Posted on June 26, 2009 by Steve Dale in Twitter, Video
Maybe nothing new here for the seasoned Twitter user, but as always, Lee Lefever does a great job in putting across fairly complex concepts in a simple ‘matter of fact’ way. This new video from CommonCraft covers Twitter Search, and for anyone who wants to know more about ‘trends’ and ‘hashtags’ then look no further, all is explained here.
I found this to be an excellent overview of the current evolution of the web, and a good layman’s guide to the Semantic Web or Web3.0. The original video can be found at the STI International website.
For me this was an opportunity to air the views I had previously blogged about regarding a perceived disinterest or lack of understanding in the public sector (and possibly elsewhere) of how the Web 2.0 world is making traditional records management policies and procedures largely redundant and in some cases completely unworkable.
The podcast (Episode 4) last 46 mins and covers the following points:
what impact is Web 2.0 having on the way organisations are keeping their records?
are current records management practices and standards still adapted to the web 2.0 world with its increased volume, and pace of information exchange, increased diversity of systems and increased pace of technological change?
what kind of record keeping would be suited to the web 2.0 world? Will the web 2.0 world result in organisations keeping records in a completely different kind of way?
This may be a dry subject for some people, but whichever side of the coin you’re on – the dynamic and relatively undisciplined world of Web 2.0 or the highly disciplined and structured world of records management, I think you’ll soon be affected one way or another since many of the issues go to the heart of how information is created, used, published and destroyed – or not, as the case may be. It’s certainly a polarising topic with few opportunities for sitting on the fence. Either we accept that information creation is increasingly user-centric and we adapt policies, procedures and technology to cope with this, or we continue to throw money and resource at ECM and EDRM systems based on increasingly redundant policies and procedures that assume centralised control and management of information. Whatever you believe, there is a tension in the system that is going to lead to something breaking somewhere, and soon.
These are my links for June 9th through June 15th:
CIO > How Facebook and Twitter are changing data privacy rules – CIOs think about privacy the way some people think about exercise: with a sigh and a sense of impending pain. Outside of regulated industries like health care – where patient privacy is paramount – privacy affects CIOs as a corollary of security when, say, a laptop holding millions of people's records is lost or hackers siphon off customer data.
"CIOs generally don't care about privacy," says Peter Milla, former CIO and chief privacy officer at Survey Sampling International (SSI). Milla says most CIOs either focus on technology, or regard privacy as outside their domain, the province of a chief privacy or chief security officer. He finds both attitudes wrongheaded. CIOs, Milla says, should "want to be ahead of the curve" on privacy.
socialstrategy:start [Practical Participation] – There are many small hurdles to effective use of social media and technology in public services. In democratic engagement and participation; communications and outreach; education; or just about any other area of work – the same soluble barriers hold up action.
This wiki builds upon this blog post and offers a space to share learning about how to overcome the many small hurdles.
Select any of the Hurdles listed below to add your comments, insights and experiences on how they affect the uptake of social technologies, or how they can be overcome.
You can also find a list of other blog posts talking about this list.
Lifehacker – The Google Wave Highlight Reel – Google Wave – We haven't been invited to try out Google Wave (yet? pretty please Mister Google?), but based on the 80-minute demonstration video, we're jazzed about it. Don't have 80 minutes? These eight 30-60 second clips highlight the best parts of Google Wave.
David Wilcox (Social Reporter) has produced an excellent post describing the ‘Social by Social’ game that a few of us at the Net Tuesday meeting took part in. This was the first time I had attended a Net Tuesday meeting, which is run on the first Tuesday of each month, and intend making this a regular item in my diary. Thanks too to Andy Gibson and Amy Sample Ward for organising us all on the day.
10 awesome Twitter tricks – Every Twitter users is looking for the ladder to boost his/her following. You might be one of them trying to increase your Twitter followers. You must be looking for more public reading your updates. For sure you must be tired of trying out weirdest things to build followers in Twitter. It’s not tricky to build a famous profile, but it’s significant to start with the right understanding. Most commonly people try things like tweeting interesting stuffs that spreads with RTs to grow your twitter account into a solid distribution channel. Posting a lot of how-tos microblogs won't help actually, for they get repetitive. what you need to understand is that Twitter is a community for interaction and it is also an effective marketing platform. Why not make the best of Twitter. To make things easier for you we decided to provide you with the 10 awesome Twitter tricks to enhance your experience.
I was asked by the Network of government library and information specialists (NGLIS) to run a workshop session on Social Media Tools for their 2009 Conference, held in London 3rd June 2009. I thought this might be an ideal opportunity to run the Social Media Game that David Wilcox and Beth Kanter had developed.
