The Bamboo Project Blog

Ok. Now I'm REALLY Annoyed

2009-07-10T04:57:24-07:00

For the past few weeks (it may be over a month now) I've been going round and round with Typepad. For a reason that defies my comprehension, I am unable to respond to comments on my own blog. I've tried to use Safari and Firefox. I've tried logging in and out of my Typepad account. I've tried leaving comments at different times of day. All that happens is my comment hangs, spinning endlessly and never posting. A few times I've been fortunate and the comment posts, but for the most part, it's impossible. What I don't get is why some of you are able to comment, but I can't. I also don't get what was different about the few times I was able to get a comment to post.

I'm frustrated because I read every comment I get and try to respond, even if I'm late by a day or two. Now I'm beginning to look like a blogger who just sucks in comments without actually engaging readers, which is so NOT who I am.

Typepad has given me a free month, but that doesn't really help the potential damage to me as a member of the blogging community. It also doesn't deal with the frustration I'm feeling in being unable to respond to some great comments. I suppose I could do posts to respond to comments, but that's not the fix I'm looking for.

Anyway--take this post as a blanket apology and explanation for why I'm not responding to comments right now. It's not because I don't want to. It's because I can't. Hopefully this will be resolved soon, or I'm going to have to seriously consider moving to Wordpress.

P.S. This morning I tried to post a comment and it said my comment posted, but then all that was there was a blank. <Sigh> If you're also having problems commenting, drop me an email (michelemmartin@gmail dot com). I'd like to get a feel for whether or not this is impacting other people too.

Are Knowledge Workers the New "Blue Collar" Workers?

2009-07-08T05:51:40-07:00

I'm currently reading Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, and it's raising some interesting questions about "knowledge work" and where we may be going with the information economy. (For a decent summary of some of Crawford's main points, check out his NYT Magazine article, The Case for Working with Your Hands).

Crawford's argument is a muti-pronged ode to working with your hands that challenges some of our fundamental notions of white collar and blue collar jobs. Although the primary goal is to get us to think about the trades in a different way, in doing so Crawford makes us consider the possibility that many forms of "knowledge work" are in fact glorified factory work, performed in cubicles rather than on the shop floor. A lot of what he discusses isn't new, but the way he makes his case is pretty compelling.

Crawford maintains that in recent years there has been a "degradation of white collar work" and that we've come to believe that "trafficking in abstractions" is the same as actually thinking on the job. In reality, he says, what we've seen is that white collar jobs are "subject to routinization and degradation, proceeding by the same logic that hit manual fabrication a hundred years ago: the cognitive elements of the job are appropriated from professionals, instantiated in a system or process and then handed back to a new class of workers--clerks--who replace the professionals."

The development of "expert systems" and the increasing sophistication of the technology that supports these systems means that decisions that used to require some level of skill and judgment can, in fact, be done with computer support, concentrating true knowledge work in the hands of an ever-smaller elite. Routine work that can be done digitally is also a prime candidate for outsourcing, which is where much of our so-called knowledge work has also been going. Says Crawford, "It seems we must take a cold-eyed view of 'knowledge work,' and reject the image of a rising sea of pure mentation that raises all boats. More likely is a rising sea of clerkdom."

Ultimately, Crawford maintains, we are blinded by the idea that freedom to make small decisions--deciding which letter to send to a disgruntled customer or which medication to prescribe after following the decision-tree--is somehow real "thinking," when in fact these merely give us the illusion of problem-solving and independent decision-making. In reality, many knowledge workers are as bound by quotas, rules, policies and procedures as any factory worker. True creativity, innovation and problem-solving has been leeched out of many of these jobs. At best, creativity for most knowledge workers occurs on the edges.

Crawford also makes an interesting point about how knowledge work makes us grapple differently with "reality." As humans, we already have an innate tendency toward pattern-making. But in knowledge work, this is heightened so that our perceptions are often "concept-driven," rather than data-driven. This is to say that when we look at information, we tend to see existing patterns and try to force the information into those patterns, as opposed to looking at the information itself and finding the patterns. This, of course, is in line with my post yesterday and is a natural tendency for we humans, it appears, exacerbated by our move to more concept-driven thinking.

