Write Technology

Every year I write blog posts during and after my Learning 200x event. This year, I’ve invited several colleagues to join me in the blogosphere.

I thought hearing from other conference attendees would offer you, my readers, differing perspectives on the conference. Plus, with so many sessions to choose from, there’s a fantastic chance we’ll all be attending different ones.

The first person to accept my guest blogging offer was Gary Wise. Gary is the Senior Director of Learning Architecture at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Cincinnati Children’s is one of the finest hospitals of its kind in the nation, and their education and training program keeps up with the reputation. Gary is also the forum leader of the local ASTD eLearning Forum. He has a fair amount of knowledge in LMSs and CMSs, among countless other things. He also likes a good glass of cabernet. Hopefully, Gary will find some time to post to the blog while he’s at the conference or right after he returns. I look forward to it!

Write Tech mobile is now available at http://writetech.mobi, with a link to this blog in "mobilized" format.

The My Wine Education blog is now available at http://winegirl.mobi.

Well, it looks like my Wine Blog (My Wine Education) actually won the aforementioned competition. I’m not sure if I’m one of the Best Blogs in Cincinnati or Best Cincinnati Blogs, but it’s one of the two. There was one Chamber member winner and I tied with another excellent blog for community winner.

We all three won iPhones. It’s a pretty cool honor. And while it doesn’t necessarily mean I know anything about wine, at least I can feel confident about my writing and design aesthetics.

What does this mean to you? An up-close and personal review of the iPhone by the end of the week.

Cheers!

Blogs named content winners

As far as personal issues go, 2007 has been a rotten year. But professionally, especially on the Web 2.0 front, 2007 has rather rocked.

From being voted VP Technology of our local ASTD chapter, co-facilitating a Learning Lab at ASTD TechKnowledge, both this blog and the wine blog being recognized as Typepad Featured Blogs, to big things in store at Learning 2007 – well, I can’t really complain.

And things just got a bit better. My wine blog, My Wine Education, has officially been recognized as one of Cincinnati’s Top 10 Blogs. I found it in the Enquirer online edition, but apparently it was even in the hard-copy paper as well. (Do people still read that? ) I don’t get anything for this recognition except a warm feeling in my chest, which is fine. It’s really cool just to be recognized.

There is still a slight chance that tomorrow I’ll win an iPhone. But the competition is stiff. The Cincinnati Blog is darned good (I’ve read it for a long time) and there’s a girl blogging about fighting cancer. How do you beat that? But it really is an honor just to be nominated.

CincyTechUSA, Chamber Pick Region’s Top 10 Blogs

I was shocked today when I realized I hadn’t ever written a post on tagging. At the ASTD TechKnowledge conference, when I explained Web 2.0 to a group, tagging was an integral part of the conversation. But tagging requires you to take a step back from the web, and consider how you think.

Folksonomy: a
type of classification system for online content, created by an
individual user who tags information with freely chosen keywords; also,
the cooperation of a group of people to create such a classification
system (Webster’s New Millenium Dictionary of English)

When we’re tagging things, we’re creating a folksonomy. The key word in the definition above is individual. That’s the key to tagging – it’s your individual thoughts and thought processes defining the things in your world. In fact, I’ve bet you’ve used tagging and you didn’t even realize it. According to the Pew Internet Project, in December 2006, 28% of Americans had tagged online content. According to David Weinberger, in an interview for the Pew Internet Project report,

"Tagging lets us organize the vastness of the web … using the categories that matter to us as individuals.
…Tagging also allows social groups to form around similarities of interests and points of view. If you’re using the same tags as I do, we probably share some deep commonalities."

Tagging in the Real World
Let’s back up a little further and go off-line. When you’re arranging things in your planner, or your file cabinets, perhaps you categorize them. You assign key words that make sense to you, based on the content in the folder. Assigning that contextual key word allows you to find that folder again easily. You’ve just created a folksonomy – you’ve just tagged.

Tagging Online
Now, let’s take that concept online. For each blog post I create, I try to also create tags, or descriptive key words. Why? Tagging blog posts provides several things – it allows me to better search my own posts and it also allows search engines to better search my posts. Tagging adds findability to something.

Within the last year, Amazon added tagging to its web site.

In the above example, people have tagged the new Harry Potter novel with tags such as "harry potter," "magic," and "best book ever." These are all individual tags, reflecting the individual thoughts and feelings on that book. Do you want to find more items tagged "magic"? Just click on the tag. View the most popular tags used across Amazon.com. Add your own tag to this or other items.

I often tag items on Amazon.com. My tags may or may not be useful to you. If I’m searching on curtains for my new home, I might tag an item "new house," which I can then search on later.

Tagging is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s something we’ve been doing all our lives. We’re just moving it online. A large part of the Web 2.0 and collaborative learning movement is understanding that we have a lot to learn from each other as individuals. Web 2.0, through its varied tools, gives us the opportunity to share that knowledge. Tagging is only the beginning.

