Thinking Ahead – Ideas for a rainy day
While I was arranging the last fundraising event and making mental notes of things that were working, and things that I would do differently, I came up with an idea. I wanted the next creative challenge to be really simple and the word ‘Tribute’ came to mind. I wanted to honour the women in the Philippines who were taking steps into working their way out of poverty.

Opportunity Arises -  social networking serendipity
One morning I friended the friend of a friend on Twitter. I never expected him to follow me back  with a direct message the next day, asking me to call their offices. When I rang, I never expected to be having a conversation about a potentially significant donation to my fundraising project for Women’s Opportunity.

Money changes everything – respect the community
I had a weekend to think about the ideas they suggested and think up a project. I read up about Incentive House. I had to consider what I wanted to achieve (awareness of the Philippines, fundraising) and how I could still respect and create something that my online community would appreciate. I wanted this to be as authentic as possible (at least, as authentic as corporate sponsorship can get). Suddenly my ‘Tribute’ idea sprung back to mind. By Monday I shared my idea for a paid blogging challenge ($100 per post donated to Opportunity International) and soon after the initiative was launched,  raising $1300 in just a few days through the generosity of bloggers around Australia.

Sharing Ideas – social media sanity check
Before launching the initaitive I vetted the idea with a social media friend Des Walsh to get his feedback, which was all positive and helpful! He even interviewed me later on for the Social Media Show to get some more information about microfinance and this project. Subsequently I received two more donations creating an additional US$200 donation.

Image originally uploaded by Ryan C Anderson

Over the last month a number of people gave towards a project  called #SOS09 (Shout Out Social) which had two purposes; to help raise funds for an Opportunity International project and to encourage people to be creative for a cause.

Around the world, individuals used their creativity to express something that mattered to them, including topics such as Healthcare, Hope and Green Spaces. They submitted their images to a Flickr Group, and the images were displayed as part of a digital wall show at Horse Bazaar over the weekend.

Eileen Clegg graciously created a mural to shout out for Creativity and explains her message on video

She says,

“The more we can express ourselves and what is authentic about us, we are sharing with others to add to (this) collective knowledge…

..” so the more we can define ourselves, our creative selves, what we are interested in, our knowledge – then it makes it easier for other people to find us as well, so we can work together..

When we use visuals to express ourselves we are saying: ‘this is a picture of what I am thinking right now’ we are not passing judgment on the world or trying to tell it like it is. We are saying ‘this is what I see right now’

And that’s the best part about creativity – it’s completely individual, nobody can argue with it – and it’s always wonderful.”

Shahin Shafaei reminded people of the importance of creativity and expression in our day to day lives, by sharing his experience of nearly two years in isolation at an Australian detention centre.

Although the event (unfortunately) didn’t raise a stack of funds, being part of this project and event was personally fulfilling. Eileen and Shahin spoke from the heart. A  number of individuals around the world took a few minutes to use social media for positive change, and a small bunch of people braved the rain to come along to the SOS09 event. Even the decor of the venue represented the importance of people, history and culture in a technical and creative context.

Saturday evening I left the event knowing that people around the planet had made a difference, however small, and that each of us had experienced something good through our individual contributions to this project against poverty.

Have you been part of a creative project that made a difference? How important is authenticity and “speaking from the heart” to you?

If you would like to thank the people who contributed to this project AND make a difference to a group of women living in poverty right now, you can make a donation or purchase some quality greeting cards or wall art (all proceeds go towards this Opportunity International project in the Philippines. Thank you for your kind support.)

For instance (from my Age of Conversation II chapter submission)

“It’s easy for people to talk and connect – when the boss is not around. Establishing a culture of trust is essential before ideas can naturally flourish in the Enterprise.”

You can read The Authentic Enterprise by the Arthur W Page society – really worthwhile. So is this podcast of For Immediate Release by Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz with Jon Iwata, who heads up IBM’s Marketing and Communications. Another hat tip to George Faulkner.

Are you expressing the importance of trust and authenticity in your social computing education and communication?

And of course it has to be said – when it comes to Trust...the expert is really Hal Hartley

RIP Adrienne Shelly

A bit of background first: Douglas and I live in different countries, we work in very different roles, but have discovered more about each other over the last few months through blogging (including our intranet), Twitter, Instant Messaging and a brief meet up in Secondlife, where we have discussed issues around the application of web2.0 in the workplace.

Back to this experience. Saturday morning I walked past my laptop, when a message jumped out at me from Twitter…

wow, Douglas and his wife are about to have baby!

