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Jeff’s del.icio.us bookmarks for February 11th

These are my links for February 11th:

  • Learning 2.1 – This is an updated version of the fun site put together for Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to teach staff about the world of Web 2.0. It is a great resource for people who want a hands-on guided tour of Web 2.0.
  • Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT – Broad and thoughtful article from John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler that pulls together many of the main themes in how the Web is changing the way we learn. Also has a good discussion on learning how to learn.
  • Business Models on the Web | Professor Michael Rappa – This is a great summary of Web business models. Focuses on "front door" models and does not discuss API-based revenue, but some of the model classifications could be further interpreted that way.

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Jeff’s del.icio.us bookmarks for February 8th through February 10th

These are my links for February 8th through February 10th:

  • Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up – Another sign that "social fatigue" is accumulating on the Web. The article includes interesting stats on the drop in social network usage. Big implications for the biggest monetization model, advertising. Now people are "partied out" will they still le
  • Social Networking with the Elite – Interesting article that alludes to the probable emergence of elite cliques on the Web. As people become increasingly social-Web savvy, they will naturally seek out exclusive time with peers – just as we always have. From clicks to cliques.
  • eBook: Web 2.0 and Workplace Productivity – Enterprise 2.0 has become mainstream enough that IBM and CMP have jumped on the jargon bandwagon. Both the eBook and the video offer a good overview of emerging E2.0. The eBook is also chock full of interesting stats.

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Enterprise 2.0: The Three-Legged Stool Revisited

In my role as Director of Education Solutions at Web 2.0 University™, I recently updated our outstanding (if I do say so myself) Enterprise 2.0 Bootcamp to include a model I used in earlier knowledge management learning products. I can’t claim the model as my own – it has been around for quite sometime – but I wanted to update it for E2.0. The three-legged stool model is designed to reinforce the importance of processes and culture in the success of E2.0 implementations. Because the technology is primarily “what’s new” in E2.0, it gets most of the attention. But processes and culture are just as important. All three must be balanced for the stool to work properly. So, let’s briefly review the Enterprise 2.0 Three-Legged Stool.
Leg One: TechnologyThe first leg is technology and it has been the primary topic of E2.0 discussion. The innovative platforms and tools of Web 2.0 are being carried into the enterprise. Wikis, blogs, social networks, prediction markets, open APIs and mashups empowered people on the Web and now people want that same power at work (for more info, Dion Hinchcliffe has a great post how E2.0 technologies may fare in 2008). And while we focus much of our discussion on technology, you cannot just “build it and they will come.” You must have the other legs in place for the stool to stand.
stool_two_legs.gifThe second leg is processes. Though usually emergent phenomena, E2.0 solutions needs to establish standard process and procedures in order to be successful. Employees must understand how each of the E2.0 tools works, how it interacts with other tools, and how they are expected to use it. E2.0 tools should be easy to use by definition, but employees will still need to be educated on “how” “why” and “what”. The “how” is an understanding of the tools’ function and features: “How do I use this to be more successful at work?” The “why” is about understanding the benefits to themselves and the larger organization: “Why is it worthwhile for me to use the tool?” The “what” is about understanding what the tool should be (and should not be) used for: “What would I use this tool to do?”
Leg Three: CultureThe third leg is culture. For E2.0 to succeed the organization must value collaboration and knowledge sharing. This is often the most challenging of the three legs. If your organization does not already have a culture that values collaboration and information sharing, it may be impossible for your E2.0 implementation to be successful. But cultures can be changed. Before we consier changing a culture, let’s be sure we agree on what a culture is. For our purposes, I will define culture as: “The behaviors and values characteristic of a particular group.” Within a culture, we have “mores” and “taboos” (and many other things we won’t go into). Again for our purposes, I will define mores as: “Accepted traditional customs and behaviors of a particular group” and taboos as: “Behaviors proscribed by a group as improper or unacceptable.”
So how do you create a collaborative culture? The group (especially leaders) must adopt the values and behaviors that foster collaboration and information sharing. Leaders must establish mores by modeling and rewarding collaboration. For instance, they should use the blogs and wikis themselves and they could make active collaboration an integral part of the organizations annual performance reviews. The entire organization can use taboos to encourage collaboration. Consider this chastising praise: “That was a great analysis paper you wrote, but why did you email a copy to everyone instead of just posing it on the wiki?” From a leader or a peer, that sort of feedback will help mold a culture of collaboration. Of course cultural change takes time. Take that into account when plan your E2.0 implementation and set expectations accordingly.
The Enterprise 2.0 Three Legged StoolSo there you have the three legged stool of Enterprise 2.0 (or any type of collaboration/knowledge sharing system). Successful E2.0 implementations assure that all three legs of the stool are strong and balanced. They also recognize that a change in any one of the legs may require changes in the other two to keep the stool balanced. To close with a blatant plug, I encourage you to join us at a delivery of the Enterprise 2.0 Bootcamp to learn more about the three legged stool and successful E2.0 implementations.

