Social Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Community

Are Co-working Spaces marking the emergency of Web 3.0?

Nathaniel Whittlemore on Social Entrepreneurship points out:

Writing about Virgance last week, ecofirm Max Gladwell advanced a new definition for Web 3.0 that’s not about cloud computing and semantic web, but instead about a phenomenon of human use:
Web 3.0 might also encompass the merging of the digital world with the actual world through Web and mobile technologies. Web 3.0 might include applications that integrate or necessarily include the actual worldwide web—the one in which we live, the tangible web of homes, streets, businesses, and government offices. If Web 2.0 is the Internet as a platform, then Web 3.0 might be the World as a platform.
In the new internet there is an increasing fluency between online and offline, and the direction of discovery flows both ways. Social networking technologies are no longer just the place where your offline connections live, but a doorway for relationships with new friends and colleagues.
The creatives are translating this emergent energy by building community hubs, rooted in place and designed to unleash the power of relationships to inspire innovation and ideas.
In the for-profit world, this is taking the shape of incubators. Y-Combinator is just the best known of an array of institutions designed to accelerate young companies by lavishing them with mentorship and connections. VentureBeat wrote yesterday about a new group, SproutBox based out of Bloomington, Indiana, and gave a shout to the growing field “a list that includes TechStars in Boulder, Colo., Launchbox Digital in Washington, D.C., Start@Spark in Boston, Mass., and Capital Factory in Austin, Texas.”
In the social sector, there is an explosion around co-working spaces for social innovators. The Hub’s global network is one of the leaders (and poised to come to the US for the first time this fall), but there are many others, such as NEDSpace in Portland, Oregon. Both the incubators and the co-working spaces share a common sensibility in attempting to draw out the unique composition of the communities in which they’re rooted.
And everywhere, conferences are popping up to build momentum around new sensibilities. This post was inspired by Big Omaha, a truly awesome looking event wrapping up in Nebraska today that is designed to converge brilliant entrepreneurs around the leading city of the Silicon Prarie.
The potential here is truly immense. Imagine a network where every city you went to, there was a community hub that you could check in with, each with a feel it’s own, but all connected by a passion for unleashing people’s capacity by allowing them to inspire and collaborate with one another.

10 Things I Learned at Nashville Startup Weekend

10 Things I Learned at Nashville Startup Weekend about Entrepreneurship and Business

I recently attended Nashville Startup Weekend at the Owen School of Business at Vanderbilt University and had a great time. I participated with the team that worked on Planet PE, an e-learning startup focused on physical education curriculum:

1) Scenario model for pitches is great (example narrative or sample customer interaction)
2) It helps to be funny
3) Artificial demand helps your business model and revenue
4) Re-packaging content (again and again) might help scale it
5) Often your personal pain points make the best products and stories
6) Build on existing communities for starting your business
7) E-mail is old school, but can work
8] Mass customization can work as a business model
9) Re-current revenue often beats a one off.
10) Can replicate an existing model in a new market or with a new twist (aka re-mix, mashup)

Here is an article which explains five reasons business plans fail, which can provide helpful guidance when writing a business plan. (hopefully, I’ll blog about and summarize the salient points from this article soon)

Here are all the startup ideas that were pitched on Friday night thanks to Tod Fetherling of the Nashville Technology Council:

1 Luke Mobile phone carrier identification app
2 Lawrence Human value exchange (service barter system)
3 Nicholas Boffee shop
4 Kate & Jason Office Hero (ordering system)
5 Nick Buffalo club (weight loss pool)
6 Lily Daily Candy (sports for sports haters)
7 Betsy Roommates.com for songwriters
8 Darren Online doctor scheduling
9 Stephen Focus Radar automated tasking system
10 Nick-o Get Rich on Jokes.com (joke aggregator/monetizer)
11 Jason Outlook for ADD, Anti-FocusRadar
12 Bruce Golf course merchandise aggregator
13 Luke MBA-powered musicians™
14 Tod PE Teacher.com (Online PE curriculum)
15 Lee Pizza Smackdown
16 Chris Online music collaboration marketplace
17 Anne & Justin Menu planning meets video poker
18 Jake Passive Traveler
19 tod Nashehr.com
20 Chad ican’tmakedecision.com
21 Luke Everyone’s favorite restaurant (multi-delivery)
22 Tom Zombie augmented reality storytelling 2.0 kindof
23 Jake Real estate self-guided GPS app
24 Chris Simple menu-to-SMS ordering for small restaurants
25 Justin Basecamp for event planning
26 Scott Real world Monopoly® GPS-aware game
27 Lee One auto enthusiast site to rule them all
28 Amber One wiki-like legal search app to rule them all
29 Nick-a-rama Reusable Hot-or-Not
30 Kate Evernote for Lyricists
31 Matt Local news site to take The Tennessean’s lost advert $ 2.0
32 Tod Truck Sock + The Wedge
33 Nathan K. Hyperlocal calendar aggregator
34 Nathan S. Wuja Cuja (charity-a-day)
35 Jake & Nate Startup Yearround (Kiva for the First World)
36 Bayard Social Media Styleguide Generator
37 Bo Mortgage applications – shop to all mortgage lenders

And here are the finalists thanks to Andrew Duthie of Duthie Learning:

Here are the five finalists:
PE Teacher.com (Online PE curriculum)
Focus Radar automated tasking system
One wiki-like legal search app to rule them all
Daily Candy-like service for sports haters
Office Hero (ordering system)

And here are the pitches that made the first cut but not the final:
Mortgage applications – shop to all mortgage lenders
Zombie augmented reality storytelling 2.0 kindof
Startup Yearround (Kiva for the First World)
Menu planning meets video poker
Basecamp for event planning
Nashehr.com
Real estate self-guided GPS app
Online doctor scheduling

Crowd Sourcing and Outsourcing Video Editing Solutions

Crowd Sourcing and Outsourcing Video Editing and Production Companies

You might call me a fan boy of the crowd sourcing phenomena. There are several options for crowd sourcing video. Increasingly as broadband speeds go up, video streaming fees go down (plummet), and the desire for website interactivity and social media rises on both the consumer and enterprise end–video outsourcing and crowd sourcing looks to expand dramatically.

