It's a tea and marmalade-on-buttered-flax-bread sort of morning. My main task today is to catch up with myself.
I've been so busy, which has been great, but it has also meant that I've left things behind. My recycling is out of control (need to call the alderman, as my area seems to have been left in between systems--blue bag or blue box, and we don't have the new boxes, so I have to haul my recycling elsewhere). I'd like to get started with worm composting, though that may be a task for after I join #psone and thus have handy access to a drill so I can make my own enclosure rather than buying one.
I've already started a small pre-worm composting bin and am tossing my grapefruit rinds (have I mentioned that I've been re-addicted to grapefruit?) and used tea leaves in there. It's sooo nice to toss the tea somewhere I know it will be productive, rather than in the trash where I know it will be plasticized and then take up space in a landfill.
Oh! And just before May Day, I planted a little herb garden and some peppers (and re-potted the spider plant Marty gave me cuttings of) for my porch. The fact that it's enclosed is handy here, but it still gets a ton of light. Though we're already getting those fake ladybugs inside it. I hope they won't become a problem.
But back to breakfast: I picked up the tea last night in Chinatown, after learning that I can walk there in a terribly reasonable 15-20 minutes. Becoming too impatient to wait for the bus does have its perks.
But back to the tea. It's a peach-infused green which will make an excellent (and less caffeinated) alternative to the peach black I originally got a ton of at P.F. Chang's so long ago that I'm almost out of.
And it complements the apple-citrus sylt (marmalade). Which is, rather sadly, from IKEA, since I haven't gotten up to Andersonville to shop for the real thing yet.
Oh, and my favorite thing about this tiny breakfast this morning--the trick I started using to soften cold refrigerated butter: put the butter on the bread but don't even attempt to spread it until after placing it on top of the water boiler near the steam vent. So much easier afterward.
I've now talked with my landlord: I'll be staying in the aptly nicknamed GoldPeach past July and thus for another year. Which is excellent since I've finally got the furniture the way I want it and he's finally letting me hang things (and thus put holes in the walls).
I also started another professional blog since I've lost access to my Penn State blog space. The task right now is importing and adding backdated entries that were housed elsewhere or that I drafted way back when but never posted. Like the one about Flourish conference that I ended up drafting in an email to the head of the central management team when he asked about it. And I still need to write one about the TLT Symposium.
The oblique reference to #psone needs a bit more clarification, doesn't it? I first found out about it at Flourish, which is a conference about open source. And #psone is very open source-minded, though they work on a membership model. Their events are often open to the public, but usually for an extra fee (which is another way they raise money to support the organization, which is legally a non-profit). They recently started renting a space and are in the midst of the build-out, including the building of a loft space, among many other perks. Here are some pictures I took at one of the Tuesday meetings. Members teach each other what they know: programming to carpentry, press release writing to how to use a scroll saw, juggling to electrical engineering, and anything and everything in between. I might run one (if I join) about making chain maille/chainmail, jewelry and otherwise.
Could also do one on photography, now that I think about it. Friday was full of photography: I shot behind-the-scenes on a taping of Good Morning America in one of our labs. It should run next Friday morning. I've got the photos I could finish and post the half-hour I had left after the (long, exhausting) day up on our flickr account for the college.
I'm now out of marmalade and tea, so I'll have to continue this later. Too much else to get on with today.
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Social bookmarking/the problem with marketing
Social bookmarking has caught my attention again. I've had one account or another for years and years, but in the last year or so I've really latched onto it.
In part, I think it has at least a little to do with my iPhone. Before this, I've (generally speaking) had two computers in use at any one time. One for work and one at home. And the work bookmarks went on the work laptop, and the personal bookmarks went on my home computer.
When I started emailing myself links to my work email address from my home computer rather than hauling out my work laptop, though: that's when I knew I was in trouble.
And then the iPhone came along. And believe it or not, it's my main mobile device. When I stopped in on the Learning Design Summer Camp, all I brought was my iPhone. No laptop. And I did fine interacting with the Live Question Tool, and backchanneling via Twitter, and all that.
But to really get the most out of whenever I was websurfing on my iPhone, I needed to be able to access my bookmarks. And putting them "in the cloud" on a social network (so to speak) has done that.
Someone a few weeks ago told me that you can tell a lot about someone by looking at what they bookmark. I'd give that more credence than judging by their shoes--though I don't know a lot about shoes past what's comfortable and looks decent.
