That weekly calendar pop up I received every week for the PAST SEVERAL WEEKS reminding of the day I was to contribute to my good friend Jane’s book tour just kept getting pushed back. So here I am watching “Outsourced” and browsing through Jane’s book realizing that pop up popped up for the last time. There are so many nice review’s of the book, I just thought I’d give some advice on how to actually use it (beyond simply reading it).

10 Things you can do with Jane Bozarth’s new book, Social Media for Trainers:

1. Read it, of course, then…
2. Casually drop the book on the desk of a frustrated coworker who says he just doesn’t get all the “social media” stuff…or
3. Use material from the book for staff training…or
4. Donate one to a school or library…or be evil and…
5. Send a tweet to someone who annoys you and tell them [you think] they’re featured in the Twitter chapter. You could also…
6. Buy the Kindle edition so you’ll have it as an electronic resource then be all uppity and….
7. Take your Kindle to various events and say, “what are you reading? I’m reading my good friend Jane’s book. I have many friends who authors”…or
8. Use it as inspiration to write your own book…and of course…
9. Apply the ideas in the book. Finally,
10. Thank Jane for writing a really easy-to-read, practical book.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.” ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 22, spoken by the character Holden Caulfield, via quotegarden.com

I watched Jon Meacham, Editor of Newsweek, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last week. Meacham had learned earlier that same day that Newsweek is being sold. He described the decision as a “rational economic decision” (based on journalism today). I applaud him for being there. I would have been curled up in the fetal position with a bag of Cheeto’s.

“Who is going to be doing the reporting?” Jon Stewart asked. “If we’re all aggregators, if we’re all commenting, if we’re all analyzing, who exactly is going to be doing the reporting?”

Hmmm. This might as well be a question asked at some “social learning” session within the “emerging” track at a national conference that is rich in sessions about traditional training (“dino” track ; ) It’s the same conference where there’s one person tweeting for each 100 attendees and there’s often no wireless. The one where you use a #hashtag so you can go back and link to the stream to illustrate how lame it was.

Anyway, Meacham made this statement which has generated some critical commentary:

“I do not believe that Newsweek is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we’re one of them. And I don’t think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.”

From Peter Wehner at Commentary Magazine:

“We still need journalists reporting on oil wells that explode and leak, British elections being held, wars being fought, genocide unfolding, riots occurring in Greece, and all the rest. The good news is that we live in a world that features both “hard news” and informed commentary, to a degree we have never had before.

In that respect, what we have today is a vast improvement over the past.”

Ethan Epstein at True/Slant in Journalists Try To Hold Democracy Hostage also wrote about the Meacham interview.

“Meacham is, of course, wrong on the facts. There are now more catchers in the rye than ever before. Paradoxically, the same forces that are killing Newsweek are responsible for a blossoming of scores of specialized news outlets. Newsweek has to die so democracy and journalism can live. Simply put, it is the fact that web publishing is so cheap that has both killed Newsweek, and allowed all forms of niche publications to thrive. (The kind of publications, it should be noted, that never would have made it in an era when you needed deep pockets to produce news.)”

Meacham, when responding to a question from Stewart, points to The Economist as being successful today. He doesn’t give his opinion why. Mine would be that The Economist is (and  has been) a meritocracy. And that’s the nature of the social web.

The Economist is different from other publications not only because it offers a broad international perspective but also because it has no bylines. It is written anonymously, because it is a paper whose collective voice and personality matter more than the identities of individual journalists. This ensures a continuity of tradition and view which few other publications have matched.

Or, is it Vanity Fair’s, Matt Pressman’s take?

The Economist is like that exotic coffee that comes from beans that have been eaten and shat out undigested by an Indonesian civet cat, and Time and Newsweek are like Starbucks—millions of people enjoy them, but it’s not a point of pride. Reading The Economist or drinking cat-poop coffee shouldn’t be either, but as the quirky lead sentence of an Economist article might say, “Human beings are peculiar in many ways.”