All of this opens up some questions for me:

When we talk about "knowledge workers" who do we really mean? Is this as large a group as we think or are many of the people we think of as knowledge workers actually working as glorified clerks? I think, for example, of the teachers I know who work in school districts caught in the grips of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind. They are given a specific curriculum, a teaching schedule, particular techniques they must use, etc. and told to go through the process. How, exactly, is this so different from factory work? (And this is not a cut on teachers--it's a comment on how the work has been structured).

Nancy White's post on key skills for knowledge workers includes scanning, filtering, connecting, etc. This is an idea that's been kicking around in the blogosphere for awhile--that knowledge workers need these kinds of skills--but it doesn't seem like it gets a lot of traction within companies. Is that because the vast majority of their knowledge workers are not actually performing work that requires these skills? This seems to me one of those areas where perhaps there's lip service paid to wanting independent thinkers and skilled information analysts, when in reality, we just need people to follow the procedure.

As technology becomes ever more sophisticated and we develop greater capabilities to have computers do the analysis and thinking for us, what does this mean for what we currently consider to be knowledge work? Are we going to be innovating many knowledge workers out of a job because technology can do a lot of the heavy computational and analytic lifting, requiring only a small number of "experts" to actually make sense of the data?

Related to the issue of technology, and back to Nancy's suggested knowledge worker skills--are many of these in fact "skills" that will be performed by computers in the not so distant future? On some level, in fact, computers are performing functions such as scanning and filtering right now, albeit imperfectly. It's only a matter of time before they get better at these tasks. But this takes us back to the real question--for what purpose are people scanning, filtering, connecting, etc.? I would argue that a good chunk of knowledge worker jobs simply don't require these kinds of skills to be performed at a particularly high level. At best, they're "nice to have" skills that can make you somewhat more effective, although for the majority of people I'm wondering if this translates into real progress. At worst, having them can signify a person who asks too many questions and has too many ideas.

How does all of this impact the training business? A few weeks ago I was discussing some thoughts on the the future of learning that operated under the premise that we will primarily be supporting knowledge workers, in the true sense of the term. Is this really the case? Maybe there will be a shrinking market for the kind of learning we see as being necessary for knowledge work. Maybe the market will really be in creating expert systems. Or maybe it will be in supporting work done in the trades. I can't help thinking that there is some kind of impact though.

Just some random thoughts and questions here. Would love additional feedback and reactions to Crawford's ideas.

UPDATE--I have NO idea what was happening when I wrote this post last week, but I inadvertenly referred to Matthew Gardner, instead of Matthew Crawford as the author of Shop Class as Soul Craft. I've made the corrections above.

Information Literacy and Habits of Mind

2009-07-07T04:29:58-07:00

Here's an interesting tidbit published in Science Daily--researchers analyzed 91 studies that included over 8,000 people and found that most of the time we seek information that supports our viewpoints and then screen out everything else:

The researchers found that people are about twice as likely to select information that supports their own point of view (67 percent) as to consider an opposing idea (33 percent). Certain individuals, those with close-minded personalities, are even more reluctant to expose themselves to differing perspectives, Albarracín said. They will opt for the information that corresponds to their views nearly 75 percent of the time.

The researchers also found, not surprisingly, that people are more resistant to new points of view when their own ideas are associated with political, religious or ethical values. . .

This seems to be another piece of evidence that confirms my concerns about online homophily, which of course extends offline as well.

