Wikis as Mosaics - Social Capital - Clay Shirky - Here Comes Everybody - Ch 5

 

Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger's Wikipedia morphed out of their original 2001 idea - Nupedia - which had an amazingly bureaucratic process of vetting & approvals before content could be published - if you ever been on a standards writing committee you will know what it feels like... it was overtaken by its offshoot Wikipedia .. "a hybrid of tool and community" p 136

However it actually followed the first user-editable Wiki developed by Ward Cunningham in 1996 predicated on the then radical assumption "groups of people who want to collaborate also tend to trust one another. If this was true, then a small group could work on a shared writing effort without needing formal management or process" p 111.

Interestingly Wikipedia was conceived as an open encyclopedia .. becoming "a general-purpose tool for gathering and distributing information quickly, a use that further cemented Wikipedia in people's mind as a useful reference work"  p 117

I find it intriguing when fellow techo professionals pronounce that one shouldn't use Wikipedia as a professional resource let alone cite it - personally I choose to do so - as a first pass - Dummy's entry point if I have to learn something new - like Non Tariff  - Technical Barriers to Trade at the World Trade Organization. It's easy to read - commonsense approach helped me enormously to get started as I tried to navigate the WTO & EU web sites - ultimately I created a wiki in Sharepoint - like a breadcrumb trail to find my way in and out of these seemingly impenetrable maze-like sites.

And my Teen finds the same works for her - she really likes Wikipedia but knows that she needs to cite other more acceptable & reputable sources !

The driver for me in creating wiki pages in Sharepoint was just as Shirky described for Wikipedia ...

"Someone decides that an article .... should exist and creates it. The article's creator doesn't need to know everything ... Once an article exists, it starts to get readers. Soon a self selecting group of those readers decide to become contributors. Some of them add new text, edit the existing article, some add references to other articles or external sources, and some fix typos.. No one person was responsible for doing or even managing the work "  p118-119 . Shirky describes the wiki format as a form of "publish-then filter". - p 135

And so the wiki and its wiki pages seem as though they are becoming a fascinating & evolving series of mosaics - where sometimes you can't see the whole immediately.

Pic 1 Athens - Pic 2 & 3 Delphi Mosaics - Pic 4 Istanbul Topkapi Palace - Pics 5 & 6 Istanbul Hagya Sophia

See the full gallery on Posterous

In fact I find with my org's Sharepoint pages that not everyone wants to edit online but they may tell you verbally or email you suggestions. It seems that many struggle with the concept of "publish-then filter" - preferring to edit repeatedly before publishing. I recall attending a Knowledge Management Round Table where attendees at my table felt too afraid to embrace the "publish-then filter" approach.

This seems to align with Shirky who describes participation in Wiki activities as following a power law distribution - others call it the 90-9-1 Law - ie 1% of folks will initiate content, 9% may comment or amend it and 90% (sometimes called the Lurkers) will only read it but not initiate nor amend. Similarly - this probably reflects public involvement in government consultation initiatives - how some government bureaucrats bewail the "self-selected".

And it explains why Twitter remains highly successful - even if most users don't tweet - they may still value reading the tweets of others they respect. Same effect showed up when my org's ICT surveyed users about one of our Communities of Practice - more folks liked to read, even if they didn't contribute themselves. I shared this with my Management Team yesterday when we began reviewing the state of our Knowledge Sharing programme

"you can't look for a representative contributor, because none exists. Instead, you have to change your focus, to concentrate not on the individual users but on the behaviour of the collective" p 128

Shirky also suggests that this power law effect is what lies behind Chris Anderson's Long Tail. Reflecting further he distinguishes between tightly connected small groups and those larger ones with weak ties drawing the wedding reception analogy where the bride and groom can only "talk to most of the guests for just a few minutes" - p 130.

So the tool is there with Wikipedia & other wikis  - but why do people bother - when there are no financial incentives ? But then why do some folks volunteer to coach kids sporting teams or in Australia deliver "Meals on Wheels " to older frail folks ?

Shirky suggests 3 reasons : to use some unused capabilities, vanity and to do a good thing. He also argues that "Wikipedia exists because enough people love it" p 141

And the nagging question - does anyone care about the wiki contributions anyway ? According to Shirky "Wikis reward those who invest in improving them. This explains why both experts and amateurs are willing to contribute" p 135

His final words in this chapter ...

