Note--I wrote this post on Sunday, right after I wrote my original social media spiral post. It further explains where I'm trying to go in regard to social media use and learning and thinking through how to help people use social media tools for their own professional development. After the post I just wrote on early adopters and the early majority, I think it may add more food for thought.... Read more →

On Sunday, I asked for feedback on the social media spiral I drew to represent my current thinking about how people transition from "old" media to new social media. This is a follow-up post to tease out some of the comments I received and integrate them further into my thinking. I will warn you that it's 6 a.m. and this is a little stream of consciousness. First, a few people... Read more →

One of the first things you learn as a trainer is that you have to anchor new knowledge in previous knowledge. That is, for people to understand new concepts and develop new skills, you have to start with what they already know. I've been doing some thinking about how to help staff make connections between new media and the older tools they already know how to use. In a long... Read more →

Yesterday's post on the six reasons people aren't commenting on your blog was one of those things that takes you by surprise. One second I'm dashing off a quick post between calls and the next I'm watching my stats and comments go off the charts after Chris Brogan tweets about it. Of course the real beauty is that with all those comments, I got some great info and questions from... Read more →

As part of his Social Media 100 series, Chris Brogan is exploring the power of blog commenting by "writing" his post through comments. (OK, I'm a day late in seeing this in my feed reader). It's an interesting experiment that has me thinking some more about commenting, a topic I've explored previously. Many of the commenters in Chris's thread are complaining that they don't get comments on their blogs, something... Read more →

Although I don't know if stats back me up on this, personal experience tells me that one of the main reasons people are afraid to use new tools is because they don't want to look stupid in front of the world--and more specifically in front of their customers. I've been thinking a lot lately (again) about why there's still resistance to social media tools. I'm beginning to believe that some... Read more →

Here's an interesting post from Ray Jimenez on the types of jobs he can see emerging as organizations begin to make greater use of Web 2.0 tools. At a minimum, these seem like functions that should be incorporated into someone's job description. Some of the standouts for me included: PLE Assistants - Personal Learning Environments (PLE) - Downes, Sims and Kareer talk about the need of the connected learners to... Read more →

Three months ago we started the Building a Better Blog Ning network. After three weeks I was still enamored with the community. Things were going well, we had a lot of new members. All was right with our little corner of the digital world. Then we hit a wall, which I blogged about a few weeks ago. Site activity was way down and we began struggling with ways to continue... Read more →

As someone who's been blogging for awhile now, one of the things I've realized is that skills and thinking that are second nature to me are not so visible to new bloggers. What I've been trying to do lately is to think about ways I can be more transparent in my processes, talking through decisions I've made, how I go about accomplishing various tasks, etc. This is also helpful to... Read more →

An interesting post over at Tactical Philanthropy from Perla Ni, founder of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She says, Does blogging substitute real action? I get asked about this a lot because I blog. Why are all these people blogging? Why aren’t they out there in the real world doing something? Especially in the nonprofit world – where there’s so much need and most ED’s I know are busy enough... Read more →