Robert Paterson's Weblog

How can a choir become a Social Object?

This is a story about using "Story". The challenge was this. A small team of Alumni and from WDAV a Public Radio station in Charlotte NC had organized a tour for the Choir of the Cathedral from my old college at Oxford, Christ Church. We of course wanted full houses. We did  not have the money to do PR in the old way. How then could we use the web instead?

How could we make the choir into a "Social Object"?

This is how we pulled this off with the help of Tom King our wonderful web guru and ex chorister himself. 

The web is more than the tools and technology. We love stories about people. We love to have our say. We love to go behind the scenes. The community knows more than any expert. An engaged community can do far more than the hardest working individual. The web can unlock these forces. 

Using this context, we set out to use the web to tell a story and so engage a community. For we knew that more than 60 million people sing or have sung in a choir in America. Could we tap into this? Could they do the work?

At the outset we set the context. Before the tour began, we produced a deep background series on the Choir itself. Here is one of the videos about the choir. What was our history, who were the people and what was their life like. Here is an amazing interview with 2 choristers.  Here is a piece on the Choristers.

 

We did the same for the music. We have to care about that too before we hear it. Here is Christ Church rehearsing in Toronto with their Host Choir from Grace Church. 

We have to care also about the places. Every host had their own space too where we made it easy for their local community to know what would happen and how to get tickets. Here at Grace Church on the Hill in Toronto is how we supported every venue. 

By the time the choir boarded the plane, the world of the tour had been vividly drawn and a community of support had been brought to life. 

We then set up a process and the rules for how all those who were directly involved in the tour could tell their own story. Singers, radio stations, hosts, parents, friends and family took up their cameras and pens and covered every moment of the tour. We used facebook and people also sent Tom and I material that we put onto the site daily. Here we are in New York. The story unfolded like a Dickens book in daily chapters that were as novel to the author as to the reader. So all was fresh and exciting.

We got what we wanted - full houses and standing ovations all the way.

And as a result, we saw something new and unexpected. Firstly, we could see that the Cathedral is no longer bounded by its walls. We can implant the cathedral in the hearts of people. Secondly, we could see that we at the centre do not have to do all the work. We are no longer constrained by our own limited resources. With the right invitation, the community will do the work. 

We know now that the future of the choir is now tied into the web in this way. Is it not for you too?

The full web story is here.

Japan - Is the web a private or a public matter?

I was at a Media conference last week. A Journalism Prof dissed Twitter all night long. How could anyone cover a story in 140 characters? In the last 2 months in Canada we have had a regulatory fight - in essence the web is being seen as another entertainment channel where the most important part of the equation is how much we should all pay for watching movies.

I think that this idea - that the social web is trivial and just about fun is wrong and dangerous. I think that its true importance has to be put on the table politically.

Japan nails this issue for me.

Once again, as a huge story breaks, many of us have found that Social Media has given us a better sense of the event than the traditional news POV.

Big news just cannot get at the scope of such an event or touch its immediacy.

Some like the BBC and Al Jazeera are finding a good way of covering such a story - which is to act as an aggregator. They make it easy - you got their their site - I use Livestation as a portal.

Some like NPR are finding out that their one man news platform - Andy Carvin - who is personally aggregating offers a good view as well. Andy and his readers tend to use Tweetdeck

So what are the lessons for the rest of us?

1. If you are in media - curating and aggregating is the way that breaking news will be covered. So what does that imply? It implies a new model for news. At the centre aggregation and then context setting. For you no longer have to do a 90 second view of an event. You can cover the event 24/7 as see what pattern emerges - while you do this - as the pattern becomes visible - you add context. We can start to get out of the sound bite perspective. This will also cost you a lot less to do and improve your coverage. This works on all scales. If you were my local paper or my local CBC station on tiny PEI - population 140,000 - you could offer a massive range of stories - from ALL the sport every game on the Island - to a breaking weather event this way. Maybe for less money than the current system that can only cover 20 stories a day. The same is true for world news as we are finding out now. news will get better and better the more we go down this road. We will all be more informed and we will indeed all become part of the story. I was riveted by a Skype interview from the BBC in London with a woman stuck in her apartment in Tokyo - what was going on was represented in the most human and direct way. I was there. Old news is trivial when compared with this!
2. If you are in the crisis business - In spite of all the mess in Japan now - imagine how much harder the rescue efforts would be without social media? With good aggregation and intelligent filters it will be possible to get a handle on what is going on in a much better way. Again this works at all scales. Back to my little place PEI. We have been having very bad weather and road conditions recently. The mainstream media are starting to do a good job at aggregating the reports of the citizens. The result is that we all know so much more and in real time. We will all get through bad times better. I bet that in the years to come much of the story will be about how social media saved many lives.
3. If you are in a crisis - Imagine being in a badly hit place in Japan and not having a working cell phone versus having one - Could be life and death for you. Imagine if you are at your office in Tokyo and your family are on the coast. How are you going to find out if they are OK? I recall in the early days of Social Media looking for my lost daughter among the pictures of the dead - she was OK thank God! so look ahead and think about how your access to thew web is governed now. Will many people be excluded because they cannot afford to pay? Will the system be too vulnerable to survive a big problem? Is the system only about the needs of the IP's or is there a larger context here?
4. If you have a service or a product to sell - How can you not use this avenue for listening and responding. Gone are the days where you could wait for formal research. Gone are the days when you asked the questions. Now you listen and you see the patterns. Tools like Darwin help a lot here. Will you be held hostage too by the IPs? Will the IP's be able to levy any kind of tax they want on your business? Can they exclude you?

The biggest lesson then for me is that the web and social media are not just toys where I watch movies, hear songs or play games. The web and social media is now the most important part of any society's social infrastructure.

This implies that it cannot be regulated as merely another entertainment channel. It has profound public value that has to be put first.

Societies that have a healthy and widely used and easily accessed web and social media system - will be better informed and more resilient in the shocks that are inevitable in our future.

The private interests of all have to be subsumed to the public good.

 

Social Business - How do you get there really

Harold nails this for me. I have been struggling to understand the blockage that keeps so many from understanding.

Might it be that we are so used to dealing with "problems" that have known and rational "answers"? That is what school is. "Robert" 2 x 2 what is the answer?" This is how we learned what a "Problem" was. We also knew that there was a Known answer or a Known Algorithm that would produce the answer, We also knew that the best people knew the answers and the algorithms. They were at the top of the class and now are at the top of the organizations. They "Know".

But as we all explore the shift from machine to network, we may know the theory but actually how this plays out in practice cannot be known in advance. Just as Columbus could "Know" that if he sailed west he would find land but he could not know when or what it would be like or how to get there in detail.

Columbus had to explore and feel his way there.

Crossing America in 1805 was to truly explore. Off go Lewis and Clark into the truly unknown and unknowable. They could only explore and use trial and error. They did know that the Pacific was west, as Columbus knew that some kind of land was west. But that was all. They did know to take the "right" people with them. They selected the best back woods men. They also had a special person - "Sacagawea". She was an Indian woman with a baby.

What did she bring? They knew that they would be in Indian country all the way. She had two powerful things to add to the strength of the party. She knew many languages and the culture - she could connect the explorers to the locals and vice versa.

But maybe even more important, she was a woman and she had a baby.

This sent out a signal to the system that this party was NOT a war party. For without that, even if they had had a male Indian who could be the cultural connector, they would have all been killed before the meeting!

So what do traditional organizations need to "cross the chasm"?

I think that they need to stop thinking that is is a problem that can be resolved by finding a known answer. That the top person can know.

The top person can give herself a break. She cannot know but she can fund the expedition as Queen Isabella did.

So there is the theory - here are some examples from recent history that I know a lot about because I have lived them.

When I worked with NPR back in 2005 the question was "How will social media affect us and what should we do?"

The great thing then was that No One could know the answer to that question. And if by chance one of us did, no one else would just accept that answer.

So what we did was to set up a process of discovery where it was agreed at the outset that no one knew.

We then set off, nearly 1,000 people, on a number of test journeys where groups "Played" with creating stories about what the future might be.

After 6 months a number of pictures of the future emerged that were consistent. All that you now see as being normal for the new media was nailed by these people back in 2006. It was all novel then and no one had done any of this. But this 1,000 people had invented the key principles and had invented stories about how this all worked in the day to day lives of people. They had discovered the world of social media as it might apply to radio.

I thought, wrongly, that most would then rush off and enact them. But this did not happen. Fear still held many back.

But ALL now had a common picture of what was important. A picture that ALL had co created. So while fear may have stopped many from changing, no one doubted the principles of what they had discovered.

The results? There is no doubt in my mind that, while NPR may now have the political fight of its life on its hands, it knows better than any other traditional media organization how to use Social Media. It has also delivered on them as no other media organization has.

Why? In the project we included over 250 NPR staff so the sense of having discovered the truth was well spread. Most of the key facilitators for the project were the senior executives and members of the board too - so there was no need to "sell" up or down. The majority of NPR had done the exploring themselves and could trust their own experience.

The other organization that has really "got it" is KETC - Now the Nine Network for Social Media - Jack Galmiche, the President was an active player in the NPR project and when he got his new job running KETC in St Louis, he also had the experience of creating the future and so the courage to go for it in TV.

KETC has been through many voyages of discovery. All the staff now have experienced the new. Many are now highly adept. They have discovered this for themselves. No one taught them!

KETC is now the acknowledged leader in the use if social media to augment TV.

KETC is now also a viral infector of the public system.

As KETC trail-blazes, it has worked with other stations. In the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project with about 60 across the nation. They too "experienced the new". The best of them then went for it too and now a critical mass of stations have enough practical exploration under their belt to go for it.

They are about to launch a new nation wide project that will cause the infection to spread further.

I think that this idea of a voyage of discovery is much more helpful that the idea of problem solving.

So selfishly how do you do this? Is there a book or a formula? Is there a snappy consultant who will show you how to do this?

No, I think that what has been shown to work best is to hire a "Sacawagea".

The issue is culture and fear of the unknown. There are no snappy answers. As John Seely Brown says in Harolds post - you have to "Marinate" in the situation.

So if you want to be successful, please think of hiring someone who knows the other native people out there and the new culture. Who is a native of the world that you aspire to go to. Who is less of a guide than a trusted friend. Who you can talk to quietly in the evening around the fire and have her hear you out. Someone who risks as much as you do on the journey - or even more than you. Someone who is safe and who helps you feel safe as you take risks.

I think a know a few of these people!

Amplify’d from www.jarche.com

Social business is about a shift in how we do work, moving from hierarchies to networks. The highest value work today is the more complex stuff, or the type of work that cannot be automated or outsourced. It’s work that requires creativity and passion. Doing complex work in networks means that information, knowledge and power no longer flow up and down. They flow in all directions. As John Seely Brown said, you can only understand complex systems by marinating in them. This requires social learning. Complex work is not linear. Social business is giving up centralized control and harnessing the power of networks. It is as radical as was Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. The potential of social business is organizational survival. Enterprises must be able to share knowledge quicker than before.  This requires a shift toward something like a starfish framework that not only allows for independent action but also distributes knowledge through all the parts. Social learning is how organizational knowledge gets distributed. Social businesses can learn quicker. The main barriers to social business are cultural. People in charge of most organizations today got there by doing things the traditional way of the MBA mindset. They feel they do not need to change and few are willing to give up power and authority, even if it is for the good of the organization. Read more at www.jarche.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bmrhb

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Boingo - The Power of Strong Ties

What would it be like if your business had a sales, marketing and support force that was 1.3 million strong that you did not have to pay for? What if you could source this leverage with a tiny central force? Sounds impossible? Do you have any idea of how this could work?

Now that everyone is using Social Media – what I am seeing mainly are people who using the new tool in the old way – trying to shout above the noise – “Look at ME!” “Aren’t I cool!” “Aren’t we good!”. I am seeing a Dilbert approach – “Let’s have a Facebook site” “Let’s get on Twitter”.

Most do what most do when a new technology arrives – they apply it in the old way and so get nothing in response.

So what then is the power and leverage that you can harness by using social media well?

Boingo are on their way to finding out how to do this. Oh yes and I am one of the people that are part of this and oh yes I am not being paid and nor do I in any way work for them. I am living the theory.

So how might this work and so how might you do this too?

Boingo have a class of people that are deeply committed to the enterprise that Baochi calls her “Super fans”. They and why they are connected to Boingo and each other is the core of the leverage potential. We will meet 4 of them in this post who agreed enthusiastically to be interviewed by me. As you will see, these Super Fans are attracted first of all to Boingo by the obvious:

• The service – easy one stop access to Wifi in Airports and Hotels – is now no longer a nice to have for travellers but an essential
• The support for the service is outstanding – got a problem – you get instant personal help

But a great product is not enough. Nor is good service. What is the differentiator for Boingo is the human nature of the relationship that Boingo has with its customers. Most organizations do not allow their people to be human. Service people are often ciphers working from a script. Boingo have set up an environment where their key point of contact is a real person who is allowed to be herself.

She has a name and a face and we are all in awe and a bit in love with her. We all feel her presence watching over us. It is way more than getting her help when we can’t sign on. She watches out for us. Have a problem – A quick tweet. In minutes she is there. She is like the guy who runs the old corner store who holds your keys when you go away, keeps an eye on your kids in the street, helps you find a new roommate.

As Nuno Montegro, a customer in Portugal says – It is not what she says but how she says things that is the difference.

Nuno is like me, a customer who actively refers others to the service.

Most of Social media is all about Weak Ties – They are very useful but Weak Ties don’t get people to do much – or risk much – or commit much – that is why they are Weak – they are easy.

If you want to do something – Civil Rights in the US – you need Strong Ties. (Nice new piece by Malcolm Gladwell that explores Weak and Strong Ties in depth)

The key to attracting Strong Ties is being human. It is NOT PIMPING your product. It is instead to show that you really do care about ME. It is instead to show that you can indeed be trusted.

How do you show this? Nuno makes the point that every service and product fails at times. The key is to offer the best possible response to the inevitability of a problem. The best possible response is to know from experience that if there is a problem, you can reach a real person quickly and that they will go the distance to help you get it fixed. “I felt as if I was the only customer in the entire world when she was helping me” Bruno told me. I had the same experience.

Attracting Strong Ties is all about “Giving”.

Aaron Strout is the CMO at social media agency, Powered Inc. and is also Super Fan. “Boingo is proactive and they don’t expect a direct return – they are not selling all day – so if they want an inch, I go the mile back. It’s Karmic! I know if I have a problem that they will look after me. If people are good and do good, then good comes back. Not necessarily directly but good gets attracted back. We talk about a wide range of things that affect me not just the product – which is great too – have to have that – they listen.”

What Aaron is talking about here is a very old model for an economy that was the centre of all tribal economies – the Gift Economy. In the Gift Economy, the Big Guy is not the man who has the most stuff but the person who gives the most.

This is the power in networks – this is how Open Source Works too.

Cliff Bremmer is a programmer who works for a company called Carley Corporation that bids on government contracts to develop instructional CD base/computer based training for the US military.  ”In my spare time I help companies understand and navigate the social media spectrum in a professional yet interactive way.  The company I’m currently helping is the one my father works for called the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel“.

The Gift?

Not only is he a fan but in interacting with Boingo he has learned a lot about how to use SM media well. “If there is anything I’m proud of lately it’s that I helped the Pegasus Hotel promote their brand with the help and support of @Boingo and other companies to become one of the most popular brands in Jamaica.” Boingo is  not only helping him with his travel and Wifi but is talking with him and helping him help his dad in his business with advice and Tweet Up prizes such as free access and bag tags. The Gift in action!

He can see the flaws of how most use SM – “They are stuck in self promotion versus communication. I can see through it all – it’s all about them.”

In the Gift Economy that drives Trust and so Strong Ties, the starting point is YOU. In the non network economy the starting point is ME. No small difference!

Shelby Rogers is a flight attendant, a serving soldier (in the active reserve) and the wife of a serving soldier. Travel is her life. When she is not working, she travels. Access to Wifi has made her travel better – “I now know more than the Gate Agent does about my flights!” and it has taken away much of the loneliness that travel brings with it. Who has not been alone eating room service and watching TV in our room? “I can stay in touch with my husband on Skype and every city seems to have a friend in it.”

For Shelby, Boingo is a service that truly meets her needs. But it is how Boingo is connected to her that has transformed a pleased customer into a Super fan.

How often has your service provider taken you out to dinner? “We have even had dinner recently. I am now a walking billboard for Boingo with winking bag tags!”

So what does this mean? What are the lesson for both Boingo and for you?

• Baochi is no accident – the Boingo senior leadership have created the role and given it the space to enable someone who is naturally humane to be herself inside it. This new way of using Strong Ties to be the centre of a network is all about culture. In most cases senior leadership is too scared to let go. But if you do let go and create this safe place then the power of the network effect can be yours
• A really powerful network has to have an inner core bound by Strong Ties. This is where the leverage is. One staff person like Baochi can without too much trouble have close ties with 34 people. That gives her an outer network of 1.3 million. If she can handle the Dunbar limit of 144 that creates an opportunity of 400 million! You can see that with the right person, you can have a vast reach – provided you realize that your goal is not to have thousands of relationships but a few Strong Ones
• The secret is the math of social leverage. Many of you know about the “Dunbar Number”. Some of you know about “Magic numbers – the hierarchy of trust in human groups. If you don’t here is a quick primer.

So what now?

I think that the next stage would be this:

• At the moment all the Super Fans have a strong relationship with Baochi – I think that the best next step might be to find a way to connect them to each other
• At the  moment most of the dialogue is still about the obvious and excellent service that Boingo provides – I think that some of the work that the Super Fans could do might be to deepen the conversation – Shelby touched on this in her interview with me – What is it that being easily connected while travelling does? In her case it helped her deal with isolation and loneliness – it helped her do her job better – it kept her in touch with her husband – these are deep issues that I think connect all of us who travel a lot

As I think about networks, I think about the laws of physics. All systems have order and attractors. Some force is needed to keep systems coherent.

Think of the Sun in our own local system. It has mass that provides a gravity that holds all the planets and asteroids and stuff in a pattern. It has energy that creates life in the system. I think that any healthy human social system has to have gravity and light.

At the very centre is the “Right Space” a Trusted Space created by the leadership. In this Space, the Right Person – Right being a person who as part of her natural persona truly cares about others. Connected to her is the fuel and the mass that makes up the Sun – the Super Fans. The closer they are to the centre and the closer they are to each other – the more mass and the more energy. The more mass and energy, the larger and more healthy the network of Weak Ties that form up around the Sun.

What gets in the way is our fear about losing control.

At Disney the surface of the Brand Icon never changes but inside the mask is a person who changes all the time and so is never allowed to speak.

But in the new world we have to take off the costume and let the person inside have conversations with the public – HARD to do.

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Posted via email from Rob's posterous

The British PM asks Facebook's MZ to help engage public in how to cut best!

via youtube.com

However this works this is a great start!

Back to my point on how to do this - Leadership is key - so here we see the PM himself making a symbolic point that the British Government is going to use social media to help engage with the public.

Even if this had been a department head, it would not have been enough - but now with the PM the door is open.

So PEI why not get on board too - VAC is there and can help you

 

Engagement has not been the forte of any PEI government - but a much better job is possible. Cynthia Dunsford has been a key player out there and can help too.

 

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

What is the "right" voice to cover Complex Issues?

At KETC we will soon launch a project on "Immigration" in America. The deep question that we will be asking in a year of hosting an online space and making a 4 hour documentary is "What is the experience like for all people and where should we go?"

A huge challenge for us then is "Voice". What is our position? For the range of opinion is vast, the emotions are high, many see the issue in terms of good versus evil, few look into any of the pragmatic aspects.

It's a minefield!

Jay Rosen has been digging into the traditional perspective taken by the orthodoxy that journalists have to have:

• No opinion of their own
• Showcase issues as having two sides

He has opened a hornets nest!!!

I called him last week for advice and here is what we came to.

First of all we were clear that Immigration is not a simple or even a complicated issue - issues that are knowable and that can be resolved by applying known rules. It's a Complex Issue: Being Complex means that it can only be known via the process of "Emergence" - lots of trial and error leading to patterns not to single solutions.

 

Source: NOOP.NL

On Jay's site I made the point that this felt like a Quantum world where only zones of probability could be determined and where the view of the observer would always affect the observed.

Another reader said that this was "Bullshit" - but while the issue of complexity may not be Quantum it does share the reality that there can be no single right answer.

The other point is that there can never not be bias. We all live in a world of a cultural screen. We all screen in or out what does or does not fit. To believe otherwise is to be naive.

So where pragmatically does that leave us at KETC?

It might be this? (Welcome your views for this is just MY opinion)

• For patterns to emerge we must have a "Plurality" of opinions/storis and voices. With such a Plurality we have the chance of creating "Emergence" or stable patterns of norms. A kind of Wisdom of Crowds
• To do that then our job is to host safely and in a trusted way as many opinions and stories as possible and to encourage a deep but civic debate - as Jay does on his own site
• To do that I think that those if us who are the hosts should also disclose who we are and have a diverse group at KETC doing the hosting - so we too represent a broad view. (Jay discloses here - Jeff Jarvis Discloses here)

Here is how Johnnie Moore puts it:

Johnnie tells us that the answer is simple but difficult. Difficult because the answer demands that we converse in a different way. Yes the simple idea is that we talk to each other differently. The challenge is that to do this we have to give up some hard wired habits.

What we have to give up is using conversation as a duel or a combat where the dominant player wins and all ideas that don't fit are killed as are of course the divergent thinkers. What we need is a conversation that opens up new ideas and that builds community.

Here is how Dave Snowden sees the distinctions:

 
 

One thing is certain - that the Simple and the Complicated worlds are not what we are dealing with here.

So what do you think - how can we best offer up the full complexity of an issue such as Immigration?

Are Books Bad For Us?

Have books been bad for us?

by Rob Paterson

May 12, 2010 at 1:10 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Community, Culture, Innovation, KM, Network Effect, Relationships, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Objects, Trust, Trusted Space, User Revolution, Wikinomics, Wikipedia, Wisdom of Crowds 

A really weird thought has been building in me for months. Have books been a bad thing?

Is this better?

If so – why?

If so – Is this the campfire of all campfires?

So what’s my argument?

Many people are convinced today that the birth of the web is making us stupid. That the web is only superficial. That only dense books can contain and spread real knowledge.

I am coming to the conclusion that the opposite is true. That books make us stupid and that the web, like the campfire and for the same reasons as for the campfire is what makes us clever.

So here goes. All our foundational knowledge was discovered around the campfire. Imagine you a hominid sitting around the fire at night. You are awake. You are looking at each other. I would imagine that at first, before we could speak, we sang or made music together. The fire elicited a social dance of interaction and community.

I think we can surmise that the campfire helped us speak and so it helped us become conscious. Something like this happened about 100,000 – 60,000 years ago. For suddenly our tool development, art and technology took off. All the foundations of our world today were discovered in a 10,000 year period. Tools had been the same for a million years. Within a 1,000 years they were completely different. We invented pottery. We invented metallurgy. The wheel. Everything we depend on was discovered then. Not only discovered but widely disseminated in a short period of time.

How did this occur?

My bet is that it happened because of the social process created by the campfire and by our hunter gatherer culture of equality. Such an environment extracts order from chaos. Design from intuition. It is ideal for the exploration of implicit knowledge. It is ideal for discovering things that we don’t know exist. It is ideal for taking half baked ideas and refining them. Let’s use a thought experiment.

How did pottery get invented? Surely no one said “Let’s have a project to invent Pottery!” How can you invent something that had never existed? No it must have happened like this – The People stopped for the night after a rainfall. The next morning, as they prepared to leave, the fire keeper noticed that beneath the coals that she was harvesting, the ground had baked to a crust. Maybe she could carry the fire in this thing – this bowl. That night as they shared the food around the fire, she told the people what had happened and showed them the “bowl” that she had lifted out of the earth the day before. And the conversation began – how had that been? Did it hold the fire well? What else could it hold? What if we put it back in the fire? Would it hold water? And on and on. Experiments were made. Some earth worked better than others. At the seasonal meeting with the Cousin Peoples, the People shared their story with the others and gave up a “bowl” as a gift their elder. At the next season meeting, the two tribes spent days sharing the stories of the experiments that they had been making…….

There was no peer review. There was no authorized way of doing it. No one was telling anyone. They were sharing and asking and arguing. They were having conversations!

But with the book comes authority. With the advent of the book, much of knowledge development stopped. Only the in group was allowed to play. What mattered was not observation. Not trial and error. Not experiment. Not sharing. But authority. Most of the accepted authority were texts that had no basis in observation or trial and error. Ptolemy, St Augustine and Galen ruled.

Worse because of the “Book” people who did observe or test were killed or persecuted. The Book stood for the ONE WAY. It spoke not you.

For a while, with the advent of the press, knowledge opened up.

But where did the great advances then come from? Did they come from the Universities? No they came from amateurs – from Natural Philosophers. Who met in clubs over dinner to talk about their work. Gradually, the “BOOK” came back. Only papers written and approved inside the authority system counted as being right. People outside the authority system were discounted.

Knowledge was seen as an explicit thing – an object. The Book was its metaphor.

But now with the web, we have a global campfire. Once again, we can play with ideas, with observations and experiments. Once again we can share with equals who will not knock us down. Even better, this time the group around the fire is not 35 people but all of us.

What new things will come from such a process? Surely amazing things. Things that could never have come from the use of books.

As a person who loves books, whose life is reading, I now wonder……

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Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Can we get to a good place - Immigration - KETC is trying

The statue’s pedestal bears the words of poet Emma Lazarus, written in 1883:
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

When the Ellis Island immigration center opened its doors on an island in New York Harbor near the Statue of Liberty in 1892, Lazarus’ words welcomed the 12 million immigrants who passed by “Lady Liberty” after trying trans-Atlantic journeys on their way to becoming Americans.(Daily Cufflinks)

Is this still true? Is America still the land of opportunity for those that seek it?

There is no doubt that in 2010, Immigration, will move to the top of the list of issues that Americans think about. But what will the debate be like? Send all the illegals away! Give amnesty to all! Will it pander to our worst fears? What is the truth?

Can we find a truth? Labeling people is so easy. We know “us” and we don’t know “them”, so it is easy to put our fears on “them”.

At KETC we are trying an experiment - we are going to do our best to help each other find more of the truth. For we know no more than you. We too only know what we know and that is not very much.

So here in this space we are going to do our best to make a place where we can discover more of the truth than we could know if we only bandied about soundbites. We plan to build a very complex web presence to handle a very complex issue. In addition we are planning a 4 hour TV series on Immigration today in America that I think we can use as a Social Object or Catalyst to focus attention.

There have been TV shows that have had a web add on before. There have been web series on issues. This is a first. The first time that a TV station has built a holistic whole of TV and Web. Where the broadcast has been wrapped in engagement from the first.

The TV series will be shot this summer and fall and we begin this week with the web. The engagement process, where we go out to the community and find out from them directly what is going on started 2 months ago.

Here is our design for how the web will role out over the nest few months.

News and Comment - We are getting ready to bring you the most interesting stories being written by anyone. We as a team are scanning the web and we ask you to help us here too. We are also experimenting with a brand new type of search tool, Darwin, that will look for how issues rise and fall on the web. (More on that later).  We are building human networks that will reach into the immigrants in St Louis – nurturing social bridges that we hope will enable people who today are only labels to others find their own voice and not only tell their own stories but also help each other find their way in the strange new land that is America. We hope that we can go back and forth between the web and the people and see how the truth emerges.

We will be adding a Twitter and Facebook stream to this soon and we hope that you can help us find material that will add more light to the entire topic. We hope that this space can become the best place to go to find out the wider truth. To discover an emergent picture of what is really going on.

Helping new Americans find their way - As we prepared for this project, we were stunned at how complex the journey is to become not only a legal American but also as important an assimilated American – a person who fits into the culture. We were stunned to find out how complex the legal issues are. We were stunned to find out how much conflict there is between cultures that see the extended family as the core of existence and the homeland culture that looks to the law. In this segment we plan to offer a number of views. First of all people need expert advice. Getting the system wrong is easy and has enormous consequences. We plan to find sources of expertise who can shed light – just as we did in our Facing the Mortgage Crisis project. We at KETC can never be the experts, but we can help you find ones that you can trust. But we have found that there are two kinds of experts. The technical experts and those who have lived and are living what you are going through. We plan to offer the second kind as well. We hope to have a panel of New Americans that have made it. Made it through all the system and also made the cultural adaptation. We hope to find a panel of  immigrants who too are finding their way. It is our hope that such a panel will have the practical expertise to ask and answer the best questions. For who will know more than they about how to make this journey?

Helping established Americans find a place for their concerns - Many people have deep fears. Fears of having their economic future threatened. Fears of losing their community. Fears of losing their culture. Many others merely dismiss these fears as being stupid and then wonder why people become angry. We plan to explore these fears. For a fear explored is then a fear that can be coped with. What is the impact on jobs? What is it like to have your community change around you – who gets to set the culture? Most of all “Who are these strangers” and “what do they want”?

Dealing with the “Other” - Nothing is more scary than the unknown. As we walk down the street and we see people who are unknown and unknowable to us. They look so different. We plan to explore the “different”. What it is to be Bosnian in St Louis. To be Liberian, to be Mexican, to be Chinese, to be Irish or Scots, to be different. We will explore food, music, religion, family life. What is their culture. We will explore what brought people here and what the journey has been like.

We hope to give people a chance to be themselves in public to show yes how different they are but also how much they are the same. How they too want the freedom that America represents. How they care about many of the same things. About what they face from the dominant culture. How surface similarities hide fears. Such as how a Liberian can be taken for an African American until he opens his mouth and how the same is true for a Bosnian being taken for a WASP. We will find out that many immigrant groups who believe that they are unique will find out that others share much of their story such as how both a Liberian and a Bosnian have both come from a war zone so horrific that we cannot imagine – how maybe both boys saw their father killed in front of them.

Established Americans are strangers too for many newcomers. Much about the established America is hard to understand. This is manifested not only in the streets, the schools and the workplace where we all meet but in the homes of many traditional immigrant families. As the youth adapt, as girls wear new clothes, as boys listen to new music and eat new food, the older generations become afraid. As the power to translate the new culture moves to the young the old power lines in the family are threatened.

Our hope is to give all a chance to celebrate who they are and so give us a glimpse of not of a stranger but of people that we get to know who too have fears, hopes, families and a deep desire to do well in life.

Video and Story - As you can see as this project evolves, we intend to give up most of this space to you. Much of it will involve video. So to enable you to tell your story well on video, we have set up a “school”. This “school” is here to help you learn how to master short form story telling for the web. We will teach editing, all the mechanics and how best to tell a story. To help in this, we also have more than 100 Flip cameras that we will be lending to those that wish to tell their story.

The Documentary - Currently we are in the development phase of the film making process. We are deciding on what 4 big stories we will tell and what each story needs to be made. As we get more defined, we will come back to you here and tell you what we are doing. You will see the documentaries being made – the “story of” will be made as we make the story. There will be times when we need your help and we will ask you here for it.

The Team - At the moment the team is all from KETC. It involves people from all disciplines. But in time, we will withdraw to the background. Most of whom you will see and hear from will be from the community of St Louis.

via explorehomeland.org

This weekend we launch a new project at KETC. We are taking a subject that is at the heart of the nation - its social, economic and cultural heart - and trying something never before attempted.

We are trying to get away from the "He said" - "She said" - "on the one hand" and "on the other" POV of how issues are traditionally covered by the media.

We hope to offer up the broad complexity of the issue.

We are creating a TV series that is surrounded and informed by social engagement and the web. No add on after the show but the Petri Dish in which the show is born.

We are creating a "Social Object".

Over the next year, I will do my best to tell you the story of this project.

This post is from our new website. It has just been launched. It's only a starting point right now.

We are at the day of birth today. Much has been happening in the womb before this day. Much of it messy and painful. We have had to go from let's put on a show to having a real plan based on real objectives. Later I will tell you about those struggles.

Our new child is as helpless and feeble as a new born is. But as the months go on, she will I hope, grow into a strong and capable person - capable of reaching the potential that her "parents" KETC hope for her.

My hope is that by November we can have expanded the debate beyond the demagoguery that I fear and that we with your help may shed light and hope into this so complex and taxing issue.

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

P.E.I.'s CAP sites staying open - Where is the National Dream?

P.E.I.’s network of 38 Community Access Program (CAP) sites will not be closing after all, says federal Industry Minister Tony Clement.

In a one-on-one interview with The Guardian Tuesday, Clement confirmed all of the sites will remain open. He said funding will continue throughout the 2010 year.

“All 38 are going to be funded,” Clement said from Ottawa.
“They’ll be funding out of a different fund but no one really cares about that. That’s just internal accounting. What they care about is the fact they are going to be funded and they will be.”

Last week, Industry Canada sent letters to CAP site operators informing them the funding criteria had changed. The federal government said any group within 25 kilometres of a library would no longer be funded. Because of P.E.I.’s network of small, community-based libraries, that would have meant none of the province’s 38 CAP sites would qualify for funding.

Prince Edward Island would have been the only province to lose all of its CAP sites.

But Clement said the funding was never in jeopardy. He blames poor communications.

The federal minister said P.E.I. will continue to get the same level of funding this year. He would not say what will happen after the 2010 year.

via theguardian.pe.ca

In 1994, Doug Hull, the best civil servant in the country, developed a comprehensive plan for getting Canada off the ground for the web. He got his minister (IC) and the his ex boss the Minister of Finance's attention and the Schoolnet program and CAP sites were the outcome.

He aimed at where kids were and directly at the digital divide - still points of leverage. He made the web part of the core plans of the country.

OK so the money for poor old PEI is back - for a year - but where is the vision?

The US has been backward regarding the web as well. Like Canada, it has been content to protect our terrible IP's and has been fussing about copyright.

But the new US plan is clear - the web is the railroad - the highway system - steam - it is the platform on which the economy and society will be based.

As Doug and I talked about all of this 16 years ago, we kept returning to the memory that Canada was created as a nation by a project to build a connecting network - the CPR.

That dream - The National Dream - is more valid than ever. Doug and Paul Martin saw it back when the web was tiny. Now that it is pervasive but Canada has fallen way behind, where is the vision?

Come on Ottawa and the 5th floor - you can surely do better than this?

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Universities will meet their version of Craigslist!

Newspapers were struck a death blow by Craigslist - We all know that story. But what was it like when Craisglist just got started and we did not know that was going to happen? What will it be like when a new "Craigslist" enters a new sector with all the potential to disrupt?

Well today I read 4 articles that lead me to believe that Universities - as we know them - are DEAD! The Death Star has arrived and in the end - there can be no defence.

Article 1 - The NYT - 25% of kids are unemployed - this includes most graduates who also have large student loans. If they get jobs it is in the McJob world. It will take years for this to change - see my post below - meanwhile the debt has to be paid and the summer jobs are not there. But if you don't have a degree - there is no employment that will pay enough to raise a middle class family - so there is a paradox

Article 2 - Why University costs are so high and so impossible to cut - basically the President has no power over the faculty - like the print union at the paper - the faculty have a lock on how work is done and how they are paid and will not give this up.

Article 3 (Via John Robb) A story on a new way of getting a degree on your own at your own pace for $99 a course at Straightline. A real degree using all the same material with better access to teaching - all at your onw pace and time - all at home.

Article 4 the link (John Robb) to Straighterline - a very neat idea

Here why I say DEATH. If universities cannot change their costs. If unemployment for the young lasts a decade and the only way of paying is debt - then the "smart" kids and parents will find "smart" alternatives. Straighterline is maybe the Craigslist challenge.

It's all about the economics - isn't it?

What do you think? More after the Jump from the article by Kevin Carey