Twitter is now over three years old and it’s grown up fast. But it still sometimes feels like we’ve only just begun to really understand some of the ways in which this type of real-time social connectivity is transforming our relationships and is impacting on our institutions and businesses.

I’ve been Tweeting for just over a year (use http://whendidyoujointwitter.com/ if you want to check how long you’ve been on Twitter) and I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit over that time about how I can best use Twitter. Though everyone has a theory on how we should be using Twitter, I wanted to share my own learnings with you about what I’ve learned over 385 days of Tweets.

I’ve broken up my learnings into four posts, which I’ll be releasing over the next few weeks:

• Format
• Content
• Tools
• Connections

Format

What?
I’m slowly developing a formatting style on Twitter, which looks like this:

As well as ‘Asking’, ‘Listening’, ‘Sharing’ and ‘Smiling’, I’ve also started tweets with:

• Reading
• Commenting
• Blogging
• Helping
• Downloading
• Laughing

This list is far from exhaustive and will no doubt expand in the future. As well as the active word at the start of the tweet, the rest of the format breaks down like this (click the image for a slightly larger version):

Why?
A key objective of my Twitter use is to provide as much utility for my followers as possible. The Tweetstream flows insanely fast for many of those followers and so I want my tweets to be very clearly structured so that the active reason for me tweeting is immediately obvious.

By standardising the format I hope to make it easier for my followers to quickly digest and process my tweets, and at the same time it speeds up my tweeting. That’s the theory anyway.

I’d be interested to hear back from anyone that follows me as to what they think of this format. I’d also love to hear about people out there who are using their own formats when it comes to Twitter and to hear their experiences.

Here’s some wise web thinking shared in the last week:

“If my 12 hr work day goes so slowly, why do the years seem to be going faster and faster.”

(words of wisdom shared on Twitter by @sophiehirst)

“Think you know your users & can design without involving them? Observing and talking to actual users is *always* eye-opening.”

(philosophical musings brought to you by @voirol from last week’s Philosofriday)

Got something profound you’d like to share?

You can submit your Philosofriday smarts in a few different ways:

• Put your philosofriday insights in the comments below
• Tweet your philosofriday genius from your own Twitter client (#philosofriday)

Smartest tweets and comments will be immortalised in this feature every Friday.

Think you know someone who never stops dispensing interesting morsels? Use the Retweet button on this post to point them in this direction!

(Image hat-tip to Telstar Logistics and the awesomeness that is Creative Commons)

Here’s an innovative idea.

If you’re a brand, spend your money on developing a product that actually works and improves peoples’ lives, rather than spending it all on a smoke-and-mirrors campaign to convince people that your steaming turd of a product is really the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Got something profound you’d like to share?

You can submit your Philosofriday smarts in a few different ways:

• Put your philosofriday insights in the comments below
• Use the retweet button on this post to beam your philosofriday wisdom to the masses (#philosofriday)
• Tweet your philosofriday genius from your own Twitter client (#philosofriday)

Smartest tweets and comments will be immortalised in this feature every Friday.

I recently attended the latest Insight Exchange event, run by Beth Etling and Ross Dawson. Here’s my review of the event (which will also be published in Marketing Magazine)

Creating Value with Content

If writing an event review about the value of content seems strangely meta that’s because it is. Welcome to a world of rampant content consumerism increasingly disrupted by the connectedness of humans and their insatiable appetite for storytelling.

The Insight Exchange series bills itself as “monthly topic driven luncheons offering executives a chance to gain valuable information in a short period of time” and the latest installment brought together prominent players from across the publishing, marketing and agency spaces to ruminate on the business of content.

The Format

Before we dive into a look at some of the content, a quick word on the format. It’s refreshing to attend an event that is so tightly curated yet still offers space for audience interaction (Q&A, Interactive Strategy Workshops) and a frothy double shot of caffeine-fueled networking.

The keynote (delivered by Gerd Leonhard) established the macro contexts for the rest of the speakers to expand on the details from their respective industry perspectives. It’s a simple model and it works. I left this degustation with lots of new tastes and plenty to digest.

