My HBS Presentation - Web 2.0 Implications on Learning

I've somewhat fallen off the map on this blog. Been traveling and consulting with a bunch of early-stage and growth companies. Really fun stuff these days.

One of my recent fun experiences was doing a presentation at Harvard Business School (HBS) on the implications of Web 2.0 type tools (Blogs, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, RSS, RSS Readers) on corporate learning and someone like HBS.

In the corporate space, these tools have quite an implication in that most training organizations get displaced for knowledge transfer as content gets created by end-users/learners instead of by the training organization. My expectation is that the classic corporate training organization is going to be a slow downward path retaining compliance training and developmental activities - but these will become smaller and smaller part of how employees learn (as compared to informal learning).

For HBS, the issues really are quite different as they want to continue to be a "transformative experience" ... a truly developmental kind of experience. At the same time, graduates from HBS need to be armed with how to operate in a virtual work-team world who use the tools as a means of sharing knowledge and collaborating. Further, as HBS looks towards providing on-going value to students, these kinds of tools become significantly more important. It's not that we'll see radical changes from HBS, but certainly adoption within the core and as part of add-on services is highly likely.

Discussion Creation Among Bloggers - LinkedIn, Blogging and Discussion Groups

I've been participating in a Yahoo Group that are users of LinkedIn and who are Bloggers: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/LinkedinBloggers/

It's an interesting group of folks from diverse backgrounds. It's also been interesting to see the interaction of tools involved - Social Networking, Blogging and a Discussion Group.

It seems that four different models of "discussion creation" have occurred:

• Organice Discussion - someone posts something interesting, lots of bloggers post on the topic, distributed discussion ensues.
• Tag Memes - Someone posts a question and "Tags" five people to give their response. See Five Things Meme as an example.
• Blog Hub - A central blog provides a place where the topic is raised and comments are collected and bloggers post. See Supporting New Managers and What Would You Do to Support New Managers? as an example.
• Discussion Group Hub - questions/topics are raised via the discussion group and can go out into the blog world to get a more diverse audience - which is now happening with this group.

I'm not sure which of these make sense in what case. Certainly it suggests that there's need for something more than MyBlogLog, Explode, CoComment, etc. to help bloggers and blog readers with comments.

But this still leaves me with lots of questions about the interplay between these tools, so I'd ask people who author a blog, use LinkedIn (or other social networking), and participate in discussion groups, how do you use these tools.

How do you use LinkedIn?

How do you use Discussion Groups?

What's the interaction between them?

I'll be curious to see the response from the group. Actually, what I'd love to see are some responses via blog posts from different folks in the group:

Bill Austin -Famous Quotes 2007 Weblog Awards
Alister Cameron - www.alistercameron.com
Dennis McDonald - www.ddmcd.com
Jason Alba - http://www.JibberJobber.com/blog
Ben Yoskovitz - http://www.instigatorblog.com
Ben - http://blog.targetz.net/

My answers...

Where I use LinkedIn:

* I definitely use LinkedIn for Specific Requests - Ex. Open Source Business Models, speakers for Web 2.0 event I did last fall.

* LinkedIn has been great to keep track of people I know and their current contact information. I regularly do wine tastings here in Los Angeles with some interesting folks I know. LinkedIn has been my primary tool for keeping track of who to invite.

* I definitely check people out using LinkedIn. It's a great way to get a background on folks.

* I've not found that much use for LinkedIn to help my blogging, but I'm starting to think about this. Maybe this meme will help.

Where I use the Discussion Group:

* I've not been very active in the discussion group on particular topics. However, it definitely has served as a hub. This suggests that something more than MyBlogLog is needed to create hubs from groups of bloggers. That's probably the value of this group.

Interaction:

* Not much right now between LinkedIn and my blog. Certainly my LinkedIn profile provides a better public profile for me. Otherwise, I've not seen much.

* I'm constantly frustrated by conversations that take place in discussion groups that can't cross the border into the blog world. And, I don't like to copy and paste.

Kevin Federline Search Engine

Just saw a post - Sleep with a pop star, get your own branded search engine. - talking about Prodege's Search with Kevin Site - http://searchwithkevin.prodege.com/. I actually think this is a pretty innovative model. Take a look at other sites: http://searchwinmerch.prodege.com/?cmd=ct-allsites

But the overall idea is to provide branded search in order to get merchandise from your artist, star, etc. It also works well for non-profit groups:

http://www.prodege.com/organization/partners.html

It's a relatively new concept, but it likely has legs.

(Disclosure: we helped build the system that is behind these.)

Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital

Seth's guide is worth reading - The realistic entrepreneur's guide to venture capital

Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple

Jeremy Liew at Lightspeed Venture Partners has an interesting post: Time Rich or Time Poor? In it he separates web consumers into: Time Rich (more time than money) and Time Poor (more money than time). He tells us:

If you’re starting a new internet company, its important to know who your audience is, and to make sure that you don’t let your own experience and that of other Time Poor people guide you wrong.

This is an interesting concept and not something I've seen articulated this way. What's interesting is that I've been seeing opportunities to use social marketing for businesses that typically target Time Poor audiences. Does this mean that they'll have lower response rates? It's certainly something to keep in mind.

I also read - The Difference Between Apple and Microsoft Marketing that tells us:

Apple's marketing is designed for Time Poor buyers, while Microsoft's is
designed for Time Rich buyers.

I would agree that Apple's product design would suggest that it aims at Time Poor buyers. However, the ubiquity of the iPod including use by many folks who certainly would fall in the Time Rich category (lots of time to play with music) suggests that their product and marketing appeals to both segments. Doesn't this call into question the central concept of Time Rich and Time Poor and the importance of making a choice prior to product design which audience you are going after?

F2F Still Matters

Kathy Sierra has a great post today: Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video... and she provides this picture: It shows that while we slowly approach real-time, realistic virtual conversations, it still isn't quite the same thing as being there.

As an aside, I personally question that view. In the long run - 25 years - we will all be walking around with devices that attempt to make in-person as good as doing it via online. Online you will have an incredibly realistic experience (think how good virtual actors are these days - add 3D - presence based audio - first person shooters). And because you are online, you will have access to all sorts of information about the people, what their interests are - it will be easily captured. The challenge will be getting people used to this - hence the 25 years.

But for now, Kathy expresses something quite true:

The point is, face-to-face still matters. And in fact all our globally-connecting-social-networking tools are making face-to-face more, not less desirable. Thanks to the tools y'all are building, we now have more far-flung friends--including people we've never met f2f--than ever before. We now have more people we want to connect with in the human world, often after years of electronic-only contact.

Kathy suggests that we should really be working to:

Get people together in the real world.

I completely agree with her, but I've found it to be really difficult to:

• Meet People within a given Geography Online who share passion around Technology, Start-ups, etc.
• Find avenues to network with these folks.

So, what I've ended up doing is planning our own events (wine tasting) and just inviting people who I know are interesting. We've done one so far, and it's great. Kathy's on the money on this one.

8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing

Great post - 8 Ways The Internet Changed Software Marketing - is an interesting take on how different it is these days to market software. Good stuff.