But what are the enterprise solutions in this space? Here is an overview of some of the companies which make up the video crowd sourcing, outsourcing, and off shoring space.

Crowd sourcing Video Companies
Initially Kaltura offers an open source method of outsourcing video editing.

If you are looking to outsource video editing there are many solutions available, with most positioned in India.

More locally, here in Nashville, Studio Now offers a platform for video production and editing. You might also check out Media Mobz for professional video or SpinXpress for more crowd powered video editing, production, and collaboration.

Alternative Crowd sourcing and Outsourcing Resources
Of course, Guru, E-lance, and other sites like Ki Work and even Craigs list offer more generic solutions, which allows you to find video editing and production freelancers internationally. If you are interested in other crowd sourcing companies this list is fairly comprehensive as is this list , although neither is entirely extensive.

Outsourcing and Project Management Principles to Keep in Mind:

I think I would opt for the outsourcing solution which provided:

• a clear idea of the production quality
• a clear time line for completion
• customer service
• met the overall needs and objectives of our organization
• overall custom solution

Have a suggestion for a video crowd sourcing or outsourcing company I left out? Want to recommend a firm you’ve worked with and been happy with the results?

TED Talks Videos on Education, Creativity, and Play

New Models and Ideas about Education
1) Richard St. Johns on Eight Secrets of Success
2) Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together
3) Ann Cooper talks school lunches
4) Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
5) Barry Swartz on our loss of wisdom
6) Jose Abreu on kids transformed by music
7) Gever Telly teaches life lessons through tinkering
8] Tim Brown on Creativity and play (more for university and business)
9) David Perry on Video Games
10) John Wooden on Education and True Success

Open Source and the Future of Education
1) Brewster Kahle builds a free digital library
2) Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning
3) Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web

Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Models in Education
1) Dave Eggers’ wish: Once upon a school
2) Sugate Mitra shows how kids teach themselves
3) Gustavo Dudamel leads El Sistema’s top youth orchestra

Other TED Talks on Education
1) Scott McLeod on Top 20 TED Talks for school innovation, educators, public policy makers, and administrators.
2) 25 Incredible TED Talks for Educators

What do you think are the best TED Talks videos about education, creativity, and play?

Customized E-learning for Middle School

Customized E-learning Curriculum for Grades 5 Through 12

In a recent Harvard Business Review article “How to Make the Classroom as Exciting as a Video Game” Tom Davenport of Babson points to:

This time-honored but silly approach to education, however, is beginning to crack. This summer, for example, 80 students at Middle School 131 in New York’s Chinatown attended the “School for One.” They worked on individual computers, with content tailored to their progress and learning styles. At any given moment they might be working with a virtual (or live) tutor, filling out an online worksheet, or playing an educational video game. Their individualized learning programs or “playlists” are generated by a complex “learning algorithm” with analytical precision. They studied only math with this approach, but the same approach could be employed for other subjects.

There are other instances of this “differentiated learning.” SAS offers a program called Curriculum Pathways that serves up modularized content to students in grades 8-12, and it’s also got an analytical function to individualize the educational offerings.

Philissa Cramer calls this model schooling by playlist:

Students in the new pilot program, a $1 million effort that officials are calling the School of One, take a quiz every afternoon, and then receive a computer-generated schedule each morning, called a “playlist.” A student’s playlist might tell him to begin the day by meeting with a tutor, then to complete a set of online tasks, and then to work on a project with his classmates. The program, which focuses only on math instruction, will expand to three sites in January.

Davenport points out that this model is moving into higher education as well.

If this is interesting to you, you might check out my summary and review of “Disrupting Schools” by Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn.

I think this model has some promise. I think it may be best in mathematics. I’m curious if in other subjects if it would feel more like a banking model of education and I’m curious how much of a role student choice comes into play when creating the curriculum and daily schedule.

What do you see as the future of curriculum customization via education technologies? What models for innovation can we look toward?

Note: I believe it should be called “School of One” as opposed to “School for One.” I’m sure its possible the administration and others use the two terms interchangeably.

Did You Know 4.0

Here is the Did You Know 4.0 video from the wonders of the interwebs:

This version was created by Scott McLeod and Karl Frish who put together the infamous Shift Happens videos (along with the visual design firm XPLANE) and sponsored by the Economist for the upcoming Media Convergence Conference.

Its pretty amazing how far computers have come since 1965 and how small and powerful they will be in just 10 years from now–particularly as mobile moves forward.

For more discussion and insight the Shift Happens wiki suggests these questions for students, teachers, and policy makers:

• What are your initial reactions to what you saw in the presentation?
• How are these changes manifesting themselves in your personal lives? professional lives?
• What do we think it means to prepare students for the 21st century? What skills do students need to survive and thrive in this new era?
• What implications does this have for our current way of doing things?
• Do we need to change? If so, how?
• How do we get from here to there?
• What challenges must we overcome as we move forward?
• What supports will we need as we move forward?
• What kind of training will we need to move forward?
• What kind of commitments will we need to make (with each other, our students, and our community) to move forward?
• Who’s scared? Why?
• What will we do next? What are some concrete actions that we can take in the near future?
• Is it possible for a teacher to be an excellent teacher if he/she does not use technology?