After the jump, see some more examples and uses of tagging, as well as the sites that depend on it.

continue reading »

Everyone has growing pains as they progress from toddler through to adulthood. The blogosphere is a living, dynamic thing and it’s no different. It was inevitable, of course. That’s not to say it’s not painful for some, and emotional for many.

I debated on even mentioning it, but when it was picked up by the New York Times and the BBC (here and here), I had to investigate further.

To understand it, you have to acknowledge that as in any industry or field, there are certain high-profile folks. In the blogosphere, we have our own "stars" or "celebrities." People like Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Kathy Sierra, just to name a few. These folks are incredibly high profile, speak at many events, are public figures that express their views on widely read and well respected blogs. The rest of us are just regular bloggers and the rest of us make up the majority of the blogosphere. In fact, for many of us, these blog stars exist on the periphery of our blogging existence, if at all. So, why are their problems important?

It’s similar to how when high-profile chefs focus in on certain foods. Maybe Emeril makes a jambalaya extra special and showcases it in his restaurant, cookbooks and TV show. Eventually, that same style of jambalaya, in a cheaper, less artistic, and less tasty version will filter down to the regular and inexpensive restaurants of the world, such as the Cajun place in the mall food court. It’s slow, but the high-profile folks have an effect on the rest of us.

Let’s get to the situation at hand. Kathy Sierra, of Creating Passionate Users, received several threatening emails and comments on her blog. At the same time this situation was escalating, another site called Mean Kids was launched. Personally, I don’t get the vision behind Mean Kids, as it does seem rather juvenile to me. But I don’t know the thought process that went behind it. Maybe it was intended as a sardonic and witty comment on our society. Maybe they were just being mean. Having not seen the site, I am not qualified to judge. However, it is public knowledge that one of the Mean Kids, posting anonymously, actually turned mean, and crossed a line from humor to threatening. Someone on that site posted death threats and rude comments about Kathy Sierra and others. The site came down. Another site that was similar in content went up instead, perhaps with the intent to exercise more control. The experiment quickly got out of hand again. In the end, Kathy Sierra was faced with threats of all levels from multiple sources. It scared her, and she has withdrawn from the E-Tech event and from blogging. In the process of revealing this information, a lot of names got dragged in and out of the mud and prominent bloggers all commented.

As the blogosphere, or at least the high-profile part, reeled from all this, Tim O’Reilly (yep, the guy who puts animals on his tech books) decided to step in. I concur with many bloggers out there that his actions as "hall monitor" are slightly misguided, no matter how well intentioned. O’Reilly has issued a draft Blogger Code of Conduct and suggests blogs have badges – those who subscribe to the Code of Conduct and those who have an "Anything Goes" badge. Basically, Anything Goes means that any sort of comment can be posted on the blog.

It raises valid questions. Are bloggers responsible for the comments posted to their blogs? Can we censor the comments, and is it censorship? What information do we actually own, when it comes to our blogs, and how accurate are we expected to be? Should we allow anonymous commenting? Are we responsible for the people who choose to remain anonymous?

I don’t have answers, but I do have an emotional reaction to the whole thing. I think it was bound to happen to someone at some time. Human nature dictates that when there are a lot of people engaging in an activity, at least one person will act like an idiot. (I can’t scientifically back up my idiot theory of course.) In this case, the idiot scared a lot of people in the blogosphere. The reactions have run the emotional gamut. After all, it’s not like bloggers are a quiet, repressed bunch. We blog because we like to share.

It’s my blog and I’ll post what I want. I don’t need a badge to advocate basic rules of being polite. I am polite and I expect it from my readers on each blog I run. I encourage people to disagree. It’s great and it creates a dialogue. That’s what Web 2.0 is all about – sharing, learning, collaboration, growing your own viewpoint by being exposed to others. If someone disagrees with me, I’m not going to delete the comment. However, if someone posts something that truly offends me, be it language or violence, well, I’m going to delete it. It won’t see the light of day. I moderate the comments and I always will. It’s my blog. I don’t want to be offended and my other readers don’t want to either. I don’t need a Code of Conduct to tell me that.

I also don’t allow anonymous posts, but truly, I do that because it cuts back on spam.  For a while, the spam was so bad I turned commenting off. That’s been changed, but there are certain restrictions I keep in place, such as no anonymous comments and the CAPTCHA to curtail it. By the way, the only offensive comments I’ve ever deleted from any of my blogs were posted by blatant spammers. When it comes down to it, you can read a blog, and read the comments, and decide if that blog is right for you. If it’s not, you don’t have to read it. That, folks, is common sense, and doesn’t require a Blogging Badge.

I’m not the only one rather conflicted and coming out against the Code of Conduct. I really don’t think it will fly. People like Cory Doctorow and even Robert Scoble are uncomfortable with the whole thing. In fact, the best dissection of the proposed Code was written by Tristan Louis. There is also an odd kind of pressure those folks are feeling, like disagreeing with Tim O’Reilly could hurt their career. I suppose the high profile folks will work it all out. I encourage everyone to contribute to the conversation though. If you’re a blogger, express your opinion, either way, about the Code of Conduct. It’s not like writing your congressman. In theory, the call of the blogging masses in this dialogue will set standards for the future. And just like restaurants, the ideas at the top will trickle down to the rest of us.

