Category: Resources

Blogging Masters Thesis

The focus is on putting blogging in perspective with more traditional
forms of media and advertising communications. That's not the only use
of blogging, although it is one that is attracting much attention
lately. Nonetheless, this is a worthwhile resource and take on one
aspect of blogging today.

This is a very cool, very in-depth study of blogs by a guy who wrote his thesis on the subject. His thesis was on:

I
looked at how Blogs have impacted business and communication, how some
Blogs create revenue, how some companies are using Blogs, how Blogs
greatly boost the spread of information, how Blogs add richness to the
media landscape, how Blogs work in the Long Tail, how some companies
are tracking the Blogosphere and what the future of Blogging may be.

174 different bloggers participated in the survey(including myself). Here are some random stats from the blog thesis:

  • 85% allow comments on their blogs
  • 33% use Google Adsense
  • 22% use BlogAds
  • 45% generate no revenue
  • 40% generated under $5,000 per year
  • 4% generated over $100,000 per year

Anyway,
this paper has tons and tons of information, standing at 145 pages
long. If you’re looking for an in-depth look at blogging, check it out.

How to Create a Better Checklist

While on the subject of lists, this is a nice introduction into what
makes for a good checklist coupled with good arguments about why you
would want to make more frequent use of them to begin with.

How to Create a Better Checklist.
Checklists are great to develop consistency and realiability in
accomplishing routine as well as emergency procedures. But, you ask,
how do I make one? Here it is! [Open Loops]

Merlin Mann on crafting good to-do lists

Merlin Mann offer two excellent posts on the unexpected subtleties of crafting a good to-do list (Part 1, Part 2).
While for many people (like my wife), this is a completely natural
process, I frequently struggle with it. Mann is full of good advice and
understands how our bad habits interfere. This will certainly help me
in crafting to-dos that are much more concrete and actionable.

Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part I.
Planning your work means more than just collecting the detritus of an
occasional “brain dump.” Learn to create an actionable, unintimidating
task list that helps you maintain focus on the outcomes that are
important to you. Part 1 of a 2-part series (new post Tuesday morning).
[43 Folders]

John Seely Brown and New Learning Environments for 21st Century.

Good insights, as always, from John Seely Brown about learning.

New Learning Environments for 21st Century(.pdf)
– I really enjoyed reviewing this presentation. John Seely Brown's view
of learning in today's society is very similar to what I've been
advocating about connectivism.
In particular, he presents the urgent need to rethink how we provide
learning in an effort to compete at a global level. Stephen Downes also
links to an audio file of the presentation.

Rich collection of idea generation methods

While I wouldn't be so bold as to label it a “definitive collection,”
it is nonetheless very rich. The techniques I am familiar with are very
effective and effectively described, which gives me confidence that
those new to me are worth investigating as well.

The definitive collection of idea generation methods. Martin Leith gifts us with a page full of idea generation methods, a treasure trove for facilitators and team leaders. The definitive collection of idea generation methods

“This website lists and
explains every idea generation method I've encountered during the past
15 years. It is the result of extensive research; my many sources
include books, management journals, websites, academics, consultants
and colleagues.

The methods have been drawn not just from the worlds of creative
problem solving and innovation, but also from other worlds such as
organisational change, strategic planning, psychotherapy, the new
sciences and the creative arts.

The methods are listed below. Each is linked to a description, and
in some cases you will find full instructions for using the method to
generate ideas.”

Thanks, Martin!

[via eLearningpost]

,

By noemail@noemail.org (Nancy White). [Full Circle Online Interaction Blog]

Places to Intervene in a System

A nice reminder from Jack Vinson about an excellent resource on ways to
poke on complex systems that are more likely to be effective than our
typical efforts. I’ve pointed to this before in several incarnations (here and here).
We’ve certainly seen more than our share recently of ineffective ways
to intervene. Perhaps we can hope that some of these lessons will find
their way into broader practice.

A 1997 article by Donella Meadows has been reprinted in a software developer magazine, Places to Intervene in a System. (Here’s a fuller version from 1998.)

Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage
points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an
economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in
one thing can produce big changes in everything.

The systems community has a lot of lore about leverage points. Those
of us who were trained by the great Jay Forrester at MIT have absorbed
one of his favorite stories. “People know intuitively where leverage
points are. Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and
I’ve figured out a leverage point. Then I’ve gone to the company and
discovered that everyone is pushing it in the wrong direction!”

[via Johanna Rothman]

– jackvinson (jackvinson@jackvinson.com) [Knowledge Jolt with Jack]

Thinkers you should know – David Reed

(cross posted at Future Tense)

One of the most profoundly important (and disturbing) things about the Internet is that fundamentally no one is in charge. One of the individuals responsible for that design is David Reed, a computer scientist from MIT.

As far back as Jethro and Moses in Exodus, we’ve applied hierarchy to bring complexity under control. Many have characterized Jethro as the world’s first management consultant. One of the reasons that hierarchy works so well in organizational settings is that is addresses the problem of information overload on managers, where middle managers serve to consolidate and route information through the hierarchy.

However, computers are not people and hierarchy is not the only, or necessarily the best, solution to information management problems. Reed, along with J.H.Salzer and D.D. Clark, wrote a seminal paper in the early days of the design of ARPANET and TCP/IP called “End-to-End Arguments in System Design” that laid out the reasons that hierarchical solutions were a bad idea in designing a network of the scale and complexity envisioned for the ARPANET. Those design insights were baked into the basic architecture of TCP/IP and are one of the core reasons that the Internet has grown as widely and rapidly as it has. If you hope to understand how the net and network thinking in general will continue to impact the future of work, this had better be one of your starting points. “End-to-End Arguments” is a pretty technical paper, although it is manageable; you might find “The end of End-to-End?,” also by Reed, a better starting point.

More recently, David has been exploring other notions about how markets and technology interact in ways that don’t necessarily mesh with our default assumptions. In particular he’s done interesting work on why eBay and other internet companies have thrived but handing significant power over to their customers with the notion of Group Forming Networks.

Currently, David is back at MIT at the Media Lab leading a research program on Communications Futures. A good starting
point for this work is the program on Viral Communications (pdf) David is doing with Andy Lippman of the Media Lab.

Like other thinkers, the value of looking at what David is up to is twofold. First, the ideas themselves are powerful. Second, watching how someone smart tackles problems can give you insights into how you might tackle other problems

Corante launches Future Tense – on the future of work

I’ve signed up to contribute to a new blog at Corante that launched officially today. Hylton Jolliffe lays out the premise below. My involvement grew out of a lunch Hylton and I had last month in Cambridge (at Charlie’s Kitchen, a Harvard Square landmark). We’ll be exploring a topic that’s long been near and dear to my heart and it feels like it’s going to be a great group to work with. For all you fans of RSS, the blog’s feed is here.

Check it out.

New blog on the future of work. Today we launch a new blog – Future Tense – that will examine and explore how the modern work “place” is evolving and adapting to new trends, technologies, and economic factors. Future Tense, authored by a handful of closely read thinkers and practitioners in the broad, industry-spanning “space,” will discuss the trends and pressures that are forcing employers to rejigger the way they think about the workplace, manage projects and staffs, encourage collaboration and innovation, support a decentralized workforce, motivate and reward employees, build morale and foster teamwork, design physical spaces to accommodate a mobile and transient workforce, etc. Future Tense’s co-authors: Elizabeth Albrycht, a 15-year veteran of high technology public relations practice and a co-founder and co-producer of the New Communications Forum; Jim Ware, cofounder of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program; Regina Miller, formerly of Vodafone and founder of the consultancy The Seventh Suite;… [Corante Blog]