The Keynote

Gerd Leonhard, media futurist

Gerd describes himself as a “media futurist specialising in content and technology” and it’s clear he understands the business he’s in. Gerd dutifully proposed four fundamental shifts (amongst a wealth of other insights) those in the business of content would do well to monitor:

• Controlling consumers is being replaced by earning their trust
• Data is the new oil that will fuel future content innovation
• Privacy is the next major issue content providers must address
• Command and control is out. Coordinate and cultivate is in.

I recommend checking out Gerd’s presentation slides on his website for more detail.

The Industry Speakers

Craig Davis, co-chairman and chief creative officer of Publics Mojo Aus & NZ

After Gerd’s planetary perspectives it was refreshing to hear next from Craig Davis, co-chairman and chief creative officer of Publics Mojo Aus & NZ. Craig took exception to the term content and proposed a world made not from atoms as your science teachers may have misinformed you, but from stories.

The takeaways?

Great communication has always been interactive, stories (not media) are social and the audience is the network. Oh, and my favourite morsel of the day: “Brands, stop interrupting what people are interested in and start becoming what people are interested in.”

Justin Lam, group brand manager at Cerebos Foods

Justin Lam, group brand manager at Cerebos Foods, served up the next segment, appropriately enough a case study on the Asian Home Gourmet brand.

Justin skirted around the numbers, which is always a little frustrating with case studies, but it was still an interesting look at how a clear content strategy and innovative partnerships can drive FMCG sales.

Check out Justin’s presentation slides over on Slideshare.

Louisa Bayles, digital sales manager for BBC Worldwide

Last up was Louisa Bayles, digital sales manager for BBC Worldwide. We all know the Beeb is an institution but did you know that 4.6% of its revenue today comes from digital sources?

You did. Hmmm, well they’re looking to grow that to 10% and are pursuing a pretty detailed third party strategy with other web publishers that you might like to look into in more detail.

Again, to get more of an idea of what Louisa had to say check out her presentation slides over on Slideshare.

The Wrap

The long lunch used to be a staple of the advertising industry. This reviewer can see it making a welcome return in the form of these nutritious Insight Exchange events.

Your say

Were you at the Insight Exchange event too? Please comment what you thought of it and if you’ve written your own review, please include a link to that in your comment.

UPDATE: Neerav was at the event and used the great live blogging tool CoverIt Live to record his and others’ thoughts on the event. It’s well worth checking out over at the getSocialAdvice blog: http://getsocialadvice.com/creating-value-with-content-strategies-for-marketing-and-advertising-insight-exchange/

A big thank you to Mark Pollard for suggesting Recycle a Blog Post Day on Twitter (#rabpday). This pre-loved post needed an update anyway, so I’ve revisited it and upcycled it.

I haven’t posted much on this blog over the months I’ve been going but I wanted to dig this post out because I’ve been thinking a great deal recently about technology and how it can enable and disable certain types of interaction and communal behaviour. More on that in a blog post to come.

As and when I find plugins for Wordpress that I think are particularly useful for reaching out to your community, I’ll add more posts in this series. I’ll also give you my opinions on the plugins I’m using, so in time I hope to have reviewed a number of Wordpress plugins that might be useful for community building and management.

For Part I, I’ve come across three great plugins that I think can help to grow your community on your blog. I’ve installed the following:

Comment Relish plugin

Comment Relish does something very simple but I use it to really try and make my commenters feel appreciated and to highlight for them some other ways in which they can interact with me online.

The plugin allows you to specify the text of an email to send out to new commenters on your blog. I have used this email to give some value back to new commenters on my blog and to encourage them to connect with me in other areas across the web.

The benefits?

• Make commenter feel appreciated. Acknowledge the commenter for their thought and interaction.
• Share fascinating content. Share some great links with the commenter to content they may well appreciate
• Develop strong outgoing links. Boost connections with other bloggers in your area
• Deepen relationships. Encourage first-time commenters to engage with you online across other sites

Note: Now I am using DISQUS to manage my comments I have had to move to manually sending the Comment Relish email out, but actually this doesn’t take all that long, and considering the value of the interaction I don’t mind it at all.

