Week 5 Reflection

Communities of practice

Communities of practice (COP) to me are people within a community who have a shared set of learnings or “practice”, in which they can use to deal with issues or ongoing problems that they share a common interest, housed within a social structure.

COP has three characteristics which include, the domain is the shared interest of the community, such as photographers, authors, aeroplane hobbits etc. The community is when the community interacts and learns from each other, without this it also cannot be a COP. The practice is the use within a shared practice that enables them to deal with one-off or ongoing issues with the help of others with the same vested interest, such as architects during a lunch break discussing continued problems and solutions to them.

Social learning systems

Social learning systems involves social competence, a level within a community in which you become competent to within a community and personal experience that is what we learn and share within our community gathered from the world.

Week 4 Reflection

This week has answered a lot of key questions about the 4C’s and more importantly, how they’re applied. What I gained from this week is includes, but is not limited to below.

Communication

Communication being more or less informal, with less interaction than other types of social software. The types of social software under communication include, discussion forums, which is good for business and social discussions, blogs, help a business discover insights from personal that can be used for knowledge management. Instant messenging can be used to communicate to multiple users or a single about, important information or simply for training.

Cooperation

Cooperation is an informal style to work, where the more people using this type the better it works, also called a network effect. The network effects value to a user is based on indirect values (what occurs from others using it) to direct values(what occurs when the user uses the software). I see this as others helping others in an informal manner, via social software.

Cooperation includes social software such as, media sharing, adding the ability to rate, tag, vote and RSS media. Social bookmarking folksonomies (non hierarchical, user-created categories for display) finding information based on what others categorise this information can be less time-consuming and generally more effective. Social cataloguing similar to social bookmarking, this can be used to help cite certain items such as an author or could be used in a business to recommend items and gain important insights from others.

 Collaboration

Collaboration is a more formal type of social software, requiring a lot of interaction by users.

The types most used in this category are, wikis are limited user access, easy to use, allowing email traffic and meetings held to minimize, creating a more effective and efficient workplace. Human-based computation uses questions to ask users in collaboration about problems and in turn stores these for future use.

Connection

Connection social software types are more formal requiring less interaction than other types, they include, social networking, for a business can be used to find common areas of knowledge and connect to customers and other employees for better communication. Tagging is a powerful tool in which users can tag information based on how they understand or relate to it, this makes searching easier and faster. Social search seems to be an excellent way in which users can find information within a company, based on user defined tags or keywords, that by-pass author created metadata. Syndication generally taking the form of RSS is an easy way to keep updated on key topics and sites. Mashups is a website or application that can take outputs from multiple social systems within a business and turn it into a combined interface defined by the user.

Web 2.0 Tools

Heres a list of sites considered to be web 2.0. I have to say that this list is very extensive!

http://www.go2web20.net/

I hope you enjoy, I did.

Web 1.0-3.0 and the differences

The shift from web 1.0 to 3.0 to me, seems to have involved a lot of change requiring a fair amount of time and effort by innovative individuals seeking to make their internet experiences better for them and others. The biggest change recorded and displayed to date that I have noted from web 1.0 to 2.0 is the added ability for normal individuals to information share with others,shifting from a one-many to a many-many situation, creating a decentralisation of website content, where the users are also the “creators”.

Web 2.0 to 3.0 becomes more of a gray area as no one really knows what it will be like, but with that said some of the obvious things that will flourish when you think about what you would like to change about web 2.0, are the increased ability to search in a more “contextual” or customised way, and the ability to have the same access and information shared around with other sites. As we all have found out even with using a web 2.0 search engine(Google), you’re splashed with more information than required, which means more time searching and refining than using the required information. In a hypothetical web 3.0 search engine, it would be based on contextual searches to give the user the added ability to type in whole sentences and receive information pertaining to the query, such as if you wanted a new battery pack for your HP pavilion notebook under a hundred dollars from a store in your country, you would simply type “Need a HP battery pack from a store in New Zealand under $100”. Web 3.0 will also enable users to access sites with the same password and login and sharing information between them all. Even though web 3.0 is still a very grey area with a lot of assumption, stuff like what has been mentioned characterise what web 3.0 would most likely include.

