2007 November « wonderwebby

Archive for November, 2007

Facebook Fridge

Ever realise Facebook is one big public fridge door? You know, the kind of fridge you left messages on in a share-house when you first left home. The fridge door you stuck your favourite photos on, your housemates put their odd magnets, messages, fridge poetry, postcards from friends or lyers for events and films. It became the hub of your household activity, a “what’s happening in your life in glance” central point of contact in busy lives.

Tonight catching up with the lovely Stellah de Ville and Starr Sonic we were discussing the cheesiness of some web2.0 design and how Facebook is one big cheesy bad design aggregator. And how the cheese sticks. People like the cheese. Then I starting thinking how Facebook becomes one big public fridge door for notices, photos, trashy postcards…only this time the pictures move, dance, spin and sing (Funwall anyone?).

For the record, I like a relatively clean fridge door ok? Beautiful pictures and words please. And maybe the odd cheesy magnet to hold up preschool art

Beta Mentality

Sometimes I wonder (as Wonderwebby does) if the uptake of web2.0, social media and virtual worlds requires a beta mentality. First of all, you need to be ready to find the goodness knowing there might be some minor usability hiccups along the way.

It also means having a beta mentality towards the content you are putting out there, ready to gain influence outside of the team or enterprise by losing control of content. Not everybody likes to lose control of the written word. Yet, new initiatives within an organisation can benefit from contribution of multiple authors (eg via a blog or wiki) prior to the final publication. Team members can form awareness of subject matter expertise quickly when given the opportunity to showcase their knowledge and talent.

Mind you, it’ not an excuse to stay stuck at beta release mindset just because the benefits and rewards are collaboration candy. Some people find the entry level into blogging and using a wiki far too technical. Too many logins. Too many click throughs. Virtual worlds freeze up. Navigation and HTML looks confusing. I’m hoping to see some nice improvements soon to the ease of navigation for new users so that selecting social media to collaborate or publish can be as ~~lazy~~ easy as sending an email. Then we might see a much more rapid uptake within large organisations. IF the decision makers can learn to think beta when it comes to content.

Cybersquad Worldview

Published November 20, 2007 innovation , web 2.0 8 Comments
Tags: social networking, web2.0, knowledge-management, influencers, influencing, knowledge-sharing, worldview. social-media, cybersquad, world-view

(What) does your cybersquad contribute to your worldview? Wikipedia’s definition of Worldview is “a wide world perception. Additionally, it refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it.”

When we use social media we are not simply creating dynamic virtual communities of interest and learning. I believe we are also creating frameworks of interaction with the world that in turn impact our ideas and beliefs. When we add a friend on a social network, choose a new blog to follow in our feeds, select somebody to follow on Twitter, read our Facebook newsfeeds, we are choosing to influence our worldview with our cybersquads (;p) to some degree.

Social networking affords a great opportunity for knowledge sharing and community building; you can also broaden your horizons, extend your social networks and spheres of influence. It also means there are people speaking into one another’s lives, whether they realise it or not. As you often read, the people you surround yourself with will implicitly influence and challenge your thoughts and beliefs, no matter how strong your own ideas might be.

Perhaps some might say social networking using new media is too superficial to be quite so pervasive to shape our attitudes, our potential or even our belief systems. The people we interact with in our turbo-charged webby social networks have all kinds of diverse lifestyles, thoughts, unique points of view. Do we ever stop to think that we might influence others with behavioral tweets or blogs with attitude?

I’m a big believer that words can have a tremendous impact. So I’ve decided I might be a little bit picky when I choose to follow somebody. I enjoy the conversation but think I need to rein it in a little.

So beyond social media for knowledge networking, who inspires you? Which blog or podcast challenges you to think and innovate? (What) does your cybersquad contribute to your worldview? Do they draw out your passions, ideas and talents? Or is it a mass of voices in the information vortex drowning out the ability to hear your own?

Two Words

Published November 19, 2007 Uncategorized 3 Comments
Tags: blogging, communication, blog titles, two words

Not sure if you noticed but my titles (subject headings) are only ever two words.

I have read you are not *meant* to write titles this way (eg for search results, google rankings etc.) It’s my exposure to magazine formatting and new media product management days haunting me. I can be a bit ruthless with my editing. Less is more. And now I’ve started a format here and it’s stuck.

I try to shake it off, I think “this time I’m gonna write a sentence to explain my post better”. Then I write the title and it comes out as two words. It becomes a fun challenge for me. This one was easy

Sorting Profiles

Published November 15, 2007 Uncategorized 4 Comments
Tags: application, avatars, facebook, find, friends, organisation, organization, profiles, search, social media, sorting, twitter, visual, visual-search

Ever noticed how difficult using avatar pictures to search for a friend on Facebook, Twitter or whatever social media goodness you are using is? Ever wonder if you could filter the view on groups of “friends”?

litte Blythe dolls lookin’ avatar-ish

When I’m searching for a friend, fun avatar pics tend to get lost in the jumble of colours, icons, photos, illustrations, abstract or generic icons. I would love the ability to search by image instead of typing in a name, but there is no order to the visual chaos. If it was easier to find an avatar it would mean one less step of navigation. I could stay on the same screen instead of being taken to a search results screen, before getting to my friend’s details.