"When people care enough, they can come together and accomplish things of a scope and longevity that were previously impossible; they can do big things for love .. " p 142 -  in this case for the concept of what Wikipedia means.

 

 

Posted via email from kerrieannesfridgemagnets's posterous

Social Media - Cloud Tools - blessing or curse for the Quality Field - Quality in Unusual Places

Quality Management needs and Social Media Tools in the Cloud often seem totally unconnected. So is finding a long term quality tool in the social media cloudy universe probably asking too much or not ? I chose this as my theme when ASQ's Paul Borawski asked the ASQ Influential Bloggers to explore finding Quality Tools in Unusual Places as their theme for March 2013.

Both Quality and Social Media share a focus on improvement and innovation. However Quality Management requires procedures with documents and records to be kept for extended periods - whereas the Social Media in the Cloud paradigm is more rooted in ephemera and the ever ephemeral - also seemingly all too trivial to some.

Nearly 5 years ago, as the Global Financial Crisis exploded onto the world stage, I found my Quality Manager role totally shaken up. For the previous two years it had mainly required a "steady hand on the tiller". But as my company wanted to expand its export efforts it faced an ever increasing number of non-tariff barriers aka Technical Barriers to Trade aka TBT's. As Quality Manager I was tasked with working through the maze and getting the certifications in place.

The amount of information I had to sift through to understand the global trade and standards system of each country or region that I was dealing with seemed insurmountable - as various countries fled increasingly into the use of the TBT's to protect their domestic economy. The US Trade Representative's report of 2010 showed how the number of TBT's experienced exponential growth. So a lot of work for me, but when you consider each boatload of steel sent to Europe was worth 15 million Euro's - it became quite compelling to get on top of those evergrowing mountains of information.

Coincidentally in late 2008 I had attended a National Knowledge Management Conference in Canberra Australia where newly emerging social media tools were being enthusiastically shared. Initially hesitant, but by March 2009 I had decided to dive in head first into the social media tools pool to help deal with the TBT information overload :

• storing & sharing favourite websites aka bookmarks - (thenYahoo's) Delicious
• scanning for information - Twitter & Hootsuite microblogging tools plus Google Alerts, groups in LinkedIn and powerpoints in Slideshare
• blogs - although back then the number of Quality related blogs was still quite low - initially I used Google's Blogger but then moved over to Posterous which was a little friendlier to use
• RSS feeds & RSS reader - when great sources of information were located I could feed them into Google Reader where I could read them in one place without doing Google searches or going to individual websites - a great time saver - and the articles could be tagged eg Quality, Records, Audits, TBT's etc. And it was all searchable and shareable. Over the following years I evolved to become one of Google Reader's Power Users.
• and I managed to get them inter-connected and talking to each other - my own beautiful little Quality ecosytem.
• I then shared the information in a Company Sharepoint site via a wiki - a great tool for on-boarding a new team member. And to also minimise a whole lot of people going off and doing the same Google searches over and over again. My new team member soaked up the knowledge and information on that wiki like a sponge.

Togther these tools all made up my electronic Quality Personal Knowledge Management System Toolkit.

My company achieved certifications for several Asian countries and for the European CE Mark Construction Products Directive & Regulation. Using the Social Media tools helped save my sanity back then. And over the following couple of years, more folks in the Quality space began using these tools too, as well as ASQ, ISO, SAI Global etc - so it was all a great resource as my Quality Manager role expanded.

Then a few ripples and ructions.

I was headed to an ISO TC 176 SC2 Working Group meeting in Sydney Australia looking at the future of ISO 9001, when I heard that Yahoo decided to drop Delicious in December 2010. I had so many Quality related websites favourited in Delicious so I was definitely shaken by the news. A few days later I moved to Diigo along with quite a few others. Delicious was subsequently reincarnated - so I decided to use both - a sort of back up plan if either should fall over again.

Twitter bought Posterous Blogging and there were whispers that the end might then be nigh for Posterous - although this was denied - so I started moving copies of my blog articles over to Blogger as a backup just in case. I also began using Wordpress in late 2012 when I set up the social media tools for a local resident community group, but I hesitated to copy all of my own Posterous articles to the Wordpress Blog site - wouldn't copies of the same article in three places have been overkill ?

