Learning is Change

Question 153 of 365: What is bad?

I have pretty consistently told others that nothing bad ever happens
to me. I say this becuase of my generally positive outlook on the
events that unfold in front of me. So long as I can see the end of
them or rationilize them in some way, they are not bad.

I can’t see to the end of this at the moment. My wife’s mother died
today. She isn’t my mother, and I wasn’t there when it it happened.
But I see the hurt that is coming, and I can’t get beyond it. Someday
soon it will happen, at least that is what everyone is telling me. But
when my wife calls, there are no words that work. They break in my
mouth, each half waiting for some sort of self-medication to take care
of the muck that this day has been. This hurt isn’t mine because I
didn’t know my mother-in-law but for a few years. But a piece of the
only woman to ever know me died today. And that is bad.

Posted via email from The Throughput

Question 152 of 365: What do we do with uninvited guests (or, the CC effect)?

There is a disturbing trend in sharing.

We share with others (as we should), giving them the ability to edit and observe. This allows them to contribute and for everyone in the collaborative process to move forward. However, this is where the trend emerges. Once this becomes a norm within our institutions, there becomes an expectation of sharing. Ordinarily I would say that this is a good thing. I have spoken many times about the “collaborative instinct” thqt I believe to be essential. But it isn’t the people that we intend to share with that are causing the trend. It is the expectation that everyone needs access to all collaborative processes. It is the CC effect. Because so many people are being given the rights to edit and add to the conversation, everyone believes these rights are inalienable now.

We share documents now because we think we have to. We let the collaborative space be the way in which we communicate changes in direction, and we let the single act of contribution become the end all and be all. We are cc’ing the collaborative process by keeping our bosses in the loop. We are shortchanging the power of the brainstorm because we need to be setting up protocols for future times to come together. Drafting areas are becoming final solutions.

The unending email thread is no longer the worst thing to happen in office politics. Now, the wiki with an agenda that doesn’t take into account all those with editing rights, is dead in the water, as are its originators.

But, what do you do with a list of people who have access to a google doc, all of which matter but one? What do you do with a Wave that can’t get the work done that it was designed for, simply because of who it was shared with? How do we get rid of our unwanted collaborators?

We used to be able to hold meetings at awkward times to try and smoke out those with a hidden agenda. We used to be able to write one another notes and leave them on the desk of certain people. We used to not have to worry that the edit button was just a single click away from the very people who seek to derail our change or cross out our best ideas.

When the unwanteds speak up, there isn’t anything to be done other than to sit and take it. Much of the time they occupy very disarming positions of power. And they are the folks who recognize when they have been removed from the access list.

Much like my wife’s high school boyfriend noticed when she unfriended him on Facebook. She gave the logical reason that she didn’t want to be friends with him on facebook if they couldn’t be friends in real life. I can respect that, of course. But this former flame noticed his sudden unfriendly status with Kara and called her on it. She refriended, but that wasn’t fair. Clearly she could (and still can) take a harder stance with him, but she shouldn’t have to. It should be okay to set boundaries on everything that is shared.

While I am no expert in privacy settings, here is what I propose:

  • Along with the ability to share a document or piece of information with specific people, there should also be the ability to bleep it out for certain users. No matter if they were shared with directly or received a link, I would like to see a way to specifically and preemptively ban the people who are willing and capable of creating havoc in our collaborations.
  • I want to see the staggered share. I want he ability to edit the live document and then publish a more sanitized version of the document whenever it is appropriate to do so for a second tier of users. Right now, everyone either has view or edit rights. I think it should be edit, view, see. As in, you see what we show you.
  • I want the ability to kick people out and not have them know it. I want to keep letting them see the same version of the document or site that they originally accessed, but nothing more recent. Perhaps this is too underhanded for most communications, but I think that addressing the security of information is all about taking snapshots of what that information is and providing them as evidence of the collaborative process. Kicking uncollaborative people out of the environment is the only way that they will see just where the value comes from. An alternative to this solution would be to simply be able to tag every element of a collaboration with users who can edit, view, or see them. This may be more cumbersome, but it may allow for more transparency. Essentially, we are telling people that the web isn’t the same for everyone, and there is no one source of truth, unless you create it. I think that most folks are going to have to get used to that soon enough anyway.
  • So what do we do with uninvited guests? Nothing… Yet.