As humans, we're innate patternmakers. But to some extent, we seem bound to find data that supports the patterns we already see, as opposed to seeing new patterns in the data. A few years ago I was trying to learn how to draw using Betty Edwards' book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. What was most fascinating to me about the experience was how you have to turn off your left (analytic) brain in order to draw things as they really are. When the left brain is in full operational mode, we tend to draw not what we actually SEE (which is the raw data coming in), but our concept of that data. So we don't draw the face that's in front of us. Instead, we draw our idea of a face. For example, we don't place eyes in the middle of the face where they actually are. We put them toward the top because that's our construct of where they belong because of our hairlines. The point is, that while we think we see the data, what we really are looking at is our preconceived idea of what that information means.

I read with interest Nancy White's excellent post the other day on Skills for Learning Professionals Part 2. In it she says that scanning, filtering, connecting and sense-making are critical skills. I agree with this, but think that maybe Nancy didn't go far enough in thinking about how we develop these skills. She offered a series of excellent questions to ask ourselves in terms of our ability to do things like scan and filter, but they don't take into account the habits of mind and psychological behaviors we bring to the table in developing these skills. In light of our tendencies toward homophily and pre-conceived ideas, it would seem there are deeper issues at work that we need to consider:

When we are scanning, how do we combat our natural tendency to only "see" information that fits with our preconceived notions of the world? The skill of scanning isn't just about how well we are able to manage a stream of information. It's also about our ability to actually SEE information in its raw form.

In developing our filtering skills, how do we ensure that we are not filtering out information that doesn't fit wth our existing concepts and frames? I suspect that many, if not most of us, are likely to apply our filters in a way that shields us from data we may not want to consider. But this is not effective filtering behavior, particularly if we end up filtering out key data that would change our decisions or ideas about how things work.

Creating a knowledge network is important, but if we are creatures of homophily, seeking out like-minded connections, then are we really using this skill to its full advantage? How do we make our networks diverse? As I've pointed out before, social technology tends to collude in this process of connecting us to like-minded people, for example suggesting friends who share our interests. But how do I ensure that I'm connecting to people who think differently than I do?

How do we become capable of objective sense-making based on the actual data that is coming into us, rather than our IDEAS of what the data means? I think that the tendency to interpret information as its coming into our brains is so ingrained we don't even realize it's happening. That's why "beginner's mind" is an aspiration, rather than something most of us are able to do on a regular basis.

These skills are not just about the technology strategies we use to find, filter and make sense of information. They are also about the habits of mind that we bring to these activities. If we don't address both aspects, then we're missing something here.

Flickr photo via vaxZine

Accessibility and Learning

2009-06-29T04:40:51-07:00

As I've mentioned previously, I'm working with a couple of clients right now who work with individuals with disabilities on some social media projects and it continues to be a learning experience. For the past week I've been hard at work pulling together a wiki for a 2.5 day workshop we're doing in August on using social media in Centers for Independent Living. We're adapting Beth Kanter's fabulous WeAreMedia curriculum, focusing on how the tools can be used within a community with varying challenges to accessing the technology. In particular, I'm finding that there are a lot of challenges to using social media with people who have visual disabilities. Here's some of what I'm learning:

The convention of having links that say "As I've mentioned previously" (see my first sentence) or "go here" does not work for individuals with visual disabilities who are using a screen reader to navigate the web. They need links that are descriptive---that say where you're linking too. This is actually good SEO practice, too, but something I continually have struggled to stop doing as I'm so used to making links out of vague references, as I did above.

I'm used to embedding Slideshare and YouTube videos directly into my wiki handouts so that people don't have to navigate away from the site to access them. For individuals with visual disabilities, though, this is a problem. They can't advance through Slideshare slides or hit the "play" button on a YouTube video because their screen readers can't give them the information they need to do this. For them, an embedded video is just a frustrating blank in the wiki page.

Speaking of Slideshare, many of the great presentations on Slideshare make extensive use of photos and graphics to illustrate their points. I find this to be particularly true of technology presentations where there are lots of screenshots and Flickr photos being used. While this is obviously a great way for sighted people to learn about the tools, if you have a visual impairment, visuals aren't going to be very helpful.

