The Popular Crowd

Doesn’t it seem like lately, there’s more and more discussion about twitter followers, being popular, and how to NOT be boring online? Maybe it’s just me, but I swear that every day I think I see more blog posts, tweets and discussions about this and I honestly just don’t get it.

It frustrates me to hear people talk about how many followers they have – there are people out there that seem to obsess over this and make a big deal about people un-following them – why? Why is that a concern for you? I guess I could understand it if you were a company and people were deciding not to listen to you – you might want to think about what your message is or how you might better engage your audience, but if you’re just you? Just a normal person like everyone else.. why does it matter how many twitter followers, or Facebook friends you have? Why is that important to you?

Just a few days ago I saw at least three different comments about how if someone isn’t listening to you, you must be ‘boring’ or not ‘worthy’ of being paid attention to. The other day on twitter I followed someone that I thought I could potentially learn something from and was greeted with an auto-response follow asking me if I’d seen a specific blog post on how to get more followers. It irritated me so much that I immediately unfollowed. It is NOT about the numbers, folks.. it’s about connections, networks, learning, growing, and listening. It’s about having conversations and expanding your perspectives. It’s about collaborating and interacting with each other. This is not junior high school – it’s not about your popularity.

Chris Brogan had a fantastic post today about exactly this sort of thing – perfect timing. Here’s an excerpt:

“I think people get confused by numbers. I am followed by 33,000 folks on Twitter. I had 245,000 unique visitors last month. I’m #6 in Advertising Age’s Power 150, #68 in the Technorati Top 100. Numbers, numbers, numbers. I think that’s part of the problem.

Because, even though I use those numbers as a gauge of what I’m doing here, what I spend my time and attention on is making connections. Many hours out of every day go into making relationships with you. Look at any given page of my twitter traffic. Realize that I’m my own #1 commenter on this blog. I spend hours every day answering email and phone calls from folks who often times want nothing more than to connect.”

Read the entire post here.

When I commented yesterday on twitter about this sort of thing, I received a response from a new follower that basically said “yes, but most people ARE boring!”. I just don’t agree with that. I think every single person on this planet has a unique story and if we had the time to listen to them all, I think we’d be amazed at how fascinating we all are.

So please, can we move past the numbers and popularity game and just try to treat each other with respect and consideration knowing that it’s not about winning – it’s about connecting and learning from each other.

We need new phrases

I don’t know about you lovely folks, but I’m getting tired of using the terms “social networking” and “online community”. Not tired of being a part of all of it – not by a long shot, I think we’re just breaking the ice on these things – but we need some new words to describe what we’re talking about.

Why are we calling it an “online community”. Community is community. Who cares of we’re sitting face to face or typing avatar to avatar. We’re a group of people, together, *united* with something in common.I wonder when we’ll get to the point where it really doesn’t matter if the community exists on our street or on our blog. I hope it’s soon.

Also, “social networking” is really starting to become this sort of ‘catch-all’ phrase that is losing meaning for me.  What *is* social networking? To me it’s just finding ways to connect with people and meet people that you might not otherwise have run into if you weren’t online and involved in communities where you get introduced to people because they either have the same friends you do, or the same interests.

I certainly don’t want this post to come off sounding cynical or negative because that’s not at all my intention. I’d simply like to think about some other terms for what we’re talking about here because if all of this is really just getting started (and in my opinion, it is) and I’m already tired of typing, reading, and hearing those phrases … then we’d better start thinking.

Any ideas?

What’s an eight-hour work day look like?

I’ve been reading some things here and there lately about flexibility in work hours and how we should probably rethink that whole idea of an eight-hour work day. I’d certainly say that, at least in some professions/positions that should be a thing to consider.

I’m certainly not saying that I think flexible hours will work in every situation, but I do think that expecting someone to sit at their desk from 8am until 5pm and be completely focused on work during that time and then leave at 5pm and ignore work until the next morning at 8 is ridiculous in this day and age.