DandyID Services plugin/Friendfeed embeddable sidebar widget

If, like me, you have a presence across a number of online services, it can be helpful to let your readers know this. If they read your blog they may also be interested in your Twitter feed, or your Amazon Wish List.

Simply displaying links prominently and clearly to your other accounts online can help to deepen your interactions with existing users and also serves as social proof that you are walking the social media walk too.

The DandyID plugin in a screenshot

The Friendfeed sidebar widget in a screenshot

Benefits?

• Walk the walk. Demonstrate that social networking is an important part of the way you interact with people online
• Broaden your relationships. Encourage visitors to your site to connect with you elsewhere online
• Deepen your relationships. Augment existing blog connections with connections on other online services

Note: As I have taken to using Friendfeed more often now I have stopped using DandyID to display my online presence. It makes more sense for me as I try to interact a bit more frequently through Friendfeed these days.

DISQUS Comment System

Adopting the DISQUS system to manage my comments was a major decision, not least because it invalidates a number of other great plugins that operate through the default Wordpress commenting system (like Comment Relish for example).

But the clean design and robust functionality of the DISQUS platform won out for me in the end. It just adds so much handy functionality to the comments (threaded comments, email reply to comments, editable comments, track comments, OpenID etc logins) and does it in a neatly styled manner.

Benefits?

• Network effect. As more and more sites use DISQUS it becomes easier to navigate around the web and track comments across multiple platforms
• Showcases humans. The platform allows commenters to display their Gravatar and to easily link back to their own site
• Aggregates conversation. DISQUS brings comments, Twitter @replies, and Friendfeed comments all into the same interface in a way which manages the conversations taking place around the social object that is your post in a coherent and contextually clear way.
• Granular conversations. Threaded comments with no limit on the number of nested layers really means that proper conversations can develop in your comments in a way that is clear and easy for commenters and readers to follow.

Don’t mistake tools for solutions

This is the first in a series of posts that look at technology applications (plugins) that may be able to assist you in encouraging a community around the content you produce on your blog.

But the plugins listed here and throughout this series are only tools. In the wrong hands and wielded in clumsy ways these plugins might also hinder the growth of community on your blog.

Before you begin adding plugins indiscriminately to your site, consider first whether the plugin will help you to achieve some of the objectives you’ve laid out for your blog. Here at Come Together I want to encourage people to employ tools strategically and in thoughtful and innovative ways.

How are you using plugins to help build community?

Are you using plugins (or other technologies/widgets) to reach out to the people who read your blog and encourage them to become more like a community? How are you employing technologies on your blog in thoughtful and innovative ways to nurture community interaction?

Share your experiences in the comments below – I look forward to hearing your views.

Other #rabpday pre-loved posts from across the interweb

• How Ikea games you: the real Gruen Transfer, by Mark Pollard
• One sentence diary, by Julian Cole
• A collection of recycled posts, by Age
• Where the hell is the sponsor? by Servant of Chaos

Thank you Matt Moore (on having a dad, being a dad, bodies, and gay), Gavin Heaton (on balls and bravado and on the joy of dancing to Culture Club), Julian Cole (on being bullied and being ‘man enough’ to reach out for help), Jye Smith’s beautiful post on being adopted and his return to Columbia, and especially Mark Pollard (on the journey to first-time fatherhood). I take strength from all your examples, so thank you for helping me to write this post.

I want to try and tell this story because talking and writing about it has helped and is helping me to slowly come to terms with it all. On February 3rd of this year my Mum died. What happened to me during her final days and after her death has taught me a lot and I’m still learning: about asking for help, about confronting my emotions, about my priorities in life, and about acceptance.

Thanks to triple j and Reach Out for giving us all a platform to celebrate what it means to be men.

At a dinner party, early

Being a man means: knowing where you came from
I was a pretty intense, bookish kid, sensitive and a little introverted. Mum understood my anxiety and always made me feel better when I was stressed.

We would spend hours together, watching television (Twin Peaks), solving crosswords (we shared a love of words) and talking about current affairs.

Mum never treated me like a kid, always listened intently as I formed opinions about whatever it was that we were discussing. She was fascinated by ideas and incredibly compassionate.