And then in February 2013, on the day I was heading out to South America for 6 weeks vacation, Posterous's demise was announced by Twitter's CEO - with no access available from May 2013. I was relieved that I would have time on my return to make sure all my article posts had gone to Blogger. And I began to re-think posting them all into Wordpress after all.

Finally in mid March 2013 when I was still vacationing in South America, Google announced it was retiring aka axing Google Reader as part of its "spring clean" - now that had me worried. So much of my Quality related information was in there. Previously I had put aside niggling thoughts of what to do if this ever happened.

By the time I was back home in Australia, possible solutions were emerging - 500,000 people had moved to Feedly - which looked prettier, but didn't have all the functionality of Google Reader although it is promised. Will it make the July 1 2013 deadline ? Who knows ? However it seemed the best of what was on offer.

Two other big guns, Digg and Wordpress have promised to develop solutions - and there is an alphabet soup of other products out there - but many were anchored in Google Reader so how they will go once it is axed - then again, who knows ?

Google advised of a tool to download your stored data from Google Reader, cutely entitled "Takeout" - unfortunately for some of the power users like me, we had to wait for even more tinkering to get our information downloaded.

Various folks began to remonstrate - can you trust Google - can you really trust social media tools in the cloud? Is it wise to develop such a reliance on them ? (Harold Jarche and John T Spencer). Others were like ... just get over it and move on - Beth Kanter - with references to Spencer Churchill's 1988 "Who moved my Cheese?"

Indeed the pace of change in this field of Social Media Tools in the Cloud is so great - such a very short half life. But for some of us, we need a much longer information half life - eg for Quality certification requirements or operation of physical infrastructure like power stations, highways and dams etc. Finally, I read, a couple of days ago, that some folks were beginning to recognize these differing half life paradigms.

I liked the comments on educationalist John T Spencer's blog post  on Google Reader's demise. He ended up agreeing it's worth using these tools - but make sure you have educated the students to understand change - and be sure you have a back up plan in case the plug gets pulled on the tool.

I would still advocate the use of these tools for the finding and sharing of supporting information in the Quality Management field - and definitely agree you need a back up plan to ensure continuity of this information. But for that key information, documents and records needed for Quality Certification, I would contend that they be kept in a place where you control their destiny - and not the boards of companies like Google, Yahoo and Twitter.

Posted via email from kerrieannesfridgemagnets's posterous

70-20-10 Learning - an Aussie ASQ Global Influential Voice for Quality Shares on Making a Difference

Lifelong Learning & 70:20:10 rule of learning = Informal on the Job:Coaching:Formal Classroom Llessons  ? Making a Difference Globally ?

I am a great fan of Harold Jarche & John Tropea with their strong focus on informal learning including the 70-20-10 rule of learning. Likewise I am a strong proponent of Quality in our daily lives, and so was intrigued by ASQ's head Paul Borawski's recent post "Quality Tools and Education : Making a Difference on a Global Scale."

Of course, learning & knowledge management are key components of continual improvement in Resource Management in Quality - as reflected in even the previous edition of ISO 9004. In our world Education is not just what you do at school, college or university - we have to keep re-learning in such a rapidly changing world. And we need confidence in the quality of the resources we use, as we continually learn & re-learn.

Nearly 10 years ago I encountered the Learning Cities & Communities movement - centred around Lifelong Learning - a key to resilience of communities in change and adversity. The initiative was largely appropriated by the Community College movement aka Adult Education Associations in Australia. Yet I always believed that it couldn't be monopolised by this sector alone - not everyone is in a position to attend formal face to face classroom lessons.

In Sydney, Australia we had an insightful article by Louise Williams in this weekend's edition of our local Sydney Morning Herald "The Slow Collapse of the Ivory Tower". Ms Williams wrote of how learning is changing from face to face classrooms in an internet world and how this threatens the traditional university or college monopoly on higher learning. She also spoke of how increasing numbers of students are not attending lectures, choosing to source their required information in alternative ways. Curious as I had observed lecturers at my local uni lamenting the same when I attended a prize giving event last November.

And yet it's not new - when I served for 12 years on the Governing Council of the University of Wollongong (located south of Sydney), I found that UOW was already moving into on-line blended E-learning years ago. However there are advantages of face to face learning - the serendipity & synergy of bouncing ideas off each other.

