What Would Google Do?

This is the title of a new book by Jeff Jarvis that provides a good overview of how the web has changed the ways in which companies and organizations operate. If you have ignored all the hype about the Web 2.0 and are just curious about how people are thinking about developments in search, social networking, sharing free content, engaging with the public and so forth, this would be a good book to get a thoughtful summary of this thinking.

Here are Jarvis' basic themes that define the ways in which Google and other web savvy companies and institutions will succeed in the years to come:

Customers are now in charge. He suggests that organizations will need to organize the delivery of products and information in ways that meet customer needs. Obviously, this basic idea has always been true, Jarvis asserts that the we are going to have to be even more quick to be responsive to customer demands.

People can find each other anywhere and coalesce around you-- or against you. Organizations that are good at engaging the public around their ideas, products and people are going to be more successful than those who fail at this. He provides important examples of how customers also can organize against companies that fail to respond to problems. It is no longer an idle threat to say, "I am going to tell a few million of my closest friends about how horrible your product or service is?"

The mass market is dead, replaced by the market of mass niches. Alot of commentators have made this point in the last several years (see Chris Anderson, The Long Tail). Some good examples of this idea are Amazon (lots of small book sellers and lots of obscure books) and the Huffington Post (lots of excellent writers/commentators in one place.)

Markets are conversations. This idea was first offered in The Cluetrain Manifesto and extended in Naked Conversations. There are good examples of this idea in this book, but this is still a fuzzy idea. Ok, so I get the idea of talking to customers. What do I really need to talk about? What are the important conversations? And who is really the "customer?" There are lots of customers and lots of topics. How do you find the right conversation? This is much easier said than done.

We have shifted from an economy based on scarcity to one based on abundance. This idea has a variety of implications. How do you manage too much information? How do help people manage and organize lots of ideas and options? Another question related to this situation is what value do you add when everyone can find any product, service or idea a click away?

Enabling customers to collaborate with you-- in creating, distributing, marketing and supporting products-- is what is creates a premium in today's market. This idea is an elaboration of the marketing as conversation and customers are now in charge.

The most successful enterprises today are networks and the platforms on which those networks are built. Today this means Facebook.... tomorrow this means....?

Owning pipelines, people, products, or even intellectual property is no longer the key to success. Openness is. This may be both the most important idea and the most troublesome. Note that Jarvis does not say that pipelines, products or people are "valueless," only that "openness" is the key to success. He notes however that Google does not practice this value in much of its operation. This is a complicated idea. What needs to be open? In what ways is it valuable to be open?

This book provides a good basis for an extended discussion of many important ideas that will shape business, education, media, government and much more. We are only at the beginning of understanding how to think, work and act in this world.

Parents and Facebook

There were at least 14 books written in 2007-2008 about protecting children in regards to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

In reviewing these books, Zheng Yan writes,

"public concern is enormous, the entire scientific community, including governmental and private funding agencies, theoretical and applied researchers, and journal editors and reviewers, appear to have fallen behind rather than lead the communities of parents, publishers, and policy makers in responding to the growing use of SNSs among adolescents and the accompanying concerns about their safety on these sites" (J. of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2008, 29, 473).

In the same journal Subrahmanyam and Greenfield (2008) write,

"For researchers who study young people's use of the Internet, one of the biggest challenges is the constantly changing virtual world. Online communication forms are in a state of flux, and many operate like a fad. By the time researchers become aware of a popular online application or site, identify the research issues, design a well thought-out study, and get IRB approval, the population of interest has moved on to the next new application" (p. 417).

As information and communication technologies continue to change the social environment we will increasingly be pressed to move more rapidly in understanding and adapting to these changes.

Social Network Design in Prevention

This past week my graduate program development course considered social network design for use in prevention and intervention programs. We viewed Howard Rheingold's Social Network Classroom ideas and read BJ Fogg's Mass Interpersonal Persuasion and examined the efforts by the Open University to build a social learning platform.

At the beginning of the discussion I think we were all skeptical of the idea that social networking would work in changing behavior. We gave examples of the various silly activities that were possible in Facebook-- playing games, putting objects and slogans on Facebook walls and so forth and noted that although Facebook could be playful, fun and entertaining with friends and acquaintances it was just not a place that one expected to do anything very serious like thinking about changing behavior or learning something new. Despite Fogg's description of a model for how persuasive strategies could be widely disseminated in a social network environment, we were not convinced that the evidence was there to explain how someone would change a difficult interpersonal (e.g., try an alternative to spanking) or personal behavior (e.g., get more exercise). Also, knowing the demographic profile of social networking (young, better educated, etc.) we were doubtful that many of the people most in need of information and ideas of change, were not likely to have the time or access to this technology.