When we’re connecting with students, working on projects and using our gorgeous Web 2.0 tools to weave our community magic, and eight-hour work day is a thing of the past. If I’m adding students on Facebook at 10PM and writing on their wall and joining groups they’ve asked me to join, I’m still at work.

The problem for me is that I *love* my job. I have no desire to turn off the lights at 5pm and ignore all of it until 8am the next day. It’s not how I function. I’m constantly connected, constantly interacting (unless I’m sleeping, but that doesn’t count – and actually my iPhone is about 1.5 feet from my bed during that time as well and if I wake up in the middle of the night, the first thing I do is check email and twitter), and I love that. I love social networking and community building.

Now, if I’m not at my desk at 4PM because I have to run my very active and athletic 14-year old to practice, is that still frowned upon? Is it still a bad thing to “leave work early” when in fact, I never leave work at all.

What’s an eight hour work day look like? I have no idea. I can’t remember.. it’s been so long since I’ve seen it.

Community Mashups

It seems like every day we find a new way to express ourselves in this Web 2.0 world. Until just a short time ago I hated online video. HATED it. I felt like I didn’t have the time or patience to actually sit and watch a video of any kind. I didn’t care if it was news or entertainment, I had no time for it.

I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m finding myself drawn to video more and more and really loving creating my own video content in addition to watching video from others. It feels very ‘real’ and more personal to me these days.

For the Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium coming up in Spring of 2009, we’re considering a mashup project involving attendees where we ask them to submit to us what their idea of “community” is. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with, but I sure hope that a lot of the submissions are videos. I know mine will be.

Social networking for teens

I took my 14-year old to the local office supply store today to get her school supplies. She’s going to be a freshman in high school this year so she needed the usual: binders, folders, pencils, pens, and notebook paper.

As we were walking to the check-out line, I saw a huge poster near the copy/print area of the store that announced the “Social Networking Cards” you could have printed there. There was a teenager on the poster and the sign said something to the effect of “Let everyone know where you are”. I have to say that I was slightly surprised to see it. I guess I just thought that teens already knew the online communities they all belonged to and wouldn’t need to announce it with cards, but maybe not.

The more I work with social networking and the ways to let everyone know “where we are” the more I think these little cards are a great idea. I do think that we’ll make some for World Campus to hand our staff and students and let them know what we’re up to and where they can connect with us online if they choose to do so. It’s one thing to just say “we’re on Facebook, twitter, Second Life, YouTube, and Flickr” but it’s quite another to hand someone a cute little card that bridges the gap between on and offline connections.

Collaboration

I spent yesterday (yes I know I didn’t do my blog post yesterday, I’m making up for that now) in an all-day session reflecting on the past year in my organization and talking about where to go from here. Apparently one of our focuses for the upcoming year is “Collaboration”. Imagine that.

I think that those of us heavily involved in online communities have been collaborating for years, so it was nice to see that was a theme for our organization this year, but I wonder what that really means to the organization as a whole.

I’m quite sure that for some people “Collaboration” means that they’ll try to work a little better with the person beside them, or down the hall, or in another area of the department and don’t get me wrong.. we need to do that. We all – *ALL* – need to make an effort to be a little nicer, a little kinder, and a little more caring in our daily lives, myself included. I do think, however, that the idea of collaboration goes far beyond our cubicle walls and extends outside our building, university, town and state.

Every day that I think about the friendships, connections and relationships I’ve built just over the past year in online community I try to imagine what it would be like if that sense of ‘belonging’ and desire to work together encompassed the entire world. Can you imagine what it would be like if the whole world was on twitter? (We’d see that fail whale a lot, no doubt)

Imagine someone from a small country saying they needed medical supplies. How quickly would those supplies arrive from someone in another country that had the means and desire to provide and help? The collaboration we’re seeing in our local online communities are just the smallest, tiniest ripple of what we truly could do if everyone was connected.