Free by Chris Anderson for Free

For those worried about the demise of print Journalism and interested in the future of online content, Chris Anderson’s “Free” may provide some needed insight:

There may be more of them, not fewer, as the ability to participate in journalism extends beyond the credentialed halls of traditional media. But they may be paid far less, and for many it won’t be a full time job at all. Journalism as a profession will share the stage with journalism as an avocation. Meanwhile, others may use their skills to teach and organize amateurs to do a better job covering their own communities, becoming more editor/coach than writer. If so, leveraging the Free—paying people to get other people to write for non-monetary rewards—may not be the enemy of professional journalists. Instead, it may be their salvation.

Here is the Google books version of Chris Anderson’s new book “Free“

You can read Malcolm Gladwells retort of the “Free” thesis in the New Yorker as well as Chris Anderson’s follow up defending the study and analysis of free (but not the business model so much). Tech Dirt has links to many of the players in this ongoing debate over the success of the “free” product offering as a business model.

Web Research Tips and Tricks for Academics and Debaters

Scott Phillips recently put together a great list of five fanatic tools for debaters to do more efficient and productive web research:

fasterfox – makes webpages “endless”, so you don’t have to click “Page 2″ in some news articles or search results, you just keep scrolling; also lets you search google right from the url bar: the dropdown combines your visited sites history with the top results from google right as you type, so you never even have to visit google. make sure you disable “Auto Copy Selected” (for compatibility with Debate Copy) and maybe disable that annoying text popup bubble

evernote – lets you clip and save notes of anything. you should install both the software program and the addon. in the program options, you can assign a hotkey like F6 and that will clip either the selected text or the website to your notebook. I use it to organize literally everything I find; you can search, organize, or go back to original source later.

feedly – it makes RSS simple. subscribe to your favorite websites and it gives you a daily digest. I think it’s organized better than Google Reader

One which isn’t included in the 6 he provides is the latest debate plug-in Firefox by Gulakov.

If you check out the comments section of that post, Richard Glover has some other Firefox plug-ins.

How I would change the Idea Resume from Innosight

I ran across the Idea Resume from Innosight. I think its a great way to evaluate internal company innovation or the possibility of entrepreneurship. In a sense, its like a micro-business plan because it theoretically doesn’t as long to write, organize, and compile.

If I were to change it–I might perform two core augmentations to make it better and arguably more useful. First I would make it two pages, so that there is more room to write and brainstorm. I think the spaces are unneccessarily confining. I think I also would allow more columns. The page doesn’t give you much room to talk about the potential development of the idea over the course of 3 to 5 years. I think if I were consulting with this I might add an extra column for 3 to 5 years down the road to more fully include the life-cycle of the idea or product. However, I think its a fantastic tool, even without the changes I suggested. I further think that my suggestions would probably hamper the simplicity of the tool.

You can find the Idea resume here in (pdf form) or check out these Innovators tools at the Innovators Guide to Growth website.

How to Be Organized as an Entrepreneur

I was looking for a way to create organization to my seemingly thousands of pages I have floating around my informal office area. I thought I would provide my insight in four (inexpensive) ways to be organized as an entrepreneur. I hope it helps you if you are in need of organization

Organization Model 1: Expando File
Purchase a 31 section expando file (although at 20+ one will do) Create two pockets at the beginning for your business plan draft and final. You may also want a second for important components like your marketing plan. Then each section of your business plan becomes one section on the expando file. This allows you to do competitor research and print out a single page or perhaps multiple pages from their website or say Hoovers. This method can really grow as you grow your business. This method has the downside of possibly wasting paper–but I don’t think its excessive.

Organization Model 2: Binder Clips (or paper clips or folder paper)
This method is same as expando file, but less expensive and less organized. Each binder clip performs the same function as the sections of the expando file. You can even have a table of contents which provides some semblance of order. This ultimately is still quite precarious. At best its a stop gap measure until you get an expando file.

Organizational Model 3: Google Spreadsheets or Excel
This is for those of you who are excel pros. I am not an excel pro, so more traditional paper and pen models are slightly more appealing for this task. But if you can do it, more power to you.

Organizational Model 4: Delicious and Google Docs (or some other social media platform with tagging like a blog)
The social bookmarking tool delicious is fantastic for allows you to tag particular pages on the web (say your competitors or your pain point and you can use those exact words-or if you need to be more covert I’m sure developing a letter code can easily solve your problems). Google Docs can help by allowing you to cut and paste any extra relevant info and keep a document to track your progress. If you are planning on showing your idea to potential collaborators virtually this may be the best option for you.

Both of the later two are clearly more green friendly ways to be organized as an entrepreneur (and probably even less costly–as you save between $12 and $24 in prints and an expando file).

Feel free to leave your best ideas about organization, productivity, and workplace efficiency below in the comments section. Thanks.

Challenges and Opportunities for Social Learning

Evaluating the Opportunities for Social Learning
Increasingly enterprises are looking to implement social learning events to increase worker skills and development. As this trend continues it increase opportunities for innovation, while at the same time creating challenges. Initially the opportunity is created by the recession. Eric Davidove the senior executive with Accenture Learning BPO Services and Peter Butler aptly point out a salient analogy to our current economic morass:

Consider a soccer team forced to cut its practice time by 30 percent and its team roster by 20 percent. Such a team must do two things: First, make sure that each practice session is efficient and targeted at the most critical areas of development; second, enable the remaining team members to be more versatile—better able to play different positions and to learn from one another.

