Specifically, in terms of the people that I know, there are huge gaps in skill set and experience. While I have access to a great many people through my professional social networks, there is much more that ties them together than separates them. Each of them has more than a passing interest in technology. Many, if not most, have some interest in teaching and learning. And, nearly everyone I associate myself with is working on creating, writing, coding, connecting, presenting or some other productive pursuit. These things that join them all together as “my network” also mean that I am missing out on huge amounts of information and people that do not fit these roles. While I can go out of my way to collect voices that go against my own ideas, even those people will be passionate creators of content, have an interest in learning, and probably care about technology. Those voices are not new data points; they just provide a new outlook on the same data.

I ran into an amazing tool for visualizing all of the data points in my network, and it really brought home just how homogeneous my network is. The tool is called Gist and once you give it access to gmail, twitter, linkedin, and facebook, it will analyze all of your contacts and conversations to see the patterns of how your network acts and reacts. It literally shows you just how important each contact is to your working and waking life. You can adjust this importance if you like, but the default data is pretty telling for me.

The most important people in my network according to Gist are all involved in Online Teaching and Learning, more specifically, the online school in my district. While this is not surprising, it means that on any given day, the data points that I get to consider are all working on the same things that I am working on. They are working toward the same goals, bringing only the small differences in their experiences to the table.

So, now that I know exactly just how insular my network is. Here are the following things I would like to add in order to gain a much richer perspective on my own existence:

• A fortune 500 CEO
• Some kids who make up games for fun in the middle of a large metropolitan city
• Professionals who do not speak english (Google has a pretty good translation feature now)
• A cohort of happily retired individuals
• Someone like LeVar Burton (Actor, eloquent speaker, fan of reading)
• People who struggle to understand technology
• Baseball players who toil in the minor leagues for 10 years or more
• People recently divorced (I literally can count on one hand the number of people in my close network that have gotten divorced. While that may be an anomaly, perhaps it has something to do with the number of people in my close network that are children of divorced parents)
• Functionally illiterate people with good paying jobs

And there are lots of other data points that I think would add value to my outlook for technology, learning, and entrepreneurship. While I love that Gist can show me all of the holes in my network, I have not yet been able to figure out how to fill them. That kind of a service would be one that I would be very interested in.

I would like to imagine a world in which I can say that I have all of the data points required in order to speak and act in my own best interest. While I can say that I do that right now, I believe that without hearing the stories and understanding the background of lives outside of my daily existence, I can’t really know what will lead me to greater understanding of education, the economy, politics, or humanity. I feel like those things are worth knowing, too.

Perhaps social networks are structured all wrong for this type of pursuit, though. If I want to find people who are nothing like me; how would I go about doing that? Facebook is set up to connect me with the people that I already know, LinkedIn connects me to people that I work with, and Twitter is a wildcard but it has a specific userbase that mostly fits with my worldview. Maybe it is time for a social network to be created that puts together all of the stakeholders on any given subject, especially the ones that are not traditionally listened to. Perhaps there is room for a network to grow around getting everyone to the table, not just those with an inclination to show up. I want a social network to exist for the simple function of telling the most complete version of a story possible. That is a story I would read.

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So, my question becomes, how is color training us to be active participants on the web? How is it asking us to collaborate? How is it pacifying us? How does it cause us to consume more or work less?

As someone who is in no way qualified to answer some of these questions, I feel like I should start with something specific. Let’s take the examples of color that I mentioned: Twitter blue and the four colors of Google.

The following are companies who all use some form of the Four Colors of Google for their brand:

• Zoho
• The Olympics (with black added in, but I think it still counts)
• Kestrelflyer
• Joomla
• eBay

What do these companies and organizations have in common, and why would they all choose to go with a four color logo that seems to have been designed with the same aim in mind? My feeling is that these four colors represent a standard of quality. These four colors represent something that people will want to put their trust in. They say to anyone who wants to look that the company in question takes all kinds and then strives to be the best at one thing (at least one thing, that is). These colors have been embedded into the fabric of the web as the face of leadership (or at least the hope of leadership, in the case of Joomla and Kestrelflyer). I find myself gravitating toward these services precisely for this reason, even if subconsciously.