Enterprise 2.0

The two classification models SLATES and FLATNESSES, both highlight what each type of enterprise 2.0 software is classified by, and what it does. I agree with Dion Hinchcliffe, heres his blog here with a bit more detail than the text-book http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/the-state-of-enterprise-20/143. Now with me agreeing with which is better the third as coined in Niall book simply classifies them by the 4C’s, which to me personally is easier by far to understand and is more easier to group and compare with the actual software that has been classified.

The formality/interaction graph is followed to show how a company may implement the different types of social media, as mentioned by Niall Cook(2008) Enterprise 2.0: how social software will change the future of work.

Perfect storm

Well thought I would graphically show the “perfect storm”, which illustrates the reasons why Social media is so prevalent in society today. I know this is not the best or coolest representation but this will suffice.

As you can see each “Major” barrier to entry has been stacked side by side, because you cannot induce a perfect storm without both, as mentioned in Enterprise 2.0 textbook. These barriers to entry become obvious when you start to ask questions such as why did it not work in the past? things like groupware and other technologies have been around for a while. Some reasons are, when cost on technology goes down, incomes increase and better technology presents itself, people are more inclined to spend more, and interact in different ways. Now due to cheaper technology and excellent economic conditions we have made the perfect storm.

Blogging makes a difference

I have just read chapter two from our text and wow!! If Robert Scoble the blogger who was hired by Microsoft can be successful and humanize the company. I thought, imagine what bloggers with the right audience could do politically and economically? well I have just found successful bloggers who have.

The first is Americablog found at http://www.americablog.com/. This has helped expose a few problems in politics and came to the forefront in America after exposing a Jeff Gannon who was a member of the white house press corps.  

Liberal conspiracy, which is rated the best in the UK and is found at  http://liberalconspiracy.org/. This sites blogger, Sunny Hundal was rated blogger of the year in 2006, and has a very influential record in political blogging.

Porous membrane

Well upon reading some more on chapter one of our prescribed textbook Enterprise 2.0 Nial Cook (2008). The chapter briefly covered porous membrane and how social media can create an “alignment” between corporate/internal conversations and external/customer conversations. A concept formed and drawn by Cartoonist/CEO of Stormhoek USA, Hugh Mcleod coined the idea porous membrane, as illustrated in his diagram below. 

Porous membrane as described by Hugh MacLeod (2005). 

On the diagram A represents  the internal conversations, that is encased in membrane X.  Membrane X can be like some sort of corporate barrier, this membrane separates the “internal conversations” of a business from the “external conversations” of their customers. This can be a problem when you want to “sync” or connect and convey your business and ideas to the average customer. Now if this membrane became more porous such as conversations that are not dictated by corporate appointed public relations experts and are instead conversations from the average worker, which can “inform” and align the customer. This can give the corporation a human touch, which they can easily convey and connect with their respective customers.

Having a porous membrane can be a very good way to connect and build trust with customers, but what if this membrane becomes too porous? or how porous is this company meant to be? and what if the membrane becomes obsolete? these are excellent questions for a business and should be thought of before committing. We all can point out past media headlines featuring certain people being disciplined, fired or worst for becoming the front man for their respective organisation.

An example is the incident involving a former US intelligence agent Bradley Manning(employee) and the US state department(employer), where he felt morally obliged to convey information concerning the US forces workings around the world to the public(customers) check the link out here http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/5395-wikileaks-whistleblowing-or-treason.

Heres one of the many leaks by All blacks http://sport.stv.tv/rugby/138336-all-blacks-face-dressing-down-over-twitter-leak/ , which could have been avoided if a set of control was in place, Ie a controlled porous membrane, with more understood boundaries without a free reign of what can be said.

Heres a link to Hugh Mcleods page porous membrane http://gapingvoid.com/2005/05/09/the-porous-membrane-why-corporate-blogging-works/.



Minor updates

I have tinkered around with my blog a fair bit now.

Updates include:

– likes button to social media sites such as Facebook and twitter

– I have added two new categories – Social media, which includes topics I am learning for 157.240, and a Random category, which will feature items I feel compelled to share with you all.

Theme update

Well I finally found out how to update the current theme. Thought the original theme was a bit bland so I have updated my theme to what is called greyzed, which was created by forge web creations. They hands down have done an awesome theme!!