They continue:

Effectively improving the social learning environment can meet three urgent needs for companies striving to stay on the path to high performance during these challenging economic times. First, companies can reduce training costs by leveraging employees to produce and deliver personalized learning content that is both relevant and timely. Second, they can improve their return-on-learning investment by compressing the time to competence needed by business-critical workforces. Third, they can create a more nimble workforce, capable of responding faster to marketplace and customer change.

Further, social learning has dramatic impacts on innovation and employee development:

The free-form environment encourages people to experiment, innovate, collaborate, communicate and share their experiences and knowledge in engaging ways. This knowledge sharing has a positive impact on how other employees serve customers, find information or solve problems.

All employees have the opportunity within the learning environment to establish a presence or social profile that reflects their expertise and interests. They can then create and share their knowledge and experience, even search for peer insights, all organized by user-generated tags and topics. People and their content are linked to one another through team sites, instant messaging, blogs and discussion threads. Material is also rated by peers during the sharing process according to quality and applicability.

In fact at the corporate level often the focus should be shifted from traditional e-learning courses to more social learning processes and opportunities for employees including experimenting with and learning from learning 2.0 tools and communities. This is the real face of the next generation of business, organizational learning, and productivity around Enterprise 2.0 platforms, communities, and content.

What are the Challenges of Social Learning and the Social Learning Organization?
In other words how do you create a social learning culture? And how to you ensure that the social learning culture is focused on delivering value and return on investment? (ROI). Mark Sylvester suggests that the three primary challenges to social learning are fear, control, and trust. I think I would widen that to include time and resources. Mark suggets these three questions are critical:

What if they say bad things?
What if they say wrong things?
What if people say secret things?

Realistically the time commitment of social learning and what the exact parameters. For learners and employees who already have time in their workflow for such issues, this is an easy transition, while for others it becomes one more job in the work day. Also, the issue of trust value and expertise of social learning content is certainly a question–however is has always been an issue and when the alternative is less knowledge–generally this is a non-issue. Its more an issue of the time for reading, evaluating , sorting, and storing the social learning content that seems to be the largest time and resource commitment.

End Notes:
For those who want to deal with such issues Slide 13 and 18 of Mark Sylvesters presentation on social learning are helpful with creating a process to deal with the introduction of social media to the training and learning process of an organization. You can see the whole presentation on social learning here.

E-learning business trends for 2009 and 2010

Tony Karrer hosted a great webinar on the future of e-learning business trends. Here are my notes from the Skillcast e-learning webinar:

Bersin and Associates
(their website includes research, resources, and blogs):
-11 % reduction in companies
-More toward blended model-redefine training
-less content, more relevance, more job related
-”deep specialization”–whats driving value
(sales, consultants, engineering, whatever) in high value roles
-TAT interactive creates simulations

-How to compete with free? How to make money with free?
-Sponsorship (Wired: How to make money with free)
-Increase relevance.
-Deep dive into to become an expert. Can talk to the industry people about their industry.
-Become a consultant. Talk about things you can’t build.
-Focus on accountability
-Company–focus on sustain results. Create new value and markets with clients.
-Tony: How to make money for free?
-Tony: Pent up demand for skills vs. learning?

Panelist: Lisa of Amplify Selling
-Trends for corporate buyers
-Have to fight for an hour vs. a half day for front line. Unless its compliance training (ie 2 hour requirement)
-Immediate ROI
-Where placing accountability
-Shift in HR and training roles
-Reasonable customization and turn around time. Tremendous pressure on learning companies.
-Less staff.
-Large firms have moved away from customization and toward volume.
-Lots of desperate felon strategies (???) Being badgered for sales. Sale at all cost vs. relationship.
-Not a lot of room for growth. No abandonment of traditional.
-Companies digitizing own content.
-Not doing a lot innovation (not a lot of products coming to marketplace)
-Letting go of senior sales force. Juniors are more willing to badger and cheaper.
-Irritated when they
-Winning: Expertise and ability to customize. Agility (speed/flexibility/rapid e-learning,) and personalized service.
-Five Supplier Trends (manage cost, blended, desperate sales, minimal innovation, talent management-letting go of seniors)
-Tony: E-learning spend is flat??? Whats the scoop on e-learning???
-Percentage to e-learning is flat or declining. They don’t want catalogs of content.
-They want to solve urgent problems (customized, tailored, ) (ie Computer Associates or Ciscos revamp of sales. High powered with deep) Catalog market has peaked.
-Social learning is a new trend.
- (???) Companies trust front line of people more than others (???)
-Corporate Learning Officers (CLOs)–Can’t fulfill all demand.
-Informal learning (processes, approachers so learn from each other and share best practices) The training department can NEVER keep up) Tap into high value programs. Customize offering a little more now.
-Guarantee results. Focus on results. (Training department not the buyer.)
-Has the buyer changed Lisa?
-Still have corporate universities and learning and development (in other cases you may have to seek out the one with money–the buyer)
-The VP of sales will likely still go to the internal learning person.
-Money and projects from training person.
-At most 20% of learning in org. is formal. Not as relevant.
-Tony: Emerging models? Making money for free and other ideas. Outside the box–new models that training companies should be evaluating.
-For instance Live Mocha is a competitor to Rosetta Stone. Manderine Chinese, German, etc.
-Internet has created the expectation of getting stuff for free (an email is not enough)
-Malcolm Gladwell as the market for free vs. for fee. Hopefully viral knowledge–very high value. (article in the New Yorker)
-Incredible tool to reach buyer.
-Value and education to educate about services, gain credibility to create momentum and pipeline.
-Some people gave away services and then sell them. Hallmark Greeting cards–this creates resentment. (not a bait and switch down the road)

