e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

I think I'm legally required to post about this "State of the Blogosphere / 2008"

This is nice - this allows me to tie up a couple of loose tabs - the image at the left came from here but it was made with this - a generator that lets you make your own Demotivator posters. I hate those Motivator/Successories posters and Despair, INC does a great job poking holes in that stuff.

All that is just preamble to the obligatory coverage of the latest Technorati "State of the Blogosphere" report. So, aside from the shocking fact that there are more blogs than ever, what is interesting here - actually there is a lot to wade through so here are my high points:

I do like this image -mainly because  - in the best ego-surfing modality of the blogosphere - this blog seems to be one of the 76,000 blogs with a Technorati Authority of 50+ (now granted, I just squeak in with a 68 but hey a win is a win).  

As I sit here writing this blog post with my Twitter open, my Yammer going, Facebok up and going, meebo online, having already pushed photos up to flickr - I also totally grok this quote from the report "The word blog is irrelevant, what's important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.” Seth Godin.

The report goes on to break down into "Who the Bloggers Are" (interesting stat - 59% have been blogging for 2 years or more), the What and Why of Blogging (here I like the breakdown of blogging styles - most bloggers - almost 80% consider themselves sincere, while only 1 in 5 consider themselves snarky), the How of Blogging, Blogging for Profit and Brands Enter the Blogosphere.

So there ya go. Dig through it at your leisure but it does seem that the blogosphere is alive and well and IMHO, rapidly converging with other publishing modes.

   

Who knows of "C"-level executives that have blogs?

Because NBC kind of failed to do it (see previous post), I'm compiling my own list - I would LOVE your help!
(I've stolen a few of these from Marketing Nirvana's past lists but would like to not only update that but broaden it to include more the learning/training field)

John Mackey, CEO - Whole Foods
Bill Marriott, CEO - Marriott
Jonathan Schwartz, CEO - Sun Microsystems
Various GM execs
Craig Newmark, Founder - Craig's List
Ross Mayfield, Founder - SocialText
David Sifry, CEO - Tecnorati

"Blogger-in-Chief" (NBC News)

Not a great story but good...I also wished they had included some links to the other CEO blogs they mentioned...

Day 4 - Man...I'm just getting warmed up! (and a shocker!)

Day 4 and I am on the verge on actually having the number of tabs I am closing by blogging them, surpass the number of new tabs I am openning because evidently I have some sort of OCD that compels me to right-click on every interesting link (and Oh the time sink that the Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes widgets for Netvibes are!).

Thanks to everyone (*and I mean you Mark Friedman*) who has remembered that the Tip Jar is also part of this experiment! :-)

Now for the shocker....(found via  an article in the Wall Street Journal)   turns out that a Harvard professor has found out that the arguments put forward by WIRED editor Chris Anderson in The Long Tail, might not be exactly spot on. Professor Elberse in fact, in very clear;

"For Chris Anderson, the strategic implications of the digital environment seem clear. "The companies that will prosper," he declares, "will be those that switch out of lowest-common-denominator mode and figure out how to address niches." But my research indicates otherwise."

Elberse argues that while there is clearly a "tail", it is also very flat  and hence may not contain as much profitability as Anderson's work suggests. Anderson does post a response and Elberse responds to that but be warned, this gets quickly into such exciting territory as defining what is the "head" versus the "tail."

Elberse writes that

"It is therefore highly disputable that much money can be made in the tail. In sales of both videos and recorded music—in many ways the perfect products to test the long-tail theory—we see that hits are and probably will remain dominant. That is the reality that should inform retailers as they struggle to offer their customers a satisfying assortment cost-efficiently. And it's the unavoidable challenge to producers. The companies that will prosper are the ones most capable of capitalizing on individual best sellers."

While I'm in no way qualified to judge the accuracy of Prof. Elberse's quanitative work, I will say this  - that when we use words like 'retailers' and 'producers' in an age of Cafe Press and Blurb and apps like WarBook on Facebook we need to tread carefully. As long as its online, stores can have inventories of 1 product and overhead of near zero. That must change how we view the head versus the tail.

