Write Technology

The Social Media Conversation Prism

Brian Solis, of PR 2.0, worked with Jesse Thomas to create the Social Media Conversation Prism. I'm interested in looking at this prism and thinking through how this applies to Learning.

(click the image to see a larger version)

Brian says:

The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

If a conversation takes place online and you’re not there to hear or see it, did it actually happen?

Indeed. Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence your business and brand.

As a communications or service professional, you'll find yourself at the center of the prism - whether you're observing, listening or participating. This visual map is the ideal complement to The Essential Guide to Social Media and the Social Media Manifesto, which will help you better understand how to listen and in turn, participate transparently, sincerely, and effectively.

As conversations are increasingly distributed, everything begins with listening and observing. Doing so, will help you identify exactly where relevant discussions are taking place, as well as their scale and frequency. This dialog can be charted into a targeted social map that's unique to your brand.

So how does this apply to Learning? Obviously, every time we try something new, listen to something new, involve ourselves in something new, we Learn Something.  I think this sunflower of social media also helps us decide HOW we want to learn. Picking a petal that best appeals to our own learning style (or that of a majority of our students) and focusing on those tools can make a difference. HOW do we want to continue the conversation?

What are your thoughts on the Social Media Conversation Prism?

Cheers!
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed.

A Fond Farewell to Randy Pausch

(cross-posted from bub.blicio.us)

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor whose “Last Lecture” inspired millions last year passed away this morning at the age of 47. You can read about his life here. Pausch was a techie - he oversaw the development of Alice.org, a free educational software that teaches kids about computer programming in a Second Life-style 3D environment.

If you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to watch “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” his part of the CMU Last Lecture series. It’s inspiring. “If you lead your life the right way, the karma will come to you.”

Lesson Learned on Presentations

Really, presentations are changing, and I should go with my instincts instead of caving to the norm.

Thanks, in part, to Elliot Masie's Learning [insert year here] conferences, I started appreciating presentations that have very few PowerPoint slides. Yet, I tried this at ASTD's TechKnowledge 2008 and it didn't work. It didn't work so much that before I presented a second session, I whipped up some slides. People appreciated the slides. I was baffled.

When I started offering, and presenting, a Web 2.0 course, it involved a lot of slides. I took a different approach to my slides, however, after being impressed by the slide style of Anders Gronstedt. I now use Creative-Commons-licensed images that cover the entire slide, with a small heading explaining the information. Most of the information comes from me, with the slide as an intensely visual guide. This method was a happy medium for me between almost no slides and depending slides. (With my Web 2.0 course, if given over 2 days instead of 4 hours, there is a lot less reliance on slides, and more on discussion, using and doing.)

I attempted to use my happy medium slide method the other night, with my LinkedIn/Facebook presentation. It didn't work out for me as well as I'd hoped. When discussing social networks, people have a lot of questions. Regardless of the fact that I'll be re-designing the presentation when Facebook redesigns it's profiles in a few weeks, I'll also have a different presentation tact. I'll start with the basics in the beginning of the presentation, then just go live to LinkedIn or whatever social network I'm discussing. At that point, I need to run an "unmeeting," going where the crowd takes me. Ironically, I'd originally wanted to do this and changed my mind and went with slides, based on my odd experience at TechKnowledge.

Aside from my TechKnowledge experience, the need for the "unmeeting" style is indicative of the subject matter, I think. People want to learn more, and they want to see it live, not just in a slide. If more presentations were run as "unmeetings," I think we'd all be a lot happier in attending them.

Discussions vs Presentations

In the last 6 months I've attended two conferences: ASTD TechKnowledge and Elliot Masie's Learning 2006. Despite some overlap in speakers, these were vastly different conferences. While I enjoyed and benefited from attending both, I think I learned more at Masie's conference, and here's why.

Elliot gave his speakers strict rules - no presentations and only a 1-page handout. (Granted, several speakers squished as much as possible onto the front and back of the handout.) You could see that several speakers were uncomfortable with this format, apparently wishing they had a PowerPoint presentation to hide behind. In most sessions, however, this setup forced discussion. The speaker was more of a facilitator in many cases, and discussion involved anyone who wanted to speak up. It was a fantastic way to get people actively involved in their learning.

Tufte on Presentations

Today I'll post Tufte's presentation tips. He provided tips not only on how to lead a successful presentation, but how to evaluate a presentation. I need to point out that Tufte feels that PowerPoint is the epitome of everything wrong with presentations today. Just read his article "PowerPoint is Evil" in the September 2003 issue of Wired.

Presentation Tips

• Use Word or a PDF instead of PPT.
• Provide a short hand-out on an 11 x 17 page, followed by a discussion. A high-resolution data dump on the handout  can lead to targeted questions in a short period of time.
• Provide a space for your attendees to write.
• Know your content. Quality, relevance, and integrity of content are important. When creating your presentation, get started by writing a 200-word summary to focus in on relevance and integrity.
• Practice, practice, practice. Rehearsal improves performance.

Tufte and Visual Presentation

Last fall, I attended a seminar taught by Edward Tufte, the master of visual communication. While expressing his disdain for PowerPoint, he imparted many tips, and I realized I never shared them on this blog. The wealth of knowledge I pulled from that seminar is too extensive to detail here, but a couple tips can be applied to presentations, graphics, print, web, and eLearning. His design principles are indifferent to gender, language and medium of delivery. Tufte approaches design from a scientific point of view.

Over the next day or two, I'll post his tips and suggestions as culled from my pages upon pages of notes from that day. We'll begin with the visual display of information.