But then we began to think more cleverly about how we got information through social ties to other people and the fact the challenge of getting people's attention to address real issues in their lives. Most of us acknowledged that we were more likely to try something or pay attention if a trusted friend recommended it than if a stranger suggested it. This reminded us that just getting us to pay attention to an issue in our lives was a challenge that social networks might overcome. We also reflected on a central challenge which was engaging people to think about issues within relationships and families and began to explore ideas for using music and photos as fun ways to begin to explore relationship ideas and information. We mentioned that quizzes about a television show or some life experience (How well do you know your partner?) could often be interesting and prompt us to compare ourselves with others or begin an exploration of an idea. Generally, we began to warm up to the idea that it might be possible to create social communities on the web that captured our attention and fun and interesting ways and drew us into deeper conversations and activities that could change behavior. We haven't seen examples of these types of efforts, but we left thinking that this was possible.

This Facebook thing-- Boundary Ambiguity

Ok, so now I have a Facebook entry. The first person who I told was my 18-year-old son who immediately closed his FaceBook entry so I couldn't see it. His comment was, "If old people like you are on this, I need to move on!"

So there my entry sat for a week or so and then someone asked me to be a friend. Hmmm.... I thought so how did they find me. I hadn't really told anyone and the truth is I didn't look for anyone I knew.... so this made me curious. Are there people I know out there. Yes, I found six people from my high school graduation class of about 800. I recognized one name.

So now others have begun to ask me to be friends. Mostly colleagues.... so here is my uncomfortable part. For most people Facebook is this mix of personal and professional stuff. In real life I keep alot of my personal and professional parts of life separate. So on Facebook it seems like this stuff begins to cross between personal and professional. This makes me uncomfortable and seems unfamiliar.

I mentioned this to students and they are not worried. They don't seem to think about boundaries in these ways. Perhaps they will later on, but perhaps not. What should and shouldn't be private?

Essential Roles for Communities of Practice

At the recent National eXtension Meeting, several representatives from the “pioneer” eXtension Communities of Practice participated in a panel to discuss “lessons learned”. As I reflected on our experiences the last few years, and on the talks at the meeting, a lesson that popped into mind was “Letting people lead in their areas of passion”. This gets at the need for shared or distributed leadership in important roles within the CoPs.

What are these roles? Here is what I came up with:

• Community Minders
  Those who focus on keeping CoP members engaged and connected. They would pay attention for the need for communication, and would be the first point of contact for those needing information. They would help recruit, welcome, and orient new members by formal (e.g., newsletters) and informal (ad hoc emails and phone calls) means, and would help plan virtual and face-to-face meetings.
  


• Evaluation Wonks
  Those who serve as the “conscience” of the CoP, who remind us of the overall goals of the program and the need to be accountable by documenting our impact.
  


• GuruGeeks/TechnoTerrors
  Those with an affinity and aptitude for tinkering “under the hood” (i.e., in the Wiki). They might facilitate or take over the entering and formatting of content, lead the development of new applications, or be the liaison with web designers and programmers in applying technology to the CoP’s content.
  


• Google Juicers
  These may be GuruGeeks/TechnoTerrors, but their specific mission would be in the area of “search engine optimization (SEO)” – they would put content into web form, and monitor and modify content to conform to SEO “best practices”.
  


• Web Evangelists/Net Nobbers (for “Network Hobnobbers”)
  Those who would focus on external communication (with Communities of Interest) by participating in online social networks using Web 2.0 tools. They could have two related goals: (1) dispel myths and misconceptions about child development and parenting by promoting research-based information, and (2) promoting the CoP as a source for research-based information.

There are other important roles, of course (e.g. fund raising!) but I offer these as starting points. Where do you fit in?

The machine is them/us/you/me

What the heck does this web 2.0 social networking stuff have to do with us anyway?

I’ve been reflecting on the place that the “social networking” phenomena has in the online world, and what that means for our work. After hearing presentations by Dr. Michael Wesch, Andrew Barnett, and our own Dr. Bob Hughes, Jr., I’m convinced that we need to pay attention to playing the social network game for two major reasons.

