2010: My blogging year recapped

As 2010 draws to a close, I thought I’d take a moment to recap my blog posts during the year.

I hope you take the opportunity to read any that you may have missed.

Oh, and please leave a comment or two or three…!

Learning theory & instructional design

•  Taxonomy of Learning Theories
•  Theory-informed instructional design tips
•  The two faces of blended learning
•  Style counsel
•  Art vs (Information) Science

Informal learning

•  My award-winning IQ
•  Online courses must die!
•  The ILE and the FLE in harmony
•  How to revamp your learning model
•  Open Learning Network vs ILE

Social media

•  Social media: It’s not about the technology!
•  Social media: Prevention is better than cure
•  The 4 lessons Kid Fury teaches us
•  I stand corrected
•  How not to do social media
•  Why Gowalla should merge with Foursquare
•  Sharing is caring

Knowledge management

•  Art vs (Information) Science
•  Erin doesn’t get it

Government 2.0

•  London, New York, Parramatta
•  I stand corrected

Blogging

•  Thickness of skin required
•  Greetings from the E-Learning Provocateur
•  Sharing is caring

E-Books

•  The age of the e-book
•  The end of publishing as we know it

Engagement

•  The elephant in the room
•  Shades of green
•  The Melbourne Cup: it’s not about the horses!

Events

•  My 1-liners from LearnX 2010
•  My 1-liners from TEDxCanberra 2010

Cartoons

•  The ingredients of intelligence
•  Campus firestarter
•  A short history of spam
•  Thickness of skin required
•  Trending: Sydney
•  Selective tolerance

Miscellaneous

•  Confucius 2.0
•  Green e-learning
•  Honest football
•  The two types of augmented reality
•  Swimming against the tide
•  Square pegs and round holes
•  Facts are a bitch
•  Smartfailing the vintage future
•  Allergic to ATNA
 

Selective tolerance

As we near another Christmas, I thought this cartoon was timely.

How not to do social media

As my friends can attest, I’m a big Socceroos fan.

I grew up playing football (aka soccer) and although a few different codes compete for my attention in my home town, the World Game is the one I truly care about.

It was to my great joy, therefore, that the national administrators of the sport comprehensively revamped the local league several years ago. I think it’s fair to say the previous administration was widely perceived as incompetent, so it was no surprise when it was scrapped. The Football Federation of Australia (FFA) was born, and in 2005 the A-League kicked off.

Side note: I wasn’t the only one scratching my head when West Sydney wasn’t a founding club. Maybe it was a sign of things to come.

Around this time I was getting into Facebook. I had become a “fan” of a couple of other sports clubs (eg Wests Tigers) when I noticed there was no Facebook page dedicated to the Australian national football team. So, being the passionate fan that I am, I started one.

In no time I had attracted over 10,000 fans. I dutifully sent out updates for upcoming matches, and I even provided the details of local TV coverage for fans who couldn’t attend in person.

This went along swimmingly until I got a message from Facebook HQ telling me that I had no rights over the page and my administration access was suspended. The message said I could submit an appeal outlining why I should be granted access, which I did on the basis of the page being a “fan” page. I even suggested that the title of the page be changed to “Fans of the Socceroos”. Naturally I staked no claim whatsoever to any IP such as the Socceroos logo.

Lo and behold, Facebook never replied.

What can I deduce from this? Obviously some clever dick in the FFA had the bright idea of jumping on the Facebook bandwagon – and the easiest way to do this was to hijack the fan page that I had lovingly curated.

The irony is I would gladly have handed them the reins if only they had the professionalism to ask.

But they didn’t. Suffice to say it left a bad taste in my mouth.

A different approach

The sorry affair was a faded memory as I watched Grace Gordon from Soap Creative present at last month’s SMCSYD.

Grace was busting social media myths when she mentioned a brand that piqued my interest: Bubble O’ Bill.

For those of you who are not aware, Bubble O’ Bill is an ice cream that was first launched in the US in the 1980s, but achieved peculiar success in Australia soon after.

In 2009, customer Nick Getley liked the brand so much he created a Bubble O’ Bill page on Facebook that – at the time of writing – has 844,276 fans!