Now, Twitter blue represents something else entirely. Here is a smattering of companies who want to be associated with that color:

• Skype (it was a darker blue a few years ago, though)
• Portal (for xBox)
• Vimeo
• Miami.com
• Today’s Parent Magazine

Each one of these companies wants to be thought of as something new, something fresh. Each one is looking to make a name for itself in a different space. They may not share a lot in common in terms of the technologies they employ, but each one is looking to be recognized, to stand out from a crowded field. The Twitter blue has come to mean all of these things as it continues to expand just what is possible with “the new.”

While we may not be able to derive any definitive conclusions about the way that color affects our overall habits on the web, I believe that we are being trained by the use of color to feel certain emotions and to react in a certain way based upon the colors that are chosen for a brand. This may not be anything new to a graphic designer or marketing guru, but it is certainly a revelation for me in thinking about my own habits online.

While content is important, as is service and quality; in an increasingly visual world, we must take into account all of the types of persuasion being pushed at us. Color included.

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Yet, most of us do not see Google as directly competing with our interests. We use Google, and many of us love Google. We filter everything through our Gmail accounts. We use Google Docs to edit and store our important information and presentations. We plan out all of our daily events in a calendar that reaches farther than a daily planner ever could.

We see them as an incredibly useful and “non-evil” company. How is it that we are so comfortable to outsource large portions of our jobs to a service that we continue to find endearing?

I continue to come back to the example of how teaching and learning has changed in the era of Google. Before Google indexed the world’s information, teachers, the library (including the encyclopedia), and other expert “people” were one of the only ways in which to get the knowledge required to earn the grade you wanted. There was no self-paced inquiry driven model for figuring out the dates of when something happened or the cause and effect of a war (without huge dependence on the teacher, books, and experts that is). Teachers occupied classrooms the same as they do now, but they were relied on for the information in a way that can’t be said of today’s teacher.

That means that fundamentally, teaching is different now. It has to be. When Google went head to head with teachers on the basis of their wide breadth of knowledge, Google won. So, they forced teachers to shift their focus to the activity and experience of learning rather than the “stuff” of learning. While this may not be universally true, students come to class with devices in their pockets capable of relaying all of the content for a given class. The teacher must respect that, and find a different place to compete for the attention of students. They must find a new “market” that Google can’t yet compete with.

Authors, Journalists, Programmers, and any other specialization that Google has put in their sites must do the same. In fact, we must all find markets that Google cannot penetrate if we want to stay employed. The average worker cannot be an information expert, rather she must be an integration expert. She must be able to take the information that Google spits out at her and make sense of it, integrating it into the systems that currently exist in her company. The folks in IT that used to be in charge of setting up calendar, mail and disk images to be maintained and upgraded must find another way to occupy their time. They have to find a way to take what Google can offer and train with it, implement it better, or build on top of it. Even the person that makes things must be able to iterate faster upon the product line because of how easy it is to produce rapid prototypes and harness the power of the crowd to distribute the manufacturing process.

I had a conversation with Ashton recently, my co-founder of Open Spokes, discussing what would happen if Google moved into our space before we were really ready to launch. We talked about how scary that proposition was. However, I realize now that it is only scary if you are so attached to the idea of what it is that you are “selling” that you can’t find a new space to be in. While direct competition with Google can be done, that isn’t really the point. If Google has decided to develop something that competes with your “product”, you must realize that your “product” as you have defined it isn’t your core business. Just as with teaching, the core business of schools isn’t the information, it is the learning itself. When Google moved into the news space, newspapers needed to realize that information can’t be their core business anymore. Their core business must be about the process of connecting individuals with the information and people that are most important to them. If news is to survive, it has to focus on the conversation as much as the content.

So, what should you do when Google comes for you? Pivot and believe in yourself enough to know that your “core business” can never be outsourced. As a person and as a contributor, you will always have value so long as you never stop working toward finding a space where relationships are the focus and not information. I still believe that relationships and the structures we build around them is one thing that Google will never be able to index.

While this kind of thinking is almost Utopian in scope, my question is whether we are not just shifting the ways that we consume, but rather if we are shifting what we consume as well. Is watching a movie on an iPad the same as watching it on a TV? Does streaming music onto your Boxee box change the song itself? Is the news, when read through a smart phone, the same news?