Playing for for fame and fortune

1. If you don’t show up in the first page (and actually the first 5 entries) in a Google search result, you cannot count on being found.


2. A relatively small number of web-savvy geeks are determining what gets to the top of the Google food chain. These folks are dedicated participants in the way of the (social) network, and they determine what everyone else is most likely to find on a particular topic.


3. In order to appear high on the search list, we have to capture the hearts and minds of those who play in these social networks.


4. In order to capture their hearts and minds, we need to play in same playgrounds, and be willing to figure out the rules and join in their games. Standing on the periphery and pouting will not get us noticed.

Playing to spread the word

In his talk, Bob used the controversy surrounding vaccinations and autism as an example of how “experts” have failed to engage in the kinds of conversations (in blogs, etc) that would counter unsubstantiated beliefs that have draw enthusiastic support from non-scientists. The public does not pay attention to research-based outlets - blog entries or videos that “go viral” have a greater chance of getting widespread press and public attention. We need folks who are willing to spread the word in personal and public arenas so that our views can be “part of the machine”.

What does this mean?

Does this mean that we ALL need to dive immediately in the world of Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us, Digg, etc? I don’t think so – but it means we need to find CoP members who could and would! And we need to provide some support for CoP members who would like to join this brave new world and give them concrete suggestions for how they can promote JITP (or any other website they might support). These “web evangelists” could be:

• writing their own blog posts or commenting on others’
• linking on their own websites
• providing links and tags in social networking sites like del.icio.us
• providing ratings in sites like Digg
• creating or linking to media content in sites like YouTube or Flikr

But how do we find these people? What kind of characteristics or qualities should the have? How do we recruit them? How do we provide initial guidance?

Framework for Online Family LIfe Education

About 15 years ago I wrote a paper describing a framework for effective family life education. The focus of this work was developing effective print and F2F workshops. In the paper I described ways to work from content through teaching strategies to community implementation and finally evaluation.

As I reflect today on this work, most of it still seems relevant and important for new practitioners who are interested in teaching parents and families about issues related to relationships, parenting and so forth.

However, as I think about the online versions of family life education, particularly in view of the Web 2.0 tools, there are some important additional skills and knowledge that need to be added. In a separate post I have described the basic software tools and skills, in this message I want to describe the skills and knowledge that need to go with the software tools.

Online Family Life Education Skills and knowledge

Writing for online reading. Although good writing is good writing, writing for the online reading is somewhat different. It is like news writing in that the lead sentence is critical to capturing the reader’s attention, but effective online writing includes shorter sentences, paragraphs, more headings and so forth.

Learning 2.0 design. None of us knows exactly what we mean by “learning 2.0, “ but fundamentally it is about interactive and participatory design. My own suggestion is that we create microlearning activities such as questions and answers, problems to solve, surveys that invite opinions, short quizzes that test knowledge and so forth.

Social network design. If the first killer app was email, then the second killer app was social networking websites (eg., myspace, facebook , etc.) In both cases the common denominator was “social interaction.” This interest in social interaction provides a platform for family life educators to create social participatory activities around issues of family life. I think we need to pose interesting questions and describe interesting examples that invite comment and discussion. Also, we need to have people who have skills at encouraging interaction and discussion. We need to find ways for people to share their experiences, insights and challenges.

Strategic learning design. Most of what we will do in creating learning 2.0 and social network opportunities will be wrong and won’t work. The only way to improve this work is to create feedback loops by monitoring what engages people and improving our designs over time. Failing to learn how to get feedback and learn as we create educational materials would be a big mistake.

Collaborative design. Effective educational design in a learning 2.0 world requires that we are skilled in working with others to create the educational materials and the learning environment. It requires us to be collaborative designers and instructors. Collaboration is hard and often it is a slow process of persuading people to move in a common direction. Yet when it works it is powerful The most obvious example is Wikipedia. Here is great collaborative design. What would collaborative design in family life education look like? How do we create opportunities for contributions and conversation?

Open Educational Design. Every educators dream is to have a library of resources that can be drawn on to create new instructional products, courses, etc. There are many attempts at this work and it is important to continue to work on this effort, but we don’t yet have any particularly useful models. There are several open resource repositories and there are attempts at creating wiki educational institutions based on the Wikipedia model, but instruction is not the same as a textbook or an encyclopedia. No matter how badly we are doing in regards to open educational design, this is an important area to understand and for family life educators to develop new models.