weconverse

Today I learned through futurambs really interesting post Volvo IT blocks sites mentioning "social software", The reason, as echoed by futuramb is:

[weconverse and other sites] is categorised as Social Networking and Personal Sites. Volvo Group provides access to a subset of web sites through its Internet services. Other web site categories are blocked.

So cool, I feel both socially discriminated, and sorry for the folks at Volvo, compare my earlier thoughts on the issue. Perhaps they can find comfort by chewing Ahlgrens candy cars temporarily shaped as Volvo cars (co-branded marketing campaign, most discussed topic right now at the Swedish Bloggportalen).

On a side note, I am currently discussing with a client about a learning project concerning social media for a group of selected managers. We cannot use Facebook, because their enterprise has blocked the access to it. Easy thing to choose another social network - but not for adding value to the project. Rather, the result might be the other way around.

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At this very moment (if we are following the schedule) I am presenting a few glimpes from a fresh survey regarding web trends in Sweden. Earlier this month Web Service Award (WSA) surveyed randomly selected customers with the purpose of assessing how managers responsible for web sites consider the site’s service quality from the visitors perspective. Of the 929 managers who received the web based questionaire 424 responded (45%). The web sites in question are for public use and published by (non-)government organisations as well as commercial enterprises, including e-businesses.

Part of the survey, which also was conducted in 2005 and 2006, concerns web technology trends. For around 10 named, but not described, technologies (e.g. blogging) the managers were asked to indicate their knowledge (none to very well). Those who had at least some knowledge about a particular technology were also asked how their organisations considers it (not interesting to implemented and evaluated). The questions concerns use of the tools at the respondents web site, not the managers personal use.

Here is a brief summary from my personal analysis of the data and later tonight I will publish my slides from the gig. Please note, it is a quick-and-dirty analysis with possible errors. The full report, which also compares the managers responses on service quality with those from actual web visitors, will soon be available upon request from WSA (in Swedish I guess). Disclaimer: I have adviced WSA on what they should survey about, I am in the WSA jury, and I moderate their awards event.

Communities is not so very popular. Unfortunately the question about knowledge of communities as a web technology disappeared this year. But 344 respondents answered on how they considered the use of communitites. 17% said not interesting, 42% relatively low priority, 23% are closely monitoring the development, 11% have actual plans to implement, 3% have implemented but not evaluated, and 4% have implemented and evaluated communitites.

Blogging is well known, but not popular to use. 93% had at least some knowledge. The trend from 2005 is strong knowledge improvement, but still less than 50% answers “know very well”. The organisations seems to give blogging some priority and the trend is increased implementation, even though more than 50% of those who know about blogging overlooks blogging, i.e. answers not interesting or give it relative low priority.

RSS is well known, fairly prioritized and undergo implementation. 81% had at least some knowledge, hence the awareness is good and have been increasing since 2005 when 50% knew nothing about it. RSS seems to be more popular to use than blogging and over 40% of those who know about RSS have implemented it. Less than 10% find it not interesting.

Wiki is known, but relatively ignored. 70% had at least some knowlededge, up from less than 30% two years ago. Still virtually none of the organisations had implemented wikis and close to 67% found it not interesting or gave it low priority. Since 2005 the interest to closely monitor the development (27%) has more than doubled (from 12%).

Tagging is known, but gets low priority from but a few. 69% had at least some knowledge and the trend is increased understanding from 2005. Still almost 48% of those who know about tagging more or less overlooks it and around 20% will, or have, implemented it.

Web 2.0 is known and monitored, yet not very implemented. 67% had at least some knowledge, up strong from 30% in 2005. Interestingly enough 56% responded that they knew about Web 2.0 fairly or very well. After all, it is controversial and vague concept. Nevertheless of those who know about Web 2.0  few (5%) had implemented it, but 25% had actual plans for implementation.

VOIP is still not more than known. 67% had at least some knowledge. The trend from 2005 is deeper knowledge rather than more wide spread, as fairly to very well has risen from 25% to 43%. Still virtually no one who knows about VOIP have implemented it. And VOIP is more or less overlooked with the exception of the 15% who closely monitors the development.

