Technology Twitter

The spaces in between - or communication in short.

Yesterday @lukegrange and I were using Twitter direct messages to organise for Tedx Melbourne. Our messages started short (140 characters) and grew rapidly shorter until they were one word long.

It got me thinking about communication, trust and the spaces in between. How a conversation underpinned by shared context and a pre- existing relationship could use Twitter to efficiently plan complex events.

Seems to me that when trying to replicate faceto face conversation in social software, we forget the power of the spaces in between - those spaces that exist naturally on face to face communication . So often on the web we try to fill the spaces with words when we'd be better off trusting ourselves to fill in those spaces. Isn't this how trust is formed?

Why iPad is boring and exciting simultaneously...

I find myself generally bored with the iPad as a gadget, no desire to fondle it's sexy screen or any other kind of desire in general. 

 Is it because the device is boring or is it more as Shirky says that for a technology to become widely adopted it needs to become ubiquitous. 

I'm not meant to find it completely desirable because it's not an 'early adopter' or gadget queen gadget, it's meant to be used...

Content is boring - right?

In my field of online content publication, the potential for innovative publishing models becomes exciting...

We're so used to the idea that innovative online content needs to be rich in multimedia supplied by the the author/publisher...  Does the iPad whisk us away from this model offering instead a true read/write environment. 

Content as stimulant?

A place where content is a starting point - a stimulant... where richness is added and extended and grown by the user through a rich assortment of plug-ins, apps, extensions and multimedia. 

Where something can start as one thing and end up as another.  Where evolution of content is in control of not just one user, but many.  A content model which truly resembles the richness of search?

It's easy to be cynical, but I think the true excitement of the iPad is in it's "boringness".  It's a model I'm looking forward to playing with.

A renaissance by any other name - or when DaVinci Googles

  On (or around about give or take a chocolate or two)  6th day of Christmas I sat down to think. To observe the Noughties transformation as rich and as complex as the renaissance.  By the end of the noughties I know less about more. 

In the space of 10 years we’ve moved from a narrow horizon that may “blind us” (Csikszentmihalyi) to Richard Foreman’s “pancake people spread thin with little substance, connecting wide with a vast network of information accessed by a mere touch of a button". 

 

The GFC has created a gritty reality and moved us away from objectified change that "distracts society from valuing the truths and insights it has acquired throughout the best moments of human history" (Frank Furedi).

 

Csikszentmihalyi (a.k.a that flow guy – thanks @trib) maintains that "creative new ideas arise at the interface of domains, markets, technologies” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2001). Thanks to Arnold Hauser, I discovered that “in the art of the early Renaissance…the starting point of production is to be found mostly not in the creative urge..of the artist, but in the task set by the customer”  (Arnold Hauser, 1951, p 41; The Social History of art, Vintage).

So where are we?  Micropatronage has provided new forms of funding, open systems and an abundance of data have created new opportunities across Health, Medicine, Education, Government.  An empowered community of technologically and digitially literate individuals have created the "synergy of newfound knowledge and able artisans" (that flow guy..) necessary for this new renaissance. 

 

It’s greater than a bubble or a boom, something that facilitates transactions of experience between generations.  Even, as was suggested in the Spectator, a new form of GDP based on intelligence not wealth.

 

In my current field e-learning, online learning, online multimedia- whatever it is called today and what it will be called tomorrow we transforming content from a product into a growing ecosystem of content a publication environment that empowers users.  It’s scary building something that you don’t quite understand – but exhilarating too…

 

We (my team and I) are making a playground where expertise meets content…  Where human experience, work experience and industry experience are blended to make customised ‘outfits’ suitable for all. 


 

Our part of the renaissance is informed and supported by experts past and present.  We are not inventors, we are artisans, informed by experts past and present.  Like the builders of the Florence Duomo we take what was excellent, mix it with what is excellent, and add a pinch of what could be excellent.

 

My noughties are all about mixing and I am excited to be a part of this Renaissance.

Micropatronage - taking government funding to Renaissance 2?

I was at #trampoline in Melbourne on Saturday.  A wonderful creative day full of inspiring conversation (but that is another post).  @RossHill gave a lightning talk on micropatronage:

- micropatronage is the combination of the concept of the patron with connectedness. “Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another.”

It's a concept I've come across before, but somehow in that creative oven of ideas, it set me thinking. 

In one of my previous incarnations I studied Florentine patronage, and it always interested me how patronage benefited both patron and beneficiary.

It also interests me that in Florence, patronage was the key to social status.  Career and social mobility were dependent on being involved in a network of patronage relationships.

Patronage supported not just creativity but the fundamental structure of society.

..you waffle woman, what's your point!

I was interested in Ross's take on micro-patronage as supporter of small innovative projects, but what if you take it further.

What if it's a natural extension of #gov2au.