My top tags in delicious (name change from the original del.icio.us, so named because a friend of the founder compared finding good links to eating cherries) on my professional account are as follows: socialmedia, reachingstudents, marketing, web2.0, admissions, socialnetworking, usability, content, culture, webdesign.
That's telling. Though I rather dislike that marketing shows up there: I've always resisted that label.
I'm the one usually telling my boss or my equal on the print side (who's a marketer) that we shouldn't do that when he suggests a scheme that smells suspiciously of spamming. We didn't even have an unsubscribe on the marketing email going out of our office until I got there, and our security policies were (emphasis there on the past tense) not very strong on a few points.
Is it that I'm more ethical than my marketing colleague? Possible. I do know that I'm closer to the age of the students we're trying to talk with, and way more tech-savvy than he is. And social media-minded, for that matter.
It's more that I, like many of a similar age and younger, have been totally suspicious of marketing for as long as I've been aware of it. "All Marketers are Liars" is more than a book title to me.
In this vein, social bookmarking has become really valuable to me. I'll more often trust--or at least follow--a link passed to me by a friend or colleague than one being advertised.
So in short, those are the two big draws for me. Social bookmarking is:
In part, I think it has at least a little to do with my iPhone. Before this, I've (generally speaking) had two computers in use at any one time. One for work and one at home. And the work bookmarks went on the work laptop, and the personal bookmarks went on my home computer.
When I started emailing myself links to my work email address from my home computer rather than hauling out my work laptop, though: that's when I knew I was in trouble.
And then the iPhone came along. And believe it or not, it's my main mobile device. When I stopped in on the Learning Design Summer Camp, all I brought was my iPhone. No laptop. And I did fine interacting with the Live Question Tool, and backchanneling via Twitter, and all that.
But to really get the most out of whenever I was websurfing on my iPhone, I needed to be able to access my bookmarks. And putting them "in the cloud" on a social network (so to speak) has done that.
Someone a few weeks ago told me that you can tell a lot about someone by looking at what they bookmark. I'd give that more credence than judging by their shoes--though I don't know a lot about shoes past what's comfortable and looks decent.
My top tags in delicious (name change from the original del.icio.us, so named because a friend of the founder compared finding good links to eating cherries) on my professional account are as follows: socialmedia, reachingstudents, marketing, web2.0, admissions, socialnetworking, usability, content, culture, webdesign.
That's telling. Though I rather dislike that marketing shows up there: I've always resisted that label.
I'm the one usually telling my boss or my equal on the print side (who's a marketer) that we shouldn't do that when he suggests a scheme that smells suspiciously of spamming. We didn't even have an unsubscribe on the marketing email going out of our office until I got there, and our security policies were (emphasis there on the past tense) not very strong on a few points.
Is it that I'm more ethical than my marketing colleague? Possible. I do know that I'm closer to the age of the students we're trying to talk with, and way more tech-savvy than he is. And social media-minded, for that matter.
It's more that I, like many of a similar age and younger, have been totally suspicious of marketing for as long as I've been aware of it. "All Marketers are Liars" is more than a book title to me.
In this vein, social bookmarking has become really valuable to me. I'll more often trust--or at least follow--a link passed to me by a friend or colleague than one being advertised.
So in short, those are the two big draws for me. Social bookmarking is:
- in the cloud
- with my community
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Exercising your knowledge base
Prompted by an excellent post by Shelby Thayer, as well as a meeting today with IntelliResponse, our knowledge base provider, I'd like to dig into what you can find out from and how you can fine-tune a knowledge base.
I personally find it fun and entertaining to track our top ten over time and see how things shift. Yes, I'm a strange bird. I know this and embrace it. But watching "how do I apply" crawl up over inquiries for our academic calendar shows the shift in the year again: that shift in what students and parents are thinking about. Likewise, inquiries for campus tours.
And I was thrilled to see "is Penn State a multicampus system" actually gain enough traction to make it to one of our top tens (the one that people actually type in, rather than browsing the provided questions). Thrilled. Essentially, that means that the message that Penn State is not one place has gotten out there.
But I found, when I looked farther, that "2+2" goes unanswered if someone enters it. Likewise, "campus offer." And these oversights (my own fault, mostly) are pretty egregious.
Now, those not familiar with the Penn State system might say "huh?" But both those questions should likely point to the "is Penn State a multicampus system" answer, or one like it. (2+2 is what we call our system of two years at a smaller campus, followed by two years at a larger one to finish an undergraduate degree; campus offer is an offer of admission to one of our campuses.)