Podcasting is becoming more known, but ignored. 67% had at least some knowledge, slightly up from 50% in 2005. Still the majority (72%) of those who knows about podcasting finds it uninteresing or gives it low priority.  Around 10% plan to, or have, implemented podcasts.

Widgets/gadgets is barely known and ignored. 52% had at least some knowledge, and this question was new with the 2007 survey. Close to 60% of those who know about widgets/gadgets overlooks them, no one has evaluated it and less than 14% plans to, or have, implmented widgets.

Affiliation program is not so known and not so interesting. 37% had at least some knowledge, slightly up from 28% in 2005. Of those who know about affiliation programs 67% overlooks it and 10% have implemented it. Note, only 35% of the surveyed web sites have marketing or e-business purposes.

Mashups mostly unknown, gets low priority or is monitored. Only 32% had at least some knowledge and this question was new in the 2007 survey. Of those 7% hade very good knowledge and 13% fairly good. 5% of those who knows about mashups have actually implemented it, and close to 50% more or less overlooks mashups. Still, around 40% are closely following the mashup development.

Of course all the above would be interesting to discuss further. I squeezed writing this entry into my schedule with no time for reflections. But after its publication we can all converse about reasons and meanings…do you want to?

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Uppdatering efter giget] Tack för ett härligt möte! Här är mina föreläsningsbilder (pdf) och en direktlänk till det ytterst intressanta Youngenergy.se av innovativa människor på Interaktiva Institutet. Jag har kämpat som en galning med att ladda upp min video från giget, men ännu inte lyckats. Kommer… Tyvärr är ljudet bitvis uselt, skall se om jag kan fixa det lite.

[viddler 205131ff nolink]

Hur når vi ungdomar med energifrågan? Det undrar Kalle Karlsson på Svensk Energi och sätter samman session 15 på Sveriges Energiting som går av stapeln i marsdagarna två. Förutom 45 minuter med mig blir det enligt det spännande programmet (finns bara som pdf) Kalle, “fyra ungdomar”, Bi Puranen (om hur ungdomarna ser på frågan), Lars Klingström, Gunilla Harrysson, Monica Bracco, Anders Nilsson, Malin Thorsén, Susanne Serenhov, Inge Malm, Mari-Louise Johansson och “NN”.

Verkar tokintressant. Jag säger som sist, el är värdelöst. Varför får du veta den 12 mars, fast jag vet inte om jag viftar med slipsen, kepsen och trosorna denna gång :-) Det är bara att anmäla sig.

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[Uppdatering efter giget] Tack för en kul och stimulerande förmiddag. Nu har jag laddat upp mina föreläsningsbilder (pdf) och uppdaterat min blogguide (med framförallt lite info om “off line editors”). För dom av er som vill få bättre pejl på RSS rekommenderar jag min introduktion till det området. Lustigt nog stötte jag precis efter vårt möte på en bekant som utvecklar RSS-tjänster, det händer grejor inom det området också…

Vid Institutet för Näringslivsforskning (IFN) finns en grupp duktiga Nationalekonomiska forskare som tänker börja blogga. Under briefen har jag förstått att dom har goda insikter i fenomenet blogging. Trots det (tack vare :-)  har dom har bett mig att vidga perspektiven och bidra med några råd på vägen. Cool utmaning, just nationalekonomibloggar (puh) är inte min starka sida. Mitt första möte med den delen av bloggosfären var 2004 via Georges Rocourt, en amerikansk nationalekonom och gästprofessor i Schweiz, som efter ett studeibesök på MA tipsade mig om ett inägg i Marginal Revolution apropå att jag föreläst om Netflix.

Här är ett litet urval på inspirerade nekbloggar, nån som har tips på fler?