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Jeff’s del.icio.us bookmarks for February 6th

These are my links for February 6th:

  • Social Network Operating System : eLearning Technology – More great ideas from Tony Karrer. Good point on the obvious need for "transportable open social graph… to leverage across applications." Also I wonder if the distinction of "people" and "content" is valid. Are we just not another form of content on t
  • Five Ways Women Learn – Learning Styles – Lifelong Learning – Interesting article from a book from back in the day. It raises tow questions immediately: How is this different than how men learn? and How does this manifest itself in how women learn from the Web and from collaborative learning?
  • LUNARR – LUNARR Works Smarter – Lunarr has a new take on the Enterprise 2.0 goal of improving collaboration. They take collaborative wiki-like editing and add email-like messaging system that associates messages with those documents.
  • Howcast – Howcast launched today to be the "YouTube of instructional videos." It was started by three ex-GooTube employees. High audience participation: suggestions, voting on ideas, script editing, etc. A possible mecca for learning videos.
  • Time Warner Plans to Split AOL Businesses – New York Times – Just wanted to bookmark this as a "follow-up" to my February 1 post where I postulate that 2008 will see the splitting and spin-off of the three AOL businesses…

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Jeff’s del.icio.us bookmarks for February 5th

These are my links for February 5th:

  • Obama raises $32 million in January – Yahoo! News – It has only been 15 years since we are at "Internet? What's the Internet?" and now it is the primary force shaping our society. This is especially apparent in this years political process. 88% of Obama's January money came from the Web.
  • Eons: Now You Just Have To FEEL Old To Join – So EONS takes another step towards Arrington's deadpool. I bookmark this for two reasons: EONS was an example of the vertical networks trend we discussed in Web 2.0 University. But now that trend may be reversing as people tire of too many social sites
  • Redfin: The Market-Leading Online Real Estate Brokerage – Redfin is another example of how the Web is disrupting existing business models. Real estate is one of the few remaining "protected rackets" and Redfin is aiming to end that. Since 2/2006, they've reimbursed $12 million to customers.

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Microsoft Hunts Yahoo – Is AOL Next?

microhoo_small.gifSo the blogosphere is agog with today’s big news that Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion bid to acquire Yahoo. I won’t pile on when so many others that have much more knowledge than I are busily chiming in. I will just say that I think this is just the first of many mergers and acquisitions we will see in 2008. There are too many duplicitous players out there and as the economy tightens, the strong will swallow the weak. Also, people are getting tired of having so many sites to keep track of (c’mon OpenID) that they will welcome a merger of some of their favorite social sites (can you say “MyFaceLinked”? – quick – go reserve the domain).
It did get me thinking about my old company AOL, however. Could they be on the radar for Microsoft to gobble up as well? Others have posited that Google might want to snap up AOL to strengthen their advertising sales force. That is certainly a possibility as well. But since I am way overdue to deliver some 2008 predictions, here is what I think will take place:

  1. AOL is three different companies in one: the dial up subscription service, the Web services (publishing, media, IM, e-mail, MapQuest, TMZ.com, etc.), and the “Platform A” advertising business (anchored in Advertising.com).
  2. Time Warner will not give up on Platform A. It recognizes the value of the online advertising business. It may decide to merge the “publishing” parts of the Web services with its Time Inc. publishing division. But the dial up business and the “services” part of Web services? I think they would be happy to find a buyer.
  3. So, they sell the dial-up for scrap; merge their hot Web properties (MapQuest, TMZ.com, etc.) into a newly fortified Time publishing division; hold onto Platform A; and offer everything else (AOL portal, e-mail accounts, AIM, ICQ, etc.) to the highest bidder.
  4. Who would want it? Microsoft? Google? Hard to say. But Google does have an inside advantage: they already own 5% 0f AOL. They purchased that for just over $1 billion in 2005.
  5. When does all this happen? In July 2006 – because that is when Google can exercise an IPO on the 5% it owns.

So, that is my shot in the dark. I will repost in August to see how accurate I was. ;o)
Let me know what you think…

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The Language of the Web is The Language of Learning

International travel is always exciting and wonderfully educational. Last November I did a long bit of globetrotting to deliver Web 2.0 training events in Switzerland, Italy, Singapore, England, and France. Given the challenge of discussing Web 2.0 with colleagues who speak a wide variety of languages, the topic of the language of the Web often pops up. Usually at dinner (especially after the second bottle of Chianti), passionate predictions of Web 3.0, 4.0 and beyond are debated. As the predictions turn to the issue of language, some espouse that English will prevail given its current dominance and foothold in markup and programming languages. Others suggest that China’s size and economic growth will overwhelm all other languages and dominant the Web. And then there was one person predicting that Latin would be resurrected as the language of the Web – but he was also the person who drank the majority of the Chianti.
Now, my crystal ball is no clearer than anyone else’s. But since the past and the present often give insight into the future, I decided to learn a few things from the Web:
The first thing I found was this reference from World Internet Stats (I have no idea on how accurate their data is) that shows the “Top Internet Languages” as of November 2007:

Languages of the Web Image

While interesting (and perhaps relevant in a roundabout way) this speaks to the digital divide more than the language of the Web. This is the (primary) languages of the people using the Web, not the language of the Web pages themselves. And as we see, currently 30% of the Web’s users speak English according to World Internet Stats. What is interesting further down the page is the table that shows the growth rate of languages on the Web. From 2000 to 2007, the number of English Web users grew 167%. Chinese speaking users grew at 472% (and Arabic speaking users grew at an amazing 1,575% – unfortunately, no statistics were provided for Latin speakers ;o). If we see the same growth over the next seven years, by 2015 the number of English speaking and Chinese speaking Web users will be roughly equal at about 1 billion. But that still tells us only what language the speak – not what language they are reading on the Web. So, on we go…
Next I found the Future of the Internet II report from the always interesting Pew Internet & American Life Project. In the survey for the report, they asked 742 Internet leaders, activists, builders and commentators about the effect of the Internet on social, political and economic life in the year 2020. With regard to language of the Internet in 2020, the report summarizes the results this way:

“Many respondents said they accept the idea that English will be the world’s lingua franca for cross-cultural communications in the next few decades. But notable numbers maintained English will not overwhelm other languages and, indeed, Mandarin and other languages will expand their influence online. Most respondents stressed that linguistic diversity is good and that the internet will allow the preservation of languages and associated cultures. Others noted that all languages evolve over time and argued that the internet will abet that evolution.”