Ann Herrmann-Nedhi, CEO Hermann International (also board member of the Association of Learning Providers (ISA))
-Everybody wants to play in the game and we all want to make up the rules (iPhone model and metaphor and do you have an app for that–its a mindset shift)
-How do we better involve learners in developing their own learning experiences?
-How do we make learning easier, more comfortable, and make it pay off?
-Ask your customers and associates what “apps” they want and/or “rules” they would like to remove to make their lives easier (are we asking enough of the right questions)
-High School never ends. Social networks are here to stay.
-How do we integrate social networks into our business worlds?
-What aspects of social learning can be leveraged to gather, manage, and dispense knowledge?
-Time/productivity–Set boundaries to keep it focused. Don’t try to figure it out all at once.
-Ask customers how they are using social media
-[social learning is replacing old systems]
-Continuous partial attention (padded pole in London for texters)
-Timesnapper, Todoist.
-Start designing learning in smaller, accessible chunks.
-Its hip to do good (Good Magazine and Habitat for Humanity)
-How do we engage the social passions of learners in shaping their development experience?
-[front-end customer strategy]
-We balance a customized world (extreme awareness of whats happening in the rest of the world) Zazzle allows you to customize most any clothing
-Google maps to look at Swine flu (or some other disease spread)
-[TV didn't kill the movies]
-How do we really customize learning? (no REALLY customize)
-How do we prep
-Design your products to have a custom “wrap” that is relatively easy to change
-Use the extreme awareness to get input into your scenario planning
-Leadership attributes need to change to support a changing business world.
-”Great leaders need to create arguments”–andre martin of Mars
-What does the new world of leadership look like?
-How do we encourage leaders to create constructive arguments?
-How do we prepare ourselves and leaders to address the “Triple bottom line”? (people, profit, planet)
-Creative contention one of your power tools. (ability to hear from others is mission critical)
-ISA will publish whitepaper and visualization.’
(13:42)

Future of the Business of Learning, Inscape Publishing
-Inscape Publishing for soft skills through HR consultantcies in 26 languages–over one million learners per year. Content and context
-Training, video, powerpoint and assessment.
-We producing the legos of soft skills.
-Three forces are shaping our biz
-Demand for custom/premium solutions growing
-Personalization of feedback is absolutely critical to learning process
-Trainers need to have content that is open and adaptable (if we put out quality out there we will be rewarded)
-Markets desire for cool design and innovation is coupled with reluctance to pay for it.
-As my grandmother would say “Cheap is cheap”
-What would Picasso do?
-But that only took you 2 minutes?
-If I’m giving something for free-what am i trading for
-The free part of our offer: (creates stickiness in our system)
-50K a month–going through a platform. Opt into survey. Publish with training magazine.
-Results on Managed Smarter (by searching my name)
-End user was studied. Orgs still putting emphasis (77%) on proprietary training.
-Learners of all ages like e-learning/training
-Low tech techniques for multiple examples and problem solving
-Not all the bells and whistles. Implies simulation is good for transfer.
-Tony: Untypical supplier.
Development Dimensions International (DDI) Pete Weaver
-How you make your money is a lense on how you see the world
-Leadership assessment and development (softskills)
-Not about technical training–it requires practice
[Loss of Boomers knowledge aka needs facilitation to solve]
-Ethical obligation. Tied to business intent.
-The “new normal” Change their culture. Level 4 or Level 5 if you believe in this one
-This is commoditizing the industry. Major shift in the seas. Can swamp our boats.
-Lawyers/ etc. unfamiliar with how to create change in their organizations.
-Quality-money into R + D
-Really look at needs of the organization he’s serving (deep dive)
-Not selling–helping them find the outcomes that meet business intent.
-Talking to leaders about outcomes (not about inputs)
-Be careful with tech bandwagons. I’m an early adopter. New tech finds place in web of human life–don’t overtake the old. (ie internet didn’t entirely replace the old) For instance we still have radio. They accrete themselves to what we are doing.
-The magic is in the mix (R+D cost)
-Not starting with technology in mind–but starting with the end in mind.
-Take the analogy on GPS. He already knew how to drive the car. Don’t want to get a GPS before they know how to drive a car. Same with airlines and nuclear power plant.
-Performance support is critical if the person can use it.
[self-directed learning needs to be re-inforced to stick]

Systemation
–Systemization provides project Management training–experiential–20% lecture and 80% case study with facilitator to help (check out their website for theseSystemization resources)
-Industry Challenges #1: Economic reset through 2010 (their organization has been pared down–no funds and no support and they are stressed)
-We start off with discovery call and find out what pains them.
-The consultative process is very much handicapped in the current economic client (only X to spend)
-Industry Challenges #2: Clients think our content and time should be free
-Will pay for the experience. They learn via war wounds.
-Limited to 20 to 1 people ratio in learning.
-We complement with value add. You pay for it once. You get the whole package which is worth more. -Next trend is gaming. Will break the 20 to 1 ratio. My kids are playing games.
-Project management–interact and see the outcomes. Would help with just in time. It would also become infinity to one.
-Helping us get new business. In these difficult economic times–ability to change to new vendor due to cost or customer service. Having good customer service is an asset. Really helping us lately.

You can see a summary of the ideas each person covered (in all four sessions) on this future of the business of learning blog post.

The next update to these trends will be November 17-19, 2009 It will be online and free:

The theme/focus this year is on Convergence in Workplace Learning

* Enterprise 2.0
* Communities and Networks
* Knowledge Management
* Corporate Libraries
* Talent Management

You can learn more about this free e-learning conference at Tony’s E-learning tech blog.