As much help as we've gotten from IntelliReponse (and we've gotten a ton: they've been great), you really need someone who knows the institution and office in question pretty much inside and out to evaluate your answers on a regular basis. I've found miscategorized questions, questions that don't get answered, and quite a few that are really just garbage--often someone with a juvenile sense of humor trying to see what they can get the system to answer to pretty ridiculous questions.
The miscategorized and unanswered worry me the most. That said, we're almost at a 90% response rate, and haven't been up and running too terribly long, so I'm not losing sleep over it. Yet.
I've seen as many misspellings as I think might exist for "Schreyer" (referring to our Honors College), including "shriars," "shryer," and "scyers" (virtually never capitalized, I might add), as well as referral to the aforementioned as "honros colelge." I also know the Penn State system is confusing, but I really wish we could get enough info out there that people wouldn't be so bewildered as to ask "what college is the university campus on?"
I'm also sincerely hoping that "convicted of a felony" does not become a common question to turn up.
Examples aside, paying attention to these and getting them categorized appropriately not only helps your numbers, it helps your community, and that has real results when it comes to customer service. I've found that it's not just prospective students and parents using our knowledge base: it's also Penn State staff and faculty, some of them internal to admissions.
And people are using it all hours of the day, from all around the world. So rather than staying up until it's business hours on our side of the world, a student from Thailand or China can get the answer they need right then. Likewise those that are in our time zone and don't want to pick up the phone or write an email. Not to mention those right at any one of our Penn State campuses.
So in the end, to serve your customer, you have to find out what they want or need and try to deliver it to them in the way that's easiest for them to use, not the easiest for you to manage, although the two often intersect. Keep in touch with your community and serve them well, and you'll find the benefit is enormous.
I personally find it fun and entertaining to track our top ten over time and see how things shift. Yes, I'm a strange bird. I know this and embrace it. But watching "how do I apply" crawl up over inquiries for our academic calendar shows the shift in the year again: that shift in what students and parents are thinking about. Likewise, inquiries for campus tours.
And I was thrilled to see "is Penn State a multicampus system" actually gain enough traction to make it to one of our top tens (the one that people actually type in, rather than browsing the provided questions). Thrilled. Essentially, that means that the message that Penn State is not one place has gotten out there.
But I found, when I looked farther, that "2+2" goes unanswered if someone enters it. Likewise, "campus offer." And these oversights (my own fault, mostly) are pretty egregious.
Now, those not familiar with the Penn State system might say "huh?" But both those questions should likely point to the "is Penn State a multicampus system" answer, or one like it. (2+2 is what we call our system of two years at a smaller campus, followed by two years at a larger one to finish an undergraduate degree; campus offer is an offer of admission to one of our campuses.)
As much help as we've gotten from IntelliReponse (and we've gotten a ton: they've been great), you really need someone who knows the institution and office in question pretty much inside and out to evaluate your answers on a regular basis. I've found miscategorized questions, questions that don't get answered, and quite a few that are really just garbage--often someone with a juvenile sense of humor trying to see what they can get the system to answer to pretty ridiculous questions.
The miscategorized and unanswered worry me the most. That said, we're almost at a 90% response rate, and haven't been up and running too terribly long, so I'm not losing sleep over it. Yet.
I've seen as many misspellings as I think might exist for "Schreyer" (referring to our Honors College), including "shriars," "shryer," and "scyers" (virtually never capitalized, I might add), as well as referral to the aforementioned as "honros colelge." I also know the Penn State system is confusing, but I really wish we could get enough info out there that people wouldn't be so bewildered as to ask "what college is the university campus on?"
I'm also sincerely hoping that "convicted of a felony" does not become a common question to turn up.
Examples aside, paying attention to these and getting them categorized appropriately not only helps your numbers, it helps your community, and that has real results when it comes to customer service. I've found that it's not just prospective students and parents using our knowledge base: it's also Penn State staff and faculty, some of them internal to admissions.
And people are using it all hours of the day, from all around the world. So rather than staying up until it's business hours on our side of the world, a student from Thailand or China can get the answer they need right then. Likewise those that are in our time zone and don't want to pick up the phone or write an email. Not to mention those right at any one of our Penn State campuses.
So in the end, to serve your customer, you have to find out what they want or need and try to deliver it to them in the way that's easiest for them to use, not the easiest for you to manage, although the two often intersect. Keep in touch with your community and serve them well, and you'll find the benefit is enormous.
Friday, August 08, 2008
One-upsmanship (internet culture)
We're creating our own language here at Penn State.