Often when I do wiki handouts, I'll use photos to add some visual interest to the page. VIsuals on a page are OK for screen readers, as long as they've been properly tagged so that the screen reader can identify it as either decorative or illustrative of a point and there's some indication of what the photo is about. Unfortunately, Wikispaces isn't giving me that option (or at least I didn't find a way to do this), so I've ended up removing all of the photos to avoid confusion. BTW--this is also an issue for those of us who use photos in our blogs, which may make it more difficult for people with visual impairments to navigate our posts.

The biggest shift for me has been needing to think in very different ways about my materials and how to make them accessible. This project has been a huge reminder to me too of how visual I am in my development of materials, which can be great in some cases, but in others requires a big shift in my thinking.

Comment Problems

2009-06-19T03:54:41-07:00

Just an FYI to commenters here that although work is part of the reason I haven't been commenting back on blog posts, it's not the entire issue. Off and on for awhile now Typepad has not been allowing me to leave comments on my own posts. Either I can't get to the comment section at all or I get there, type a comment and then it just hangs there. Can you say "frustrating"? Anyway, I've checked in with the Typepad Help Desk and they say they'll be issuing a fix next week, so hopefully we'll be back to more interactive blog discussion once that's done. Thanks for your patience. :-)

Who's in the Market for Learning: Individuals or Organizations?

2009-06-16T08:26:21-07:00

As part of the ongoing conversation on the future business models for learning with Tony Karrer, I mentioned in both my blog post and in a comment on Tony's blog that I think we're going to see a move away from companies and organizations to individuals as the consumers of learning products and services. Tony followed up by asking if I had anything to back up my thinking. Good question, so here's my train of thought.

Everyone agrees that work today is more complex, more knowledge-based and rapidly changing. There are a lot of arguments about how we're going to develop our workforce, but no one is arguing that there's a need for LESS learning. Everyone agrees that learning must be constant in order to keep up with the pace of change. So the demand for learning is there. The question becomes, where's the market?

For the past 50 years or so, we saw companies taking responsibility for employee learning. This made sense when you had people working for you for an extended period of time, wanted to develop them along a career path and saw them as integral cogs in your company's operation. As a result of company's taking responsibility for learning, they were the primary market for learning products and services and the learning industry (at least in terms of corporate education and training) has been totally geared toward that market.They PAID for learning, so they were the target market.

But these conditions no longer exist in most industries. Turnover (both voluntary and involuntary) is a way of life. The median job tenure according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 4.9 years, but this is skewed by the tenure of older workers (9.9 years). Workers between 25 and 34 had only 2.7 years on the job. It's also skewed by the differences between public and private sector workers--in the public sector median tenure is 7.2 years (9.9 years for federal employees), while in the private sector it's 3.6 years. If the research I mentioned in my previous post is true--that employers only begin investing in training for employees after 3 years on the job--that's a lot of people missing out on employer-provided training.

Another trend I see going on is the rise of contract/freelance workers. As I mentioned in my previous post, there's been a surge in companies looking to hire contract workers, either directly or through placement agencies. Careerbuilder reports that 28% of employers are indicating they will increase the number of contract and temporary workers they hire in 2009. And this PBS report indicates that contract worker make up 30% of the workforce. This doesn't include the numbers of people who are probably working as freelancers, but are misclassified as employees. That's a significant number of people who need to continue to upgrade their skills and who probably won't be getting professional development from their companies.

To these two trends let's add the fact that while companies SAY they need ongoing training, many of them jettison learning at the first sign of hard times (look at Tony's post for some stats on that). Learning is seen as a "cost," of doing business, not an investment in infrastructure and as a cost, in hard times it will be cut.

I also think there's a general reluctance to train staff because knowledge and skills are portable and with people having the flexibility to move to other jobs, companies are understandably reluctant to train their future competitors.

Finally, let us not forget the high percentage of small businesses that are out there--I've seen estimates as high as 90%, many of which employ under 20 people. These are not companies that are typically in the business of training their employees because of time and money constraints. At best they may send one or two people to an outside course. They still need skilled workers, but these workers need to get their skills elsewhere because these companies simply aren't in a position to provide the services.