I have her and Dad to thank for my abiding sense of curiosity but the perfectionist streak is all Mum – we both set ourselves extremely high standards and often struggled to meet them.

At a dinner party, 1969

Being a man means: knowing it’s ok to feel terrified sometimes
Dad’s voice was gentle and quite calm on the phone but I knew straight away that there was something wrong. It was past midnight in the UK and I wasn’t expecting a call. But more than that, and it’s hard to explain exactly, when your Mum has had Multiple Sclerosis for 20 years you live with an almost imperceptible yet deep-seated fear that one day the creeping degenerative disease might win the fight.

Mum had struggled to overcome a nagging chest infection, which had in turn given her breathing difficulties. We’d later find out that she had contracted pneumonia. I was struggling to take it all in but I could hear Dad’s voice trembling so I said goodbye and within four hours I was on a flight to London Heathrow.

The last thing Dad said was that I should hurry. Time wasn’t on my side and I was absolutely terrified I wouldn’t get the chance to say a proper goodbye.

Mum and Dad getting married, 1974

Being a man means: accepting when it’s time to say goodbye
Over the next three days we all sat with Mum by her hospital bed, holding her hands, talking to her, reassuring her about what lay ahead. She had always been terrified of death and it was heartbreaking seeing her so scared. When she repeatedly said “Ich habe angst” (German for ‘I’m scared’) all I could say was “Ich auch Mutti” (’me too, Mum’). It was true and I’d like to think the honesty helped us both a little.

Mum’s strength faded day after day but she seemed unwilling to let go. The doctors had advised us that it can be hard for the terminally ill to pass away when their loved ones are still so close. As she had been in some pain we all decided to leave Mum alone for one night. Hearing Dad speak softly to Mum, letting her know that it was alright for her to let go and to be free from her pain, is still one of the most beautiful things I will ever experience.

I watched my Dad, a husband of 36 years, give his soulmate permission to die and find the peace she was searching for. I hope one day I can be that brave, that selfless, that accepting

Hippy chic in Munich, early

Being a man means: taking those first difficult steps
When I got back to Sydney I realised I was mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. I took some more time off work but it didn’t seem to be helping. I actually couldn’t cope with basic tasks and although I was trying I felt completely helpless and at the mercy of my emotions, which were all over the place.

Karla was amazing comforting me but I could tell she felt helpless too and was worried about me. As much for her as for me I went and spoke to the St Vincent’s Mental Health Service in Darlinghurst. I felt totally broken and I knew I couldn’t fix myself alone.

The triage nurse at St Vincent’s was incredible. We just sat and talked for over an hour and she let me unravel emotionally. I don’t think I’ll really ever be able to thank her enough for listening so sensitively, and at the end she suggested I visit a psychologist to help me to deal with my depression and to start processing the grief I was feeling.

It was just the beginning but knowing that I had professionals who cared about me and were going to help me to feel better gave me hope, something that had been in short supply.

Mum and Dad visiting friends in Seattle, late 2008

Being a man means: sharing your feelings and embracing weakness as a strength
Seeing Jon, my psychologist, has allowed me to dedicate serious time on a regular basis to thinking about my emotions, the grief I am feeling, the sense of unending loss, and about how my I want my life to go on without my Mum. It’s the biggest challenge I’ve faced but I feel like in Jon I have a professional guide through the often messy world of the mind. Maybe I could do it on my own but I’m happy to have the support.

A massive part of this journey has been my close friends. Early on, when I was still really suffering and feeling heavily depressed, I reached out to a small number of them and explained how I was doing.

It was really hard – despite everything that had happened I still felt that somehow my admission of weakness, of being broken and unable to fix myself, was something to be ashamed of. But they were there for me in the truest sense of the phrase. I think men are often expected to fix problems, not have them. But I learned it’s natural and ok to feel helpless sometimes and that there’s a lot of truth in the saying “a problem shared is a problem halved.”

You know who you are and I hope you know how much it means to me that you were there for me. I’m very lucky to have friends like you.