Then again, people in groups together for any significant period of time do. Does anybody outside of Penn State understand the significance of "BS Breakfast"? Probably not: they'd take it for what it sounds like. Which was, of course, the intent. (BS here stands for "brainstorming," for those not in the know.)
"Language" may be an overstatement, but it's at least a code. You're "in" if you know what we're talking about.
I'm part of a lot of these communities with their own codes: Penn State TLT groupie (joke!) is just one of them. And acronyms are just part of these codes.
One community with a ton of community-made acronyms that I'm part of is BPAL enthusiasts (keep in mind, with the following links, that their aesthetic is quite dark--don't be shocked). Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is a Los Angeles-based outfit that creates perfume oils, and it has its own parlance. GC (general catalog), LE (limited edition), CD (Carnaval Diabolique) and the like are pretty common to see in discussions on the topic, as is BPTP (Black Phoenix Trading Post, their sister company, which produces all their non-perfume oil goods).
Other communities of a sort are more based on quotes or references. The video Shannon posted yesterday contains a bunch of these. Whether or not you notice them depends on where you spend your time online. One of the first clips is a re-creation of the Numa Numa guy. There's also "first!" (warning: expletives, immaturity), commonly seen in comments. See also: Internet Commenter Business Meeting (same warning applies, only way more so. plus offensiveness. plus . . . oh, nevermind--it's from College Humor, so you should expect as much), which is basically what would happen if a meeting was run like virtually any popular open forum online.
And, of course, if you haven't yet been hit by a Rick Roll, you haven't been online long enough, and you certainly haven't been taking a look all the way through my links. But that may be just as well, really.
Internet Memes (warning: too many warnings than I can list) attempts to collate all these references. It doesn't hit all of them, but it hits the highlights quite well.
And there's certainly some mocking of that communal language of references. An editorial in the New York Times today, Lord of the Memes, tells us that to be on the cutting edge, we need to be "not only an early adopter, but an early discarder." We should go through these products, services and references before anyone else and then get sick of them and dismiss them with disdain should anyone else bring them up. The article ends with "remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever."
I didn't discover that editorial on my own. In a rare reverse-crossover reference--real life to online rather than the other way around--someone told me about it at lunch and I looked at it on my iPhone when the conversation waned. There's some irony there, believe me.
But this is connectivity. Or the cost of connectivity. Or the advantage of connectivity.
The point is, that too is part of your cultural education. So choose your influences wisely--they will become your references, and part of your language. Maybe I should be a bit more selective in mine. ;)
Then again, people in groups together for any significant period of time do. Does anybody outside of Penn State understand the significance of "BS Breakfast"? Probably not: they'd take it for what it sounds like. Which was, of course, the intent. (BS here stands for "brainstorming," for those not in the know.)
"Language" may be an overstatement, but it's at least a code. You're "in" if you know what we're talking about.
I'm part of a lot of these communities with their own codes: Penn State TLT groupie (joke!) is just one of them. And acronyms are just part of these codes.
One community with a ton of community-made acronyms that I'm part of is BPAL enthusiasts (keep in mind, with the following links, that their aesthetic is quite dark--don't be shocked). Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is a Los Angeles-based outfit that creates perfume oils, and it has its own parlance. GC (general catalog), LE (limited edition), CD (Carnaval Diabolique) and the like are pretty common to see in discussions on the topic, as is BPTP (Black Phoenix Trading Post, their sister company, which produces all their non-perfume oil goods).
Other communities of a sort are more based on quotes or references. The video Shannon posted yesterday contains a bunch of these. Whether or not you notice them depends on where you spend your time online. One of the first clips is a re-creation of the Numa Numa guy. There's also "first!" (warning: expletives, immaturity), commonly seen in comments. See also: Internet Commenter Business Meeting (same warning applies, only way more so. plus offensiveness. plus . . . oh, nevermind--it's from College Humor, so you should expect as much), which is basically what would happen if a meeting was run like virtually any popular open forum online.
And, of course, if you haven't yet been hit by a Rick Roll, you haven't been online long enough, and you certainly haven't been taking a look all the way through my links. But that may be just as well, really.
Internet Memes (warning: too many warnings than I can list) attempts to collate all these references. It doesn't hit all of them, but it hits the highlights quite well.
And there's certainly some mocking of that communal language of references. An editorial in the New York Times today, Lord of the Memes, tells us that to be on the cutting edge, we need to be "not only an early adopter, but an early discarder." We should go through these products, services and references before anyone else and then get sick of them and dismiss them with disdain should anyone else bring them up. The article ends with "remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever."