At some point here, the Newsweek’s of the traditional training content world need to “get” the social web. It’s about human beings. Or is that too elitist? Too cat poop coffee? Is the clusterfuck around social learning a naïve view of learning or are the staunch protectors of traditional training taking a naïve view of learning?

BTW…this is where The Economist was over three years ago.

Sorry for the vulgarity in the title but I read a whopper of a quote from my always thought-provoking colleague, Gary Woodill, and what ensued in my mind was nothing more than a clusterfuck. (My definition of clusterfuck is complicated confusion and chaos.) Anyway, here’s the quote:

“learning through the use of social media is a set of implicit assumptions that if people are using something called “social media”, then “social learning” must be taking place. This is a confusion of the means with the ends.”

Think about it. I did.

When you Google “social learning” you’ll notice that “social learning theory” is returned first. The “social learning” hits that follow are primarily bloggers. Bloggers like me. And then there are theorists like Etienne Wenger talking about social learning and social learning systems in the  context of communities or practice and stewarding technology for communities. I love that stuff.

You can see that “social learning,” as a term, appeared enough to make Google’s trend chart in 2006 and has gone up-and-down since. From the end of 2008 and on, it really grew some legs. A trend term. Vogue. Maybe rogue. Definitely ill-defined. Often misused. Tossed around without much serious inquiry into its meaning.

In fact, it’s a  clusterfuck of meaning. As much so as ‘learning’ itself is. Ponies and unicorns.

I guess what I’m saying here is that there’s not enough push-back on the term. Is it harmful? Effective? What’s the theory behind it? Were Bandura and Vygotsky full of shit? Lave and Wenger? What do we need to be thinking about?

I think, when it comes to the new social learning crowd, we’ve got us a case of groupthink. I’ll be the first to say I’ve been part of the problem. However, I think we’ve got to slow down before we flood search engines with models that are not models and definitions grounded in little more than what someone else said.

So I sit down at my desk this morning, opened up Gmail as I always do and noticed Google Buzz. I read like 61 trillion tweets about  Google Buzz over the past few days so, of course, I was fatigued with it to begin with. Tweets, blog posts, RSS feed just loaded with it. I was expecting someone to say at breakfast,  ”hey, did you try Google Buzz…what’s that about?” (no one would ever say that to me at breakfast though…make me eggs! is usually about the best I get for breakfast conversation.)

So my point is, I was not enthusiastic. However, being a student of the social web, I jumped right in.

My first thought was HEY wait just a minute there Google, didn’t I just jump into Google Wave in the fall? How is this different? (I dunno because I’ve already forgotten Google Wave.) If a tool or technology can’t capture my attention within the first few hours of trying it, I abandon it and forget it.

I posted my first Buzz message “test.” Outstanding I know. I imagine a bunch of people followed my great content at that point…nearly as good as my “start” status on Twitter. I posted no link, no video, no photo but did do an integration with Twitter, Google Reader, Picasa, and Google chat. I didn’t email my test post, I didn’t “like” anyone else’s stuff, and I didn’t comment on anything. My answer to Google’s question “Share what you’re thinking. Post a picture, video, or other link here” was test. That’s what I was thinking. Another freakin’ test.

I’ve spent about 30 minutes with Buzz so far. I updated my profile. Looks like you can almost make it your one-stop for all things social media.

I don’t have much more to report after just 30 minutes. On the down side, I don’t see how it can support multiple accounts. Right now I can’t open two gmail accounts at the same time. This has always been a problem for me. Sign in, Sign out, Sign in, Sign out. Second, it seems like it will clog up my email (sorry thats “G”mail). I think we should be getting away from email.

And, it seems like Buzz is making a bunch of decisions for me. I can’t properly explain that but Buzz kind of felt like there was going to be some guy around the next corner when I was walking home in the dark. Boo! Oh, it’s just you….my suggested friends. Boo! Oh, it’s just you Pete Cashmore from Mashable and while you’re here Pete, how did you get 12K followers already? (probably with better content than “test.”)

So I’ve hit a wall of sorts. I’m going to go cold turkey for the next week and stay away from all my various social web activities. Instead, I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning and take out a pencil and paper (old school) and document how the lack of social media is impacting my work, learning, and productivity. I’m actually going to disconnect.