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    Question 151 of 365: How do we predict the future?

    Souris Microsoft | Tapis Google !
    Image by louisvolant via Flickr

    Everyone is trying to devine the next big thing. Reading the tea leaves on Twitter or letting the alerts drift in to the inbox of your choice. We are all looking to get in on the ground floor of the next version of the web (3.0, 3d, etc.). We are looking for what could be, in every cute logo or interesting color scheme.

    I keep thinking that I will know it when I see it, too. I look back on what was the next big thing, and I knew it then, right? I saw Google way before they were Google. I was searching with them back in high school. I should have just invested in them when they went public. I didn’t, though, and so many other people are in the same boat. And that is why we keep looking for the next Google.

    That’s not the only reason, though. We keep looking because we want to know the future. We are looking for reasons enough to invest our time or effort, if not our money. But we keep looking in the same places. We are looking toward app stores and startups with vowels missing.

    Predicting the future requires a little bit of crazy. It isn’t going to be the same companies, although they will be major players. It will be someone that sees something completely different from the same set of rules and situations.

    While I know this isn’t going to be it exactly, here is something that the future might be:

    There are a special glasses for making things appear to be in 3d, but I believe that there are new glasses coming. I believe that there are glasses that block out every other frame of a movie. The reason they do this is because there are two movies playing, interlaced so that the glasses will display only one and block out the other. The sound will match for the one you are watching. You will be able to sit in the same theatre or in front of the same screen and watch two separate films.

    This is crazy talk. It doesn’t exist, nor will it. There are two many unanswered questions. There are too many things that don’t make sense about something like this, but this is the future. The future of ridiculous technology that seemingly is more intrusive and convenient at the same time. These glasses are impractical. They are the unfortunate offspring of wanting to be completely immersed by the media you are consuming and wanting to be with others who are interested in being with you but not in consuming the same media that you are.

    The future is in sharing the same space but not the same experience. The future is in finding connections without having to know all of the same people or the same facts. Differentiation is the future, whether that is with glasses or with a single online profile that knows more than it lets on.

    The next Google is going to be the first company to let people be who they are with one another. They will present technologies to get people together. People have been trying this for years, but it is the one thing that is still severely lacking. The physical devices have presented screens to separate our learning and understanding. The ones that are coming are ones that bring it all together.

    The ones that have already had their shot at this rather elusive prize probably won’t get it quite right. Google, Apple and Microsoft pay lip service to the future, but they really are trying to shore up the markets that have made them profitable. They won’t see someone coming up on the outside with a crazy gadget such as those glasses. They will see it as something that can’t possibly catch on, and then once it does, they will try and copy it or buy them out. But it won’t work this time. This time, the future will be too interested in creating itself anew. And it will.

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    Question 150 of 365: What can we say in the moment?

    Chicken soup
    Image via Wikipedia

    I spoke at my high school graduation. Along with our valedictorian and a few other people who applied for the job, I gave a speech that was mostly a rehash of my application to get into college. I reprint it here to make sure that the absolute obtuseness of it is not lost on this audience:

    To borrow from the classic movie The Breakfast Club, I say to those who believe they understand: “You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.” But what I found out was that we learned more than just Algebra and Physics and English and all the other things they bullied into our heads. We learned about responsibility, change, thought, enjoyment, love, friendship, differences and ourselves. I can’t define high school but I can tell you what I know.
     
    What happened in the past couple of years? Our bodies were in so many positions. There was standing, sitting, laying, hunched over, fetally rocking, uncomfortably leaning, doubled up, reaching down and stretched out, with both feet, one foot, and no feet on the ground. Our thoughts though, were far more numerous. We used our bodies and minds wisely as well as recklessly.  We had to force ourselves to go on green and stop on red. I only got in a few accidents. Repair was a habitual thing. It always came out better than new. Except for those tiny scratches on the bumper and the keying on the window. But I know what those are from. I remember those days.
     
    ?The people that knew us before we knew anything took a back seat to other learning methods. They sat at home while we mistook nightlife for something new and untried. Sometimes in a clear shove. Sometimes in a hug. They always had their hands near the jugular but usually just fixed our clothes instead.
     