Being a man means: being a man

If I’ve learned anything through all this it is that there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for how to be a man in this crazy and unpredictable emotional tornado we call life. The only thing we can really be assured of is that life will continue to change for us all, regardless of how much we wish it wouldn’t.

All I know is that how you grow and evolve as a man to meet the challenges that life will inevitably throw at you is what really counts. I’ve learned that no matter how alone or broken you feel there are men and women who care enough to be there for you, to help you feel less broken and alone.

Thanks so much for letting me write this and for reading. Thanks especially to Mark Pollard for inspiring me to have the courage to write about the way I have been feeling. I haven’t written a poem for my Mum, but I did read someone else’s at her funeral, and I share it with you here because it is my adopted tribute to her life, one fully lived and, in the face of adversity, with courage, dignity and a loving heart.

[Cool retro image thanks to Creative Commons and Flickr user battlecat]

What if we lived in a world where the number of Twitter followers you had was largely irrelevant? What if people cared as much about the quality of their interactions as they do about the quantity of interactions they have?

It might sound crazy to abandon the idea of reach but try it for a while and you’ll realise how much latent value we are all failing to take advantage of among the existing social connections in our networks.

Seth says it best

Watch this great short video of Seth explaining why it’s important to seek out the quality in your social interactions instead of just more numbers:

At the end of the day what use are the connections we have if we aren’t servicing them properly? As Sonny Gill says in his recent post Are you shortcutting your community?,

Personally, I see nothing genuine in building your community by participating in a link-a-thon, which unfortunately furthers the assumption that social media is about the numbers and is what drives success. Sorry, but it is and will always be about the relationships and subsequent conversations that go on with yourself and those community members.

The value here is largely in the details of those interactions and how they relate to your strategic objectives.

The devil is in the details, so revisit your existing social connections

Chances are that in the rush to build the size of our social networks and boost the number of weak ties we have we are actually missing out on maximising the latent value we have in our existing relationships.

Somewhere along the way many of us seem to have fallen into the trap of equating value solely with scale. While it’s true that having a big (read: broad or wide) network can be beneficial, if we seek to build size at the expense of deepening the social relations we have with existing contacts we’re actually missing out on a great proportion of the value of those relationships.

A more innovative approach to connection?

This is exactly the topic I spoke about at the FastBreak E-festival of Ideas, part of the Australian Innovation Festival. I was asked to discuss innovation in relation to connection. The video below is of all of the presentations that day. I wholeheartedly recommend them all (kudos Jye, Isadore, Matt and Elias), but if you would like to skip to my discussion of the need to capitalise on the existing latent value in our social networks then I take the stage at 8:25 and speak for just over four minutes. If you’re happier reading my notes, then you can download them as a PDF here:

What if people cared as much about the quality of their interactions as they do about the quantity of interactions they have? Well then we’d all be part of far more valuable social networks.

What do you think? What tactics are you using to get more value from your existing social networks?

[Creative Commons and Flickr user inju to thank for the photo]

I recently revisited Clay Shirky’s discussion on ‘cognitive surplus’, the idea that there is a tremendous amount of latent mental energy going unused or being underemployed. If you haven’t explored the idea then watch the video of Mr Shirky’s keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Franscisco last year. And after rewatching that video I started thinking about how to better use my own cognitive surplus…

It’s time to get off the couch…

What is really great about this idea is that we can actually all start to re-employ our own latent cognitive energy and all it takes is enthusiasm and a bit of elbow grease. I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy of late and I have been asked by a number of people “where do you find the time?”

The frighteningly prosaic answer is that I work long hours and I care a great deal about the projects I get involved with. But it’s also true that I keep a folder on my Macbook actually titled Cognitive Surplus (don’t believe me?) and I try to make sure that there are always a few small projects I can spend so-called ’spare’ time working on.

Mapping cognitive surplus, or notes on amateur social cartography

Most recently I have been employing my own cognitive surplus in producing a custom Google map that has Sydney cultural guide TwoThousand’s Eat/Drink and Shopping listings marked on it. I should make it clear at this point that I have no professional connection to TwoThousand and that I was simply motivated to work on the map because I love their guide so much. I really appreciate their editorial work and I wanted to repurpose their content in a creative way using existing platforms. If you represent TwoThousand and want to chat about the work, please feel free to contact me.