• Dan Rodrik
  http://rodrik.typepad.com (Harvardprofessor)
  se även http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/09/economist-blogg.html där Rodrik sammanställer vilka nationalekonomers bloggar hans community helst skulle vilja se.
• Marginal Revolution
  http://www.marginalrevolution.com (två ekonomer vid George Mason Univ))
• Crooked Timber
  http://crookedtimber.org (akademiskt orienterad gruppblogg)
• Overcoming Bias
  http://www.overcomingbias.com (akademiskt orienterad gruppblogg)

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[Uppdatering efter giget] En stimulerande eftermiddag minsann, tack alla schyssta studenter. Extra tack till lärarstudenterna som läser interationsdesign för ett givande mini-seminarium med er. Nu har jag laddat upp mina föreläsningsbilder (pdf) och här är min liveinspelning av introt via bambuser. Specialtack till Per Axbom som i förrgår inspirerade mig till öppningen med Google Earth (2 min in i liveinspelningen). Jag följde helt enkelt Pers utmärkta instruktion. När SH publicerar sin video med hela min föreläsning kommer det en länk här. Kolla gärna fyra fruktansvärda filmer.

Sedan några år ger Medieteknik vid Södertörns Högskola föreläsningsserien Open Lectures. Jag har blivit ombedd att presentera mina tankar kring Webb 2.0 och sociala medier för deras studenter - och övriga intresserade. Så det lär bli ett fint tillfälle för den som vill förkovra sig. Själv ser jag nervöst fram emot giget. Rätt många (unga) studenter har ju redan pejl på läget. Och i så fall blir det spännande konversationer, där jag lär mig en massa…

[Uppdatering 2008-02-08] När jag fick förfrågan undrade dom om jag eventuellt kunde ha ett extra seminarium med ett antal av deras lärarstudenter som läser interaktionsdesign. I går blev det hela klart och jag har glädjen att möta även dem.
Open Lectures startar 13.15 och är klart 14.45, efter en paus blir det med seminarium med lärarstudenterna fram till kanske 16.30.

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Knowledgeable in the fine arts is something one cannot call me. Nevertheless I have read Paulo Coelho’s the Alchemist and I am aware of that he has received used to think that he had received the Nobel Prize in literature.

Monday evening Martin Källström reported from the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in the super(secret) PPlist. According to DLD it is “Europe’s conference for the 21st century, covering digital innovation, science and culture”. Martin was there, and according to another member of the list he was “typing every second”.

So, here is my first point. Martin is educated , connected, and social. Even though he is in a meeting - he is conversing with the outside world. If that was not the case you would not have read this. Beyond that he is an entrepreneur (co-founder of Primelabs, commented by Techcrunch yesterday).

Martins report was one of the best of its kind (wide coverage, broad, quick, short, and focused). I found value in every word. Let me share what Martin wrote about Paulo Coelho’s session (I got Martin’s permission to republish it here). Coelho (conference bio)  presented in the Creating Universes track. Ignore Martin’s typos, this is not an excercise in English, it is immediate reporting. Hopefully DLD will publish videos from the sessions, including Coelho’s, in the near future.

Pauolo Coelho made a very interesting and catching talk about how he uses the internet in surprising ways for a writer. I didn’t write it down so here’s a summary from memory:

“For books, the Internet has an impact in three areas: Language, Distribution, Social Interaction.

Some people think that internet destroys or deteriorates language with people writing 4 instead of “for” or U instead of “you”. But language is a living thing, I do not think internet is destroying language. And the fact is that people are reading more now than they ever hav done.

And writing more, in emails and IM and so on.

I use internet for distribution. I released one book exclusively on the internet and we had an amazing 1 million downloads. But even though this is a very high number, I didn’r receieve a single comment on the book. No one was actually reading the book, In 2001 we had really no readers in Russia. My best seller The Alchemist was selling a 1000 copies per year. And then it was pirated on Bittorrent and people started to download it. The next year it sold 10 000 copies, the next year 100 000 copies and today we have sold over 10 million copies in Russia.