I didn't discover that editorial on my own. In a rare reverse-crossover reference--real life to online rather than the other way around--someone told me about it at lunch and I looked at it on my iPhone when the conversation waned. There's some irony there, believe me.
But this is connectivity. Or the cost of connectivity. Or the advantage of connectivity.
The point is, that too is part of your cultural education. So choose your influences wisely--they will become your references, and part of your language. Maybe I should be a bit more selective in mine. ;)
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Serendipity and complications
Amit Gupta wrote about social serendipity today, and it feels like we've got a landslide of that going on here at Penn State, though much closer to home than his examples (he's the guy behind Photojojo, for those not familiar).
As my follow list on Twitter grows, I'm finding more and more amazing, knowledgeable people out there who "get it," in the words of one of those folks, who it just so happens I got to meet for lunch today.
And the give-and-take of that community, online and off, has been amazing. You end up tapping into the collective knowledge of a ton of experts, as long as you're willing to wait for an answer.
This has happened to me before, in other forums and communities, but this is as close to home as it's come. And while it's really cool to have connections wherever you might need them--an online shout-out for info about Buffalo a couple months ago turned up online friends that I didn't know were out there, for example--having them right in your backyard is amazing.
I mean, hey. Impromptu lunches are a possibility, even.
But it does cost attention. Design for Emotion and Flow describes this really well in the second paragraph of the article. The rest is no less important, but it's unrelated to my point here.
There's a point of balance that I think most of us are still trying to find in this newfound community:
Some of this, no one has talked about at much length. But I'm feeling it out there. And it's something we all have to work through. Personally, I worked out some of this by dividing my Twitter presence into personal and professional. Folks I meet at conferences may get one or the other depending on the context.
Some folks have made parts of this problem quite plain: Shannon posted two videos to explain why she might "unfollow" someone on Twitter. Other bits of this are way more unspoken.
It's exciting to me that these new modes of being create new problems, bizarrely enough. It means we're progressing, expanding. Perhaps not in a geologic time sense, but significant nonetheless.
I'm looking forward to solving these problems for myself and seeing what they mean on the grander scale, especially as re-localization becomes a trend.
As my follow list on Twitter grows, I'm finding more and more amazing, knowledgeable people out there who "get it," in the words of one of those folks, who it just so happens I got to meet for lunch today.
And the give-and-take of that community, online and off, has been amazing. You end up tapping into the collective knowledge of a ton of experts, as long as you're willing to wait for an answer.
This has happened to me before, in other forums and communities, but this is as close to home as it's come. And while it's really cool to have connections wherever you might need them--an online shout-out for info about Buffalo a couple months ago turned up online friends that I didn't know were out there, for example--having them right in your backyard is amazing.
I mean, hey. Impromptu lunches are a possibility, even.
But it does cost attention. Design for Emotion and Flow describes this really well in the second paragraph of the article. The rest is no less important, but it's unrelated to my point here.
There's a point of balance that I think most of us are still trying to find in this newfound community:
- how to give and take equally to one's network;
- how to enjoy oneself and others evenly;
- how to find a sympathetic ear to vent without alienating others;
- where "no invitation [is] required" and crashing the party;
- expansion of connections and input overload;
- "value" of contribution and "just being yourself."
Some of this, no one has talked about at much length. But I'm feeling it out there. And it's something we all have to work through. Personally, I worked out some of this by dividing my Twitter presence into personal and professional. Folks I meet at conferences may get one or the other depending on the context.
Some folks have made parts of this problem quite plain: Shannon posted two videos to explain why she might "unfollow" someone on Twitter. Other bits of this are way more unspoken.
It's exciting to me that these new modes of being create new problems, bizarrely enough. It means we're progressing, expanding. Perhaps not in a geologic time sense, but significant nonetheless.
I'm looking forward to solving these problems for myself and seeing what they mean on the grander scale, especially as re-localization becomes a trend.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Facebook and recruiting, initial thoughts
Wish I had more time to address this today, but this one will have to be quick. Keep in mind most of this is supposition.
Sometime during their search, I bet students looking at colleges and universities are likely to tap into Facebook. While this is still theory, it's supported by others such as James Howell, in his entry a few days ago.
Unfortunately, right now I don't expect that Penn State Admissions will be headed in that direction just yet, despite the presentation I made this past spring at our Penn State Admissions conference. The basic gist of that presentation was a suggestion to use Facebook Pages rather than Groups or Profiles for an "official" presence there. The "fan of" dynamic is just easier to deal with. That aside.