I was motivated to do this after responding to a Canadian friend’s request for advice on what to do in Melbourne by producing my own Google map of my favourite haunts down there. It occurred to me then that this completely free and incredibly powerful mapping platform was just sitting there waiting to be used. So instead of watching TV in the evenings I have been compiling the map below.

The Unofficial TwoThousand Guide to Sydney
View Unofficial TwoThousand Guide to Sydney in a larger map

Anyone can crowdsource, so now it’s your turn!

What projects can you devote a small amount of time to regularly that will put your own cognitive surplus to better use? Have a think about it and let me know in the comments below. Is there a project you’d like to see get off the ground that you haven’t managed to find the time for yet? I’d like to think if we’re prepared to share the idea and share the investment of our collective cognitive surplus, we can all work on those problems and crowdsource some nifty solutions.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts :) If you’re interested in sharing this blog post, don’t forget you can Tweet about it using the Tweetmeme button at the head of the post or by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post.

Have you heard of #foodfridays yet?

Twitter users post their tips and advice about dining out, cooking and drinking, attach the #foodfridays hashtag and voila – instant culinary inspiration and insiders knowledge about where and what to eat and drink.

Don’t believe me? Click on the thumbnail screenshot below for a flavour of what is served up:

Well, anyway, for my first #foodfridays I give you the joy of homemade spicy baked beans. Yes, the humble baked bean has been done a great disservice by the likes of Heinz etc. And while the convenience of canned baked beans can’t be called into question, I urge you all to embrace a different epicurean approach, one that maximises individuality, flavour and texture. If you dare doubt me then simply do yourself a favour and try cooking the recipe below one evening.

Homemade Baked Beans

Ingredients:

• 2 x canned beans (cannellini, borlotti, 5-bean mix – whatever you like best)
• 2 x chopped tinned tomatoes (low sugar, low salt are best imho)
• 4 x cloves of garlic (diced roughly)
• 1 x white onion (sliced)
• 2 tbl spoons tomato paste (or more, depending on how rich you like your sauce)
• Splash of red wine
• 2 x birdseye chillies (or whatever heat you’re comfortable with)
• Fetta cheese, crumbled
• Freshly chopped basil

To make:

1. Heat a large saucepan and fry the onion in some oil. Once the onions have browned add the garlic and chillies and let their flavours get all funky together.
2. Drain the canned beans and – if you can be bothered – rinse them off. Add the beans, the chopped tomatoes, the tomato paste and the splash of red wine and mix up in your saucepan. Reduce the heat so that it’s all simering along nicely.
3. Check on the beans to see how much the sauce has reduced down. Depending on how much heat you’ve got on them the times will vary, but in general I have got better results with a slower reduction of the sauce with a more gentle heat. I like my beans pretty thick, so I tend to reduce the sauce quite a bit, but this is all up to you. They’re your beans after all :-)
4. At the last minute add generous amounts of chopped fresh basil, stir tht through and serve the piping hot beans onto two large slices of your favourite toasted bread. Sprinkle on as much fetta as you like and slip gently into a bean-induced culinary coma. You have just experienced what baked beans should always be like.

There are a few great things about this ridiculously simple recipe: you can cook the entire thing in one large saucepan, greatly minimising the post-dinner washing up arguments; you can substitute in and out all sorts of ingredients depending on your tastes; the types of beans you choose can add great variations in texture to your beans, which I really love; and lastly, you can cook vats of the stuff and save it for later. I also really like to throw in some cumin and coriander, but the options are endless really.

Give it a go and let me know what you thought in the comments here. Oh, and Tweet your own #foodfridays tips.

OK, before we begin it is prudent to acknowledge the fact that this debate has been going on for generations and is unlikely to be settled here. I’ve been stirred into thought and word and deed on this thorny issue by Zac Martin’s pot-stirring post Universities don’t eat apples, which has attracted plenty of comment and is worth reading.