I suspect that we may be at a place with employee training that is similar to where we are at on things like employer-provided healthcare and pensions. In larger companies and organizations that could afford these benefits, the trend has been to put more and more of the "costs" onto workers and for companies to get out of things that aren't their "core" business. Small companies couldn't even afford to play. I'm not sure that employers see employee training and development as a central concern (although they pay it lip service), so I'd see T&D as a primary candidate for putting back on workers, especially if they can invest in performance support systems to cover what they need for business processes.

So how to improve worker skills if it isn't going to happen through employers? At best, I think we'll be seeing employers using things like tuition reimbursement, which puts both the buying and the onus for learning on the individual.Yes, companies may have some guidelines on the courses that could be taken, but beyond that, they will have little input into the buying decision.

We may also see government stepping up to the plate. I do a lot of work with "second chance" workforce programs that are funded through the US Department of Labor. Here, laid off workers can qualify for "individual training accounts" that they can use to upgrade skills in order to find new employment. The Recovery Act infused a ton of funding into that system, so it may be another avenue for funding learning, although, again, it puts decisions in the hands of individual consumers. And as a government program, there are lots of caveats on how the money can be used.

So to summarize--I see several different trends intersecting here that, to my mind, are going to reduce the amount of employer-provided/funded training and education that will occur. There's still a NEED for ongoing learning, but I think the market for this is going to shift to individuals rather than being delivered through employers. I also think that we've had an untapped market sitting there for awhile that we haven't figured out how to access yet (I'm thinking of freelance workers, for example).

What I'm really trying to say here is that whoever pays for the product or service is the target market. In the past, we've relied on companies to pay for ongoing worker training, just as we've relied on them to provide healthcare benefits. What I think we're seeing, though, is a move away from employers paying for ongoing learning, which means either people stop learning or someone else has to pay for it. I think it will be individuals, either out of their own pockets and/or with assistance from government (if government can get its act together on financial aid and supporting lifelong learning).

Frankly, figuring out who is going to pay for lifelong learning is a key policy decision we need to face as a country if we're going to survive in the long-term.We also need to figure out how to re-educate that large class of workers used to relying on their companies to tell them what training and skills they need to develop and then paying for it. These people need to fundamentally change their view of how we do professional development in this country.

If what I'm thinking is where we're headed, I do think this changes the conversation we're having about the business models to employ. Individuals are going to be thinking very differently about what they want to access and how than are employers. ROI will be calculated in a different way too. This isn't to say that companies will no longer be purchasing learning. I just think that as providers and business people, there are some markets here that are changing and need to be further explored.

So what do you think? Am I making sense here? What am I missing?

The Business of Learning: What Does the Future Hold?

2009-06-16T03:49:32-07:00

Tony Karrer is asking an important and provocative question for those of us in the business of learning:

While training as a publisher of courses and courseware faces an increasingly challenging market, what other things can learning businesses successfully sell to internal or external customers?

As always, Tony's post includes a good framing of issues along with a reading list. The basic premise is that internal and external training departments have been in the business of more traditional formal learning and content creation--how does the model change when content is free and readily available? And how does it change when there's an increasing reliance on informal learning over more traditional formal methods?

I have no answers but wanted to get down some of the random thoughts/questions going through my mind after a quick read through his post.

What's popping out for me here is the idea that where ever things go for the future, we're going to have to embrace some of what's disrupting other industries, such as publishing and music. We're also going to have to think about the characteristics of social media that are rapidly shaping our expectations both on and off-line. (Warning--Stream of consciousness and ill-formed thoughts ahead)

In terms of the products that get created, I think we're looking at having multiple formats of complementary materials that can be used flexibly. I think of SpanishPod, for example, where you can learn to speak Spanish through a combination of podcasts (listen online or on a mobile device), videos, printable exercises/activities, participation in a language learning community, teacher discussions and flash cards. You use what you need to support the lessons. The idea of multiple formats along with the ability to learn alone or by connecting to a community is key.