In the meantime, down here in the middle-class blogosphere, we’ll just stick with basic tenets of human kindness and common sense, and occasionally deleting the spammers and idiots.

Technorati Tags: Code of Conduct,
Blogosphere,
Web 2.0, Growing Up,
Growing Pains

I have a wonderful new blog widget embedded in this blog, as well as my other blogs, called Answer Tips. I’m pretty thrilled with it, and it’s given me some neat ideas for implementing it in a corporate environment.

First, a little exercise. Pick a non-hyperlinked word in this blog (ANY WORD) and double-click it. A little pop-up window should appear with the definition of that word. If the word is near a recognizable phrase, the phrase itself will be defined.

Now, think of the implications for learning. Humor me, and imagine you don’t have a firewall and your students can always access the magical world of the Internet. Picture Answer Tips embedded in an elearning course, internal or external web site, or group wiki. It’s an effective, just-in-time delivery of learning, right there at your user’s fingertips – meaningful, memorable, and relevant.

It gets better. Answer Tips is a widget provided by the free service, Answers.com. Answers.com allows you to integrate their tool into your desktop, so much so that the pop-ups are even available when you read your email. It’s all free. Even more importantly, they are using licensed content from brand-name information providers. The academic in me loves that they give you the tools to offically cite each piece of information you find in APA or MLA format.

Downsides? Well, I haven’t yet installed the desktop tool, so I haven’t yet read the license agreement. I don’t know how much of your life they may – or may not – be paying attention to. In theory, they should be tracking what information is referenced in order to bulk up the most popular areas. In theory, they are also doing this with anonymous user data, which is good.

Other downside? You’re stuck with Answers.com. I couldn’t find anyplace on their web site where they mentioned internal customizations. If you’re a healthcare company, for example, with specific and difficult terms and phrases, wouldn’t it be wonderful to build your own customized content and have that information pop up for your employees? Just in time learning, when and where they need it.

Overall, Answer Tips and Answers.com is a nifty, free toolset. Spread the word. A tool like this has great potential, but we have to use it!

Technorati Tags: Answer Tips, blog widgets, Answers.com, Web 2.0

Don’t be scared of Web 2.0. It’s like that big shaggy sheepdog that you love. It’s big, but it’s cuddly and friendly. More importantly, it wants to love you and be loved in return.
Poor analogy, eh?

So many times this week I had to stop and explain Web 2.0, so I thought I’d pop those thougts onto the blog as well.

Over the last decade or so, the Web has been this wonderful, evolving creature. Most of us go to the Web to get something, be it travel information, a book from Amazon, weather reports, news … The Web gave and we took away. Just like a living creature, however, the Web has evolved. Now there is the opportunity to give something back. The world just got smaller. In Web 2.0, there is a give and take on all sides.

Blogs and wikis are the current big tools of the Web 2.0 revolution. Why? Well, with a blog, there is commentary on an editorial. Except a blog is usually moderated, and it becomes sort of a conversation in regards to the most recent post, or editorial. Wikis are even more collaborative. Wikis are dynamic, with all users participating, contributing their knowledge. Conversations can happen in the comments, but the actual knowledge grows and changes with each edit to the page. Are wikis always accurate? No, but they are self-correcting. Eventually, a wiki will become accurate.

Does that help at all? The point of these tools, and others like them, is to leverage existing knowledge. We’ve all got knowledge locked away inside our heads. This allows us to get that knowledge out there, share it with our friends and colleagues. Imagine the power of all that existing knowledge applied to learning!

The ASTD TechKnowledge Conference recently inspired me to make some changes within Write Technology. These are changes I’ve been thinking about for a while, but the time has come to start the ball rolling.
I want to move forward from creating standard eLearning for my clients. I want to start pushing them forward into collaborative learning, using blogs, wikis, RSS, and other tools to harness the existing knowledge surrounding them. I’ve got some great ideas as to how to implement this in a corporate environment.
Am I advocating switching from traditional elearning entirely? No. Just like I believe that not all training works best electronically, all learning does not always lend itself entirely to group collaboration. At least, not yet.
So, watch the Write-Tech main site in the next few weeks for some changes on the front and training pages. The world is changing. Several speakers at the conference pointed out – the world is changing. Adapt or die and learn.

I don’t know how many of you only read blogs and how many of you maintain blogs as well. But I’ve noticed something about blogging.

When you first start blogging there is a passion for it. You post frequently, and most of the time your posts are useful, meaningful, and relevant to your topic. As time passes, you blog a lot, but certainly not as frequently as in those first few months. Eventually, life gets in the way. You blog when you can. For me, this happened after about 2 years with the blogs.

I actually run four blogs: a personal blog, a family blog, a wine-related blog, and this one. It’s a lot to handle, although it seemed like a good idea at the time. When I don’t post for a while, I get an overwhelming case of blog guilt. Will I lose my readers? How often is often enough?
So I was curious, am I the only one out there who gets blog guilt?