It got me wondering (as Wonderwebby does) is there an better, easier way to organise and search for avatars (by image - not by typing in a name?) I’d like to be able to drag and drop the icons around to sort them. Or, considering how often people change their avatar pics, what about some fuzzy sorting app?

For instance, imagine if you could display the avatars by colour code. A bit like obsessive compulsive wardrobe organisation; white to black with the colour spectrum in-between.

Or, sort alphabetically. And/Or sort by geography. And/Or tag. And/Or group. Etcetera

Then, the other thing. What if you could filter the display of your social networking site via group. There are moments when I want to be able to view work and family only, other times I also want to view colleagues with similar interests, then moments I want the social media burger with the lot. I’d like to have a social network base and networked layers. Friend slices. Sometimes you are in the mood for jumbled up twitterings, other moments your head is so busy you just want the basics thank you. Or would partial-continuous-partial attention (or is that discontinuous-partial attention) be a little snobby and un-socialmedia of me?

Sublime Machinima

Published November 14, 2007 Uncategorized 5 Comments
Tags: art, Kirsty Hawkshaw, machinima, Meteors, Millions of us, Robbie Dingo, sublime

It’s refreshing to see new artwork like “Meteors” by Rob Wright aka Robbie Dingo and Kirsty Hawkshaw created for the Millions of Us artist in residence program.

Pixels, art, music and storytelling transporting us to the sublime, creative and emotional psyche.

Virtual Memories

Published November 10, 2007 lifelogging 0 Comments
Tags: AM Radio, charity, Jazzydee, lifelogging, photo, secondlife, virtual worlds, wheatfield

How do you capture a virtual memory? How can you log a moment that happened in a virtual world?

A photo or machinima may capture the image, perhaps I would need to lifelog it to preserve the moment with tags; other snapshots; a real life image of myself at the computer; music playing on the day; links to the real life weather report; a recording of the sound in my home; a few notes about my thoughts on the day; a virtual time capsule of conversations that occurred on my screen.

As an example, a friendly avatar I met recently in AM Radio’s wheat field asked if she could take a photo. Sweet. She sent me the pic today.

The photo brought back the mood and memories of the moment, even tho we didn’t meet face to face or set foot on actual land. If you weren’t there, the photo wouldn’t really have any connection for you. It probably just looks like a cartoonlike postcard. No memories of conversation, sounds, atmosphere, lighting, mood etc. I felt like fairy floss in an Emo landscape.

The photo might give you a glimpse into that surreal moment, but I would really need a lifelog to tell the whole story online.

More amazing snaps of AM Radio’s field on Flickr. If you buy a copy of the field, all proceeds go towards Heifer International feeding the hungry.

Prolific Profiling

Published November 6, 2007 web 2.0 0 Comments
Tags: 2d, 3d, animation, avatar, develop, development, facebook, identity, learning, linked-in, online-identity, personality, social media, social networking, web2.0

Could this be a new learning and knowledge or communications job description in the not-so-distant future?

Online Identity Development Manager

Seeking a community shepherd to implement and manage online identity within globally evolving learning and knowledge networks:

Implement the creation of an online Identity Development Plan for each employee. A plan to develop and maintain 2D and 3D avatars, eg profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, virtual worlds and other agreed social networking tools suitable for each job function, contribution to a professional individual or group blog, tagging of colleagues etc

Oversee the uptake of self-directed daily investment by employees developing and maintaining online identity and knowledge networks

Educate employees about profile personality attributes and avatar grooming, deportment and netiquette (for the aesthetically and socially challenged :p)

Enable employees to create knowledge networks by embracing and establishing leading online identities and social networks

Assist employees to use lifelogging and microblogging tools

Provide education around the practice of knowledge and profile sharing, profile (and personal) protection and adoption of business conduct guidelines

Promote telepresence, confidence, trust and authenticity

Develop micro-learning modules and identify key knowledge stakeholders for pervasive knowledge distribution

Introduce attention management and telepresence focussed time management skills

Promote innovative collaboration and quality contributions using social media

Provide reporting and analysis of networked activity

Potential candidates must have evident virtual learning communities and a Technorati ranking of less than 100,000 etc etc (heh, you can add to my list!!)

Will the Learning Development and Knowledge Manager role/s soon transform to assist employees developing their informal modes of learning (telepresence) and focus on virtual identity?

Strikes me that those not thinking about including profile and avatar maintenance as part of routine individual development will not be well equipped in the rapidly evolving and changing communications, learning and knowledge sharing space. Traditional learning will still exist and be important of course, but perhaps the pressing demand for telepresence, on demand relevant information and dynamic interactive knowledge networks will make classrooms, elearning, and hierarchal knowledge transfer seem less critical.

I’ll leave you with a nice visual example of profile driven learning - take a look at this map discovered on Jack Vinson’s blog recently.
Marlilyn Martin’s Learning Terrain

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wonderwebby

Archive for November, 2007

Facebook Fridge

Beta Mentality

Two Words

Sublime Machinima

Virtual Memories

wonderchatter

recent wonderings

IBM wonderpeeps

wonderpeeps

wonderlinks

wonderarchives

wondertags