Let’s collaborate with the world.

Listen to me

Yesterday I saw this amazing video on YouTube about online community and what it means to people.

I wonder how our online community feels and what our similarities and differences are. I bet it’s very much like this video. The one thing out of this entire video that had the biggest impact on me was the clip of a girl saying “Where even I can get noticed”. It made me happy and sad all at the same time.

She’s a very cute girl and there would be no reason in my eyes for her to not be noticed offline, but online communities allow everyone to be on the same playing field where everyone’s opinions have the same weight. I love that, and I love online community.

Participatory Learning – What’s your “Technoprofile”?

Saw this post this morning on one of my favorite blogs, The Bamboo Project Blog, by Michele Martin. I love her blog and find something valuable there on a daily basis. Truly.  Michele’s post refers to a post by Christine Martell that refers to a learning framework by Ray Jimenez on social media and learning.

In reading Michele’s post I was thinking about how this still relates to the discussion that we’ve been having in our local learning community recently about “open invitations” to participate and the desire to involve everyone.

As Michele points out, some of our learners might certainly be ready to participate, but perhaps not in the way we would want them to, or in the way we think they should.  I think this is really important.  We may feel that it’s easy and perfectly natural to comment on blogs, edit wikis, and take part in online conversations and even if we extend an invitation to others, it may not work.  We can open our arms as wide as we can, have snacks and refreshments waiting for them, and we may still not have anyone come to our party. Why? Not because they are refusing to participate.. they’re uncomfortable with the ways we’re asking them to participate.

Not only do we need to think about inviting people to be part of our community, discussions, and learning but we need to be aware of the different levels and know where our co-workers are.

I think most of us agree that we want our learners and co-workers to be creators and contributors, but they may not be ready for that. They may not feel comfortable starting a blog, creating virtual content or even editing your wiki. In fact, I feel completely comfortable as a content creator and even I’m intimidated by editing a wiki. No idea what it is, but I’m always a little hesitant to do it.

That being said, these are all things to think about as we think more about “Open Content” and invitations to participate.  Not everyone’s ready for the four-course meal. We might need to just offer some appetizers at first. At least that way, everyone’s at the party.

Ning

Yay Ning. I’m supposed to love Ning, right? I have to say that I belong to several Ning groups and so far, I’m just not ‘getting’ it. Hopefully some of you can help me shed some light onto why this is something I should become really passionate about and invested in.

Every time I get an invite to join a Ning group a little shudder of excitement comes over me. I love being part of online communities and being invited to join one always makes me happy.  Then when I sign in, I am asked, every time mind you,  to create a profile page. Every time. I’m uploading the same photo, entering the same profile info.. every time. Is this something I can just save somewhere because wow is that a pain. Anyone?

I’m also just not sure what value Ning will add for me. Right now it just seems like one more place to say the same things I’m saying elsewhere. I don’t want to make another blog, I don’t want to make another profile and I don’t want to have one more thing I have to check-up on, or keep up with. Again, if there’s something I’m missing with Ning, let me know.. because right now.. I’m not sure I “get” it.

I think maybe if you were someone who didn’t have your own blog (blogs?) or domain, or twitter feed, or friendfeed, or jaiku, or plurk account, or Facebook page, or Flickr account, etc… then maybe Ning would be  a neat place to put all those things, but as it is.. well, I’m just not sure.

I completely understand the value of networks and online communities. I definitely also think that Ning has some great features and would be a fantastic spot to have your own ’social network’ if you didn’t already BELONG to a bunch of different social networks.  I am sure there’s some benefit to Ning that I just don’t know, or that I don’t understand at this point, but from my own experience so far.. I’m not getting a ton of value from it.  Value is a big deal to me these days. I’m finding more and more that the most valuable thing I own is my time and unless a new tool can either save me time or make it worth my time then I’m likely to not fall in love with it.