Writing a Business Plan Video Resources

Writing a Business Plan Video Resources

The Graduate School of Business at Stanford University has two videos on creating and evaluating business plans. One by Jim Ellis of the Stanford GSB and one by Jim Goetze of Sequoia Capital [more about venture funding, but also about business planning]. The Stanford GSB also includes several external links to business plan resources and more generic business and entrepreneurship resources which are helpful along with videos from the GSB.

Tim Berry has some great business plan video resources on his You Tube channel. Tim Berry blogs at Tim Berry.Blplans.Com and runs Bplans.com Tim talks about the idea of presenting your “secret sauce.” [their business plan software products are between $99 and $199]

Professor Ed Hess, one of the authors of “So you want to start a business?” (“So You Want to Start a Business” is also available on Google Books) spoke at the MBA School University of Virginia also entitled “So You Want to Start a Business?”

Alternative Entrepreneurship, Technology Startups, and Business Videos and Resources
The Entrepreneur School, which has been covered by multiple mass media outlets, also has videos on issues related to entrepreneurship.

10 Things You Need to Start a Business by Frank Levinson from Stanford University on Academic Earth. [its actually a series of several short 2 minute snippets]

Perhaps the biggest and best repository of entrepreneurial and business videos available online is found at the Stanford E-Corner. This is a vast wealth of videos and insight. I’ve included the 15 Best Stanford E-corner Videos here.

Of course you may want to look into issues of pitching, bootstrapping, funding sources for startups, and marketing planning. This can serve as a guideline for moving forward. Much information on this issue is provided by Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start, Score.org, the Small Business Administration, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

FYI: the Yale Business School has a free 30 to 45 minute podcast on writing a business plan that is quite comprehensive.

Startups and Venture Capital in Education Technology

Its hard to keep up with tech start ups, particularly in the education space, so I’ve made an effort to include several recent developments in the ed tech niche:

A couple new education tech start ups were featured in a recent article in Fast Company: “5 Startups to Watch” which focused on the Venture Capital in Education Summit 2009 which was hosted by Stanford University School of Education in Palo Alto, CA. The article focused on 2tor Inc by Princeton Review founder John Katzman, Edufire by John Bische, Grockit by Farbood Nivi, Inigral Michael Stanton, and Knewton by “Kaplan-test vet” Jose Ferreira.

That very same Fast Company magazine features “Who Needs Harvard: How Web-Saavy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education” which is worth a read and features the free education video service Academic Earth which the founder and Yale graduate Richard Ludlow “modeled on Hulu.” The article also points to the open source education models which are emerging in higher education like the Open Courseware Consortium and David Wiley’s Flatworld Knowledge on the one hand and Peer2Peer University a project by Harvard PhD student Neeru Paharia and the University of the People on the other. In a telling forecast Wiley, professor at BYU with a PhD in educational psychology and technology suggests:

If universities can’t find the will to innovate and adapt to changes in the world around them…universities will be irrelevant by 2020.”

Apex Learning, which focuses on AP exam review, is one of the more famous given its connection to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and its inclusion in Clayton Christensen’s recent book “Disrupting Class” co-authored with Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson which is a fascinating inquiry into education technology and reform. You can see both my summary and review of “Disrupting Schools” which includes mention of eAgilize’s Brain Honey, Wireless Generation, Edu Fire, Immersive, several Virtual High Schools, and Curriki which provides open source curriculum (the Global Education and Learning Community created by Sun Microsystems).

Of course Union Square Ventures recently hosted a Hacking Education mini-conference which featured thought leaders in tech and education who collaborated and discussed issues of higher education reform. Their discussions are available at the Hacking Education wiki, which includes a transcript and other relevant higher ed resources including readings and topics of discussion.

Keen Guides are more of an university education marketing start up (from what I can tell) who recently demoed at a recent Launch Box Digital event in Washington DC. They feature virtual university tours–given that they just launched most of their video collection is from Wake Forrest University.

This recent CNN article on social networking, higher education, and learning features Cramster.com, Scitable.com, and University of the People. You can find more about University of the People and its founder in a recent NYT article on e-learning and a Campus Technology interview.

And of course there are a host of education related iPhone applications according to Google.

Crunch Base Database of Education Startups, Career Start ups, and Training Start ups. (if you drill down using the tags on the side, its easy to find various related edu tech niches as well)

You can always look at Business.com’s or Yahoo’s directory listing for education technology companies.

If you know of other up and coming education technology startups or old standbys feel free to leave a message or link in the comment section. Thanks!

Challenges and Disadvantages of E-learning and Distance Learning

Challenges and Disadvantages of E-learning and Distance Learning

Higher Education e-learning and high school virtual schooling is currently broken. Here are some of the challenges (and ultimately opportunities) that I see in the distance learning and e-learning literature as I’ve reviewed it. The question becomes…can high school and higher ed e-learning meet the task?