It’s appropriate, I think, that Google Buzz is the catalyst because the social web is a bit like addictive drugs but without the craving of munchies. I’ll report back next Friday the 19th.

You know one of those brief tweets or status updates that can easily be lifted from bigger, continuous conversations  you’re having with online friends and followers?  Out of context stuff. Or, it’s a user’s name that’s exploited, like this from NBC news anchor Brian Williams:

“There’s no way of knowing if the incoming text from partygirl99 is being written from Tehran or Texas.”

Poor partygirl99. Williams’ statement is very true. It is hard for traditional media to vet information coming from the public in a form they’ve never seen. It’s the AND part of the job. This AND that. Reporting, fact checking, AND now monitoring & participating in worldwide network of “on the street” de facto reporters.

<digression>… another interesting tidbit from Mr. Williams, below, is worthy of its own post)

“The belief that “social media” only feeds our national self-obsession and that the often-used phrase “online community” is, in fact, an oxymoron.” (from here)

Wha??? Oxymoron? (to be continued…) </digression)

Anyway, this is one of the silly comments used in an attempt to illustrate Twitter’s (in)significance – David Letterman’s first tweets:

What’s lifted is usually day-to-day snark or silliness that fuels a community. The stuff that  can become an “inside joke” down the road. I’m always aware of that when I’m silly, snarky, or even stupid. Like recently.

I’ll try to keep this short and eventually get to my point. But first…in case you’re not up to speed on Twitter hashtags, here’s a little explanation. Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait. (Elevator music)

K. Ready?

It started with this:

What followed was a bunch of #whackamole tweets that eventually started to show up in a search for the game “Whack-a-Mole” on Google (Whack-a-Mole was the answer to my question).

During all this #whackamole business, I had brief exchange on Twitter with @susank about monitoring social media activity for your company. Susan is Senior PR Manager at Mzinga  who communicates with all sorts of people on Twitter. Like me, part of her daily work includes having conversations on Twitter. Our exchange…

Me: “i hope my employer is not monitoring what i’m tweeting. oh wait. i’m the one that monitors.”

That statement is a joke…snark…totally a problem if lifted by an employer with no sense of humor and/or who doesn’t get it. See, spending 10 minutes on whack-a-mole is (for a virtual worker) about the same as an inside joke in the physical office.

Now monitoring a company on Twitter is real-time customer service to me.  It’s my “AND” job. Researcher/Analyst AND “all the social media stuff.” At Brandon Hall Research, we’re all responsible in some way for social media but I guess you could say I “own” that.

These dueling roles have created a persona issue for me.

• A local community college asked me to teach some classes about social media (for businesses) in the evening…i.e., teaching about my “AND” role.
• A friend of a friend asked if I can give some advice on how to use social media for his new venture.
• A member of the local Chamber of Commerce (I’m also a member) contacted me about using social media to support a book he’s writing.

These are all related to my “AND” role. I was all like, “how do I deal with this?”  What I do is no secret but it’s getting confusing. You can teach people instructional design without having an instructional design blog but I don’t think it’s as easy to teach people ‘business 2.0′ when you don’t have an online identity about that. It’s an identity thing. A credibility thing. And, it’s a transparency thing for Brandon Hall.

I’ve got information to share about both roles. I’m still learning. And here’s how I’m dealing with it:

• A separate website for the business side of social media. It doesn’t make much sense to write about the “AND” role stuff here and it doesn’t make much sense to teach others about it when I only write about e-learning related topics here. It’s confusing.
• Separate accounts for some social networking sites to keep topics organized.

So, I’m sticking to e-learning research here with some “AND” writing on the side about the business side of things. Because that’s the way I learn best. Write about it. Talk about it. Write about it some more.

One last thing about this conflicting persona / subject matter thing…a video from a panel Mark Oehlert led at DevLearn09 with Michelle Lentz and Aaron Silvers about reputation, authenticity, and credibility. Very smart people documenting their work  and becoming  more knowledgeable. Just not all mixed up in one place.