**I also learned a new word: sabermetrician. Turns out that this is from "Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics." Geez. Who knew?

Day 2: Welcome to Day 2 of Mark's "Clear the Tabs" Blog-a-thon"

No, in answer to your many calls and emails, I have not made enough money from the Tip Jar experiment to quit working - but we're getting close! :-)

I am getting rid of some of my backlog of tabs but I have this problem where I keep getting new feeds from Twitter (Dion Hinchcliffe's tweets are particularly addictive) and Netvibes and I haven't been able to squash the reaction to click open a new tab  - but I'm working on it.

Evidently Apple is also 'working on it' - looks like they sold something like 1 million 3G iPhones in 3 days and 10 million apps were downloaded. I'll say it again - whether or not you own an iPhone, Apple right now is re-defining the mobile experience. I promise that if you don't own an iPhone, the company that made your phone is desperately trying to figure out how to make the next one. It really points to the fact that an engaging design will trump all kinds of technical and pricing issues.

HHS and Federal Government Blogs

Did you know that the Secretary for Health and Human Services has a blog? USA.gov also has a nice list of other U.S. federal government blogs here. I'm going to head over and check out the feeds from the CBO blog and the Dept. of Transportation blogs. Oh come on, I kid! Actually there are some good ones on the list like the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress.

Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: The Blog Book Tour - Week Two

So the pressure is on. Everyone knows that Week Two, Stop Two is clearly the most critical stop on a blog book tour. ;-) I am following some great bloggers like Tom King, Tony O'Driscoll, and Cammy Bean. (as an aside, since a couple people bring up how they read they book, and as a recovering grad student - I thought I'd link to a post I did on "inspectional reading" that still gets a lot of hits - evidently that's what they call it at MIT...we called it 'gutting a book'. :-))

Actually, the cool thing is that no one knows that but we're giving it a shot - or rather Karl Kapp is helping us take a shot. I love the idea of a blog book tour and kudos to Karl for both the book and this idea. The LCB Big Question and this exercise I think really demonstrate the virtual collective that we have out there in the ether in some virtually concrete ways.

Karl's book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning is a great read and I can say that with some authority. A whole back I got on the list to serve as a reviewer for Pfeiffer (the publisher) and occasionally I get an email asking me if I'd like to review a book that is been submitted and so it was I came to meet Karl's book. I will add this insider's note...this was a happy meeting...some books, well let's just say you'd rather not meet them.

Karl though, I think got a bit of a surprise from this reviewer. Usually they (the publisher) asks for something like 4-5 pages of notes; I think the Word doc I sent back in was something like 18 pages! Karl really touched a nerve! So trust me folks, I've been through this book with a fine tooth comb and have had great discussions with Karl over it and can heartily recommend it. That being said, I wanted to recap a few of the notes I took (excerpted from the document I sent back to Karl - page numbers are probably off since these would refer to galley pages). *the trick being, you kinda need the book to make sense of the notes ;-)