    We were asked to climb a mountain with people in front and behind.  Our goal was to reach the height with the best view. Any falter would cause us all to have scraped knees. It was a burden to be depended upon. But there is no burden greater that that of being undependable.
     
    School locked our hours tightly with a chain of double-edged paper. It was easy to break free but the cuts still hurt from every time I did. We were told at point blank range our worth. Built up with perfect marble and torn down with precision wrecking balls. A river of questions raged towards us, capsizing us or prolonging our ride. In the end our bodies ache from overuse but heavy objects aren’t so heavy anymore.
     
    The never ceasing need to win drowned out many a day. Pride in a future unknown. Loving people for ability natural and learned. We were told to be the best according to every banner, announcement, and flyer. There was no celebrating of mere trying or thinking of things that saw further than Friday night. I too followed the blesséd ones. Why? Because I need to see someone do the things I can’t. We are people of action. Sometimes we just choose the action of inaction. But life would be pretty boring without the other exercises. My primary objective though, was within. Finding vocabulary enough to purge deep demons and strength enough to be completely fragile. I called myself names to satisfy the recognizable. But beyond tangibility lays just my name. No cleverly labeled packages, no boxes with ingredients, I’m filled to the brim with undiscovered theories without perforated lines. My ode to the four years past is “While most people were given their fishes of truth, I taught myself how to cast out the nets.” I’m not ashamed of what I caught. I know that many of my peers can say the same. In the end I am satisfied. That is the greatest thing about an end, the satisfaction of completion. We are now at point B and point A seems so very far behind us but as I see it we have about 24 more letters to go. And I’m prepared this time. My clothing is warm. I brought chicken noodle soup. My shoes are new but broken in. My watch is set perfectly. I have taken a comfortable sleeping bag and pillow. My deodorant, soap and comb are tucked away. I know how to make a fire. I know when to rest. I don’t know, however, what will become of these things on my journey, but I’m prepared. So let’s go.

    While I still can look back fondly at some of those words, I mostly have no idea why I would just tell people what I was thinking. I mostly am completely embarrassed that they let me get away with speaking to thousand or so people who were there to see us off. I had that opportunity to say something real and I turned it into an academic exercise. I tried to write the kind of poetry that is heavy on inside jokes that I didn’t let anyone in on.

    Cleverness is not flattering when you are the one doing the setup and the punchline.

    We squander ooportunities like this all of the time. We resort to being cute or speaking around what we actually mean instead of coming right out and saying that we don’t have the first clue about what the future holds. Instead of giving a status report with a few engaging anecdotes, we try and make everything universal. And in trying to appeal to every experience, we can’t even relate to our own.

    I hope I don’t do that this time. I hope that when the time comes for me to speak to my wife about her mother, I don’t try to be anything other than her friend. I hope that when it comes time for me to speak with my boss about the ways things should be heading, I don’t try and defend bad decisions in metaphors. I hope that when I am given the opportunity to present in front of others, I don’t try and drive home a message that is only valuable in my head.

    I hope I have enough common sense and courage to state for the record that I don’t know anything but what my stories have told me. I want to be the one to not try wnd resort to movie quotations and other quick words of wisdom to score cheep relevance points with the audience. I want to stand there in all of these situations and respect the moment enough to know that it will never occur again. If I can see others for who they are and not as additional data for my version of the monologue, I will have done more to achieve the respect that my original graduation speech was supposed to.

    Selfishly, I just wanted the audience to need more from me. I think that is pretty backwards considering how much I needed them, for approval, for their collective power to make me feel important. Now, I want to let the moment dictate what is important. If it isn’t me, so be it. I think that is why I have given so few speeches since. It is much harder to share a moment with others if all you are doing is talking at them.

    In such a shared moment, we share a part of who we are. We can ask for someone to do the same, but that is up to them. It is the giving of your self to someone else that makes the contract between people so important. I nope to negotiate many more such contracts as I look out into the future.

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    Question 149 of 365: What happens when it shatters?

    The wind must have grabbed it while we were out. It must have taken hold of the oversized umbrella and flipped the entire table, shattering the glass top directly on the deck. It must have done this because when we came home we found the thousands of pieces and the heavily bent umbrella.