Andrew McAfee, who literally wrote the book on Enterprise 2.0,  delivered the keynote address on the first day of the E-Learning Guild’s DevLearn 09 conference.

You say “social,” McAfee said, and the CXO will think this…

Enterprise 2.0 makes clear that the new technologies are good for much more than just socializing-when properly applied, they help businesses solve pressing problems, capture dispersed and fast-changing knowledge, highlight and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas, and harness the wisdom of crowds. (from the book)

So  for the C-suite cut the social terminology. Talk about what problem you’re trying to fix (open communication channels, connecting cross-functional groups, project management, on-the-job support, matching experts, reducing redundancy, knowledge management).

I think this is spot on and, BONUS, it seems to ironically fit my persona : )

photo: http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/

1. Can’t hide.
   Other person: “Want to talk at 2:00?
   <pause> Me: “No, I’ve got a meeting at 2:00.”  {note: there is no meeting}
   Other person: “OK, how about the same time tomorrow?”
   Me: “Sure, 2:00 tomorrow.”
   (Me, silently: Great. Now I can’t Tweet, update my Facebook status, blog, bookmark, etc. because my every click will show up on FriendFeed and I’m supposed to be in some fictitious 2:00 meeting. And I’ll have to change all my presence indicators….should’ve just had the meeting.)
2. Procrastination becomes visible.
   Links shared throughout the day could be viewed as breadcrumbs on your way in or out of the rabbit hole. Like “Ig Nobel Public Health Prize Goes to Bra That Converts Into Gas Mask. Innovation at its best.
3. Sloppiness has a wider audience.
   Adding a wrong name to that email is a lot easier to take than sending an @reply instead of a DM. (if that’s foreign to you .. an “@reply” on Twitter goes to many people, a direct message (DM) ideally just goes to that one person. Ideally.)
4. New paranoia becomes a caricature of old paranoia.
   Old paranoia might be wondering if “they” are talking about you behind closed doors. Well, you know when you’re on LinkedIn and it says “your profile has been view by 5 people in the last 7 days…see more”? New paranoia means your viewing someone’s profile looking for clues like some stalker or something. It’s much easier just to casually walk by the office several times.
5. Time becomes more of an issue.
   Flight was late? Accident on freeway? Inclement weather? There’s an app for that. And your boss might have it.
6. This type of thing:
   
7. Photographic evidence.
   Can’t opt out of the work happy hour if your “friend” is going to take pics of you doing something entirely more fun and then upload them via twit pic.
8. Short attention span.
   God, grandma…can’t you tell that story in 140 characters already? Or are you going to make it a blog post?
9. Scanning.
   “Yeah, I saw the memo. Didn’t read it though. Why, what’s going on?”
10. Multi-tasking.
    Reminiscent of potheads from the 70s. “Did you read that? What? <pause> “Did you read that?” <insert random factoid>
11. Laziness.
    Someone already said it better than you so why bother. Just improve your search skills and go find it.
12. Bad hair day.
    …because someone will document it in some way to their entire network (and maybe even add a #hashtag).

Lisa Gualtieri, Editor-in-Chief, eLearn Magazine wrote an article called Learn from Rogue Tweeters: 7 Steps to Promoting Your Organization in Twitter. She writes that while organizations are trying to figure out how to use social media in a formalized ( more on that later) way, the rogue employee  just does it, “it” being participating in mutually beneficial dialogue about the company with the general public . You rogue-types know who you are (from the article: “Mark plans to continue tweeting until someone tells him “that’s not your job.”)( I would add “or until he gets promoted or finds a sweeter gig.”)

Why does Mark  (the employee in the article) tweet for OMSHR (the company in the article) when it’s not in his job description? My guess is passion, greater good (it’s safety stuff), dedication, or if-not-me-who? (he’s in IT). Only he knows why but OMSHR is lucky to have him. He is concerned however, that policies may eventually constrain him…he believes the current informal process works because he is “conscientious and diligent.”

THE CURRENT INFORMAL PROCESS WORKS. So why formalize social media (in my mind a highly informal way to learn)? Or should we be saying “non-formal?” (And go me! for not tripping over that stack ‘o buzz words.)

