Deleted Knowledge and Learning – seemed broken in that Twitter consistently reports 0 members Replaced with km+learning+network Created BI and Data Created DevOps Created Cloud Created ID+AccessManagement
Luis Suarez (@elsua), curator of the Life without eMail G+ community, has posted a Vodcast co-presented with Claire Burge (@claireburge) Here’s the full video: 30) Here are my notes on the highlights of what Luis and Claire think is wrong with email: “Email creates a dumber workforce” (3:02), because (4:02) the structure of email forces an obsession with emptying the inbox without action. Email is a selfish tool (4:59) – centred around individual, not team or company goals (because you cannot see the impact of your email on the other person’s workload).
Going back to basics, but on the principle of narrating my work, here’s a short post I published today inside the firewall… What is it? Most people will be familiar with the idea of “bookmarks” (aka “favourites”) in a web browser – the menu option on IE, Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc. to save the site links that I use most often, or find most interesting. Social Bookmarking tools take this idea and extend it in ways that are not only useful to me as an individual, but which also make it simple to share links with other people.
As part of the site revamp, I wanted a place where I could put “narrating my work” type posts that were outside of the main site flow – the nature of these are that they are often quick and partial, and I find having them in the main flow inhibits my writing. The obvious place to start, was with a Custom Post Type, but unfortunately most of the things I use to write to this site (Word and the WordPress iOS app) don’t support CPTs.
No tool is all good or all bad, so following on from “Email – what’s wrong with it?“, here are some of the reasons why it is useful: Email is almost ubiquitous … has been around a long time, so almost everyone (in a work world) knows how to use it (or thinks they do) … allows asynchronous communication, especially with offline workers (actually so do other technologies) … is well-suited to notification-type communications
Many have written on the issues that email causes, here are some highlights: Email soaks up time – e.g. McKinsey in 2012 reckoned 30% of average office worker’s week was spent reading and answering email … makes people feel they are being productive (when they are not) … locks up information in silos – a lot of company knowledge creation is carried out in email threads visible only to those involved, and almost impossible for anyone else to discover, leading to duplication of work,
A placeholder for some areas where I want to refresh my knowledge of current thinking Communication, collaboration and community in online networks – what builds social capital? And what else? Gamification as a tool for motivating productive behaviour in online networks The factors that balance individual skill / knowledge with social capital within organisations and professions
A blog redesign, and a metaphor for 2014… I decided a while ago that my blog theme had become just too complicated – over the years I had added more and more “good ideas” until the page was utterly swamped in widgets. So I’m trying to get back to basics with a stripped down theme. Perhaps it will stimulate me to write a bit more? The complete lack of posts in 2013, and almost complete lack in 2012, are a reflection of what was going on in my professional life.
A sticky idea… Howard Rheingold has thrown up a new idea – Peeragogy – which has found a sticky resting place in my brain. In a blog post written as a pre-cursor to his 2011 Regents’ Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley he reflects on his experience to date with collaborative learning, and sets out the stall for his next project – to collaboratively create a guide to collaborative peer-to-peer learning:
How many times do you have to tell the Government something? Image via Wikipedia Recently, my mother died, so it fell to me to inform a number of organisations, including the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). I knew that I would also need statements from them of any benefits that had been over-paid, as these would become a debt of her estate, something you need to list when seeking probate.