    It was the hottest few days of the summer so far and the only relief was that umbrella. The cool air at night was so beautiful when sitting around that table. Grilling out or simply bringing the leftovers to the deck for one more experience with them, made the day just fine.

    Nothing is fine now. The table is broken. My wife is leaving for one of the last times to see her dying mother, and all she can do is study for her final exams. She spent almost 12 hours today at Starbucks, trying not to feel everything that she has ever right to feel. And I tried to think of something that I could possibly do or say. I was unsuccessful in that regard. Everything feels utterly shattered.

    But my kids aren’t. They survive, as they jumped through water fountains in the park today. They saw the shattered table and just wanted to watch it get cleaned up. I wish I could say that with that single act of cleaning up, that the rest of it would be okay too. It isn’t likely, at least not for a while.

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    Question 148 of 365: Who gets notified?

    SAN FRANCISCO - JANUARY 26:   Workers apply th...
    Image by Getty Images via @daylife

    The shipment of iPads came in. The ones that my father was looking forward to. The one that meant a message from Apple was was sent out to his email address. I was notified because he was notified. And I went and picked it up. I will mail it off tomorrow, but for today I will spend some time thinking through the idea of being notified when good things are coming your way.

    I wish I could be notified for the following things:

  • When my children say they love me when I am out of earshot.
  • When I could get away with eating a bunch of junk food because of my low calorie count for the rest of the day
  • When my wife works on our budget or bills and I don’t know it. (This is to make sure I never take it for granted).
  • When someone adds something substantial to an idea I enjoy thinking about
  • When remember something worth writing down. (Ideally, this wiuld alert me to the idea I’ve just had and not the fact that I have just had an idea.)
  • Whenever something new is going to completely change my direction and interest drastically. (This may require being able to know the future, though.)
  • So, while I don’t get alerts for those things yet, I can be fairly confident that at least I get alerts for the new gadget du jour. That is nice and convenient, but not nearly as transformative,

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    Question 147 of 365: Who are the workout haters?

    Gym Free-weights Area Category:Gyms_and_Health...
    Image via Wikipedia

    During my first year of college, I decided that I was going to work out every day. And I did. I ate whatever I wanted, but I worked out for at least an hour. I would start off by running on the treadmill or doing the stationary bike and then I moved on to the sit ups. I did about 50 a day for the first few months and then I started adding weights to my chest. This was a hold over from the summer before when I just used my graduation present dictionary.

    I would do work on the machines in the fitness center too, but I never felt all that confident on them. I think I always just thought of myself as having more control over my body when I was the only thing that could break.

    Throughout that year, I didn’t miss a day. I even found a gym while I was visiting my girlfriend’s family. I was obsessed then with making sure I worked out, much in the way I am obsessed now about writing these questions.

    Right in the middle of the year, though, I received a phone call from a good friend of mine. He was worried about my working out so much. He said that my time on the treadmill was going to hurt my knees. He told me that I should take it easier and not worry about it so much. Now, this was coming from someone who didn’t work out at all. It was coming from someone who, while a wonderful friend, had no idea what the workouts were all about.

    To him the running on the treadmill was something you did to get into shape. It was something to be avoided, if at all possible. To me, it was the rhythm of my day. It was what was helping to sort things and out them in their place. It was a way of establishing responsibility for something when I really had nothing to take care of. I had nothing tying me to anything else, other than my studies. I worked out because I could rely on it.

    And for him to suggest that this thing was going to negatively impact my knees was ludicrous. It was as if he was attacking being healthy and being sane at the same time. I didn’t stand for it, either.

    But, people keep telling me to get off of this treadmill too. While they admire my stamina, they keep on asking if I am really able to reflect or write to the depth that I could if I would slow down. They tell me that I am going to get burned out or that I will run out of ideas. I can’t guarantee that either of those things won’t happen, but what I can do is to pound even harder on the keys.

    The repetition of writing at this point is much more about fighting of the intense instability that is everywhere else. This is what I can control. And I have continued to add weights to my chest as I go.

    At first, it was just answering questions. Now it is something different. Now, I have to tell stories. I have to write over 700 words. I have to tell the truth. Now, I have to challenge myself to write about more and more personal memories, to see just how much I am willing to let out.