Let’s go on a little Google hunt.

Back in 2005, Stephen Downes had some comments on formalizing informal learning based on a CLO article

Of course, this [the writers had said that informal learning needs to be integrated into formal learning in the sense that it should be tied to measurable performance metrics] isn’t the point of informal learning at all – but I can see the point. It requires a very careful balance between respecting learner intentions, which in the end drive informal learning, and supporting corporate needs, which are addressed not through demand learning, but rather, by making appropriate informal learning resources usefully and widely available.

Respect your learners intentions and make informal learning resources available and useful.

Earlier this year Mark Oehlert, in response to a George Siemens post about “formally adopting” informal learning (vs. trying to make it formal…big diff), said:

why does it bother me that people/organizations think that somehow they need to “adopt” this mysterious thing called “informal learning.”? How about this…the principles of ID can’t handle it, IDs aren’t taught how to design with it, no one knows how to assess its impact and yet we feel compelled to somehow exert our control over something that largely grew up because we failed so miserably in other areas…

[ID should] stay the hell out of it.

Catherine Lombardozzi, also earlier this year,

I think that creating an informal learning strategy in support of business learning needs is mostly about aggregating, organizing, and making available a variety of resources that can support learning on a specific topic, similar to how I’ve talked about learning environments in the past. The strategic part is making decisions about what resources we’ll deliberately support – we can’t possibly corral all possible informal learning resources, and we need to figure out where to start.

Aggregate, organize, make available and decide what to deliberately support (formally adopt a strategy)

And this, recently from Mike Prokopeak talking to Lance Dublin about a third domain:

Formal learning typically refers to structured learning events and programs, while informal refers to unstructured learning that happens outside the bounds of traditional learning events, whether it’s over the water cooler, in the field or through a blog or discussion forum.

“There is a third domain,” Dublin said. “That’s the domain where you use all these informal tools but you use them with intention. You put enough structure around them so they have a purpose within the organization.” [He calls this non-formal learning] The opportunity lies in defining the middle between the two poles, Dublin said. Non-formal learning is structured, but not formal, intentional but not directed.

Structured, but not formal, intentional but not directed.

Lastly, a conversation I’ve been having in comments with Karl Kapp in What are the Results of Following an Instructional Design Process? in which I’m disagreeing with the idea of Web 2.0 ‘design’ entirely. Karl mentions templates, simplified (read standardized) tagging,  guidelines, etc.

As designers, we need to provide templates for meaningful contributions of one peer to another, perhaps a sample blog entry to use as a model, or a method of standardizing contributions, a list of key words so the folksonomy is limited, something that ties strategies to contributions to encourage learning and retention of the content contributed. These elements add structure to the contributions but still allow creativity.

What’s your take? Ithink we need more Mark’s and OMSHR’s. Less meddling and a better understanding in the industry of what strategy is.

Just finished up an online presentation, Using Social Medial to Improve Workplace Learning, slides below. I had uploaded my slides an hour early and took care of all the necessary details – shut off cell phone and house phone, banished children from my immediate area, let the dog out, shut the windows, and…special bonus this week…asked my contractor not to run the power saw or pound sheet rock from 1-2 pm. I forgot to tell him the part about me needing electricity and, of course, at 12:55 I lost power. I asked him “calmly” to put it back on and was presenting by 1:02 with a light sweat. Anyway, it went pretty good in my opinion (which doesn’t mean jack.)

At the end of the presentation, I tried something different and shared Wordle so we could make a word cloud for two issues: what things make a bad  classroom training session and what an ideal online community would look like. I gathered up text from the chat box. This one is for “bad things.”

and this one “ideal online community”:

Couple of additional notes from the presentation:

• Most of us reported a dramatic change in the way we communicate, collaborate, and interact at work over the last 10 years.
• 2/3′s didn’t have a strategy for social media
• Most of us reported moderate usage social media

Some quotes and talking points:

“Social learning technologies must be seen as the medium for relationship creation, not information exchange.” (Digenti, 2000)

“Learning is an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice.” (Lave & Wenger, 1991)