SpanishPod also illustrates another thing I think we'll be seeing for the future of learning--subscription models. The podcasts are free, but to access the other learning materials, you pay a monthly fee that frankly is pretty reasonable if you're serious about learning another language--$9 for the basic package and $29 for the premium package. What's happening here is that you aren't buying content as much as access to an ongoing community and set of services, offered at a reasonable rate. You can try the subscription out for a month and then stop if you don't like it--something you can't do when you buy more traditional learning packages.

The community aspect is big and I think we're going to be thinking a lot about what makes up a learning community and how to nurture them. It may be partially about the platforms we use, but it's also about who is in the community. I tend to think that open communities of practitioners learning together across organizations may be a more viable long-term model than "behind the firewall" solutions. I can't help but think that open source and open social networks are successful for reasons that apply to learning, although I know that privacy and proprietary issues play a role, too.

How learning content is packaged is something else we need to look at. If the social web is teaching us nothing else, it's that having a personality and a point of view sells. We're talking business here, so it isn't just about who has the most "effective" learning tool. It's about who's creating learning that people want to participate in. The rest just looks institutional and like the commodity it is. People want a sense of humor, to be entertained.

A good example of what I'm talking about is the Plain English videos, created by Lee and Sashi LeFever of Common Craft fame. That series is fun and full of personality ("Yea! Boo!") and they were able to parley that into a business for themselves. I think that it's this kind of creativity that we'll be needing more of for the future.

I'm also wondering who the market will be. If you read Tony's post, the assumption is that we'll be selling learning to organizations--in particular, large companies. But increasingly, I'm thinking we'll be selling to individuals. For one thing, even though businesses say that learning is important, at the same time, they are investing less and less in their workers. A few years ago I attended a conference where the keynote speaker shared research indicating that businesses didn't invest in training their employees until they'd been there for three years. Given the average tenure on the job is shrinking, we're going to see more people who aren't there for that three year window of opportunity.

Related to this, I think we're seeing a push to more contract workers. Technically these people are not employees and most companies are not going to invest a lot in their development. That leaves learning up to individual workers themselves.

I also think that company-specific training in procedures and processes is either being handled through OJT or with performance support systems, which decreases the need for learning that's customized to a specific company. This too will give companies an "out" in terms of whether or not to invest in training.

If I'm right, then this really changes the business landscape for learning. Individual learners are working with different value propositions and needs than are their employers. Right now, they try to get those needs met through colleges and some self-study, but I think there might be some opportunities here for training companies, especially along the lines of the subscription model I mentioned earlier. These learners will be more price sensitive and will want learning that is flexible, creative and fun. I also think this is where the community aspect becomes important--the right community will build long-term loyalty, which is exactly what we're seeing when community is done well in other businesses.

I'm someone who, frankly, would prefer to see individual workers being in charge of their own learning, rather than putting that responsibility in the hands of companies. This is the essence of a knowledge economy--you own the means of production, in your head. Letting someone else decide what you should learn would be like letting someone else decide what machines you would use to produce your goods in a factory. This is one reason that companies are reluctant to invest in training--you can now take their "machinery" with you when you leave. I will admit, then, that part of me WANTS the future to be in learning sold to individuals, rather than to companies. Still, I think there's something here.

I hesitate to prognosticate--I'm sure you guys will be able to point out a lot of the flaws in my thinking here. In fact, I hope you do! This is an interesting conversation for us to be having, though, because in a knowledge economy, how people will be able to access learning is a big deal. The business opportunities are also going to shape what learning is provided, how it's provided, etc. so I'm curious to see where this takes us.

Do You Know How to Ask the Right Questions?

2009-06-05T11:00:10-07:00

Looking at tools like Google Squared, Google Trends and Wolfram Alpha, it's becoming increasingly clear to me that one of the key challenges we have before us is learning how to ask questions. And not just any question, but the RIGHT questions. There's tremendous power in the possibilities of these tools, but if you don't know what to ask about or how to ask it, then what's the point?

