full posts
Web 2.0 in just under five minutes
Watch this, by mwesch. Excellent!
Thanks to Michael for the link.
My role
I've been very busy lately redefining myself, in terms of what I want to do as a self-employed person. After my graduation I knew I wanted to continue in the social software business, making sense of its impact on working routines and learning strategies. Unfortunately, up until now, people in The Netherlands are still very slow in adopting new software and new learning strategies. So unable to find a job the only route for me was to own my own job, which has its pros and cons.
It took me over a year to figure out to some extend what my added value can be for people. Although the search will continue, for now my focus will be on the individual. A lot of people are continuously struggling with everything going on on-line. People don't know where to start their search. For instance Ton told me the story of a participant in one of his workshops who knew about wiki's, but a search on the internet gave so many different wiki's that she didn't know which one to use and therefore didn't try one at all (the paradox of choice).
Apparently we have reached a point of abundance for newcomers to social software. These people need guidance in what tool (or better which combination of tools) could suit them, based upon their communicative goals rather than technical specifications. Be it this wiki, or that blogging platform. Most important, they need help with formulating the right questions about their needs so they can choose themselves.
Guiding people in the landscape of social software, helping them choose, help them ask the right questions and learning them how to cope with the ever changing landscape themselves is the role I see for myself.
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Masterclass Social Software
Last Wednesday I was present at a Master class social software organised by the Digitale Universiteit. I've written a larger post about the event at my Dutch blog. I will write something about this master class in English soon, but for now I only have the energy to point to the Dutch piece. So if you're able to read Dutch, please head over to Skallagrigg. If your Dutch is not that good I can only ask you to be patient until my eye infection has gone and I can look at the screen for a longer period of time.
P.S.: Never mentioned in the literature, but having healthy eyes is definitely a prerequisite for blogging ;-)
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Sharing stories
Generation gap - using the internet for communicating
"There are signs of a significant generation gap, and rather than using the internet as their parents do - as an information source, to shop or to read newspapers online - most young people are using it to communicate with one another."
A history of Communications
"Apart from moving on to work on other things one reason seemed to be that the explosion of different media for communication made it extremely time-consuming to keep the timeline completely up to date."
Call center via Skype
Dave Pollard: Convergence Bridge
Just take a look at what Dave Pollard is going to do with his blog postings. I can understand the changes in graphical representations, but I'm not convinced the linguistic changes he's going to make will "allow a higher level of intellectual discourse on these pages", as he puts it himself. Makes me curious!
[2-4-2005] Phew, April fools day!
Listening to podcasts
I've been listening to some of the podcasts of Neville Hobson and Shel Holz. I really like what they're doing and they invite interesting guests. The only downside is that I have to sit at my desk to listen to the podcasts since I don't own a MP3 player to download them. I've noticed that I find it very difficult to keep listening to it while restrained to my desk. When listening to a speaker in the same room, I normally don't experience difficulties with multitasking during listening. I can look up stuff in the Net, check my e-mail, write an e-mail and listen to the speaker at the same time. While listening to a podcast I need all the attention for the one task and therefore get bored after a while. I'm curious why. What exactly is missing when listening to a podcast? Obviously, the person your listening to is not physically present at the same time and therefore doesn't 'force' you to listen to him or her socially. Would it be any different when there would be video streams available of the podcasters? But then it wouldn't be podcasting anymore, since you would be forced to sit at your desk to listen AND view the podcast. I think the solution for me would be to listen while walking around the house (or outside), but why are MP3 players so expensive? (at least the ones I would like to buy don't come cheap)
Towards a new communication model
Sounds promising. You can follow the discussion at the IAOC Blog.
Visualizing Time in Social Networks
I'm not that much into social networking, but the tool Peter Gloor and Yan Zhao have deloped for visualizing social networks looks very interesting.
Abstract:
This paper introduces TeCFlow – A Temporal Communication Flow Visualizer for Social Network Analysis. TeCFlow automatically generates interactive movies of communication flows among individuals by mining e-mail log files and other communication archives. Combining those movies with measures of social network analysis such as the change over time in group betweeness centrality and group density leads to insights into organizational dynamics. In addition we have defined a contribution index, which measures the activity of individual actors as senders and receivers of messages relative to a group.
We have applied our tool to the analysis of different organizational scenarios such as management of large software projects, sales force effectiveness, mergers of groups, and research and development teams. Through this analysis we have gained an intuitive understanding of the inner working of these virtual teams, which are hard to obtain by conventional means.
(via Bill Ives)
Norms and values
In the latest edition of Filosofie Magazine (a Dutch magazine) a PhD student, Rutger Claassen (he leaves no traces on the internet) wrote an article about the norms and values debate in The Netherlands. This debate is about e.g. whether it is allowed for muslim-girls to wear headdresses at school, respectlesness to authority, problems with youngsters owning weapons and taking them into school (which recently led to the shooting of a teacher who died). I'd like to quote a few passages from the article (I translated it into English).