But when I wanted to start to distribute my books over the Internet my publishers told me that I donät have the rights to the translations and so forth. So what I did was that I collected all bittorrents of my pirated books and put them on a website called Pirate Coelho. And I started to link to this page from my own blog, I have a link on my main page. And people are downloading my books very much trough this site. But I can’t tell this to my publishers because I don’t have the rights. So whenever they create a translation of a book to a language, say Portuguese, I ask to review it before printing and then I immediately release it on Bittorrent. I don’t know if the publishers have spotted this scheme but at least they don’t say anything.

Being a writer is a very lonely business. You sit alone and write.

Internet allows social interaction and through my blog I now have houndreds of thousands of people contacting me. Last year I invited 10 of my readers to a party and this year it’s going to be a hundred readers at a party in Paris.

Time for my next point. It is not the Producers (publishers and authors) that are in the driving seat. This case is just another illustration. But what an illustration! And note the amount of braveness Coelho demonstrate. He must be very well aware of the dangers of telling folks outside the connected world, who through their disconnectedness probably have missed what Coelho has already done.

Too many book authors refuse to both utilize what consumers are doing with their work and are afraid of letting control. Most likely that crowd include writers of educational literature. Furthermore, school teachers are obsessed by correct spelling, without respect for the dynamic evolution of Language. That is why I qouted Coelho in my gig för IPON 2008 this morning.

Thank you Paul. Thank you Martin. You are more than I. As a result of your inspiring ventures We are growing. I wish political legislators would understand this view on the world, and not only the Publisher/Producers desperate attempts to preserve old thinking.

Meanwhile, you can taste Celho’s stuff at Pirate Coelho.

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[Uppdatering efter giget] Tack till en härlig grupp informatörer för en spännande förmiddag. Här är nu mina föreläsningsbilder (pdf). Lovade också direktlänkt till min bloggingguide och bloggindexeringstjänsterna knuff.se, intressant.se och technorati.com.

Snabba pucker efter giget för Fleminsberg. där Akademiska hus var representerade bland deltagarna. Företaget har ju en ganska omfattande verksamhet, där den externa informationshanteringen är en viktig aspekt. Så dom bad direkt om en speciell inspiration/workshop just denna förmiddag. Även om mina erfarenheter då Företagsekonomiska institutionen på Stockholms universitet flyttade från Frescati till Kräftriket är blandade, så tror jag ändå att dom blir en värdefull idékälla (från mitt håll).

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[Uppdatering efter giget] Tack för en otroligt stimulerande eftermiddag med massor av utvecklande konversation. Här är mina föreläsningsbilder (pdf) och en länk till livevideon hos bambuser. Apropå några av dom hetaste frågorna lite länkar:

• Primelabs (blogganalysverktyg och produkten Twingly)
• Intressant.se (hitta bloggar)
• Technorati.com (”internationella” bloggosfären)

Det här är ett helt öppet gig som arrangeras av Kommunikationshuset (framförallt Hasselgren, Netdoktorn och Magiq). Mellan 13 och 16 skall jag “leverera en levande, frustrerande och dagsaktuell inblick i webbens utvecklingstendenser. Vi får se och höra om många fascinerande verktyg, praktikfall och praktiska råd när det gäller nya möjligheter och utmaningar.” Därefter blir det bubbel och mingel. Plats SUMMIT på Grev Turegatan i Stockholm.

Den officiella rubriken är:

Hur skapar du bra kundrelationer på nätet? Handfasta råd för dig som arbetar med marknadsföring inom läkemedel och hälsa.

Mer info och anmälan (950 kr) via eventet i Facebook eller Kommunikationshusets flyer (pdf).

(Blir inte klok på varför event som jag föreläser på i Facebook inte dyker upp när man söker på mitt efternamn. Verkar vara så att det måste stå i rubriken. Knäppt).

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Via en inbjudan i Facebook till eventet Tillgänglighet 2.0 - the user experience får jag reda på detta heldagsseminarium som verkar mycket intressant. Key note är webbstrategen Per Axbom och i övrigt pluggar arrangörerna sina verktyg för talsyntes och liknande. Phoneticom, en av dom som står bakom seminariet, bjuder även in via inlägget Accessibility 2.0, the user experience.