    This daily habit is breaking me too. I don’t have the option of taking a night off or quitting because my question sucks. I have to follow my idea to its logical end, otherwise I will have wasted a day.

    I can feel myself getting stronger, too. I don’t hesitate to state my opinion or couch it within a greater movement. I don’t have to apply everything to a technology or a teaching technique. I can let my posts just stand for themselves, even if no one reads them. I trust myself that given enough time to think and write, I will come up with something that at least I will be interested in reading again someday.

    So, don’t tell me I am going to hurt my knees. Come running with me. Don’t say that my torrent of posts in your feed reader is too daunting to catch up. Draw a line in the stand and start there. Don’t say that I am spreading myself too thin. Rip down barriers for me so that I can spread unabated.

    If only I could find time for working out now, too.

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    Question 146 of 365: How are we taking turns?

    No turns
    Image via Wikipedia

    My children take turns with the best of them. They have a strong instinct for when it is their turn, but they will (if prompted and given a reason to do so, sometimes) give other people a chance to play with an important toy or go down the slide in front of them. Their sense of ownership is absolute. They say “mine” as if their lives depended upon it. My one and half year old has developed this low rasp to his voice whenever he is arguing with his sister over an item that he doesn’t want to give up. It is so insistant that often my three and a half year old daughter will have to run to one of us to make him stop. But, he is just as gracious sometimes, too. He will bring my daughter her socks instead of putting his on first. He will hand me the remote to the wii instead of banging it against the wall like he wants to. My children take turns and share, and they do it with more transparency than almost anyone else I know, including adults.

    Adults have a hard time taking turns on much of anything. There is the sense that we have already done our waiting (perhaps as children) and we no longer need to do it anymore. In our professional lives, we see little benefit to waiting in line. The stories that get told most often in professional circles are of the outstanding wunderkinds or amazing successes achieved in short periods of time. We are in awe of 1 million iPads selling in the first month of existence or the meteoric rise of LeBron James. Even in our poetry, Dreams Differed are not well thought of.

    And yet, taking turns is still a value I harbor. I just think it requires more investment than we tell our children.

    Taking turns requires us to all agree that there will be some point in the future at which the turn will be reciprocated, that my attempt will be just as respected as the previous one. There is no guarrentee of this in business or school. That is why we don’t take turns in our careers. We know that no one will ever give us our turn back or hold our spot in line.

    It is my contention, however, that anyone who will not invest the amount of effort it takes to hold your place in line or to give you a turn in front of them doesn’t matter. I believe that all relationships that are not turn-based are doomed to fail. And I know this because of my family.

    I mentioned that I my children take turns pretty well, but the person that I take turns with the most is my wife. We take turns all of the time. I get up with my children while my wife gets another 30 minutes of sleep. I never get that sleep back, but that isn’t the kind of turn I’m looking for. I put my son to bed so that my wife can start studying for her Micro-Biology exam. I’m not exchanging that time for something else, however. I drive 30 minutes out of my way so that my family can have a dinner out at Wahoo’s Fish Tacos. I don’t expect my wife to do the same.

    That isn’t what taking turns is about. Taking turns is about knowing the relationship so well that you never have to trade on a line of credit. There is never any true up and the end of the fiscal year and there is no bank that I deposit my efforts into with my family. Taking turns is all about knowing exactly where the next move is for everyone involved. It is about having a partnership that doesn’t wait for permission. It is about making a decision and then dealing with the consequences together. Sometimes I am making those decisions, and sometimes my wife is. Those are the turns I am talking about.

    Anyone in the public world is not a true partner unless they can see through to at least some of what I am talking about here. Unless you can make decisions with someone else, whether that is another company, another colleague or another department, there is no hope for that relationship to last. The future is a daunting enough task without having to worry that your efforts have to dovetail perfectly every step of the way. You should be able to put in the effort with those people enough for you to make decisions sometimes and for them to do so the others, and for you both to deal with the ramifications.

    There are some pretty big turns coming up for my family and the ramifications of those decisions will be felt for years to come. My wife has applied to nursing school. I have started a business. It isn’t about which one is going to win out, or which one has to come first. It isn’t about who quits their job or how we find money for child care. It isn’t even about whether or not we can find time for hanging out with our kids. These turns are about who we want to be when we grow up.