I would like to make the case that the very content we consume is changed by the distribution channels that it takes. In a conversation I had with @raventech last night, we discussed whether or not a hashtag on twitter could be the nexus of a movement. Could a single technology be the organizing force which pushes all conversations to be about changing the ways that schools and learning organizations operate? The distribution channel of 140 characters forces us to be on topic. It forces us to hyperlink and pivot fast between topics. There is no room for drawn out back-room deals to be made. Twitter is searchable and open. A hashtag can be archived and sorted for any information of value. This means that the message is fundamentally changed by the stream of tweets that it inhabits.

It is the same with more mainstream content. A song really does change when you can see the lyrics on screen. A movie really is different when you can speak directly with the director in a live chat (as some BD-live content has done). A book really is different when annotations can be searched and done collaboratively. These are not small shifts.

As many people in the media industries have bemoaned over the last few years, the old distribution methods are dying. If video didn’t kill the radio star, certainly Last.fm will (or at least the disc jockey). When distribution is actually distributed, no one person or company can actually own it. While the world may think Apple is making lucrative distribution deals with Marvel comics, textbook companies, and major publishing firms; they are really changing what a book is. They are changing the message of all books to be: read me… but also collaborate with me.

They, and nearly all new distribution forms, are causing us to question the very nature of the formats that we have held dear for so long. While the experts and the artists will always be the ones that we look to for their work, the ways in which we consume content are dictating to us to become more involved in the process of creation. We are not only creating well-informed (and advertising-saturated) customers. We are also creating customers that expect to have a voice, that expect to be social, and that expect to co-create.

This is what will save the dying industries. Not micropayments, not ad-support or blending video into newspaper layouts. The thing that will save newspaper, music, and film are engaging the audience in the means of distribution itself. When we feel like we own the content as a part of ourselves, we will buy as much as we can. And when the distribution channels truly become two-way, that is when their value will be irrevocable. We will just simply need the content because the content is us.

My initial reaction to budget cuts is to say that I have a unique enough skill set that will save me from getting the ax. I react by distancing myself from anyone who does not have such a “skill set”. This is just as much of a defense mechanism as those who are trying to huddle next to one another for warmth and solidarity. My reaction to bad news is to state that I am above it, while others reactions range from disbelief, to intense debate, to outright overworking. I don’t think that any of these reactions are better than any other.

But, perhaps there is a strategic reaction that can be found somewhere in there. It is possible that among all of the gossip and unending rumors, there lies a truth about what to do when you realize that people’s jobs are on the line (including yours). As much as anyone can really have an answer, here is mine: make lots and lots of noise. Ignore all gossip and start talking about what matters to you. Get into the conversation with and about content because it is one of the only times that other people will be talking about everything but content.

When budget cuts are discussed, real work gets pushed to the side. Don’t let it. Stay on message. I’m not talking about being insensitive to the plight of your fellow worker, but I am talking about bringing things to the table that you are working on. Send out e-mail about projects you are a part of and ask for opinions and help. Blog about what it is that you are doing. Have conversations with anyone who will listen about what is going on in your district, your company, or your organization. Whenever anyone brings up the budget, you can tell them something new about what you are developing. You are a fountain of stories about what you have done and are going to do. Tell those stories repeatedly.

If you make that kind of noise, you will be one of the only ones who looks collected and calm, even if you have never felt a more potent fear. If you approach people with content and questions, there is very little they can do but to respond in kind. Yet, you are not ignoring the problem. In fact, you are facing the problem head on. You are telling anyone who cares to listen what value you have and by involving other people, you are stating their value too. While this is not an original idea, it is one that I need to be reminded of every day that I sit in on a meeting listening to an interim super-intendant talk about the “difficult economy” or “tough times.”

THIS is a part of my noise making effort. While it may not save my job, I know that someone will hear it and start a conversation of their own. If I can create a space that continues to work despite the paralyzing gridlock that happens when you turn people into numbers on a spreadsheet, then I will be truly “saved” in a much larger sense.

I did not get into my position in order to feel job security. Nor did I start my work to steer clear of controversy. I did, however, start in order to create change. And that is what I plan to do until someone tells me I can’t do it from here anymore.