“We are moving toward a knowledge-era model of education with large-scale social networks involving complex communities and individual identify construction.” (Wenger, 2004)

“Social learning technologies can bring together and bridge the gap between training and knowledge management – linking knowledge and acquisition, development, and learning. A strong collaboration platform links continued knowledge acquisition, development, and learning.” (Bruck, 2007)

“It is within complex online communities and networks where social construction of understanding occurs.” (Huberman, Romero, & Fang, 2008)

References (because, ya know, I’m a researcher ; )

Bruck, P. (2008) Welcome and introduction to microlearning and capacity building. Microlearning and Capacity Building. Proceedings of the 4th International Microlearning 2008 Conference. Innsbruck, Austria.

Digenti, D. (2000). Make Space for Informal Learning. ASTD Learning Circuits.

Huberman, B.A., Romero, D.M. & Fang, W. (2008). Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope. Social Computing Lab, HP Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA and Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (You must buy this book!)

Wenger, E. (2006). Learning for a small planet: a research agenda. Scientific project description.

I’ve been thinking about a possible link between a specific personality type (introvert) and social media success for several months and what it means for learning in the workplace. (I haven’t done any significant research on this topic yet.)

I can’t synthesize this provocative older post from Venkatesh Rao but his insight was this:

…the word “social” in the term “social media” represents the ultimate in misleading advertising, and is responsible for many failures and a lot of disenchantment, especially within the enterprise.

Here are the parts of his post that became my initial ear worms:

• thoroughly introverted, unsociable, egoistic, and ornery individualists take to (social media) like ducks to water
• social media amplifies the human traits of social manipulation and exploitation
• successful social media efforts are fueled by self-interest
• social media attracts extroverted, harmony-seeking, consensus-driven people who end up carcasses

So I went looking and found some opinions about his first bullet point…

On introverts

Peter Cashmore wrote about introverts here (and noted that a very popular social media personality, Guy Kawasaki, described himself as a loner). Cashmore ran a poll and reported results showing

61% of Twitter users considered themselves introverts (only 13% described themselves as extroverts).

In another post, Mark Dykeman reminds us that the difference between introversion and extroversion lies in the effect other people have on us.  He thinks social media removes the need to connect in person (something extroverts are more comfortable with). He quoted Laura Thomas at Dell:

“social media is very introvert-friendly (because many introverts) are more comfortable writing their thoughts/feelings than they are speaking them.”

Dykeman also notes that Darren Rowse (who has a huge online presence) said:

“as an extreme introvert I enjoy social media as it gives me social content but in a measured way.”

Lou Covey wrote that social media is attuned to introverts  because it levels the playing field.

Russell Miyaki wondered if, because social media is a controlled environment, introverts can be connected with their own world online and be by themselves at the same time.

Brent Leary, a self-described “introvert with an accounting degree for crying out loud” wrote about his success with social media.

Sandy McMullen, talking about the book Twitter Revolution, noted that

social media allows those with a preference for introversion to reveal themselves after the have had a period of time to reflect on what and how they want to present themselves.

Anthony Vultaggio thinks introverts have a distinct advantage with social media.

“[Online] social networking is a solitary activity done from the privacy of one’s personal computer. Traditional introverts…lack the need for feedback…they reach inward.”

Here, Jim Blasingame interviews Patricia Weber (a former corporate trainer) in a poorly titled podcast about whether or not social media is a tool or a crutch for introverts (assumes there’s something wrong with being an introvert). She notes that social media, while used by all personality types, can be a productive. She thinks an introvert can be a good bet for getting a social media strategy rolling or to keep it rollling.

I’m not a big fan of Myers-Briggs but this is interesting. Breanne did an unscientific survey of 296 people on Twitter and found that INFPs are more represented than other personality types (14.7% in the Twitter sample vs. 4.4% of the general population.)

A good instructor can keep all personality types engaged but I suspect many introverts keep quiet in the  classroom and may not have their voice heard. Perhaps social media offers introverts a platform for their voice.

Now I’ll just have to think a bit more about the other three points I took away from Rao’s post.