    We want to be happy. We want to be fulfilled. We want to be together. Those are the deciding factors. Turns are not worth taking, otherwise.

    Wish us luck.

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    Question 145 of 365: How can we make self policing work?

    "Graphs & Social Networks" Facebook ...
    Image by sociomantic via Flickr

    Many people are uninterested in social networking.

    For as many people that are joining Facebook every day (about 500 million total have done so), there is an enormous amount of people who want nothing to do with it. Moreover, there are even more people who would never like to see social networking (and the objects of social media) be a part of their working life. Of the 500 million people on that social network, not to mention the hundreds of other networks, there is a significant portion who would rather not have to mix their private and professional lives in such an overt way. They may be able to see the benefit in joining the two for marketing purposes, work related connections, or simply keeping a handle on trends for customers or clients. But, there is immense resistance to placing information on the open web or within a proprietary social network.

    While there may be reason to call into question the placing of important communication on social networks, the ones that would make the most sense (we don’t own the data, the service may go down, etc.) never seem to come up. The only ones that seem to get mentioned are ones that reference a lack of control for the content.

    Here is my theory: The majority of companies and organizations that are looking at social media as a part of their branding and marketing strategy never pull the trigger because they don’t trust the social contribution paradigm. They want to police the content and moderate all annotations, comments and embeds.

    In effect, the same reasons that they want to engage in Social Media (virality, free distribution, and word of mouth) are the ones that they fear. They are uninterested in upsetting their own internal hierarchy with one from their users.

    While this may be a widespread problem (and perhaps widely understood as well), there isn’t anything to be gained by this outlook. The most common effect of this fear for social networking even in the face of the benefits of its practice are half-hearted attempts at collaboration. The most typical is setting up a blog and turning on comment moderation. While there may be more personal blogs left for dead, I have a feeling that in the not so distant future, there will be an entire generation of corporate blogs that haven’t been updated in years and have never had a comment because of their arcane moderating practices. The next best thing to set up a blog is to put “follow us on Twitter and Facebook” on every page of an existing web presence. This looks like a social media plan, but upon further inspection, there are only a few status updates and no significant content or conversations contributed by users. By dipping their toes in the water, these organizations can appear to be forward thinking while still continuing to do things the way that they always have with “official communications.”

    I am not unsympathetic to the fears that people have for letting their content go and become controlled (at least to some extent) by the crowd. However, I don’t think that locking down content is the way in which anyone is going to take advantage of the social benefits of social media. The alternative to locking down content is not turning over all content to the horde, it is a self-policing community. And I know this is because of red suspenders.

    Punk music, or at least it’s late 80’s and 90’s inception, had a huge impact on my life. I dedicated a good deal of time to its ideals of DIY and rebellion, whether that was carving things all over my bedroom furniture or learning how to play the guitar by strumming the wood off of the body of my mother’s nylon string guitar. I let it get to my clothes too.

    For a while, I cuffed my dark bluejeans up over my converse all stars. I wore white t-shirts, and on occasion, suspenders. The only ones I had access to were red ones, thick and incredibly out of style, which was all the more Punk.

    One night while I was wearing those suspenders, a friend of mine pulled me aside. He told me that only skinheads (racist punks) wore red suspenders. I tried to counter that it was only skinny red suspenders that were the choice of nazi punks, but I was vetoed. He didn’t want me to be associated at all with the dark side of our small movement, and I reluctantly agreed. I never wore those suspenders again.

    He had changed my behavior because of our friendship. He caused me to rethink my choices. Even if I didn’t agree with the social norms of our group, I wasn’t going to go against them just so that I could complete an action that I had intended to. Our community kept on going because of this self-policing, and so does every other community online or not.

    The only way to combat the folks who are apprehensive of the social nature of social media is to show them that these types of communities are bound by the same types of norms (although not necessarily the same ones) that bind their organization’s groups. I think that convincing folks to step out into the world of social contribution is as easy as getting them to recognize the unspoken rules of blogs and tweets that are so easy for them to pick up on in a face to face meeting. That way, they will see the self-policing functions rather than having to rely on the news and other sensationalized accounts of user control going horribly wrong.