I work with projects that compete each year for funding.  I write reports, and I collect data to meet compliance requirements.  This limits the capacity of project to innovate by forcing it to meet known compliance levels, and never progress beyond.

Citizens as patrons..?

Imagine if government funding, or at least elements of it could be subject to micro-patronage.  Where not just government departments but taxpayers could apportion an element of their taxes to projects which they felt would further the societies they lived in....

It sounds crazy, but could it work.  We talk of open data.  Imagine how the reports and the data would look if projects were openly competing for patrons.  Sure, there's probably a need in the transition stages to phase in the concept... 

Imagine the way society, innovation and funding could reconnect and create a second renaissance, a true chance to fund and connect some of the micro-ideas which deserve development, and perhaps take us beyond compliance, and into a rich new social network. 

Would it work, could it...?

Images: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/Images/ARTH_214images/van_eyck/red_turban.jpg

How I mixed up education with marketing (and other unbelievable facts) ....

or, about an error of judgement.

When I was more idealistic, better looking and wearing my ‘twenties goggles’ (not googles)… full of the joys of the ethical and the just, embellished by a touch of the creative, I was drawn to the giddy sparkly world of marketing. 

While drawn to the creativity, it seemed marketing was a space driven by co-ercion - a seedy space dependent on the identification of people’s weak spots….. Marketing was hard nosed, cynical and vaguely dirty - a space where multi-national conglomerates made decisions about the products I needed, the way I should live, and the things I would aspire to!

As a result I took my multimedia skills and altruism and worked with the evolving online education space.  I saw a utopian world focussed on the evolution of the creative mind, and ready to harness the emerging collaborative ecosystem that would be future education. A world where the user (aka learner) would drive the use of multimedia,

Fast forward a)some b)a few c) enough years...

..add some google, and a touch of experience, an explosion in connectivity  and a mobile device or two to discover...

A world of connected education, supportive of individual learning styles.

A global knowledge bank of subject matter experts from a global knowledge bank?

A wonderful user utopia supported by choice and the skills to evaluate knowledge

A creative collaborative world engaging and enabling.

 

None of this...I was wrong – not just a tiny bit wrong, but drastically, ninnynitted, 180 degrees wrong! 

Yes, all that potential exists, with my twenties goggles on, I can see that space.  However, the risks required to encourage this space as ubiquitous learning environment have not been taken.  It turns out that educational bureaucracies are hamstrung by the need for consensus.  Where the constant need to make sure everything is uniform has led to an educational system driven by coercion. 

Where the institution knows best and makes decisions about what the learner wants and then serves up an interpretation. 

Education makes decisions about what you want and then makes you conform to the constraints, marketing works out how you work, and then makes something appeal.

Marketing asks the question “what is new” how can we use it, Education works on measuring what has been and ensuring that all that is new conforms to all that has already been.

I am not here talking about those wonderful educational pioneers who are creating collaborative, connected learning spaces but about the structures at a government level which ensure a system that works on coercion and compliance that constrains.

One that still, at an institutional level puts the user last. 

What do I feel…bemused, but also driven - by an excitement and need to find ways to add the sparkle and pzazzz of the marketing and design world to the potential of the education world – a place where ‘blended learning’ has a whole new meaning, learning from the diaspora of creative arts and not just from a self perpetuating circle which constrains itself.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdickert/553598867/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharonkcooper/2948717977/
• http://www.gerryriskin.com/Question%20Mark.jpg
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/monkeymagic/209093925/

When only 'My Mob' rules - bewitched twittered and beleagured

Hypocrisy, or something more complex?

• It seems that since Twitter has gone mainstream (for which my references include:

The Age newspaper
The BBC
Sydney Morning Herald
Channel 9
We've heard about famous twitterers from Demi Moore to Senator Conroy (fake and real, with the fake attracting far more attention) and Malcolm Turnbull, KRudd and Stephen Fry, to mention a few.  It seems that everyone is Twittering. 

So why the hostility and animosity from the web community.  The violins are out in full.

"It's all over"

"They've taken over our Twitter"

There's an avalanche of video and blog posts predicting the end of Twitter as we know it. Ridiculing those who are 'Twitter' addicted. Why the animosity.

Surely we wanted this - we wanted people to get it - we've spent columns of text, video, print trying to convince the world that this was the way of communication in the future. "Mob Rules", "Crowd Sourcing"

I'm taking my ball and going home!

Now that the crowd has come, we're not interested any more.  We don't want to play. 

It turns out that the crowd in Twitter is just like real life.. It's mundane and sophisticated, interesting and boring. We have what we wanted, a small microcosm of life. It is uncomfortable to be woken from the illusion that we are special.

it turns out that to change the world, we will have to put up with the marketers, the ignorant and those that do just want to talk about chocolate. 

The question now is what we do in this space, are we prepared to act, to do the hard stuff?

Can we do the hard stuff:  We need leadership not cynicism!