För mig är tillgänlighet viktigt och talsyntes har visat sig vara populärt även för att göra podcasts av bloggar, inklusive weconverse. Jag har anmält mig - vi kanske ses där?

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A few days ago Emilio Quintana sent me an e-mail regardging my gig next week at IPON 2008.  Acccording to a Blogger profile he is a Profesor de ELE (Español como Lengua Extranjera) at the Instituto Cervantes in Utrecht, (Can not find him in the institutes web site, which is why I refer to other sources). [quick update] He is listed at their staff page.

In his e-mail Quintana just kindly informed me about the blogpost Re-think Learning, Gatarski en Utrecht that he published January 13. Clearly Quintana is a spanish teacher, and his posts all over the web are in spanish. That is a nice challenge for me, who does not understand that fine language and argues that we are more important than I (am). From a knowledge perspective that argument implies that I do not need to know much - including spanish. (This is a way for me to challenge a dominant idea that education in school is about individal learning).

Anyway, I immediately tried two automated translation services that I know (of). As a result we can read both the Babelfish version and the Google Translate version. Unfortunately the latters stops at a video embedded in Quintana’s post (a bug I guess). Therefore I took the remaining paragraphs and had Google Translate them separately. It also just happens to be so that one of my current students is Mexican, so I asked him too for a translation. I found it cool that Babelfish and Google did a pretty good job, my student did not add much (besides a kind of assurement).

As I started to read I smiled of joy when my paper Marketing and Public Education: Mutual Benefits? was described as a “classic”. Furthermore I appreciated the notion that watching my presentation at EDEN last year is not a waste of time (available as a video). Then I noticed a number of critical, and much valuable remarks, concerning my endevours. In particular a provocative one (I think).

The problem is that I am not sure the remark is provocative. All of us (me, Babelfish, Google, and the Mexican) can´t really figure out the meaning of:

O eso, o los que lo invitan a abrir sesiones plenarias y la BBC Learning, que acaba de contratarlo como asesor para sus nuevos proyectos, son unos masocas y unos irresponsables.

Google turns that into:

Or that, or those who invite you to open plenary sessions and the BBC Learning, which has just been hired as a consultant for their new projects are about masocas and irresponsible.

First of all, BBC Learning has not hired me as a consultant, meaning to advice them on a continous basis. Rather they invited me to inspire, discuss (and provoce) a project team for one afternoon. Second, “masocas”? I tried an handful of online dictionaries, but masocas was not there. Then I did some further searching and now guess it means masochistic - “pleasure in being abused or dominated”. If so, that would make me a sadist :-). Of course I could have asked Quintana, but that would not be as fun, and as much learning, as publishing this post and see what happens.

Whatever Quintana means, and I must really stress that I appreciate his sharing of thoughts, here is a fantastic opportuinity for me to explain that I have no intentions to let us suffer for the sake of suffering. But I am aware of that the implimentation of some of my ideas will cause pain. Just like when a dentist remove material decayed by caries from ones teeth.

Rather, I try to navigate between at the gentle endpoint just hinting at what is going on (blogs might be better than books, see how fun the students have with it) while giving some anasthetics (it is not crucial yet). The tougher endpoint is stirring minds with all the power I can assemble. The latter was the case when I said “forget school” at EDEN. I just assumed the audience to be more than “un público 100% de profesores” . They were special. At least they should have deep insights in new technology for educational purposes. And many of them are already arguing that we have to do some fundamental changes. My suggestion is extreme, but I mean it - as a thing to fuel our minds.

Generally my aim is to move the audience from ignorance to a strong sense of expectancy and frustration - not pain. In my view it is not masochistic and/or irresponsible to go to the dentist when one believes there might be a tooth related problem. But if the dentist suggests removing the tooth, and one believes (for good reasons) removal is a bad solution - simply complying is irresponsible. Are you complying?

/richard

p.s. Listen to Business Week, where John and Stephen talk about Google’s Next Big Dream, including how Google developed their translation services. They “forgot” how translations are made. d.s.

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