    Just to get a better idea of what these self-policing norms are, I would like to contribute a few that I have recognized:

  • Focused contribution begets focused contribution.
  • Media, of all kinds, is ripe for parody.
  • Being a resource or an expert is the best way to attract both praise and criticism.
  • People like engaging in both list making and quiz taking.
  • Graffiti and virtual vandalism are not random. They occur for a reason, and therefore can be largely avoided.
  • Authenticity is contagious, artificiality is a poison.
  • A link is the most effective way of sharing anything.
  • Facts are not as important as stories.
  • Small talk is not dead. Weather, Food, and Locations connect us.
  • Online communities will self-police according to these norms. They will call individuals into question or simply leave behind those that refuse to recognize the value of the established rules. We need to continue to outline these rules for those who cannot see them, especially if we want everyone to benefit from social media the way that people who are already attuned.

    Anyone care to add some norms of their own to add to this list?

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    Question 144 of 365: How do we learn to rollerskate?

    Boys rollerskating. "i took a lot of pann...
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    For my tenth birthday party, I received a set of black roller-skates. Not rollerblades or inline roller hockey skates, but rather old school roller-skates with different colored neon wheels. I was cool.

    I rode my skates around the local roller rink as much as I possibly could, which actually meant as much as my mother would take me. I skated to the likes of the ghostbuster’s theme song, YMCA, and Eye of the Tiger. I loved the way that the four wheels supported me and the way the black leather seemed to clash with everyone’s brown rentals.

    I had another 2 or 3 birthday parties in those skates before I had to give them up because they were just too small for my feet. For those few years, though, I’m not sure that there was something as freeing or as differentiating as putting on those two skates that no one else had (and most likely, no one else wanted).

    I’m not sure how I feel about the roller derby resurgence as a cultural icon of our times, but I do know this: I didn’t have roller skating role models.

    There was no Michael Jordan of roller skates. There was no Roger Clemens of the rink. In fact, I didn’t see much of anyone who was proficient at roller skating who was over the age of 18. About the best I could do were the kids that worked there or who stayed every day just for the races that were held at 1:00 or so. Most of them had inline skates, though. Even then, I knew what was going to be the dominant force in wheel-based root wear (minus the heelie which I really never saw coming). So, why did I choose to spend so much time and energy on a dying art? And, how did I learn to skate without the aid of role models that seem to be necessary to every other discipline?

    But, perhaps it was the lack or role models that intrigued me. Maybe it was the fact that there wasn’t really anyone else who was stating the way it had to be that made me want to do it. After all, if I wasn’t any good, I would still be one of the world’s best, right?

    If that was the case then perhaps we should continue to look Into the realm of obsolete achievements for trying to find others who were like me, starving to be good at something that no one else was.

    Perhaps we can go and find those things that have formerly shared the limelight and now have fallen out of favor. Or, we could see about roles without models as something to be sought after, something to be created by authentic individuals.

    Here are things that I think fit into this category:

  • Cassette recording
  • Cursive writing
  • Wood burning
  • TI-82 programming
  • Film developing
  • I realize that all of these things could have a mentor, and have some pretty decent examples of what good and creative works look like, but for the most part any one of them can be a doorway into a world that very few people are traveling within. Anyone could come to these disciplines without a role model, and simply out of their wish to do something different.

    I think that is what makes me most excited about starting up or about creating new learning spaces. Although there are plenty of good examples, there isn’t a role model for either that had the same sets of constraints or experiences. And much of what I do feels like I am trying to get people excited about the roller-skate again. They see reforms, new technology, or interesting collaborative tools as something that they have already tried. They are already to move on to the next generation of skate that seems to really have everything sorted out and comes with a huge amount of bells and whistles, but breaks down in a few months and must be replaced.

    You see, on a 4 wheeled roller-skate, every single part can be replaced or modified. Because there are so few variables, the ones that exist are essential and can be toyed with until the perfect fit is achieved.

    That is what I want: a perfect tool for the job, versatile and manipulatable. I want to be the best at wielding that tool, and know that others can’t just copy my technique because they haven’t trained their muscles to move like mine. Their technique is weak, and they are out of practice. In other words, I want to race them around the rink with everyone watching, and I want to win.

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