I felt so impatient, I wanted to know it was all going well, I felt part of his experience. Then…

I know it’s not the only Twitter birth, but I’m a little fascinated by the the future of lifelogging (aka lifestreaming) and augmentation of technology with our lives so I asked Douglas what it was like to live tweet his birth. This is his response:

“My wife and I brought a laptop to the birth of all four of our children. For the last two we each had a computer. They are convenient for watching movies in the event that things take longer than you’d expect and for updating family with pictures once it’s all done. After three under my belt I was certain there’d be time for Twitter as well as plenty of other surfing–we still had no name and I needed to research some naming ideas.

I only tweeted real time. No backdating. So there was no interruption. The twitterverse missed out on crowning, pushing, breathing, cutting the cord, APGARing, and loads of other medical denouement. Which is a shame since I think there are plenty of folks out there–men and women alike–that have a Hollywood view of what goes on in a birthing room.

Lifelogging was my primary intention. For the previous three we used paper or nothing at all. Those scraps may not be lost, but I certainly no longer know their whereabouts. I suspect to a great degree these tweets will recede in the same manner if not more quickly and irretrievably. I’ll be able to find them when and if I need.

Truthfully, I am an incongruous mixture of ‘kinda cool’ and ambivalent. I didn’t share any of the special parts; I shared the process and the steps. The twitterverse misses out on the brilliance of her eyes and the astounding mass of fluffy brown hair. Nor will it ever know how long it took before she shared the characteristic ‘grandad pout’. I’m not likely to ever break the mood of her nested on my chest asleep and snoring lightly to hack out 140 chars for everyone and no one at the same time.

Serendipitously, I just read an interesting discussion on Privacy Line with Lifestreaming by Duncan Riley at Techcrunch (hat tip to my friend and mentor Jack Mason.) Duncan writes about his concerns around privacy when lifestreaming, Robert Scoble ‘s decision to live twittter the birth of his son and questions the boundaries of personal sharing using social media.

Robert Scoble’s reply to the post included this comment:

“We had dozens of friends who were following every tweet. Real-life friends, too. You know, the kinds that don’t blog and aren’t into technology. It saved us TONS of emails and phone calls cause everyone knew what was going on and didn’t need to call us to find out how things were going.

I’d HIGHLY recommend that other people use the public Internet to keep their families and friends involved in such life events like the birth of new kids….”

So here we find ourselves, communicating in new ways, able to share special moments of our lives and revealing more of ourselves to strangers than ever before. In Gavin Heaton’s recent response to my tagging for the “8 things about me meme” he likened blogging to a social striptease,

“here the writer reveals ever more pieces of personal and professional information until the readers have built a strong and even compelling sense of the author.

Now, my long term readers will know that I started out being quite reticent about my identity and its disclosure. But over time this changed … I began to openly write under my own name, include personal photos, audio and even video casts. Yet each time, I do so I feel like I am confessing something about myself … that in displaying, writing or “performing”, some element of my true nature is revealed. This is both frightening and liberating.”

As for my colleague Douglas, well I think his step in tweeting the arrival of his fourth child was bold, generous, special and a step for him in declarative living. Although, as he mentioned, he didn’t communicate every detail, mainly the process and steps.

And to think he wasn’t too keen on Twitter only a few months ago!

Note: I do not intend for this post to cause personal scrutiny upon Douglas or Robert’s decision to share the birth of their child using Twitter. That was their own personal decision, just as some choose to have water births and others have hospital births. I hope their experiences are examples of the layers of self we choose to reveal in social media and the ability for us to further connect with each other when we share experiences and events using technology.

• Best Use of Blogs, Wikis, or Other Content-Sharing Tools for Learning
• Best Use of Games for Learning
• Best Use of Mobile Learning
• Best Use of Video for Learning
• Best Use of Virtual Worlds for Learning

Methods of learning are obviously changing, and this makes my role in Learning Services and Knowledge & Collaboration even more interesting (and challenging for the year ahead.)

I’m expecting to see more companies implement structured programs and modify existing learning models this year to accommodate informal learning styles. Many existing learning programs fail to engage the audience or harness the expertise “in the room”. I think we will see more people using blended learning models to include blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds etc in more deliberate, constructive, program driven initiatives, something I’m happy to say we are already beginning to see at IBM.

As more companies allow employees access to social media, more support for management and employee guidelines will ensue. Frontline managers will be taught more about online impression management, benefits of using social networks to capture tacit knowledge and build community – and ways to facilitate attention management, trust and authenticity.

The benefits are great, especially as more people begin to work from home and move to part-time hours. So many people talk about using social media to attract Gen Y (the Net Gen), but the maturing workforce will become even more dependent on social media to support lifestyle changes.

Learning, Knowledge and Collaboration – they are becoming even more entwined and I think learning of the future will be so much more engaging, innovative, social and learner-driven. Yes, I think it should be a good year ahead!