So for those students who choose to take a quick peek via Facebook into the ins and outs of a university, they'll probably breeze through the groups, maybe take a look at some interesting people.
If I were to give some advice to that student, it would be: don't judge us by a quick run-through, by our more popular groups, or even by our more active students on Facebook, necessarily. Take a moment to search for faculty. Look through staff like advisers, if you can find them. Look through the clubs and organizations with an official presence there. And better yet, contact people. Ask the question you've been wanting to of that student leader, that professor whose department you're interested in, especially if they've been active recently.
The head of the Undergraduate Writing Center, Jon Olson, resisted getting onto Facebook for years. The peer tutors he works with created a "Get Jon Olson on Facebook" (or some such title) group. He finally relented recently and has been posting enthusiastically since: status, photos, even video.
It's a hurdle for faculty sometimes, but I think most of them find that it's super easy (and maybe even fun). But it does present some interesting quandaries: do I provide advising for the student that contacts me on Facebook, or do I refer her/him to email? That sort of thing. And while they all make their own decisions on that end, I would hope they would at least answer you. So reach out.
Social networks are for interacting, after all.
Sometime during their search, I bet students looking at colleges and universities are likely to tap into Facebook. While this is still theory, it's supported by others such as James Howell, in his entry a few days ago.
Unfortunately, right now I don't expect that Penn State Admissions will be headed in that direction just yet, despite the presentation I made this past spring at our Penn State Admissions conference. The basic gist of that presentation was a suggestion to use Facebook Pages rather than Groups or Profiles for an "official" presence there. The "fan of" dynamic is just easier to deal with. That aside.
So for those students who choose to take a quick peek via Facebook into the ins and outs of a university, they'll probably breeze through the groups, maybe take a look at some interesting people.
If I were to give some advice to that student, it would be: don't judge us by a quick run-through, by our more popular groups, or even by our more active students on Facebook, necessarily. Take a moment to search for faculty. Look through staff like advisers, if you can find them. Look through the clubs and organizations with an official presence there. And better yet, contact people. Ask the question you've been wanting to of that student leader, that professor whose department you're interested in, especially if they've been active recently.
The head of the Undergraduate Writing Center, Jon Olson, resisted getting onto Facebook for years. The peer tutors he works with created a "Get Jon Olson on Facebook" (or some such title) group. He finally relented recently and has been posting enthusiastically since: status, photos, even video.
It's a hurdle for faculty sometimes, but I think most of them find that it's super easy (and maybe even fun). But it does present some interesting quandaries: do I provide advising for the student that contacts me on Facebook, or do I refer her/him to email? That sort of thing. And while they all make their own decisions on that end, I would hope they would at least answer you. So reach out.
Social networks are for interacting, after all.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Geology and tech: the end is the beginning is the end
I think I prefaced over this last weekend that I wasn't going to have a theme with this entry in mind.
I started college as a geology major. Somewhat obviously, I didn't stick with it, but it's still a great interest of mine.
Some of you know and some of you don't that I have an MFA in Creative Writing. So a lot of my so-called "personal" reading is actually keeping up on that end of things for me.
And to combine both interests, I recently read Threshold, by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's very much in a genre I used to write--a pseudo-magical realism, if magical realism in literature could be divorced from its Latin American roots (which it can't be, really). It starts out gritty, modern, and then wanders gently into science, myth, urban legend, and a particular superstitious nature you find in the south.
But my main point in addressing the experience of reading this book was the following passage, voiced by our narrator, Chance, who was in college as a geology major at the time:
I'm learning to read in a larger sense than I've ever read so far. And to some extent this was an evolution: I did, after all, start on email quite awhile ago, then moved to forums, then Livejournal, then Blogger, then Facebook/MySpace, then Twitter, and Google Reader and the big feeds (Slashdot, BoingBoing, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, etc) got stuck in there somewhere too (and I may be skipping steps, of course: on the multimedia end, Flickr and YouTube are two examples, but I'm talking about text here, in the main).
But in terms of an educated and informed community that I can have face-to-face contact with and shares my academic/work interests, this is a first (which might be, I might add, because my college/grad work had little to do with technology). Not just casual friends giving updates on their lives, but I get a touch of friendliness and personality alongside the theory.
So I get these fantastic ideas as well as the context surrounding them: the problems that were faced to prompt them to come up with these ideas. It's good stuff.