And there is much more valuable and interesting info in that report. I highly recommend it. But I’m a numbers guy. I want to find more stats on than actual language of the pages being posted on the Web. So – on we go…
So, I searched on and on (I gave up after an hour) and could not find any statistics of what percentage of the billions ow Web pages out there were in which language. It was frustrating to say the least. So, in the spirit of Web 2.0, I fell finally upon David Sifry’s report on the growth of RSS to try to guesstimate the language of publication on the Web. From his April 2007 State of the Live Web post, I pulled this:

State of the Live Web - Posts by Language

So, based on RSS feeds (which is interpreted as blogs) and you can see that there are more RSS items in Japanese than in English. If you visit the page you will see that he also has statistics on new RSS items per hour by language. From this, he observes, “Again it would appear that both English and Spanish are more global languages based on consistency of posting through a 24 hour period, whereas other top languages, specifically Japanese, Chinese, and Italian, are more geographically correlated.” But again, this reflects only blogs (RSS feeds) and not the much larger Web as a whole.
So, I was not able to find any data from which I could fashion a crystal ball to predict the language of the Internet. If any of you have any stats that would be helpful, I would love to hear about them. But we do not have to predict what the future language of the Internet will be to move on to the point of this post. (Are you, like me, beginning to wonder if there is a point to this post?)
One last thought before I finally get to the point (Ha! – sorry, but it helps set the satge for the point). We should first pause to reflect on the great wisdom that has been already been imparted to humankind. I speak, of course of the great book chastises the great folly of man and provides keys to the future and how we must adapt to thrive. That book of wise parables and foresight, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In that tome, the prophet Adams first introduced us to the Babelfish. The power of virtual Babelfish continues to grow and, one day, it may be the case that all languages are fully interchangeable. Until then, ideas will be more valuable in their native language – and more useful to native speakers.
So finally to my point. The Web has transformed the way we learn. To continually adapt to our dynamic environment, we must harvest ideas from the Web and assimilate them into the way we think and work. Assuming that no language lends an inherent advantage to idea generation – all ideas are created equal – the dominant language on the Web will deliver the majority of new, innovative ideas. The language of the Web is the language of learning. To gain competitive advantage in this flattening world, you must learn from the Web. Speaking the dominant language of the Web affords you advantage. So, for now, English speakers hold court. In the future, it might be Chinese, it might be Latin, who can say? But until we perfect the Babelfish, parents, educators, and businesses will be wise to have their children, students, and employees master the language of the Web.

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The Inaugural Blogural

Welcome to 2008! This is the obligatory first post to my blog. It offers practically nothing of any substance. You might want to ignore it.
Based on what I have seen of the 70+ million other blogs out there (Disclosure: I have not visited all of them.), in this first post I need to explain that I am new to blogging, that I’m excited to share my thoughts and that I hope you will share your comments. I should then plan to blog everyday and actually do so for the first two days. And then life will intervene (perhaps in the form of a suddenly incontinent pet) and I will miss blogging for a week. This will help me recognize that my life really isn’t interesting enough to share more than once a week any way. So, then I should resolve to blog one a week and will – for two weeks. After that, realizing that no one is actually reading my blog, I should drop in one or two posts before the blog becomes entirely dormant.
But since I hope this blog will not go dormant until I do (Disclosure: I do not actually have a dormant season, but during January and on most Sundays I am quite lethargic.), I will take a different tack. I have blogged elsewhere before, I have mixed feelings about maintaining my own blog, and I really only want you to share your thoughts if they add value (the exception being any comments that are really, really funny).
As for the purpose of this blog, I already put that on the About Page. And as you will learn there, I am a horrible typist so I am not going to repeat it here. That would be an insult to Tim Berners-Lee’s whole hyperlink concept anyway.
Congratulations! You made it to the end of the inaugural post. I would have lost interest midway through the second paragraph. (Disclosure: I have self-diagnosed ADD.) I do hope that you will read the other, more substantive posts and share your thoughts. Thanks for visiting – ya’ll come back, ya here?

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