• the idea of "knowledge transfer" in the context of these affordances and technologies is critically important, probably THE key to making this topic relevant as you move up the command chain.
• Pg. 37 – I think what is interesting about the Resilient trait – is that these dynamics that you cite have always been present – whether in the form of the coach who just won’t let you quit or that one great teacher that we have all had  - but these episodes were sporadic and intermittent – games allow everyone who plays them to have that experience.
• Pg. 41 – The point about socialization is important – I think about a Boomer boss needing to understand that his Gamer employees understand face time differently but value it nonetheless. He/she needs to think about the negative reaction that could come about if the enterprise has something like IM deployed but the boss won’t let the Gamer see if he is online or available. This is how they build virtual friendships.
• Pg. 45 – Last paragraph – Yes! And don’t forget the companion web site and blog where people will exchange their stories of success and failure in implementing these ideas and where they will be able to form a community around your ideas and grow them into the next book!
• Pg. 124 – Great story here to open Ch 4. The critical question is of course – why gadgets over toys? I think that the answer is kind of near the heart of an essential characteristic of the gamer generation – a toy represents someone else’s fully realized and produced idea while games, gadgets and gizmos are tools with which gamers construct and produce their own ideas – this is the idea that experiences should be able to be customized by the person in them.
• Pg. 153 – Ahh…the Kobayashi Maru…one of the holy objects of the gaming world…right up there with this last monolouge from the 1st Matrix movie…
• Pg. 165 – The point about your son exploiting the flaw is important – we need to think about how we can manage gamers so that they retain this drive to seek out the edges and not beat this out of them.
• Pg. 189 – I think the point you make about the large pharma company creating an environment is hugely important one. There must be associated cultural change to ‘permission’ these kinds of activities – it must be perceived that the organization values it.
• Pg. 224 – I think that in your discussion of virtual trainers you have hit on an important topic and one that I think has multiple layers of design implications. An initial note – on the topic of what these virtual trainers have to look like in terms of graphics, I’d recommend Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun. Both make the great point that the human species studies nothing as closely as other human faces – we are experts – and that is what makes building a human-quality face on the computer so hard (famous game designer Warren Spector has said that “we can do faces just well enough to be creepy”) but it also provides us with a way out. Scott and Raph both point to the fact that while yes, the faces in Half-Life 2 are amazing – they are also clearly not real but that if I do this ( you will immediately, inevitably and crossing all age, gender and cultural barriers – understand that as a face. So again, I think we will need to focus on the qualities of the human/machine interaction that are important – like the quality of conversation. I think that chat bots like those from AIM and MSN and others like ALICE and even a game like 20Q all represent modalities of interaction that are more doable and I think ultimately more useful than something with high graphic appeal.
  

Typepad is Down....Qumana! You're up!

So for some reason, the Typepad backend is down - of course by the time I finish this post, they'll probably have it back running again. Anyway, I thought this might be a good chance to try Qumana - an offline blogging tool. I can see using this to compose posts while on a flight or while in one of those conferences that don't have open WiFi (you know who you are).

The Qumana interface is clean and the setup took all of 30 seconds so it is definitely off to a good start. Qumana also allows you to insert something called "Q-Ads" but I doubt I'll flex that since you and that one other person who reads my little blog  - while I really like you both - you don't really add up to a powerful advertising demographic.

There..that seems like a nice little post...let's see how she syncs up...

Powered by Qumana

Follow Up the Big Question Top 10 Reason Not To and To Blog (Tony Karrer)

Tony Karrer has done an awesome and funny thing and has summarized some of the responses to the "Big Question" ("Should All Learning Professionals Be Blogging?) from over at LCB.

Some of my favorites:

Why You Should:
9. Because it forces you to do your homework (Rodolpho Arruda)
7. Because if you don’t we’ll think you’re lame and don’t know how to do your job.
1. Because your job depends on it.

Why You Shouldn't:
10. Because you are too lame
9. Because if you live in the US you don’t know how to write (Peter Isackson)
8. Because you’re a scared little wuss - Fear of Blogging (Wendy)
4. Because you’ll screw up blogging just like you screwed up using PowerPoint. (Matthew N.)

Priceless stuff.

Learning Circuits Asks- Should All Learning Professionals Be Blogging?

Over at the Learning Circuits Blog (LCB), Tony Karrer and Dave Lee have hit upon an excellent idea on how to use a blog as a focal point for a larger discussion. "The Big Question" works by posting a question on the LCB and then asking people to post on their own blogs and add a comment with the relevant link back at the LCB. You can also just add your own comment to the original post. Fabulous job guys - kudos!

Turns out that the question for this month is "should all learning professionals be blogging?" As of the writing of this post, there were contributions from Dave Lee, Tony Karrer, Brent Schlenker, Stephen Downes, Harold Jarche, Bill Bruck, Jim Belshaw, and Rodolpho Arruda  - with a number of comments as well (and all of these are excellent and mine will be but a pale imitation and late as well). I think that Dave and Tony have both hit on a sound dynamic and a great starting question. (I am a big fan of huge questions and one of the best places (beside LCB of course) to go for these is The World Question Center at the EDGE). But enough of all that - let's get to my answer! <drum roll> My answer is ..........yes........and no.