I enlisted the support of my colleague Dave Briggs, who I know had run this game before, and set about preparing the cards in accordance with the guidelines on the SocialMedia Wiki. A copy of the cards is included in the attached PDF.
The following is a detailed explanation of the process we followed for the workshop which others may want to adopt or adapt if they are considering using this game, which I can recommend as a fun way of learning about the benefits and implications of using social media tools for engagement and collaboration.
Purpose of the workshop.
A simple but fun game that enables participants to discuss the merits of different social media tools and their utility and effectiveness in solving various real-world problems. The workshop will help delegates get a better appreciation of social media tools and the issues that need to be considered when deploying the tools in different situations.
Process
Step1:
The delegates were split into three teams of roughly 7 people in each team. Each team was asked to describe a scenario (a project, problem or requirement) related to their work environment. This was set out on an A3 piece of paper structured as follows:
Scenario – a description of the issue/problem.
Location - scope of influence, e.g. within a department, across depts., local, regional, national.
People - the people affected by the issue/problem.
Other considerations – any other influences or issues that might be relevant to resolving the issue/problem)
Each team was then asked to think of a number between 7 and 15 and write this number on their respective A3 sheets. The reasoning for this is given later.
Step 2:
One member from each team was asked to join one of the other teams and explain the scenario to that team. In effect they were acting as a ‘customer’ and the team they had just joined were now ‘consultants’. Each team was now working on one of the other team’s scenarios and not the one they developed themselves.
Each of the teams was given a set of social media cards, one side of which defined the functionality and on the other side an explanation of the application and the considerations for its use. Each team then set about solving the problem described in the scenario using a selection of the cards. Each of the cards had a points weighting which represented a nominal budget for using that particular feature. At this stage the number defined in step 1 was revealed as the budget for each consultancy team. Each team were required to deliver their solution within this budget, or to justify to their ‘customers’ any reason for exceeding the budget.
Step 3:
Having worked out their respective solutions each team explained their reasoning to the team that had originally generated a scenario, i.e. their customers. The customers were then asked to verify whether the solution met their requirements and could ask the consultant to clarify any points. Any budget overrun had to be justified by the consultants and agreed by the customers.
Step 4:
The final part of this game was a plenary feedback session on any lessons learnt and whether the teams had found the process useful in gaining a better understanding of how social media tools can be used to solve real-world problems, why some social media tools would not be appropriate in some circumstances.
I can recommend this game to anyone who wants to introduce the concepts of social media to their audience whilst at the same time making it a collaborative and fun learning process.
The Twitterverse was created in the spirit of The Conversation Prism. This is a preview of the soon-to-be announced Twitterverse by @BrianSolis and @Jess3
Please let Brian Solis know what is missing and if the image needs to be reorganized for the placement of apps. (cc) www.briansolis.com
Thanks to Steve Wheeler (aka @timbuckteeth) for picking up the conversation I started on Twitter where I defined a Taxonomist as:
One who organizes information in ways that make sense to content providers, rather that content users.
Steve’s riposte was to define a ‘Folksonomist’ as:
One who organizes information in ways that make sense to his/her own community of practice or interest.
I know that strictly speaking the role of a ‘folksonomist’ may not exist, since folksonomies tend to emerge through the collective process of individuals assigning tags to things and that the creation of a folksonomy is the bi-product. However, this misses the point; the key point is that the information is organized in a way that makes sense to individuals working collaboratively, i.e. members of a social network who tag content are acting (possibly unconsciously) in the role of a ‘folksonomist’.
Steve goes onto reference the Holistic Web blogpost Taxonomy vs Folksonomy which defines the differences thus:
A taxonomy is predictable, whereas a folksonomy is flexible. Taxonomies are imposed, but folksonomies are democratic.
I can’t argue with any of these definitions, but I particularly liked Steve’s final summary definition:
In a taxonomy, the community defines the content. In a folksonomy the content defines the community.
I might argue that the ‘community’ in the first sentence is likely to be corporate-led and vastly different to the community in the second sentence. But that’s being pedantic. I like the overall simplicity of the statement and will re-use it often. I hope that Steve Wheeler hasn’t got a copyright on it!
One final point to allay any grievances from the guild of Taxonomists – I think that taxonomies and folksonomies can co-exist in the world of Information Management, and that they have complementary strengths.
Just picked up from Nick Milton’s blog, the Kuwait Petroleum Company have published a series of case studies from the communities of practice his company helped them to launch and build over the last year. Some of thee case studies include early-stage estimates of value generated. All of them are interesting studies of young communities, in the Middle Eastern culture, beginning to deliver value through new ways of working.