1) Lack of customization to student’s interest (also length instead of modules)
2) Lack of student motivation
3) Lack of personal community and connection (not blended learning)
4) Its a banking model of education (which is partially inevitable)
5) Not experientially based–its simulation based at best
6) Not necessary based on the best science regarding How People Learn
7) Lack of quality assessment and feedback, which hinders learning.
8] Mostly disconnected to the needs of employers, which means its disconnected from the desires of students and parents. (this may be the largest criticism)
9) Some self-directed learners is sometimes too random and has no process (its too loosely joined–sometimes you need a bridge or a path). Also, some is subject to quality issues. The learner has to self-analyze content without requisite knowledge or criteria (its authority 2.0).
10) Lack of certification (or assessment) for self-directed learning.
11) Tech, toys, and teaching over learning.
11) Focus on memorization over learning core competencies.
12) Time resources at a minimum (Tradeoff w/ NCLB on the high school level. And NCLB cuts into the arts in time, funding, and resources.) But some teachers dont know how much time they have.
13) Lack of mentorship for self-learners and even some “just the facts ma’am” distance learning
14) Lack of adoption to learning style of learners. (e-learning just textbooks in drag)
15) Better aligning of incentives of teachers and learners (?)
16) Downtime + mobile as well as “play” are issues to consider as well.
17) Lack of digital literacy and keeping up with the pace of change
18) Digital divide short circuits improvement
19) Best practice coordination is distributed instead of centralized (in terms of teaching and technology)
20) Content is distributed instead of centralized (Merlot.org and Open Course Consortium are the exception)
21) No ranking, evaluation of current modules.
22) Underutilized talents and facilities
23) No way to ground social networking and web 2.0 tools
24) Slow transition to innovation (Crossing the Chasm: early adopters vs. mainstream vs. laggards)
25) No reverse engineering of career paths and career skill sets. (or very, very minimal)
26) Cost of higher ed and e-learning options. Most still seem to be 75 to 95% of bricks and mortar cost.
27) On the career and HR front generic knowledge stands in for industry specific knowledge and expertise. This is especially damaging in the humanities–which means they will likely lose funding, resources, programs, and professors.
28) Students lack passion for life long learning.
29) Lack of boundary spanners in education and business . No one in the gap.
30) Lack of career center employees means you have to scale their knowledge efficiently or get a strategic lever to add on top of what they already offer. (specifically on industry specific and network specific)

Consequently, the school to job area represents a rather large gap–as does the city specific info for moving and getting settled. On top of this Alumni networks range from good to bad–and you have creative centers which means geography or the spikiness of cities comes into play with Flat Earth fantasies. And the plethora of career counselors and consultants is a hot mess (no way to evaluate–or its minimal). Alternatives to traditional career paths often aren’t explored–this is especially important given the increase in slash careers and consulting.

This ultimately is both an opportunity given the potential for disruption onlined in Christensen’s book and troubling given the dramatic increases in the e-learning space which are expected. (note: white paper download from NMC.org)

What do you think? What are your findings and experiences regarding e-learning challenges?

Further Exploration of Disadvantages and Challenges of E-learning
For more on the future of e-learning check out Masie’s blog or this Slideshare presentation on the issue of challenges in e-learning. Here is e-learning guru’s summary of some of the issues with regarding e-learning and distance learning. Where should high school and higher education focus to make the most change? What are the levers which will be most effective in creating large shifts in improvements in education?

If you’d like to explore more, I recommend my best articles on university 2.0 and social media in the higher ed classroom.

Eric Ries on Startup Lessons Learned

Eric Ries on Building Lean and Successful Startups

Here is the version of this lean start ups talk Eric did for O’Reilly. Its nice because you get easier access to the slides as the presentation is progressing. You can read more of Eric’s insight at Startup Lessons Learned, where he blogs or his presentations about start up success on Slideshare.net.

Paul Graham’s post on why startups fail is also worth checking out: 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups.

Best of Social Media and the University Classroom

Best of Social Media and Tech Education in the University Classroom

I’ve compiled what I think are the most relevant, interesting, and forward thinking posts from Compassion in Politics about social media and the university classroom all in one handy blog post. I’ve included issues of a comprehensive list of issues related to educational technology in the university context including: e-learning, career, entrepreneurship, and curriculum development. The post contains 27 resources links as well as the visualization and statistics provided by the three info-graphics I’ve also included.

Probably the two most relevant to the university professor who wants to ramp up with social media tools are “Social Media and the University Professor” which details some of the best content about web 2.0 tools in the college classroom as well as “E-learning Trends for 2009″ which points out the leading technology in the e-learning space as it reaches the University 2.0 generation. Of course this list offers a plethora of resources and ideas to explore, interrogate, and engage other educators about.

Career, Entrepreneurship, and Start ups 2.0: University Digital Literacy Skills

21st Century Skills
Best Stanford E-Corner Videos
Tech Stars Boulder Panel on Tech Start ups and Entrepreneurship (Circa 2007)
Tina Seelig’s “Everything I Wish I Knew when I was Twenty”
Career Center 2.0
Proposed Technology Literacy Program

Book Reviews, Analysis, and Summaries:

Clayton Christensen “Disrupting Schools” Part I (summary and quotes)
Clayton Christensen “Disrupting Schools” Part II (my review and analysis)
Two Social Media and Web.20 in the Classroom Textbooks Reviewed

Social Media, Culture, and Trends for 2010 and Beyond

E-learning and Education Technology Trends for 2009 and 2010
E-learning Trends (more generic, but interesting particularly micro-learning, mobile, and video streaming)
Clay Shirky on Internet and Cultural Trends (includes interesting info on TED talks)
Social Media Trends for 2010 (generic)
Social Media Trends for 2009 (generic)
Enterprise 2.0 Trends for 2010
Social Entrepreneurship Trends for 2009

Other Social Media and the University Classroom

What Will the Graduating Class of 2010 Need to Know
College professor and social media
What would University 2.0 look like?
University 2.0 Meeting the demands of Enterprise 2.0
Edupunk: The Battle Royale (Open source alternatives to Blackboard)
Open Teaching and Open Source
Journalism 2.0: What Journalism Students Need to Know in the 21st Century
Journalism 2.0: The Future of Journalism Syllabus
Ten Best of Tech Learning Blog
11 Models for University Information Dashboards (see also information dashboards and the university)
Web 2.0 Project Assessment

Darren Kuropatwa on Awakening Possibilities

You can check out the wiki Darren created for this presentation, including links to his class applied math and calculus wikis. Darren’s other education technology presentations ranked by popularity from Slideshare.