Hope is idealistic because it can be. It can wait around for years in the bellies of everyone who has filled up on it as their exclusive diet. It clouds judgement and makes individuals forget just how hard everything really is, and why it has to be hard. Hope props up really terrible ideas and allows truly brilliant people to sit on their hands and wait for things to happen.

Clearly, this isn’t the type of hope that Obama has made a part of his platform, but I don’t think that I can really talk about hope without bringing his brand into the discussion. He advocates for responsible hope and working toward your goals, but I’m not sure that it is getting across. Most of the people I interact with on a daily basis believe in a very generic type of hope that really isn’t hopeful about anything in particular. It is just a vague notion that things will get better, eventually. There isn’t any responsibility that the small things going on in the short term will get them to that hopeful place. There definitely isn’t a sense that they can design their hope so that it fits into the world in a real way. Hope that can’t resonate or ricochet off and blast through the boundaries of the way things are, is hope that is set up for only pacifying those who believe in it. It wraps them like a warm blanket and keeps them quiet within those boundaries.

That is why hope pacifies. It is the belief that weakness can be made into strength without working out. Hope is throwing technology or money at a problem. Hope is waiting for people to “get it.” Hope is having conversations without looking people in the eyes. Hope is eschewing online schools so that the issue will just go away. Hope is prayer for the economy to turn around. Hope listens to itself. Hope speaks without specifics. Hope feels everything without truly connecting to anyone.

So, why do I care that hope is the great pacifier? I care because I want to work for things. I want things to be hard. I want to hear all sides of an issue and then decide the best way forward. I want there to be conflict and friction. I want there to be lots and lots of writing and thinking and drawing and redesign. I want hope to take a back seat to DO.

Now just so you don’t get the wrong idea about this question, I actually think that Obama’s version of Hope could be relabeled as DO, but I just don’t think it would poll as well. I don’t think that people can get behind DO as much because DO requires details and thinking through each one of them. I don’t think that DO would allow people to stay disengaged in the process. As long as they can hope, they won’t have to get involved in creating change. When DO is what we all believe in, staying on the sidelines loses value. We are getting closer with blogs and collaborative tools, but I still think that the end goal for many is using them in order to shortcut their way back to hope. They will work with one another and write out what has been required so that at some point in the future, they can stop (retire, rest, etc.). Hope is still the default value. And it will continue to be for millions.

It isn’t always a bad thing to have a pacifier, but it is hard to compete while you are being lulled to sleep.

Here is the Moodle doc that tells you exactly how to get e-mail notifications for teachers and students when things have been done in your courses.

The resuting e-mail is awesome. It not only tells you who took it but also gives you a link to review the attempt and give feedback right away. Good stuff.

And yet, seeing these examples of people who have jumped off of a cliff really doesn’t make it that much more inciting to do so yourself. There is still the chance that there will be no parachute in that backpack of yours. It is also pretty likely that no one will be jumping with you. You will probably have to navigate to a safe landing without GPS guidance or the help of friends who are holding on and trying to help you beat the wind resistance.

So, why do it?

You may feel a sense of happiness, accomplishment or ownership if it works out, but there are so many more reasons to not leave your current work. Each part of you that craves stability and uniformity calls to you and tells you no. The timing is always wrong. The environment just isn’t right. Other people are going to beat you to it or going to take the credit. You won’t get any sleep and your waking hours you do have will be filled with nothing but the crushing G-forces that are pressing down on your body as you fall toward the unknown.

The stress is just too much, and yet that is the reason why you must jump.

You must jump because everything is telling you not to. You must jump because your instincts are wrong. You must jump because even the sensation of going “splat” on the ground is fantastic. It is the scraping you off of the earth that is the painful part. There are plenty of people to do that for you, though. People really do want to see you try again. They want to see you whizz by them at 100 miles an hour, even if they know you will be the same pancake at the end of the dive. It is a morbid fascination that everyone has in wanting to see people do the things that they can’t. And yet, you can do this. You must.

I will jump off of the cliff soon. Not because I think that there is some virtue in it or because I know that the parachute will open; I will jump off because there is no alternative for me. There isn’t anything else to do once I have climbed up and seen everything that there is to see. I have looked along the route and gathered the information I need at the top. It is beautiful at the precipice, but there isn’t much to do up there. The only way for me to see something new is to jump. I want to find the perspective that will lead me to my next climb. What I will be going after when I leap is still up for grabs, however. Let me know if you have any ideas.