Twitterati, I think we need to have a good hard look at ourselves.  

• Do we want people involved?
• Are we surprised that those new to Twitter are clumsy with it.
• Were we sophisticated in our Twitter usage when we started?
• Are we sophisticated now?

Does it matter so long as we continue to have the opportunity to network globally?

Are we prepared to look at this next stage and work with it, to find out where it goes, or are we going to be too busy looking for the next phenomenon?

We started it - are we prepared to finish it?  It's leadership we need now not cynicism. We don't know where it's going, so how can we possibly know that this next bit is wrong?

Ralph the hawtness in his new thong...

For anyone following Ralph's world journey, you might like to see his emerging new look...

Obviously he needed some thongs after a trip to Oz - otherwise he might burn his perfect feet on the sand... and he's inclined to say what he thinks too - hence his 'get your camera out of my face' request..

He still bears@documentally's photograph from his sojourn in London.  I'd like to give him some sparkle, bbut didn't want to monopolise him for next time!  To follow Ralph's travels @n96WorldTour. You can also find him on Flickr #n96WorldTour

 

 

The psychology of knowledge sharing - how a phone became a gnome

Ralph aka the hawtness (@n96worldtour) has been living with me for a week. He's not far from moving on. So what have i learnt from his stay.. First.. I love sharing my life.. Second.. There is a pressure to sharing a life online:
What if its incredibly dull to people..
What if other people's lives are more interesting than mine..
Who is watching..
What kind of footprint will i leave?

Why do i feel so guilty when i don't update.. Once i'm behind, why do i feel that i can only post something awesome to return with a bang!

Its a bit like being a teenager again..
Why is this important?

Because creating environments where people (other than geeks) feel comfortable sharing information is vital to connected organisations.. Because at the moment we connect as individuals and mainly connect with other people with our skills..

Just suppose we take as given that shared intimacies contribute to greater knowledge sharing efficacy. I.e that knowing what someone had for dinner makes you more likely to see them as a 3d person with whom you will share than if they are a name on a page..

I love to share information and am comfortable in online spaces.. And i feel uncertainty. How can we create structures that support newbies, address their fears and address the psychology of online connected-ness.

Having a shared phone has helped here.. Instead of my updates being isolated they are contributing to a shared global story.. what if a division had a shared phone.. A gripe phone for recording grrrr moments. A wish list of improvements.. A focus for weekly meetings.. 'Here is this weeks' story..' by sharing a device every participant and their connections can collaborate on a perspective.. So simple - but effective?

So. My phone has become a gnome.. Demanding, a little bit magic.. And more than a shiny gadget.

n96 aka Ralph the Hawtness - shares photos etc

I have renamed the travelling n96 Ralph - I tried to call him a female name, but it just didn't suit his black shadeness - Thought I'd share what he's been up to recently... oooh - and of course - the most important things following a morning hobnobbing with the bigwits..(oops wigs...)

One Nokia N96, one suitcase, one world tour, lots of places, one story...

Charlie Schick from Nokia has recently started his N96 World Tour, with the phone starting off with @solobasssteve in London.

A few weeks back I wondered what would happen if a phone went hand to hand, streaming wherever it was, slowly accumulating a story of its own travel. Part of this was inspired by The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants  (of which I've watched a trailer) and Flat Stanley (which my children both participated in). But, also, part of this was wanting to tie together a bunch of interesting people I have met and known, over the past few years, with something fun.

Peeking through curtains!

Well having wondered, the phone in it's travelling pack arrived in Perth this morning.  It's been so much fun having a sneak peek into someone else's life. 

It was so much fun to get a phone complete with snippets, conversations, photos and snatches and fragments from a life on the other side of the planet.

I've been watching the phone's progress on Ovi   I must admit to some parochialism as an ex-Londoner, I wanted to see how things were...  In fact, I kind of had a mini-phone love in to see if there were any dusty smelly London vibes left! 

I've recently spent a lot of time wondering about data, fragmentation and stories.  David Snowden and Derek Featherstone amongst others have prompted me to think about narrative as a means of connecting fragments.  Stephen Poliakoff's drama also had me pondering the randomness of events tied into meaning by narrative..  Odd combinations I know, but isn't that what's so wonderful about this web world... 

Get on with it.....

Alright ok..  What's the connection between phone world tours and random events given meaning by the storyteller.. To me it's all about the shared device.  I LOVE the idea of a gadget touring the world gathering fragments.  Each recipient adds layers, stories and meaning to create a complex international story.  The phone is just the 'memory box' storing fragments.  It's a microcosm of our wonderful web, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it grows. Let's play Homer and the Oddysey and interpret the world through the gadget...

To play...follow, and add your bits.. add the N96 to your feeds: 

- N96 World Tour on Share on Ovi
- N96 World Tour on Twitter

Oh yes, and #Perth - send your stories :)