you the very best.
The Internet makes us simultaneously more connected and more isolated. The use of mail, weblogs, shared workspaces, online conferences and other collaborative tools often means that we have less face to face contact than ever before. And online activities still don't do explicitly and efficiently what even a brief face to face contact provides--broader context, body language, casual conversation, and other social capital building and information cues.
Designing Collaborative E-learning For Results in Learning Circuits discusses strategies for "building connection, interactivity, and relationships via online learning:"
The proposed e-learning solution had to maintain the high-touch level of the face-to-face seminar within the constraints imposed by the physical separation of the participants and the technologies used to connect them. A redesign converted the lunch seminar into six 75-minute synchronous online sessions delivered over VisionCast (a version of Microsoft LiveMeeting provided by Premiere Conferencing) and a phone conference.
The following design elements were incorporated into the program:
The redesign proved successful in overcoming the constraints of physical separation and the limitations of distance learning technology. In the most recent cohort to complete the redesigned conflict management program, 100 percent of the participants rated it as “valuable to highly valuable.” In addition, 100 percent of the participants found that the course helped them recognize and deal with their own and others' conflict styles. Participants cited scheduling flexibility as an obvious advantage, but they also valued the interactive communication tools that were built into the program design. One participant said, “I am the last person normally to be impressed with computer technology, but I have to admit the technology was extremely impressive and effective.”
- numerous case examples from participants and their co-workers
- a team project that asked participants to apply new tactics and strategies to
- a real case example, which was provided by senior management
- senior executives joined the course at the beginning and end to reinforce its importance to the company, as well as to critique work and motivate employees to integrate what they learned into their daily practice
- extensive use of interactive features, such as polling and breakout sessions
- an assessment tool and a survey designed specifically to generate rich profiles of each participant from which they could learn about themselves and their co-workers. The resulting data was woven throughout the course to connect theory with practical reality.
They suggest factors to keep in mind:
The article includes issues that should be on anyone's list when outlining a successful distance learning strategy.
elearningpost talks about building experience into elearning:
For example, a logically well-laid building plan might fulfill a functional need but not necessarily the experiential need. The functional needs could be space, plumbing, electrical etc., and the experiential need could be privacy, character of a space, mood it evokes, ambience etc. For elearning to fit into today's consumption, its design too needs to be crafted for experience.The paper contends that thinking only about the functional aspects of elearning hampers our experience outlook. It identifies strategies to overcome this conflict and to successfully engage today's learners. Through a range of examples from diverse areas such as print, documentation, presentation, and elearning, the paper illustrates how deliberate attempt to think beyond mere functionality, makes an obvious difference to the experience of the output. The cues from these examples provide directions to build elearning products that are functionally sound and experientially engaging.
What does this mean for elearning?
Psychologist Alice Isen and her colleagues have shown that positive experiences are critical to learning, curiosity, and creative thought. She discovered that people who felt good were more curious, better at learning, and were able to come up with creative solutions (Isen, A. M. 1993). The scope of design therefore, should extend beyond functionality to fulfill the need for experience....
The constraints on the designer and the expectations of the learner create a gap that is difficult to bridge. A designer thinks a great deal about what his product will be like, but the environment in which his product is consumed might change. Likewise a designer cannot control the development of expectations in the learners’ minds. The designer can only control the product.This difference often leads to a layout-experience gap. A brilliant design fails because of a failure to pay adequate attention to small but decisive details that shape the final experience. To elaborate on the point, let’s consider a parallel example from architecture and understand what it implies for elearning. A logically well-laid building plan might fulfill aesthetic and functional needs but may not necessarily fulfill the experience-needs. The needs that may be taken care of by an architect might be things like space, services, etc. But the architect might still miss on experience needs like privacy, lighting, ambience, etc.When a building-plan is thought of as a layout-plan one sets a certain standard for building-design. But when this layout is translated into experience, it can get far away from the expected standard. Design should be understood not as layout, but as the translation of layout into experience.
...and even sometimes when it doesn't.
Wired News has an article on Phishers:
Phishing scams use phony e-mail messages and fraudulent websites -- phishers like to pose as PayPal, a favorite tool of eBay customers, for example -- to dupe people into divulging personal financial data, especially credit card info.According to a Gartner report published in mid-May, there have been 1.8 million reported scams in the United States. Over half resulted in the fraudulent use of credit cards or other financial data. More than 57 million Americans have received phishing e-mails, and phishing has accounted for $1.2 billion annually in credit card scams, according to the Gartner report.
...via cyfernet_technology
An interesting post on using weblogs to create an engaging learning experience:
Why are weblogs so successful? Apart from being very easy to use, I feel that there are three key attributes that have contributed to its success: 1) personal point of view, 2) chronological nature and 3) byte-sized posts. Together, these three attributes help create experiences that are both engaging and memorable. In this article, I will outline a design method that incorporates these weblog attributes.
Knowledge goes to waste if no one can find it. Although a large part of an organizations knowledge is contained in its people (and usually not capturable in any straightforward way), a significant amount of valuable informaiton is contained in publications, reports, updates, and other documents.
In Getting the Most from Content Management, Sam Goldman talks about the importance of developing a taxonomy for any content management system so that it's possible to find the information that exists when it's needed:
In creating its taxonomy, a company might begin with a survey into what information exists and what is needed and of interest to people inside and outside the organization. It is also helpful to assess how vendors, partners and employees view the organization and how, in that context, they might seek information. Such a process must involve key stakeholders and knowledge professionals working in collaboration with IT.Information exists in every part of an organization but often remains hidden to those outside a particular division. This is because there isn't a consistent contextual relationship between that information and the way it's captured. The description used by finance might be (and probably is -- remember Murphy's Law?) different from the term used in marketing. Establishing a common vocabulary and rules for applying terminology and labeling, for example, can make all the difference here.