This leads me to wonder if we're really doing a good job of teaching the art of questioning, either in schools or in the workplace. My anecdotal response would be "no, we do a terrible job of this," partially because we seem to do what we can to kill curiosity and creativity, starting from an early age. A 4-year old does a great job of asking question, but by the time he gets out of 2nd grade, not so much.

And from what I can tell, many workplaces are structured to avoid questions. Let's just do what we've been doing and not stir things up with curiosity. We also seem to love moving immediately to answers and solutions. Maybe we need to spend more time formulating the right questions.

This seems like one of those areas where we need to think carefully about how our tools may be outstripping our ability to use them. I love all this cool technology, but are our skills keeping up with what the tools can do? And how are we going to address this?

The Big Question: How Do You Spend Your Time?

2009-06-03T08:47:55-07:00

Last night I had a quick IM chat with Christine Martell, who asked me when I planned to re-join the online community--her way of pointing out that I've had my G-talk status on "invisible" for several weeks now, haven't done a Twitter update in 16 days and have clearly been remiss in posting here. So it was serendipitous to find that the Learning Circuits Big Question this month is "how do you spend your time?" And more specifically:

What's a typical day like?
How much time do you spend and how did you find time for all the relatively newer things like reading blogs, twitter, social networks, etc.?
What are you doing less of today than you were 3-5 years ago?
Do you have less of a life with all of these new things?

Given that I've not been organizing myself very well, it seemed appropriate to use the big question as a sort of check on myself. Here goes.

A Typical Day
Currently, I have several major projects going on for about 5 clients. I'm doing everything from facilitating and developing a strategic plan to designing a couple of training programs and setting up client blogs and social networks. Most of these projects need to be finished by June 30, which is the end of my clients' budget year. This does not include the myriad administrative things hanging over my head that are necessary to keep my business going--little things like invoicing.

I'm generally at my desk by 6:15 a.m. every day. This is when I routinely violate one of the first rules of time management by checking my email as soon as I plop my butt into the chair. I continue the email violations by monitoring my inbox throughout the day, just so I know what's there. This doesn't mean that I respond right away, but I seem to have this need to at least know what's coming in.

From there, I go to Netvibes, where I catch up on any news stories and try to read at least a few blogs. Lately I've had less time for reading and NO time for commenting, which is not a healthy state of affairs. However, I'm considering this to be a time-limited situation that I hope gets better in a few weeks.

The rest of my day is taken up with client calls and meetings, emails, writing/designing and responding to the latest client fire. I have moved firmly out of any strategic use of my time and am currently dwelling in that place known as "crisis management."

I am trying very hard to be finished by 5:30. At that point my brain is fried anyway and we're dealing with the law of diminishing returns. I'm also trying to reserve mornings for thinking and writing and afternoons for calls and meetings. I've been less successful with that.

Time for Social Media

When things were calmer in my working life, I spent a good amount of time (10-15 hours a week?) on nurturing my online connections, reading and writing blog entries, responding to and making comments, etc. Considering that I work alone from home, this served not only as professional development, but also as a way to feel less isolated. Since January, though, I have found I have less and less time for these pursuits--and it shows. I'm feeling less creative, less energized and less connected.

I've been trying to find ways to kill two birds with one stone--hence blog entries that started out as work for clients, for example--but this isn't always working. What I loved about my first few years of blogging was that they opened up so many doors, both creatively and in terms of connections. Now, social media has become more of a means to an end (i.e., wikis for managing my projects), rather than opportunities for learning and exploration, which is really a shame. The nature of my work right now just isn't lending itself to the freshness I so prize.

What's Different Now Compared to 3-5 Years Ago

The biggest difference in my use of time is the sheer volume of things I do online. Five years ago, email and static websites were my primary online activities. Most of my work was done face-to-face, through calls or in Word.