Web 2.0 Assessment and Electronic Portfolios

Web 2.0 Assessment: Assessing Student Projects for the 21st Century

Assessment Reform Group, (2006) Assessment for leanring

Barrett, (2000) Learning and Leading with Technology

Barrett, 5 x 5 model

Barrett, (2004, 2006) My online portfolio adventure

Barrett, (2005) White paper: researching electronic portfolios and learner engagement

Barrett, (2006) Using electronic portfolios for formative/classroom-based assessment, Connected Newsletter

Barrett, (2007) Researching electronic portfolios and learner engagement: the Reflect Initiative.

Other Web 2.0 Assessment and Electronic Portfolio Resources

Elgg.org is a commonly used platform for e-portfolios

Harry Tuttle on Web 2.0 based assessment (social media, project based learning, classroom 2.0, etc.)

E-portfolios with Barrett (Helen Barrett blog on E-Portfolios)

Assessment Reform Group Publications

Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools (2007), edited by Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum (p.168-176)

Reviews of Social Media in the Classroom Textbooks

Classroom 2.0: Reviews of the Best Social Media Technology in the Classroom Textbooks

I just received “Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools in the Classroom” and “Re-inventing Project Based Learning” both produced by the folks at ISTE. I think both are worth the money (each runs between $24 and $34 either on Amazon or from ISTE) and I think both can serve either as a guidebook for teachers wanting to implement social media tools in the classroom, textbook for a college classroom, or a guidebook for personal development day on internet technology in the K-12 classroom.

My biggest criticism of these books (and I think these are significant issues for 90 to 95% of teachers who read these texts) are the following:

• lack of a process (lack of lesson plan models or scaffolding). this could help speed up the process as well as provide some leadership on these issues.
• lack of creative ways to solve the digital divide. the inability to address the digital divide is critical to being able to fairly and effectively deal with technology issues in the classroom. how can teachers with only 1 hour a week of computer time implement these policies? how can teachers with just 3 computers in the classroom implement these policies? how can teachers use tools and organizations outside the scope of the school setting to alleviate the digital divide (ie museums)? what are practical ways that teachers have dealt with and negotiated these issues.
• assessment of multimedia digital projects. I think education is just wrapping its head around these issues. I think assessment is critical to the issues of educational fairness and motivation. Although both texts devoted about 7 pages to this issue–I think a more robust and comprehensive handling of the issue is both necessary and desirable. For instance, Solomon and Schrum do point to the work of Helen Barrett and Harry Tuttle on assessment, in addition to the use of e-portfolios such as those provided by for free by Elgg.org. However, no rubric of assessment is really provided.
• Whither Howard Gardner. the lack of mention of Howard Gardner and the extensive project based learning examples he gives, with the small exception of High Tech High, seems pretty surprising. this gives readers a potential opportunity to explore such issues in greater depth via their own research and projects.
• various other cultural and technology issues: a discussion of the issue of information overload and how to deal with the challenges technology presents. tomorrow’s workers will have to deal with a mind numbing array of information sources–dealing with information overload and the challenges technology presents is important to real digital literacy.

By the way, the 16 page bibliography at the end of Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools is quite impressive and overall the book is power-packed with insightful advice and web link resources (I am surprised that the authors or publisher hasn’t created a wiki or blog around the book–or at least one I could find online. I guess the fact that Gwen Solomon runs Tech Learning serves that purpose–so you may want to check it out for further resources, examples, and insight.)

I liked “Re-inventing Project Based Learning” because it expanded the notions of technology beyond just typical Web 2.0 tools. There are 3 examples of mobile phones in the index–as this is in the top 5 of most applicable and accessible technologies–I wish there had been more. This is certainly an area of classroom technology and project based learning which bares further exploration and investigation.

Overall, I think the authors of both education technology textbooks did an excellent job. I would recommend both of these books for any educator, librarian, or education technologist trying to help teachers in their school wrap their heads around these new technology tools. My criticisms above are only meant to supplement the existing texts–and can serve as jumping off points for further research on the topic of social media, web 2.0, and other advanced technologies in the K-12 classroom.

You can find the book publishers summary of Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools by Gwen Solomon and Lynn Schrum by clicking, along with a download of chapter 1 and the table of contents. You may want to learn more about project based learning with web technology at Jane Krauss’ blog.

If you’re just interested in communication and cultural trends in the social media space you might check out Clay Shirky at New York University, Dan Tapscott at Wikinomics, or Henry Jenkins at University of Southern California. You might also consider looking into the Museum 2.0 and Library 2.0 spaces as well to see where trends are headed there.

Looking forward to checking out David Warlick’s books on this issue in the near future (in the mean time I’ll have to just reflect on the incredible mass of resources about digital literacy in the 21st century on David Warlick’s wiki) If you have any suggestions for solving any of the above (or any research/links/etc) feel free to leave them in the comments section. (also, feel free to leave your opinion/reviews/asssment about any of the books on this subject)

Clay Shirky Presentation on Internet Trends and Culture at TED Washington DC 2009

Clay Shirky: How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history

Clay Shirky teaches at NYU and is the author of “Here Comes Everybody“

More Cool Stuff You Didn’t Know about TED Talks
Interestingly enough Wake Forest University has a TED talks watching party every Wednesday for lunch. How cool!!! This is a great way to connect online content with off line community (I’m curious how the crowd for each TED talks changes or how they coordinate the calendar for the viewing of the talks).

If I was on a college campus, ran a library, or another place with people thinking and acting on social change issues–it would be a lot of fun to start a TED viewing party/brown bag activity like this. What do you think about this idea?

Finally, someone has compiled a spreadsheet of all the TED talks so that you can have a different interface to pick and choose which TED talks to watch.