Switched on Media tells us how it came about:

It is the penultimate sentence that resonates with me:

Overwhelmed by the warm support for this Aussie icon, Streets Ice Cream contacted Nick and offered to work with him to make the page official.

Take a bow, Streets. You approached social media in the spirit that was intended, and now you are reaping the rewards.

The difference between right and wrong

So what does this have to do with e-learning?

Well, as time goes by, e-learning is increasingly converging with social learning through social media. The two marketing cases outlined above teach us that when we implement a social media strategy, there is a right way and a wrong way.

The right way is to be inclusive, collaborative and supportive. If you empower your champions to follow their passion, they will lead the charge on your behalf.

The wrong way is to be draconian, faceless and isolationist. If you burn your champions, you will lose your allies.

The proof of the pudding

So to conclude, let’s compare fan bases.

The Socceroos, the pride of a nation, has 144,378 fans on Facebook.

Bubble O’ Bill, the ice cream cowboy with a bubblegum nose, has 844,276 fans on Facebook.

Whose social media strategy will you adopt?

The Melbourne Cup: it’s not about the horses!

I was invited to a Melbourne Cup business lunch today. (Thanks C.S., that was very generous!)

In Australia the Melbourne Cup is affectionately known as “the race that stops a nation”.

As a cultural event, I imagine it’s similar to America’s Kentucky Derby and England’s Epsom Derby.

Every year, however, more and more cynics seem to come out of the woodwork. They range from the “I don’t believe in gambling” crowd to statisticians who bemoan the nation’s lost productivity.

These people are oblivious to the fact that the Melbourne Cup is not about the horses.

Even if you don’t buy into the nationalism of the event, I hope you can appreciate its true value.

Picture this: In every state except Victoria (where Melbourne Cup Day is a public holiday) the race is a workplace event. The ladies wear a lovely dress with a hat or a fascinator. The men wear a smart suit and a tie. Someone will run a sweep. The boss will take us out to lunch, or we’ll organise a barbeque. Or if we’re lucky, one of our business partners will invite us to a swanky restaurant.

Oh, and we’ll watch a bunch of horses run around for a few minutes.

Everyone gets excited, all our gazes transfix to the TV until the first nose crosses the finish line.

Some of us win, most of us lose, while others deconstruct the “shoulda”, “coulda”, “woulda” – but didn’t.

And guess what: it’s fun.

Everyone’s smiling, chatting, laughing and generally having a good time. How often does that happen at work?

If you want to analyse it in terms of management science, why not consider:

• engagement
• reward and recognition
• team building
• breaking down silos
• relationship management
• peer-to-peer networking
• social learning

…the list goes on.

But lost productivity?

Give me a break!

The 4 lessons Kid Fury teaches us

Today I read about the Twitter misadventure at H&R Block whereby a call centre employee assuming the name “Kid Fury” urged all his followers to phone in and ask for him.

It was his final day of work with that employer, so he thought it a harmless last hurrah. That was until it went viral and H&R Block call centres across the country were jammed with fools asking for Kid Fury.

The incident is kinda funny, kinda shocking, kinda scary.

So what can it teach us?

1. Treat your employees well

Yes, the kid’s stunt was probably an innocent bit of fun, but I wonder if he would have done it had he loved the company? Why was he leaving anyway?

2. Document your policies

I’m not 100% convinced that a formal Social Media Policy is necessary – especially if your Employee Code of Conduct is up to scratch – but in any case, you need to document what your employees can and can’t do on social media. And you need to ensure they know it.

3. Scan the web for mentions of your brand

In this age of Web 2.0, if you don’t scan Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and other forums for mentions of your brand, you don’t know what your customers (and prospective customers, and employees, and ex-employees) are saying about you. That means you can’t respond.

4. Be careful how you respond

Most cases of negative social media that I am aware of were (or would have been) best dealt with through participating in the conversation. In the case of Kid Fury where the antagonist was an employee, the employer still had to be very careful. I don’t suggest letting anyone off scot free, but how would it look if a multi-national corporation sued a likable young fellow?

So thank you Kid Fury for teaching us those lessons – whether you meant to or not!