Likewise there are emerging challenges to the traditional "peer reviewed paper" in an academic journal on which academics' ranking is based - enabling them to compete for research funding & attract students. I recall attending a conference across the other side of Australia about 5 years ago, where attendees were denied timely access to copies of the conference papers because the organisers wanted to publish them to increase the rankings of academics who had presented at the conference. It was "all driven by the rankings cycle" as I subsequently found out - and I finally received the conference papers 9 months after the conference! The freshness and impact of the presenters' work in my mind was lost - I'd wanted to share new insights with my professional colleagues - but all I had were my scribbled handwritten notes.

No wonder that with this time delay paradigm, the proliferation and the increasing cost of academic journals, that the peer reviewed paper model is now being seriously challenged by the immediacy of online collaboration. And yet we need to ensure that there is confidence in the quality of online E-learning & web posts. It is also important that "Digital Native" students can discriminate between accurate & erroneous information in a web based & increasingly social media dominated world.

Not to mention the tipping point as we see the rapidly disappearing print book market and the exploding E-book market - with its flow-on impact on Public & Academic Librarians. Librarians are recognising that they must participate in the debate around these changes rather than take the high moral ground and shun it. At a Library Conference in Brisbane Australia last year, one presenter spoke of the advantages of E-Readers for students in the Pacific Islands where high humidity can destroy the traditional printed book based library collections.

Unfortunately some Baby Boomer Managers are still dismissive of Web 2.0 and Social Media tools in Technology & Quality worlds. Yet ISO, the OECD & WTO, for instance, have embraced social media approaches (eg Youtube, Facebook & Twitter)  in trying to reach a wider global audience. Admittedly, it can seem haphazard sometimes especially with social media tools like Paper.li Dailies (eg mine-KerrieAnne paper.li).

However as a Baby Boomer techo manager, I've had to reinvent myself several times over the last 5 years - 1st as a Quality Manager and then during the GFC with a zero training budget, to become an International Trade backroom boffin -  specialising in how standards & conformity apply in Technical (Non Tariff) Barriers to Trade (TBT's). I've used tools like Sharepoint's Wiki to capture my evolving WTO TBT knowledge, sharing it both locally and globally across my organization - to avoid re-inventing the wheel.

So it is great to see how organizations like ASQ are embracing online E-learning & social media tools to address the 70:20:10 approaches to learning. ASQ is bringing a quality approach to these new technologies - setting a standard on how they can be applied for younger and older "students" alike - regardless of whether they are formally enrolled in courses or learning informally. As an Australian based member of ASQ, and one of its International Global Influential Voices for Quality, I am sharing & learning from my fellow Global Influential Voices - a fantastic initiative.

---

 (Please note I do receive a variety of quality resources as an honorarium in exchange for my commitment to the ASQ Global Influential Voices for Quality program. However the thoughts & opinions that I express here in my blog are my own!).

Posted via email from kerrieannesfridgemagnets's posterous

Project Management - Learning via Web2.0 in a GFC World

In the 2009 GFC era where external training & conferences are just off the agenda, many of us have to find other ways to learn.

Blogs and their self promoting headline act, Twitter, provide an alternative approach to staying up to date. Even YouTube is getting quite a mention with its burgeoning E-Learning video's - although the quality is not always Oscar level!

Good Project Management related powerpoints can be found on Slideshare : I really like Craig W Brown's 11 Week Program - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Also see KerrieAnne's UOW KM & KS in PM lecture slides .

There are a number of PM blogs out there eg PMThink! (this blog also lists heaps of others), Herding Cats, Leading Virtually, Effective Software Development, Journyx Project Management, Fear No Project & Project Management Tips. You can subscribe to blogs via RSS feeds and then read in a news reader in Outlook or also applications like GoogleReader.

Project Management Tips is a really good PM related blog. It has a huge number of tips that are actually quite on the mark so far as project management goes. I find entering the PM Tips blog site, a little like the kid in the Chocolate Shop to be honest. So many good things - which to choose ?

One approach is to follow Project Management Tips on Twitter - where the blog's headlines are "tweeted" by @PMTips, with links back to its PM related blog posts. Other PM Tweeters include @gsanchezs, @pmskills, @thepmtweet, @GanttGuru, @ProjectSmart & @meolesen. You can follow Tweeters with good content via RSS feeds and then read in a news reader in Outlook, or also applications like GoogleReader. Makes it a lot easier to get through them quicker.

