Community Mobilization

Education and Social Media - New Channels and New Opportunities

I saw the above television promotion appear the other day and went out to YouTube to view again. I was honestly struck by the concepts being suggested, albeit subtly, by Kaplan. What intrigued me was it reminded me of an early conversation - a conversation from years ago about who is king.

Channel used to be king. The channel was a monopoly held by news papers, television and radio stations who pumped content out indiscriminately because they were the only outlets in town. As additional channels came online (cable, the web) content soon became king, and we saw the quality of the content increase exponentially. The book "Everything bad is good for you" even details the increased complexity in plot line designed to be more entertaining and keep our attention. The most recent evolution is that Community is king - and by looking at the explosive growth in social media and social network sites I can understand why that axiom may be true. 

My one wish is that Kaplan, in their ad, paid homage to that. I wish they had not focused so much on the technology of webcasting and pod casting, and honed their message in on the cooperative nature of these technologies. The opportunity for students to use these technologies to raise the bar is what will truly make the impact on their educational experience. As someone who has used virtual learning tools the limits are endless, I just wish that message was captured in a follow up ad.

Using Digital media to Tell Stories - A Tech Soup Event

I had the pleasure of speaking with Susan from Tech Soup this morning about participating on a panel this September 30th, and then hosting an awards ceremony for a digital story telling event the following week. She asked me to present on using social media for storytelling, and I really thought about my years of experience in the field.

One part of my experience with social media is using it as a platform to create an architecture, almost an environment for capturing a communities story, while paying homage to the narratives of individuals. I feel that using both open forums like the RelayForLife.Org digital community, and the Second Life Relay For Life event truly provided that canvas to paint an entire groups experience while using a palate of colors provided by individuals.

I continue to take that approach as I advise the AIDS Research Alliance in crafting their social media engagement strategy. Working with a diversity of stories and experiences lends itself to creation of a moving and impacting montage. The challenge is developing a framework that bring the best of both elements out. 

Not All Social Networks Are Created Equal

First this post is inspired by the work of friend and occasional compatriot danah boyd's post 'Will the Real Social Network Please Stand Up'.  danah addresses a fundemental question in here post - what defines a good social network and are all comparable and transitive. The term social network has taken on a new deffinition of an online space to make 'friends' and exchange photos and personal information.

'Social Network' should be looked at in the larger sense of the complex collection and associated links amongst the individual actors that you interact with. Moreover there is a human condition to identify the 'best' at all times, and that is a difficult thing to do with Social Networks particularly if you do not have defined metrics of excellence.

Strength of ties, depth of information sharing, and even directional relationships play a role in understnading Social Networks. I realy like what danah has to day about how effort, size, or even diversity should not be mistaken as proxy measurement for quality. I always like to fall back on Rob Cross's research into information flows and Social Network structure but it remains prohibitively difficutl to create a ruler for measuring Social Neworks.

While individuals strive to build equity in online community spaces becuase it is easy I continue to question the value of a large and expansive network that can not be levereaged. How often to power networkers elverage thier network? And what do they do consistently to maintain relationships at a sufficient level to be allowed to leverage. Those answers to me would define a 'best Social Network'.