"Globalism is Dead..."

John Ralston Saul.and The Collapse of Globalism

vs.

Clyde Prestowitz and Three Billion New Capitalists.

Cerebrity Death Match?

SOLA Games Workshop

Cris Townley and Elyssebeth Leigh have set up a Games Group through SOLA for those interested in using games-based techniques for education & learning.

Last week's meeting looked at The Prisoner's Dilemma. We split into two teams and played 10 rounds of this game. Very simple - but suprisingly rich. An excellent game to start discussions around trust, negotiation, and culture.

I could go on about the game but what stood out for me was the necessity to actually play the game to understand its power and applications. Reading about a game is very different to actually playing it.

I am looking forward to some more of these sessions. More immediately, I have agreed (foolishly?) to have a crack at facilitating the next session.

Any suggestions for games?

The Pod Is Cast

Had lunch last week with this fellah. Mick is an incredible ball of energy and he was enthusing with gusto about his baby The Podcast Network.

Some nuggets:
1. If you podcast, blog. Cross-promotion is a wonderful thing.
2. The easiest way to get listeners is to interview someone famous. You may love your mum but not everyone else feels the same way.
3. Audio is about conversations and is "global". You can have a conversation over the phone with anyone, anywhere. Video is about events and is "local". You just have to be there.

Going into interview mode myself, I asked Mick what his biggest lesson had been this year (hey, I'm in training, it's like an automatic reflex). His comment: The Cluetrain Manifesto is still The Bomb.

Markets are Conversations. And despite all appearances to the contrary, this blog is not in the pocket of David Weinberger.

Identity Blogging & Masks

Dave Weinberger has a post on Julie Leung's talk on Blogs & Masks. Which seems to be talking about exactly the issues that have been vexing me here. Julie's blog makes reference to the term Identity Blogging.

The phrase identity blogger to me means that I am blogging my identity, creating one and revealing it at the same time. What we have most of all, all of us, as bloggers, beyond anything else, is our identity. It's our flavor. Our scent. Our hue. What makes me me, what makes us each distinctive. It is who we are.

What this seems to be talking about is the importance of voice. How individuals (or groups/teams for that matter) create (or maybe find?) a distinctive voice. Because that's what I as a reader look for in a blog. Sure, facts, links, etc. But what keeps me coming back in the distinctive voice of the writer. What they care about and how they express these concerns.

So how do you get a voice? Well, some individuals seem to spring fully formed offering insightful opinions expressed with stylistic genius. For most of us though, it comes down to graft & practice. No infant emerges from the womb laying down lines like Oscar Wilde. Instead they learn through first copying others, then engaging in conversations.

What does your voice sound like?

Personal Reputation Management

SMH article on fired bloggers taking revenge.

In the novels of Jane Austen, characters (esp. women) are always concerned about their reputations. How they carry themselves and what is said about them. Now we don't really talk too much about the value of our reputations as much as we used to - unless you are a public figure. But as noted below, this separation between public and private is not what it used to be.

To what extent do we need to return to previous models of personal reputation?

To extent do employers need to train their emplpoyees on personal reputation management?

Ask and you shall receive

Some data at Principius on Australian kids' internet usage and RSS feed usage in the US.

Public vs. Private: Cat Got Your Tongue?

Cast your minds back to Spring 1997. Tony Blair wasn't Prime Minister. No one had heard of Monica Lewinsky. I was a fresh-faced post-grad student studying this thing called the internet that seemed to consist solely of porn and pages where people put up pictures of their cats.

The cat folks got a lot of stick at the time. Their sites were lacking in interesting content, engaging analysis, wit. Lacking in pretty much everything. Except cats. And yet, in hindsight, the cat folks can be seen as the true harbingers of the future. They grasped what the internet was about in a way that Bill Gates or Marc Andreessen never did. It's not just about ecommerce or web-enabled architectures. It's about redrawing the boundaries between the public and the private. You wouldn't normally get to see pictures of a stranger's cat. Partly because you wouldn't necessarily want to. But mostly because prior to publicly accessible P2P publishing environment, you simply couldn't.

The current corporate debates around social software (Is it a good thing? What if they say bad things about us?) are attempts to understand how these boundaries are changing or to prevent these changes from occurring.

And these changes are both wonderful and scary. We don't know where we'll end up. And who will be able to see us there.

Maybe we can hide behind the cats.

So who reads blogs anyway...

Just doing some research at the moment on blogging. Here are the findings so far:

1. The Blogging Geyser from Perseus. Takeaway: Things hit an inflection point in late 2003 (apparently that was Dave Winer's fault).

2. Corporate Blogging: Is It Worth The Hype? from Backbone Media. Takeaway: Yes.

3. Podcasting & State of Blogging from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Takeaway: 1. Most Americans don't know what a blog is. 2. I am too old to be into Podcasting.

4. Blog Reader Survey from BlogAds. Takeaway: 1 in5 blog readers are bloggers.

Is anyone aware of some non-American surveys on these areas?

Call Centre KM

NSW KM Forum session by James Robertson based on his consulting experience with several call centres. Very practical & down-to-earth. A particular focus for James was the way in which you investigate people's working environments - an approach that some might characterise as "ethnographic" but boils down to looking at what people actually do.