Project Management Tips also focus on Communication & Learning in Projects and so there is a big focus on Knowledge Management tools.

Some of my favourite posts (admittedly a long list) from this blog include ..

• PM Fundamentals & Basics
• What if there was no Project Management -revisited -Do We Need a Structure
• Is Good Project Management Really Just Common Sense - Books on PM for Beginners
• Prep for Interviewing Project Managers
• Characteristics of a Project Manager - Pts 1,2, 3, 4 - Honesty - Reputation is a Fragile Thing
• The Difference between Projects and Programmes - Value of Project Management Office - Best Practices and Project Teams
• Kickoff & Exploration : VIP Admission Only
• Effective Communication - Managing the Delivery Team - X-Teams - externally focused
• Project Induction Plan- Brown Bag Sessions at the Start of the Project
• Keeping Team Focused on End Goal
• How Competent Are You - Five Signs You Aren't Cut Out to be A Project Manager
• Maintaining a Skills Database
• Statement of Work & The Defining of Requirements - Requirements Traceability Matrix - Agile Project Management
• The Project Customer & Other Negotiation Issues
• Getting the Customer Involved - Eight Things Your Business Analysts Need to Know
• When the Customer Doesn't Know What They Want - Dealing with Their Unreasonable Expectations - Keeping Track of Their Complaints -
• What the Customer is Trying to Tell You - Never Say No the Customer
• Is the Customer Your Friend - Project Sponsors What Do They Do ?
• Internal Projects : When the Scope Changes
• The Art of Negotiation - Pt 1, 2
• Common Project Issues: Keeping Bad News from the Customer
• When Client Can't Do UAT - User Acceptance Testing
• Common Project Issues : R&D - Too much "D" and not enough "R" - Pt1, 2
• PM Budgets & Challenges
• What is Risk
• Underestimating Complexity
• MOSS 2007 - ROI Calculation
• Project Management in these Economic Times
• Project Management on a Budget - Budget Overrun - Project Funding Hits the Wall
• Project Manager to the Rescue
• When Your Management Lets You Down - When it All lt Goes Wrong Again
• Learning & Managing Knowledge in Projects
  • Process Innovation Challenge - Lessons Learned - Logging Your Team's Learnings - Mistakes Matter : Post Project Reviews
  • Project Management Tools
  • The Project Portal
  • 5 Tips for Using Sharepoint as a PMIS - 5 More Tips
  • Wikis in Organizations - Sharepoint Wikis - continued
  • How Useful is a Wiki in a Project - Getting Your Project Team to Use the Wiki
  • How does the MS Wiki Stack Up Against the Competition
  • Articles from Here and There - on Wikis in Projects
  • Knowledge in Projects - An Introduction to KM- 10 Highly Recommended Books on KM
  • Communities of Practice & Knowledge Culture
  • The Benefits of KM - basically from a business bottom line perspective
  • KM at NASA
  • Metrics and Knowledge Management
  • Leadership Expectations - on Knowledge Management
  • Knowledge Management Framework
  • Justifying Your Content Management Investment - continued
  • Is technology necessary for Knowledge Management
  • Does KM work for you - theZen of Seeing - Knowledge Overload
  • Is the Term Knowledge Management misleading
  • A Knowledge Management Fable
  • KM in the News - Effects of Layoffs
  • What's Next After Knowledge Management
  • Email to Manage Your Ideas
  • Blogging within Your Organization - Blogging on Enterprise Portals
  • YouTube and KM

Posted via web from kerrieannesfridgemagnets's posterous

Toronto Web 2.0 Summit - Government 2.0

As a former City Councillor who supported E-Tools for community consultation, I observed some great examples of community social capital, including Web 2.0. So Toronto's Web 2.0 Summit sounds intriguing. Billed as an interactive forum to explore how Web 2.0 technology can change the way governments interact with citizens, create policies and make decisions - see agenda.

The Summit features Councillors, Community Groups, Council officials, industry reps eg Anthony D Williams of Wikinomics - "Government 2.0 :Unleashing Wikinomics in the City of Toronto". Also Mark Sturman, whose Keynote Address was well received. Interesting how he used Mozilla Wiki to develop speaker notes and invite collaboration, also referencing Beltzner's Changing the World slides (large). I liked Sacha Chua's blog posting on her experience as a Gen Y panelist.

... MORE