In 2005, I started an art blog-- my first introduction to blogging--and by 2007, things really exploded with blogging, RSS, wikis, etc. I now manage most of my projects with wikis and all of my training sessions are accompanied by a wiki "handout" of resources, videos, slideshows, podcasts, etc. Although I've badmouthed Twitter on occasion, I am finding it a great source of links to really valuable blog posts, articles, etc., so I check it at least a few times a day. I'm less active in places like Facebook, but have used Ning to roll my own social networks for some client projects and it's been a great way to connect people. I'm also an avid fan of Netvibes, which with my Gmail account, is my online dashboard. And I can't say enought about the virtues of tools like IM and web conferencing for working remotely.

What I realize is that social media for me has become a fabulous tool that really informs my work practice. Although my personal professional development has suffered lately, I have still found blogging to be one of the best things I've ever done in terms of my own learning. It has also been the "home base" from which I've been able to launch tons of friendships, projects and opportunities. When it makes sense (and it usually does), I'm integrating some social media tool into virtually every piece of work that I do. This is a huge change from only a few years ago and one that has made a big difference in my life.

On a purely practical level, I can't imagine doing my work now without social media as a backbone. However, I am not pleased that social media has become more utilitarian for me and that I have less time to reflect on the bigger ideas and questions that have always enthralled me in the past.

I'm realizing there's no small irony in the fact that even though my clients are asking for and using social media on most of my projects with them, their use of the tools tends to be closed--private wikis, private Ning networks, etc. And in helping them set up their systems, I'm ending up neglecting my own. That needs to be fixed.

So--that's how I'm spending my time right now. Would love to hear what you're doing.

KeyHubs and Google Wave Are Looking Interesting

2009-05-29T07:36:32-07:00

A few things that have popped up recently that have me excited to explore further:

KeyHubs for Mapping Informal Networks
Via a Delicious save from Beth Kanter, I found this article on mapping networks--an interesting read in itself. It led me to Keyhubs, which lets you map the informal networks that lie behind your formal org chart. The case studies show some interesting examples. It appears to evaluate networks based on who people trust, who they go to for advice and who they socialize with.

I could see using this as a tool to help plan for social networks within your organization--finding out ahead of time, for example, who your key influencers might be so that you might work with them ahead of time to support the learning community. You could also use it to analyze your existing networks, see where there might be gaps in sharing and connection, then plan for and evaluate the success of some interventions to grow the network.

Google Wave
Although it won't be ready until later this year, Google Wave looks REALLY interesting. According to Mashable, Google Wave is

. . . a hybrid of email, web chat, IM, and project management software. It features the ability to replay conversations because it records the entire sequence of communication, character by character. Because of this, discussions are also live in Google Wave: you will see your friends type character-by-character.

The features don’t stop there, either. Google Wave also supports the ability to drag attachments from your desktop into Google Wave. It loads that file and sends it immediately to anyone in the conversation. It’s also embeddable, so you can embed Google Wave conversations on any blog.

. . . it looks very similar to a Gmail () inbox, except it’s more focused on your contacts, whose faces you can see in your contacts sidebar on the left. As for conversations, well, it’s a bit different than anything we’ve seen before. You can reply and add your thoughts anywhere within a message. Communication within Google Wave is completely shared.

The key to it all is the faster line of communication. Attaching documents, like you do in email, is unnecessary in Google Wave. Real-time conversations and collaboration make it an ideal tool for business teams as well. Imagine an entire office having Google Wave open to quickly share and receive files. It combines some of people’s favorite aspects of many different web communication tools.

It looks to me like this could be a really RICH way to develop a collaborative learning environment that combines the best parts of synchronous and asynchronous communication. What is also interesing is that you can record the evolution of the wave, so it looks like you'll be able to see how things develop over time. And the embedabble aspect also looks promising--I'm picturing a blog or a wiki to pull together related waves.

Of course, we're relying on descriptions at this point, but I've signed up to be notified when they go live. I'm very curious to see where this goes.

UPDATE--Looks like Mashable has posted a Complete Guide to Google Wave.