- "Established authorities (church, school, state) have got to compete hard with new values that bombard people through advertising, the internet and television. Sources of values can be found everywhere in these days, in the culture as a whole.(...) A conservative reveille, with emphasis on authority and upbringing doesn't get down to the root of the problem. The vicar can preach obedience in church, but if that church is surrounded by bill boards that seduce to defiance and wilfulness, his sermon is not effective. The teacher can try to be authorative, but when the school becomes submitted to hit parades that pretends to measure the achievements of schools, his authority wouldn't stand a chance. The minister can cry out against calculating and fraudulent civilians and companies, but if in the meanwhile his civil servants play along whith the game of corruption and leave topmanagers to their own devices, it wouldn't lead to a change in the behaviour of civilians. In short, if the culture is one of cynical self-interest and distrust in all ways, and politics and other institutions legimize that; than a virtuous upbringing stands no chance.
(...)
We don't need a course on norms and values in schools, but a 'norms and values-monitor' for the government, companies and social institutions. With every decision a politician, journalist, CEO should be wondering: 'which effect will my decision have on morale in society?'"
 | It's a very solid article and these passages triggered me into reading a book about branding: Beyond branding. Ton has participated in the discussions the authors of this book had preceding the writing of the book. He talked to me about it at home and therefore I knew what the book would be about. When Ton and I visited London last november we met two of the authors: John Moore and Tim Kitchin. At that time I had no idea what Ton, John and Tim were discussing. And the time was too short to talk about the then upcoming book. But now I've read the book and the only thing I can say about the 14 authors is that they put into words a new paradigm in marketing which includes the ideas of Rutger Claassen. I most certainly can identify with this new paradigm. This is their message: |
- "(...)business has to change its mode of thinking because doing the right thing is good for business. Companies have to recognize their accountability not only to shareholders, but to all audiences and to society as a whole."(Preface)
"(...)this book does not aim to refute the negative image of business in general and brands in particular. Nor does it seek to attack business. Rather it recognizes that business can be a force for evil, but it can also be a force for good. Brands can enrich people's lives or manipulate them. Employees can find fulfilment at work or entrapment. The task is to create a culture and system where the focus is more consistently focused on the positive."(pp.2-3)
"(...)in order for it to play a positive role in society, branding must adapt to respond more responsibly to real human needs. Without authentic communication among the human beings inside and around brands, little of worth can be achieved. With authenticity, the unique creative abilities of human beings can be released to create real value."(p.104)
I could go on citating the whole book, but it would be a lot easier for me if you'd read it yourself. Or join them in discussion right now (free registration required) at chautauqua.
Bringing back the passion
Last december Lilia commented on my posting Underrated profession. She wrote that the most important thing for her was to follow her passion. That's something I thought about in the last few weeks. I think it's time to bring back the passion in the field of communication. And therefore I'll try to make a start with declaring my passion for communication. Not only my passion for using the expressional ways of communication (the use of (verbal or non-verbal) language), but also my passion for thinking about this thing. The more I learn about communication, the less I'm able to describe to other people what it's all about, because it's about everything in our day-to-day environment. Isn't that exciting?
Underrated profession
I'm a bit worried about the future. That's not because I'm afraid of finishing my education, but of the things that might come after that. The last few months I've been scanning job advertisements to figure out what I want to do after I graduate from university. Untill now not one job description seemed right to me. What is going on in the Netherlands?
Well, first of all we are in 'recession', or so we tell eachother. So the first thing for profit organisations do is cut down all overhead costs. Being a communicational specialist, especially focused on internal organisations, you don't stand a change: you cost too much so your being fired. Secondly, communication seems to be equivalent to marketing. Oh, I do hate that! When I'm graduated I'm not trained to design brochures and posters. Sure, there are students who like doing that. But communication is so much more than marketing. Just think of any organisation, everything depends on communication.
Thirdly, there is the lack of appreciation for academic scholars in the field of communication. In the Netherlands there is a level just below university, called HBO, which is more like vocational training. HBO-training is more geared to practice (learning the 'tricks') and you end up with a bachelors diploma at the most. University is (supposed to be) learning you how to think for yourself. This difference between the two types of education is enormous seen from an academic point of view, yet most people think HBO is very similar to university. Therefore organisations ask for HBO-level skills at minimum for jobs, but almost never academic level skills only. Organisitions still don't realize that they don't really need someone to design their brochure (there are other organizations that specialize in that), but do need somebody who can view the communication within the organisation from a broader perspective. For instance someone who can understand the financial situation of an organisation and translate that to other (problem)areas.
Finally, there are too much women around in the communication field. That results in a lot of parttime jobs being offered for low salary. Come on, I don't have kids yet! When I'm fresh from university I want to work, fulltime. Maybe lots of overtime if I enjoy my job. And I want to get payed enough, because I have to pay of my debts after years of education. A friend of mine, who also did communication studies, told me last week that I should just try and accept that this is the situation for our workfield. But I don't want to do that! I have a vision on how certain things should be and that doesn't include me being underrated as a communication specialist. The past few years I've been learning to go of the beaten path and I'm not willing to go back on it again. That would mean that all the energy I invested was for nothing. I can only hope that by the time I finish my masters thesis the world has drastically changed.