But larger than that, and for a longer period of time, I've been learning to read people and their interaction with technology; learning to read the evolution of society due to technology's influence; learning to read how technology is changing our minds and changing our spaces.
I'm reading the future. I've already learned to read the past.
So between geology and tech, I feel like I've got the span of things.1 And while this current tech iteration is more minute than an atom in a drop in a bucket in terms of geologic time, it's monumental for us living in it.
And I get to read it. And better yet, write some of it.
[1]Oroboros.
I started college as a geology major. Somewhat obviously, I didn't stick with it, but it's still a great interest of mine.
Some of you know and some of you don't that I have an MFA in Creative Writing. So a lot of my so-called "personal" reading is actually keeping up on that end of things for me.
And to combine both interests, I recently read Threshold, by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's very much in a genre I used to write--a pseudo-magical realism, if magical realism in literature could be divorced from its Latin American roots (which it can't be, really). It starts out gritty, modern, and then wanders gently into science, myth, urban legend, and a particular superstitious nature you find in the south.
But my main point in addressing the experience of reading this book was the following passage, voiced by our narrator, Chance, who was in college as a geology major at the time:
It's this urge that drives me, strangely enough, in my current work as well."Can you think of anything else I could do with my life that could ever possibly be half this splendid, half this important? I'm learning to read, Deke, and not just the handful of things men have been around long enough to write down. The history of the whole damned planet is written in rocks, just lying there waiting for us to learn how to read the words." - p. 177
I'm learning to read in a larger sense than I've ever read so far. And to some extent this was an evolution: I did, after all, start on email quite awhile ago, then moved to forums, then Livejournal, then Blogger, then Facebook/MySpace, then Twitter, and Google Reader and the big feeds (Slashdot, BoingBoing, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, etc) got stuck in there somewhere too (and I may be skipping steps, of course: on the multimedia end, Flickr and YouTube are two examples, but I'm talking about text here, in the main).
But in terms of an educated and informed community that I can have face-to-face contact with and shares my academic/work interests, this is a first (which might be, I might add, because my college/grad work had little to do with technology). Not just casual friends giving updates on their lives, but I get a touch of friendliness and personality alongside the theory.
So I get these fantastic ideas as well as the context surrounding them: the problems that were faced to prompt them to come up with these ideas. It's good stuff.
But larger than that, and for a longer period of time, I've been learning to read people and their interaction with technology; learning to read the evolution of society due to technology's influence; learning to read how technology is changing our minds and changing our spaces.
I'm reading the future. I've already learned to read the past.
So between geology and tech, I feel like I've got the span of things.1 And while this current tech iteration is more minute than an atom in a drop in a bucket in terms of geologic time, it's monumental for us living in it.
And I get to read it. And better yet, write some of it.
[1]Oroboros.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Spend a Summer Day notes
Writing my first post-a-day blog post in August on my iPhone during gaps in a Spend a Summer Day.
SASD, as we know it and love it for short, is a day-long open house event held at all Penn State campuses. At Penn State University Park, due simply to demand, it's held on six days: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday spanning two weeks, usually bridging July and August.
August 1st, incidentally, is also the day our new application for admission goes live. Given that and the fact that EVERYONE in the office helps during SASD (our Executive Director was running between the HUB and Schwab Auditorium on Monday trying to fix a problem), to say this time of year is stressful is an understatment.
I've been staffing our table at the information fair during the event pretty regularly so far, and I've noted a difference in style between me and some of my colleagues. Some colleagues push our brochures, despite all the information in a few of them being available online.
If I can make a generalization, these tend to be the older admissions folks who are more used to using the brochures. Others offer options: you could grab this AP brochure to see what credit you'd get for what score on which test, or you can look it up on our website. (for my own commentary, why waste the paper and cost us the money for four scores they could easily look up?)
I've also found that when I offer my AIM handle to students I'm talking to, they get super-enthusiastic. And even their parents start telling me I'm the last word in customer service: above and beyond and all that.
So while this doesn't affect the larger conversation of the newest modes of electronic communication, it does tell me that some folks are picking them up no problem (students, to generalize), some folks are slowly picking them up or recognizing their value (parents), and some folks will print out webpages if the brochure is discontinued (the non-technologically-savvy).
But the thing is, we have to serve them all. Penn State is committed to serving the Commonwealth, and any one of the above could either become a student here or at least interface with the University in some way.
So how do we serve all, even those not comfortable with technology?
I think the idea of engaging the early adopters is a good one (apologies that I don't remember who suggested it right now), and certainly paves the way to spreading the word in a grassroots fashion.