I started writing a comment on Zac’s blog but found it had become offensively long, so I moved it over here and have linked to this post from Zac’s comments. As such I highly recommend you first read Zac’s post to give you the context of this piece. Of course, if you’re not particularly fussed about the future of our higher educational institutions, no problem. There’s always other posts here to read that might take your fancy.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on our universities.

I’m going to dive into this wonderful discussion with the following disclaimer: I have been on both sides of this debate, as an undergraduate taught by both postgrads and seasoned professors, and as a postgrad teaching both 1st Years and PhD candidates. No, this doesn’t make me uniquely qualified at being right, just gives you an idea of where my opinions are coming from.

Clearly some of the factors that Zac and others here have pointed to are a reality and there is merit in pointing out the deficiencies of what is at times an archaic learning environment. But with reference to the video Gavin shared, I think it is short-sighted to single out technology as the potentially transformative factor in higher education.

Technology is important only in that it is employed by humans

In my experience great teachers possess an ability to engage students regardless of the medium used, and for those who would sling some Marshall McLuhan at me, it is worth noting that McLuhan was primarily interested in social transformations and the relationships involved, not the technologies that assisted in those seismic shifts.

The reality here is that a tutorial is a dialogic and socially-encoded forum, a space where conversation, rigorous argument and a strong mutual respect for the right of all to participate are meant to reign. What does this mean in the terms of this debate? Well, simply put, fault lies on both sides of the fence. And while it may be far more enjoyable (and, it must be said, far easier) to take potshots at each other from across the barricades, this is unlikely to help address the problems our institutions face.

So who’s to blame?

No, I’m not just having a go at Zac. I sat with many lecturers and tutors who happily bemoaned the work ethic of genuinely disinterested class members, and colleagues of mine who pioneered a blogging element of a cultural studies course, complete with thoughtful grade allocation and huge amounts of effort and enthusiasm, were often disappointed by the reaction of many of their students. Expectations clearly play a large part here and the marketing departments of major unis must consider their role in this competitive learning marketplace.

Can lecturers and tutors do more?

Undoubtedly, but take a look at the demands on their time to both publish extensively (the route to longevity in the career path and to lucrative funding grants) and to maintain their teaching commitments (and hence their tenure). Employing new technologies involves more than just switching on a computer. Often individual teachers will express much enthusiasm for the uptake of new methods and media in the classroom but these really need to dovetail with existing curricular to avoid the risk of simply passing the educational problem onto another year or faculty.

What about students?

Well, the reality of any job is that not every day is a roller-coaster of fun and engagement. There is much hard work to be undertaken, some of it thankless and often unnecessary. The qualities that attract me to a co-worker are tenacity, optimism, a can-do attitude and the ability to listen, process information and make informed decisions. All of these qualities can be honed in the higher educational system, and regardless of what you study university is ultimately about developing a powerful critical rational mind.

This is in no way to defend archaic processes or defunct methods – they deserve our attention. But for all your own personal branding efforts Zac, you are guilty of simply firing off criticism without really providing a way forward. You might counter that it’s not your job to reform the universities, but how much do you think you have contributed to their progress with your approach? Ultimately, this is a question we can all ask ourselves when we find it easier to criticise the surface patina than to explore the complex systemic web of office politics, intra-departmental budget skirmishes, government-incentivised study paths etc.

So what next?

Are there easy wins here? Perhaps, but again, reforming our universities requires more than outrage and a low-cost publishing platform. I don’t claim to be across the entirety of the issues but it seems to me that research and practical approaches to technologically enabled and sociologically-designed classrooms is a nascent step in the right direction. Using technology to help us reform the learning environment also means accepting the environment as a technology in its own right.

Having tutored and as a community manager I sympathise with those who teach nine hours a day and are then expected to moderate user-generated classroom forums. Encouraging active online participation from over 100 students every week generates a significant extra workload for already busy tutors and in our rush to have everyone embracing social media in the classroom we have to recognise the significant resourcing challenges reform to the educational environment poses.

There is a tremendous amount of work to be done, but that also means there are tremendous opportunities to invent and create the educational models of the future that embrace collaboration, collective learning, ubiquitous screen technology and ambient computing. How are we all going to contribute?

[mortar board image courtesy Creative Commons and Flickr user benrybobenry]