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The first assumption I make is that I will have to give up some piece of personal information. I will either have to divulge my e-mail address, my Google username (for open ID), or my real name. While I could obscure all of these things so that they have very little to do with me, there really isn’t much reason to do so, especially if I am trying to create a web presence of any kind. I assume that this information will not be used against me (shared with third parties, sold, spammed, etc.) I assume that this information will get me closer to the intended benefit that the service is claiming to provide.

I happen to believe in having a single identity across all web services, but at this moment, it really isn’t an assumption that I will be able to take my information from one place to another. It would be great if that were the case, but I really don’t think that data portability is high on the priority list for many companies.

Another assumption I do make is that any new web service will have some kind of “share” button. What I mean is that any new service that I sign up for must have the ability to share what is going on in there with my social networks. While this isn’t really a type of data portability, it is a head nod in that direction. I assume this much because of the following statement: “If you want your product in the main stream, you had better let me put your product into MY stream.” These kinds of things matter because we do not need another Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Services may have niches, but any serious contender should have a way of working with those big three.

My last assumption for anything that I sign up for is that media or mobile will be involved. I honestly cannot think of a single service that I have signed up for in the last year that hasn’t been a part of sharing media or talking to mobile devices in one way or another. If one of those two requirements are not satisfied, I I can pretty much guarantee that my e-mail address will never make it to the Sign Up page. Visual and mobile representation are so important to the ways in which that I function, that they have become assumptions for what I am willing to put effort into.

So, why do these assumptions matter? Well, if I am assuming these things, I am setting myself up for a stagnation. Because no one has surprised me with an original take on these three assumptions as to challenge them at their core, I am free to keep blogging and tweeting away, oblivious. The fact that these assumptions exist for me is both good and bad. It means that we are starting to depend upon the online services to be mostly uniform, but it also means that I may miss something revolutionary because it doesn’t fit these assumptions.

At the end of the day, perhaps the old truism about assumptions still holds for the Web 2.0 world.

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[Video to come]

I found myself more present at Educon than I have been in months. I sat and talked to people and looked them in the eye and felt an underlying purpose for the connections I was making. I felt this last year, but I had all of this disjointed connectedness (twitter hashtag following, e-mail checking, blog posting, etc.) that distracted me from simply being held in a given time and space and letting that be enough. This year, I was able to sit with the people that I love and listen and think and wait for something to occur the I couldn’t predict at the outset of the day.

Perhaps I was just too egotistical to believe there was anything more I could learn from a face to face community that is random than the network of people that I had hand picked to follow on twitter. I am now engaged in the act of belief.

I believe more passionately and irrationally in the power of seeing someone, truly seeing them for all of the hope they have and all of the baggage that they carry. I have faith in the fact that something fantastic will occur if I do not allow my distractions to get in the way of my real purpose for having the conversation in the first place.

I find myself asking if this is something I can replicate away from these people and this place. Can I really wrap myself in the glow of intense thought, passionate observation, and authentic speech?

Yes.

I heard it last night from Chris Lehmann. Someone that he trusts once told him to never stop talking. Whatever he did, never stop thinking through the things he knows to be true and being a community of people who want to talk about those things and make them materialize. Another mentor of mine once said that “talking is the act of deciding your future.” Once you have said it, it comes into being.

So, to be present is to be talking. Not just with your mouth, but with your ears and your intention. Talking requires the will to be with someone and show them that you want to help them create the future.

And if you aren’t saying anything, then I have no use for you. If you aren’t someone who is really willing to “talk with me,” let me know that and I will find someone who will. I will be present in talking with anyone. There is something beautiful and perfect about talking with someone who will really talk back and push you and challenge you to create the future with them. I am here to do this, and I will never leave.

The digital connectedness should lead us to these moments. If we never have them because our technology gets in the way, then we are further away from one another and not closer together. If the technology keeps us from this kind of “talking”, it is a falsehood that I can’t afford. If I am truly searching for the truth of these questions, we need to talk more and tweet less.