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Facebook and democracy

26th February 2009 By Leave a Comment

It’s a sign of  how quickly things move in the field of social media, that I was half way though composing a post about content licensing and the recent furore over Facebook’s changes to their terms of service, when what should pop into my feed reader, but another bombshell from Mark Zuckerberg and co. Only this time, they seem to have got it right, or at least they intend to.

This post on the Facebook blog outlines what they intend to do. Essentially, they plan to take a more democratic approach, giving members the opportunity to comment and vote on changes to the way the site is managed. They’ve made a start by inviting comment and discussion on two documents that would become the foundation of the new way of working; the Facebook Principles and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Of course, only time will tell how well this new approach works, and that will depend both on Facebook’s commitment to these principles, and the user’s willingness to engage with them in this way.

You might be cynical and say, “hey, isn’t this just another big company screwing up and now desperately back pedaling?”, but for me, this is what web 2.0 is all about. Things change rapidly and as a result companies like Facebook sometimes get it wrong, but I can forgive them this as long as they keep listening, learning and changing. Better that than the over cautious, focus group obsessed approach of 20th century business.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Don’t blame PowerPoint

16th February 2009 By Leave a Comment

Jay Cross has written a post called PowerPoint is tyranny, about whether offsite conferences need to change. I’ve not seen Jay’s presentation, but I don’t think we can lay the blame at PowerPoint’s door.

Like everything else in this rapidly changing world, conference organisers need to demonstrate value. It will no longer be acceptable to roll out the same old faces, talking about the same old subjects and charging excessive prices for the privilege of attending.

For example, the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering will cost you $1369.00 for 2.5 days of sessions run by speakers that the eLearning Guild thinks you should see.

Compare that to DrupalCon, where I’ve paid $250.00 for 3.5 days of sessions run by awesome speakers that the attendees voted for.

The differences?

  • The latter is a gathering of open source (and open minded) people there to share their passion for the open source platform we all use. It’s not a commercial event, designed to turn a profit. (Make no mistake though, DrupalCon isn’t some kind of open source love-in. There are commercial sponsors, and there will be many commercial conversations and deals going on).
  • There is a fundamental attitude of sharing what you know, without any expectation of commercial benefit.
  • Many of the DrupalCon presentations talk about the future, whereas L&D conference agendas are filled with what’s been done. Have we not got the message yet that information has a ridiculously short shelf life?

Conferences will have to change if they want to survive, and I think we’ll all benefit as a result.

Filed Under: Drupal, Learning Tagged With: , , ,

Learning Technologies – A week later

3rd February 2009 By 1 Comment

It seems impossible that seven days have gone by since I was getting packed for Learning Technologies. It’s been something of a whirlwind. As always, I came away exhausted and with a head full of ideas. It was great to catch up with people I hadn’t seen for a while, and to meet a whole raft of interesting new ones.

Here are the highlights of the event for me.

Tony Buzan – This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him speak, and in all honesty there wasn’t much in the content of his keynote that I hadn’t already heard. But, he is an inspiring speaker with a true passion for his subject that rubs off on everyone.

Seb Schmoller – Introducing himself as someone more normally focused on the learning than the technology, Seb went on to deliver what for me was one of the highlights of the two days. The falling cost of technology, the ubiquity of tools and connections and the increasing prevalence of open source and open content, will continue to change the way people learn. We fail to keep up with this at our peril.

Jane Hart – As always with Jane, there were new tools to share, but I was more interested in the work she is doing with the University of East London. They are building a social learning platform, based on the open source Elgg. The project is still in it’s early stages and I hope Jane will be able to share more when the project is live.

Andy Tedd – This was a very entertaining and informative insight into some of the activity taking place at the BBC’s College of Journalism. Anyone wondering about what it is that makes Web 2.0/Learning 2.0 work, would have found their answer in one of Andy’s slides;

Peer Recommendation

Peer Recommendation

Peer Recommendation

Finally, I’m not suggesting that my own session was a highlight from the audience perspective, although I do hope it was useful, but I can say that it was a highlight for me. It was one of the new format sessions, with three speakers each presenting for 8 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of questions from the floor. Although we were close to the end of the event, and fatigue was taking hold, there were some great questions from the audience. I plan on expanding on my answers to those questions here on the blog.

Filed Under: Learning Tagged With: