The “unorganization” phenomenon

Over the past few weeks I have come across a number of projects and initiatives being led by “unorganizations” — groups of people who come together for a common cause, but who are independent agents and not a formal corporation, organization or association of any sort. 

The first was, of course, the recent unconference that I co-organized, Government 2.0 Camp.  It was important to me from the event’s inception to make sure that it was owned by the people.  By design, the largest sponsorship was $1,000–just 1/20th of the total funds raised–so that no single organization owned the gathering. 

But how do you do business as a non-entity?  Duke Ellington School of the Arts (DESA) required Government 2.0 Camp to sign a standard  contract for use of the venue.The contract was between DESA and Government 2.0 Camp.  I signed the contract, but felt soft of silly doing so, as Government 2.0 Camp wasn’t a formal organization. 

One interesting idea that was suggested by Nancy Faget, an attendee of Government 2.0 Camp, was selling the proceedings from Government 2.0 Camp to a book publisher.  In fact, she claims that two are already interested!  Session leaders and other attendees could author the chapters and the proceeds could fund Government 2.0 Club.  How do you fund a non-entity?  To whom would the publisher write the check? (Yes, in reality, I know we’d form a 501C3 or similar, but the philosophy of this is still a rather intersting conundrum.)

The closing session of Government 2.0 Camp was a brainstorming discussion about creating and formalizing Government 2.0 Club–the and official creator of Government 2.0 Camp.  We were lucky enough to have Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club, to guide our discussion and ideas with his experiences from creating and growing Social Media Club.  The difference, however, is that Social Media Club is owned and operated by founders Heuer and Katie Wells.  Our vision for Government 2.0 Club is the embodiment Government 2.0, itself: owned and operated of the people, for the people, by the people.  

A few days after the unconference, my co-organizer, Peter Corbettsent out an summary and wrap-up e-mail to all attendees that directed interested parties to the Government 2.0 Club website for session summaries and other unconference proceedings.  He signed his message “the unmanagement.” 

The “unorganization” phenomenon extends beyond Government 2.0 Camp and Club, however.  I have been working over the past two weeks on a proposal for a community organizing project for a local municipality that is being created, driven and funded by “concerned citizens.”  It’s quite a legitimate initiative led by a number of impressive for-profit and non-profit organizations as well as philanthropic individuals.  I frankly don’t know who will sign the contract or write the checks.  Those are details that someone or some organization will shoulder for the sake of the cause, just as I signed the venue contract for Government 2.0 Camp. 

Another example of “unorganization” made its way across my computer screen earlier this evening and prompted this blog entry: TEA Party Tax Day.  Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the politics of Tax Tea Parties, it’s interesting to note that there is no Organization behind this tremendous grassroots organization.  When you click the About or Contact buttons on the site, you are just brought back to a page that says ”Please see the Help Organize area for the most commonly asked questions and the answers” and enables you to fill out a form for more information or to organize a “tea party” in your area.  I asked a top Hill staffer for more information about this and learned that this initiative really is being run as a collective effort of like-minded tax opponents and is not “owned” by any single organization. 

The challenges of the “unorganization” also remind me a lot of what’s going on right now in the Government 2.0 movement.  Government agencies–especially the General Services Administration–are successfully working through barriers, like Terms of Service challenges, that prohibit them from signing agreements with third party social media service providers, e.g. YouTube.  Issues of indemnification and defense are two barriers cited by the Federal Web Managers’ Council in its December 23, 2008 paper Social Media and the Federal Government: Perceived and Real Barriers and Potential Solutions.  In cryptic non-legal simplification: because the government is owned by the people, it cannot be sued and thus, cannot agree to indemnifya third party.

Why are all of these “unorganizations” popping up?  Collaboration.  As I’ve written about in many previous blog posts, we are in the midst of a major cultural shift from the Broadcast Era in which large media organizations intermediated our information, to the Collaboration Era in which we can have influence that rivals the most watched Superbowl ads.  Individuals + collaboration = game changing ideas.

How will the legal, organizational and philosophical challenges be resolved for and by the increasing number of “unorganizations” that are emerging in the Collaboration Era?

The Catch-22 of Collaboration & Social Media

I Need Social Media!
Clients regularly approach MiXT Media Strategies requesting social media help:

• Can you help me set up a Facebook page?   
• How do I “do” Twitter? 
• I want to “use” bloggers to broaden the reach of my marketing campaign—where do I find them?  

These are the wrong questions for two reasons. First, these are the wrong questions because social media is not about the tools and technologies.

“Huh?  What about all of the blogs, social networks, RSS feeds, video-sharing sites, etc.?”

Nope.  Those are tools.  Social media is about the capabilities that these tools enable.  Successful social media starts not with the tools and technologies, but with good, old-fashioned business planning: mission, vision, goals, objectives, strategies. 

Second, these are the wrong questions because they are selfish.  The behaviors and capabilities that social media tools enable are engaging, participatory, relational—social.  They are not something that you “do” to your customers to elicit click-throughs, response rates or sales.

To create a successful social media strategy for your organization, you must first understand social media in context.

What’s Going on Out There
There are two world-changing dynamics in action right now.  First, the proliferation of social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies is fragmenting the communications landscape.  Not only are there now simply more communication choices, but these new tools and technologies enable us to further fine-tune our communications by speed, formality, time and place.  We have myriad choices never before possible.  How we communicate is now as complex as what we communicate. 

Second, we as a culture are emerging from the Broadcast Era and entering the Collaboration Era.  This means a marked change in the way we communicate.  In the Broadcast Era, we pushed information AT our audiences through traditional, one-way media vehicles.  The Collaboration Era brings about a whole new set of capabilities that change our communication expectations.  No longer are people satisfied receiving information, they expect to be able to jump in, engage and be a part of the two-way conversation.  The opportunity to participate in new and meaningful ways is changing us from content consumers to creators, participants, collaborators…communities.

The Opportunity: a Case for Collaboration
Collaboration makes organizations more efficient and more effective.  Organizations that embrace collaborative practices—supported by innovative social media tools and technologies—will decrease costs and increase sales by increasing satisfaction and retention of employees, customers, vendors and partners.

The Challenge: a Catch-22 of Catch-22s
What complicates things is that each of these dynamics, in and of itself, is a Catch-22.

• We can’t understand the benefits of collaboration until we collaborate; and yet we can’t truly collaborate until we understand the benefits of doing so.
• We want to understand the value of social media tools before we invest our time and energy in using them; and yet, we can’t truly understand the value of social media tools until we use them.

What further complicates things is that collaboration and social media tools together create a Catch-22.

• We can’t truly understand the benefits and possibilities of social media tools until we use them to collaborate; and yet we can’t truly understand the benefits of and possibilities for collaboration until we utilize social media tools collaboratively.

collaboration                   social media

The confluence of these two separate but connected Catch-22s presents a solution: the Confluence Process.  Teaching organizations to use social media tools and catalyzing a cultural shift towards collaboration requires a process that manages the interplay between these two dynamics.

The Confluence Process that MiXT Media Strategies has developed enables organizations to use social media tools to learn the value of collaboration while simultaneously engaging in collaboration to understand the full extent of social media tools’ value.

ATK: real-world AFK (away from keyboard)

AFK (away from keyboard) is “in-world” speak for the state of your SecondLife avatar when you’re not operating him/her.  I’ve also heard this state referred to as “asleep” or ”latent.” 

I sought out this terminology a week or so ago when I noticed the opposite phenomenon.  I was with a group of social media cronies  at a conference or happy hour or breakfast and realized that we were the opposite of AFK–ATK: attached to keyboard. 

There was a lull in conversation while we all hung our heads–like sleeping avatars–to tweet, text or type.  We had checked out of the real world and were only existing in the virtual/online world.  In this group, this ATK behavior was completely socially acceptable.  In the technology, social media and web communities, there is an unspoken understanding when you step out of the in-person conversation and go ATK.  It’s almost like we live in a hybrid online-offline world.

However, in the non-tech, regular offline world, going ATK is NOT acceptable.  To your family, colleagues and friends, you may appear as exciting and conversation an avatar that’s AFK.

Government Irony

So, back in October 2008, I received a “save the date” e-mail from my alma mater, Georgetown University, about Transition 2009, a conference by The School of Continuing Studies that would be taking place soon after the inauguration of now President Barack Obama.  I selected the “learn more” option and signed up to receive e-mail updates as more information became available. 

Sure enough, a few weeks ago, I received the official conference announcement and invitation.  Transition 2009 will held at the National Press Club, February 12 & 13.  I clicked the” “register now” button which took me to the conference website.  I entered my name and other contact information and then stopped short: the cost for Transition 2009 is $895 — despite the fact that it’s sponsored by Georgetown, Politico and the Press Club (?).  Too much for me to justify to myself or to my government clients. 

So, I e-mailed the conference to find out if they were offering any unpublicized government rates.  I received a simple and polite e-mail in response:

Maxine,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Transition 2009 Conference presented to you by Georgetown University. 

Unfortunately, we are not offering a government rate on tickets to attend the event.  However, we do hope that you will strongly consider registering for this exciting conference. 

Please visit www.guconferences.com to register.

Regards,

The Transition 2009 Conference Team

Bummer.  A conference about our government’s transition to a new administration and no special rates are being offered to encourage attendance by those whom this will affect the most, those who will be implementing the new policies, those who understand and can speak to the challenges of old and new processes –those IN the government.

This is too often the case for conference producers.  Thank goodness Government 2.0 Camp is an option…

Peter Kim Calls it Social Business

Per my last blog post, I’ve been grappling with the contradiction between “marketing” and “social media.”  Though usually viewed as a progression from old to new, the terms more often seem like opposites to me.

Today I read and commented on Peter Kim’s blog post, “It’s Time to Transform.” I couldn’t agree more with his assessment of the need to change the way we do business and think about our organizations. I really like the term “social business” as a way to explain the critical cultural shift that organizations must embrace. Read Peter’s post (and my comments!).

Becoming a Truth Organization

What we refer to as “social media” really has very little to do with media.  Media –from cameras to demographics–is a set of filters.  Filters obscure the truth by focus as well as by omission.

Social media strips away the filters upon which content shops–news organizations, marketing consultancies, ad agencies and PR firms–have relied over the past century, and brings us Truth.  Sure, sometimes social media yields too much information and sometimes it’s the cold, hard truth, but its products and processes are raw and authentic, nonetheless.

So, it’s interesting then, that traditional marketers, advertisers and PR folks, are jockeying to stake claim as social media stewards.  From my perspective social media and marketing are not so much the same as they are different.  In fact, I’d posit that social media marketing is truly the opposite of traditional marketing. 

When I speak to clients and audiences about the importance of social media, I first talk about the cultural shift that social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies are catalyzing.  Our culture is shifting from one of facades–advertising, messaging, “spin”–to one of Truth.  The first rule of the blogosphere is “HATs off”: honest, authenticity and transparency.  LonelyGirl15 and the Walmarting Across America were early examples of misuse of social media and why Truth is paramount.

But a good portion of traditional marketers still don’t view social media this way.  Rather, they view it as another set of rich distribution channels through which to send carefully crafted messages.   (It’s not a surprise that social media has gotten all tangled up with marketing.  This likely stems from “social media” being a misnomer.)  Successful social media strategies must start not with marketing, but with introspection. 

The cultural shift towards Truth and collaboration must be felt, understood and embraced by an organization before it can truly sucessfully leverage social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies.  The organization that understands social media first as cultural shift will see why social media is more akin to business strategy, organizational change and strategic partnerships than to marketing. PR and advertising.  That, is the Truth.

The Fallacy of Opacity

Do you remember the game show “Let’s Make a Deal“ from the ’70s?

Basically contestants had to choose between the “deal” that was presented to them by the emcee and what was behind “curtain #1,” or #2 or #3…

Now even though they knew they could end up with 150 jars of peanut butter or a gaggle of geese, most of the time, the contestants went for it and took the “deal.”

For some reason what was behind curtain #1 seemed more valuable because it was hidden.  This is what I call the Fallacy of Opacity: we tend to believe that what is hidden is more valuable. 

However, this is, in fact, not a truth, but a fallacy.  Though we’ve seen it disproved millions of times on Let’s Make a Deal and in real life, alike, we continue to believe that what’s hidden is more valuable.

Why? Because we confuse it with its inverse which IS actually true: what’s valuable tends to be hidden, protected, locked in a vault.

Social media tools and technologies are challenging this assumption and encouraging us to share that which is most valuable. To those of us who are not Digital Natives, this mindshift is tough to make and even tougher to put into practice.  

Remember, sharing information enables collaboration and collaboration yields better solutions.  Hidden information is not, in fact, more valuable — that’s just the Fallacy of Opacity.

Will Twitter Kill the Holiday Card?

I spent way too much time this weekend gathering snail mail addresses for the 250 (!) family photo holiday cards that we ordered and obligated ourselves to send.  As I e-mailed address requests to a few friends and contacts for whom I didn’t have up-to-date info, I wondered why the heck we were doing this in the first place.  Why is it, in this day and age of digital communications, are holiday cards still the cultural norm?

My husband and I philosophized about this as we stamped and licked, with our kids zooming around us playing “roar” — a chasing game in which they simply run after one another and “roar.”  In our grandparents’ generation, people “visited” one another at this time of year. They’d stop by one another’s houses on a Saturday or Sunday, have tea and cake and spend time with friends and extended family.  This practice is frowned upon today in our busy culture where time is sometimes more valued that family…. 

Holiday cards are the mid-20th century’s vestige of the previous era’s “visiting” custom. They are a once-a-year opportunity to show off our families, and thus ourselves, to our geographically scattered friends.  Holiday cards, to some extent, satiate our needs for holidayconnection, family showcasing and sharing our holiday spirit.

But, we’re now in the increasingly-digital 21st century.  When will the 20th century holiday card custom become extinct and what will replace it? 

E-cards are starting to gain traction for birthdays, especially when Plaxo reminds us to send them.  Evites are quickly overtaking invites for parties and events.  But, nonetheless, the hard-copy holiday card prevails. Its  digital counterpart still seems cheesy and lacks authenticity, even in an era when our hands ache when we have to write a four-sentence handwritten thank you note but when we “Blackberry” and “text” like player pianos. 

Then in the midst of pasting, sticking and stamping, I got a Twitter direct message, or “DM,” from blogger and social media consultant extraordinaire, Craig Stoltz (@craigstoltz), informing me about a post he’d just written entitled, “New Use for Twitter: End-of-Year Family Update Letters.”  I encourage you to read Craig’s post yourself, but the basic premise is that tweeting our year-in-review letters might be a better tact for both sender and recipient. 

I love his idea and encourage you all to use the hashtag that I’ve created based on Craig’s post: #YIR (stands for Year-In-Review) and tweet YOUR year-in-review. 

Despite the 250 hard copy holiday cards for 2008, here’s my #YIR:

What if Obama’s Work Progress projects were digital?

“The country demands bold, persistent experimentation. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something!”

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

There have been a number of news articles over the past week, e.g. CBS News’ FDR’s New Deal Blueprint For Obama, that liken Obama’s economic recovery plan to the Work Progress Administration (WPA) founded as part of FDR’s New Deal in 1933. 

Some details and background about WPA from Chip Reid’s piece for CBS News:

The WPA lasted 8 years, from 1935 to 1943, and left a mark on America that is still visible today. It spent $11 billion dollars, employed eight and a half million people.

New roads were built – 650,000 miles of them. And new airports, including New York City’s Laguardia Airport.

But it wasn’t just about things. The public school lunch program got its start with WPA dollars.

“Attendance increased,” Taylor said. “It was something that raised the health of the country.”

FDR thought people needed places for recreation. So, the WPA repaired and enlarged the national park system, but Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins, the man who headed the WPA, knew there was more to life than bricks and mortar.

“The great thing that Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins recognized was that it made no sense whatsoever to take an excellent violin player and put him to work building a road,” Taylor said. “He could provide, or she could provide, entertainment to people. And enlightenment! And that’s why the WPA had an umbrella over arts projects as well as construction.”

In 1941, Woody Guthrie was paid to write songs for a month as he visited the new dams under construction along the Columbia River in Washington State.

The WPA financed 225,000 concerts, with audiences of 150 million Americans. Actors appeared in stage productions all over the country. Artists painted murals on countless public buildings, like those at LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal in New York.

The WPA financed almost a half-million pieces of art. Some are on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.

Much of what Obama is proposing–building infrastructure, roads, bridges, schools, transportation systems, green technologies, etc.–replicates FDR’s infrastructure improvements (not sure about the arts expansion…).  I’m not bringing this up to start a political discussion about whether there should be a New Deal 2 or how large a stimulus package Congress should actually agree to–that’s a completely different debate for a different set of bloggers or politicians.  My interest here is in why Obama wants to allocate these funds–75 years later–just as FDR did in 1933?

Today’s world is dramatically different, namely, we are a connected society that has all information available at our fingertips.  Expanding and improving brick and mortar infrastructure and access to traditional entertainment–though truly necessary in many parts of our nation–at the same time sounds a bit like a throwback from a previous era. 

So the question that I have for Obama is this: what are and should be today’s, 21st century, Work Progress project equivalents?  What capabilities and skill sets could Obama leverage to simultaneously strengthen morale, our economy, and our American culture for today,  just as Roosevelt attempted to do in the 30’s and into the 40’s?  What does digital work progress look like?

Social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies are enabling innovation in ways and scale never before possible.  Connected individuals and organizations are collaboratively solving problems and creating products, services and processes that are transforming our country in awe-inspiring ways.

Though improvements and construction of physical roads and bridges are certainly still critical for our country, Obama might find that investing in virtual roads, bridges, educational solutions and information transportation systems that leverage the tremendous power of social networking can have exponential return-on-investment.

Inability to comment on comments stifles the conversation

I just finished reading Keith Burtis’ great guest post on Chris Brogan’s blog, “Twitter- To Converse or to Broadcast-THAT is the Question.”  As I scrolled and skimmed through the comments to get down to the bottom and add my own comment, it dawned on me how strange it is that the participatory medium of blogs that are all about conversation and collaboration do not allow people to comment on comments.

Sure, you can explicitly refer to what commenter “Starfish” said when you, yourself, are commenting, but this requires others to scroll back up and try to find “Starfish’s” comment, then scroll back down to your comment and then down again to insert their own comment.  This is cumbersome, not collaborative.

I often find the same challenge in using Twitter: I @reply to someone’s tweet to start or continue a conversation, but maybe I’ve been in meetings for the past two hours and the tweet that I’m latching on to is a tweet from much earlier that day.  I feel the need to sort of recap the initial tweet and then add my insight or addition–tough in 140 characters.  From being on the other side of some of @replies I know it’s sometimes difficult to to figure out to which tweetstream they’re referring.

As I commented–yes, linearly, because what other choice did I have?–on Keith’s post, the broadcast problem is threefold.  First, we Digital Immigrants, are still getting our sea legs when it comes to participatory media.  Collaboration is not our comfort zone.  We want try out the latest social networking tool, but find it uncomfortable to put ourselves out there, trust “strangers,” and give away our ideas for free.  It’s a cultural issue. 

The second issue is the adoption continuum.  Remember 1994 when email was still fairly new?  Little by little friends and family members were ”getting on email,” as we said back in the day.  The user habit was to write an email letter–yep, these were long messages–to your friend.  Then once you’d gone back and forth a few times and had nothing else to say, the “forwards” would start.  From jokes, to consumer warnings, to limericks, you were one recipient on your friend’s mass distribution list.  At first this was funny and you, too, would forward these inane messages along to your friends who were “on email.”  But “funny” quickly soured and turned into annoying.  You moved on.  You started using email as a productive communication tool rather than as a toy.  It became a seamless part of your daily communications.

The same adoption continuum exists for social media.  First we sign up for a service and then probably forget about it for awhile.  Then we passively observe the landscape.  Next we dip our toes in and blurt and broadcast, “I had pizza for lunch!”  Then we settle in and start sharing useful and mildly interesting information with our followers…but we’re still operating in a 1.0 broadcast paradigm.  As we build our follower networks, we begin to see the value of social media.  Suddenly we “get it”: we have this mindshift that it’s not about us, it’s about them.  Broadcast is about increasing value for the creator; social media is about increasing value for everyone else.

The third and final piece of the broadcast problem is that the blog and microblog platform infrastructures are, too, still evolving and are not yet truly conducive to the collaboration that their content is trying to encourage.  I’d be interested in hearing if anyone knows of a blogging platform that truly facilitates collaborative discussions.  I can envision a clickable mindmapping kind of visualization.

Where can you get a 21st century education?

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the future of education.  My 5 1/2-year-old daughter recently started public kindergarten.  Her classroom, teacher, schedule and school set-up reminds me a lot of my own kindergarten experience.  At first blush this was comforting; then quickly downright scary.  Maybe it’s just the feel and smell of the 1930s school building.  I truthfully don’t have enough experience as the mom of a student to know yet.  Regardless, it’s gotten me thinking a lot about the education through which I want to guide my children.  I know this much: it cannot–it must not–be the same 20th century education that I had.  I was fortunate enough to grow up in an upper-middle-class town in southern Connecticut that attracted good teachers, had sufficient resources and yielded pretty well-educated kids.  Times have changed and so must education. 

I was speaking with a friend of mine last Saturday at a bridal shower.  She told me that her 12-year-old son had recently gone through testing for a potential learning disability because he was a smart student who had scored below average on a standardized test.  The special testing found that her son did not have a learning disability, but rather a visual processing lag compared to his peers.  My friend and her husband had prided themselves on limiting how much TV their children watch and discouraging video games in their home.  Basically, this was the problem: their son had not learned to process visual information as quickly as his game-playing, TV watching peers and therefore, was scoring below average on tests that compared him to his peers!  Had her son been compared to his parents’ generation, he would have been right where he should have been, but today’s students are growing up in a faster-paced world that is jam-packed with visual stimuli and multi-tasking.  97% of today’s teens game.  My friend’s son is the minority 3%.  To paraphrase Ferris Bueller “things move pretty quickly around here.  If you don’t pay attention, you’re bound to miss something.”

Then on Sunday, I met the wife of a friend of mine. She works for ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education.  We got to talking about the future of education and how to prepare out children for the 21st century.  She lamented about not really practicing with her own children’s educations what she preaches daily to her members and other professional contacts because she’s had other educational priorities for them.  It’s not too late for me to practice in educating my children what I preach about the cultural shifts of 2.0: my eldest is in kindergarten, just embarking on her academic career. 

Our discussion prompted me to go online this afternoon and search for charter schools in DC that are actively and consciously embracing the cultural changes that are being spurred by new and social media tools and technologies and reinventing curriculum accordingly.  It’s not to say that my daughter’s current elementary school can’t appropriately prepare her… I just wanted to see if anyone in the DC Public Schools system is actively taking on this challenge.  So I found a list of charter schools that could not be sorted by topic.  I found one arts and technology charter, but that’s not really what I’m seeking. 

I went back to Google and searched for combinations of “technology,” “21st century,” “education” and other related terms.  As I searched, the quote from Did You Know 2.0 replayed in my head, “how can we prepare today’s students for jobs that don’t even yet exist?  I came across a neat advocaty organization called Partnership for 21st Century Skills that “infuses 21st century skills into education. There is currently no DC district/state initiative. 

I feel torn on how deeply to approach this challenge.  At one end of the spectrum, I could immerse myself in the quest for creating a 21st century educational system in DC.  I’d like to hope that there are like-minded parents, teachers and administrators out there.  At the other end of the spectrum, I could do what most parents do: just try to proactively manage their own kids’ education.  It’s not about teaching my daughter technology or computer science as topics or skills, it’s about the finding a school that acknowledges that our society is changing and embraces these changes by evolving its content and processes accordingly — this is the mindshift that I try to spark in my clients every day.

A world without boredom

I can still feel the boredom of riding in ”the middle” of the back seat of my parents’ 1974 orange Datsun–without  a car seat or even seat belt because they weren’t yet the law, let alone, safety features–and whining, ”are we there yet?” and 30-seconds later, “when are we going to be there!” 

“In a little while,” my parents assured me. 

Then, what seemed like an hour later–but which was probably eight minutes later–I’d ask again, this time with sing-songy cadence, “when are we going to be there?”  This whining and pestering would continue at least a half a dozen more times.

When they were fed up with the repetitive questioning, my parents would engage me in games of “20 Questions” or “I Spy” until I was spent.  Then I’d sprawl out across the back seat–no seatbelt laws or siblings afforded great comfort–and take a nap until we finally got “there.”

Today, with DVD players for those long car trips, SMS for doctors’ waiting rooms and CNN at airport gates, Digital Natives never experience boredom.  “Always on” is their way of life.  Life is faster-paced, days are jam-packed and the Internet never sleeps.

At Digital Media Wire’s NY Games Conference a few weeks ago, I heard a panel of teens talk about how they play certain video games–mostly the old arcade games like Mario Brothers that we found invigorating and competitive–to relax.  97% of teens game.  It’s common for teens to game 2 1/2 hours per day.  They watch less than 1/2 hour of TV per day.  Interactive is their way of life…and their way of rest.  Their brains are wired differently.  Maybe they don’t need the “veg” time that we Digital Immigrants still crave.

Today, withister bopping to Hannah Montana on her iPod, brother watching Shrek on the portable DVD player and dad working on his laptop while mom drives, there is no time for–no need for–”passing the time” with the mundane family banter and games that helped us to survive these car trips when we were kids.  Digital Natives’ memories of car trips will be neutral, if nonexistent.  They won’t remember that “that was the car trip when I watched Shrek,” because that was probably the 24th time they watched that movie. 

Though the long car trips that we grew up with were annoying at the time, they were terrific family bonding experiences, just like (well, actually not really at all like) Chevy Chase’s movie, National Lampoon’s Vacation, and its sequels.  I wonder how today’s lack impromptu, undefined cartrip dialogue is changing the connections between family members.  Perhaps it’s alienating, perhaps it’s a relief from forced togetherness in tight quarters.

But what about the truth of the saying, “it’s about the journey, not the destination”?  I feel torn about the rules I create for my own children about the ambient time of the journey.  On one hand, I feel that they should “suffer” like I did and learn to occupy themselves with their own thoughts and time together with me, my husband and each other (and perhaps because I secretly have fond memories of the laughs that my parents and had from reading aloud the sides of trucks on I-95).  On the other hand, why should they pass their time listlessly or with mundane chatter when MP3s and the mobile Web provide more engaging, entertaining and educational ways to occupy themselves? 

Social Networking Breeds Positive Offline Interaction

Chris Brogan wrote a good post this morning entitled The Me Game, in which he shares successful networking tips.  As I commented on his blog, it reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: how the open, transparent and inclusive norms and etiquette of social media are impacting our behaviors–and thus the culture–of the offline world.  I find that the honest, friendly and helpful culture of my social network conversations and interactions breed their offline counterparts.  For example, when I tweet or post comments on someone’s blog and then receive positive comments, suggestions and feedback online (oftentimes from people who are strangers to me in the offline world) it encourages me to be more altruistic offline.  I find myself letting cars in front of me in traffic, smiling more at people on the street and holding doors.

Microcasting yourself across social networks

So, I’ve been grappling with how to best manage my personal feed across social networks.  It seems silly to update my status separately on several social networks when services like Ping.fm exist to enable broadcast updates across networks.

A few weeks ago I did a test and linked my Facebook and Plaxo Pulse feeds to auto-update when I post updates on Twitter.  I then asked my contacts how they felt about receiving so many status updates from me.  I got some honest feedback: it was too much information. 

I am not a prolific tweeter–I update 0-5 times per day.  Most of my tweets are observations or status updates, some are sharine interesting articles, blog posts or concepts.  So, why did this seemingly perfect concept of cross-social network updating not work in practice?

There are three reasons: the audience, the origin and the action.  Though all of my Facebook friends and Plaxo contacts are, by definition, participating in social media, the majority of them have not immersed themselves in it from a cultural perspective.  Just as most news publications use blogging as another article format, so do many social networkers use these tools primarily as another form of interpersonal communications, just as they use e-mail or IM.  In both cases, they have not made the big shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0: from a world of information exchange to a world of deep and meaningful collaboration. As I’ve already stood on my Web 2.0 soapbox, I’ll refrain from repeating myself here, except to say that embracing social media means adopting a single persona and believing that collaborative thinking is superior to self-promotion.

Second, Twitter (and not only Twitter, I should add) is of a different ilk than Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn and others.  Committed members of the Twitter community have made taken the plunge and are living by the tenets for Web 2.0: trust, transparency, openness and collaboration.  Furthermore, a large number of people who follow one another on Twitter met one another on Twitter.  This stands in stark contrast to networks like Facebook which are founded on the principle of retrobuilding existing networks.  Twitter enthusiasts want more detailed information more frequently because this interaction is the basis of their relationships. 

Finally, the action: on Facebook or Plaxo, a status update is a broadcast; on Twitter the action is micro-casting, not broadcasting.  Twitter followers find one another through keyword searches or threads based on topics of interest, geographic location, or social situation, e.g. being a mom.  Microcasting is Chris Anderson’s Long Tail in action: people building communities around niche areas of interest.

So, for now, I will keep my tweets separate from my status updates, but I have to say that at this particular point in my social network evolution, I feel a closer sense of community and am experiencing more meaningful collaboration with my Twitter followers and followees than with my real-life–albeit retrobuilt–network.

The professional Catch-22 of personal transparency

At this point it’s fair to concede that the idea of a lifetime job is a relic from a previous era.  It is widely believed that we are slated to have an average of seven careers in our lifetime–many of which will involve more than one job.  Even when we’re in long-term committed employment relationships, we are still not married to the company.  Ultimately, we’re free agents and need to manage our own career paths, proactively make job changes and build our own skill sets. 

At the same time, when we are employed by a company, we must be, to some extent, representatives of that company.  We are expected to conduct ourselves in ways that are not only ethical, but also appropriate and socially-acceptable.  Bad behaviors reflect poorly upon our employer.  This is even more the case for corporate executives.  I’d argue that the further you get up the chain of command, the more your public face melds with that of your corporation.

So how does this play out in the transparent world of social media where we have a single persona?  Because the personal is the public, it is also the professional.  

One result may be that people become reticent to BE the face of the organizations for which they work.  People may choose to keep silent and not share their opinions and thoughts in public forums.  Noses to the grind and locked behind closed doors, these employees will hinder the information sharing that leads to innovation and will hinder the development of the collaborative culture that is percolating.

Another possibility may be that people will opt out of some or all of the social media conversation to protect their employers and themselves.  My husband, a Hill staffer, has very consiously chosen not to have a Facebook page because he cannot control his contacts’ activities and posts.  An embarrassing comment on his Wall would reflect poorly upon him and thus, upon his employer. As a government employee, his standards are, necessarily, high.

A third outcome is that we may see more and more independent consultants and freelancers who represent their own brands.  Being an independent consultant may be the safest position to be in, and yet the hardest, all at the same time because we can be associated with conflicting client perspectives at the same time. Over the past two weeks I’ve come across two occasions on which I felt the need to put a disclaimer in my communications: ”the views in this post represent my opinions and are not necessarily the perspectives of my clients.”

With our world in the midst of major shift to a more open, honest and transparent culture, shying away from full participation is neither a positive, nor a sustainable, solution.  We need to find ways to be our personal and professional selves within social media.  We can’t afford to lose valuable people or their perspectives.

Walking the Walk: 5 Learnings From Observing Digital Natives

• Life and Learning are Not Linear: in the digital era life and learning are unexpected, chaotic, and random; be open, and you will be successful at both

 

• You Have a Single Persona: the professional and personal are cohesive so don’t waste your time and energy trying to separate them

 

• Learning is Doing: don’t be afraid to jump in and try new things

 

• Share, Don’t Hoard: you get more value from putting ideas out there than from attempting to “protect” them

 

• Power to the People: trust your friends and contacts; question authorities and advertising

Microblog About Microarcheologist

Dry cleaner is a microarcheologist: stains from the week tell a story.

Punctuate This Thought

Social media, in short, changing the culture.

Social media: in short-changing the culture.

With which side do you side?