Something else I'd like to explore further, perhaps in a later post, is how technology can help us realize cost savings and green initiatives without leaving anyone behind, especially considering the widespread nature of Penn State's mission.
SASD, as we know it and love it for short, is a day-long open house event held at all Penn State campuses. At Penn State University Park, due simply to demand, it's held on six days: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday spanning two weeks, usually bridging July and August.
August 1st, incidentally, is also the day our new application for admission goes live. Given that and the fact that EVERYONE in the office helps during SASD (our Executive Director was running between the HUB and Schwab Auditorium on Monday trying to fix a problem), to say this time of year is stressful is an understatment.
I've been staffing our table at the information fair during the event pretty regularly so far, and I've noted a difference in style between me and some of my colleagues. Some colleagues push our brochures, despite all the information in a few of them being available online.
If I can make a generalization, these tend to be the older admissions folks who are more used to using the brochures. Others offer options: you could grab this AP brochure to see what credit you'd get for what score on which test, or you can look it up on our website. (for my own commentary, why waste the paper and cost us the money for four scores they could easily look up?)
I've also found that when I offer my AIM handle to students I'm talking to, they get super-enthusiastic. And even their parents start telling me I'm the last word in customer service: above and beyond and all that.
So while this doesn't affect the larger conversation of the newest modes of electronic communication, it does tell me that some folks are picking them up no problem (students, to generalize), some folks are slowly picking them up or recognizing their value (parents), and some folks will print out webpages if the brochure is discontinued (the non-technologically-savvy).
But the thing is, we have to serve them all. Penn State is committed to serving the Commonwealth, and any one of the above could either become a student here or at least interface with the University in some way.
So how do we serve all, even those not comfortable with technology?
I think the idea of engaging the early adopters is a good one (apologies that I don't remember who suggested it right now), and certainly paves the way to spreading the word in a grassroots fashion.
Something else I'd like to explore further, perhaps in a later post, is how technology can help us realize cost savings and green initiatives without leaving anyone behind, especially considering the widespread nature of Penn State's mission.
August challenge
Taking up Cole's challenge of a post a day for August, according to the rules outlined there. Me and Daniel and Shannon so far, as far as I've seen.
Love to say more on the matter, but I've got a meeting in a second here. One thing to share before I go: I'm reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations and also was fed a video of Shirky talking about his book by someone in my network (the section about flash mobs is especially engaging: "nothing says dictatorship like arresting people eating ice cream," for example).
And the commentary I'd like to add is that this is, to some extent, what we're doing. Someone has an idea, puts the call out there to see if anyone's interested, and people throw their hats into the ring, cooperatively arranging taxonomies (er, folksonomies, really) to tag and aggregate content, resulting in a pool of information and new ideas being created.
It's what I've seen in action growing slowly over a year, accelerated by the TLT Symposium and Twitter, sparked further by TweetMeets and BS Breakfasts and Bookclub, and burst into full flame (as far as I can tell) in Learning Design Summer Camp here at Penn State. And I'm convinced that this is the way to do it.
But it's happening this way (or similarly, at least) elsewhere: EduWeb happened recently, and people were Tweeting and videostreaming (alternate) and liveblogging sessions, and it was almost as good as being there, minus a significant amount of in-person networking and fun. But it can be done. I've been caught up in this plus Jeffrey Veen's idea of an audience ombudsman for conferences and trying to figure out how this works in purely-online communities.
And it really goes back to the idea of an alpha user, I think. But the thing is that we've got a bunch of them here at Penn State.
More to develop on this idea. But it will have to hold: I've got a meeting for our campus tour podcast project coming up.
Love to say more on the matter, but I've got a meeting in a second here. One thing to share before I go: I'm reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations and also was fed a video of Shirky talking about his book by someone in my network (the section about flash mobs is especially engaging: "nothing says dictatorship like arresting people eating ice cream," for example).
And the commentary I'd like to add is that this is, to some extent, what we're doing. Someone has an idea, puts the call out there to see if anyone's interested, and people throw their hats into the ring, cooperatively arranging taxonomies (er, folksonomies, really) to tag and aggregate content, resulting in a pool of information and new ideas being created.
It's what I've seen in action growing slowly over a year, accelerated by the TLT Symposium and Twitter, sparked further by TweetMeets and BS Breakfasts and Bookclub, and burst into full flame (as far as I can tell) in Learning Design Summer Camp here at Penn State. And I'm convinced that this is the way to do it.
But it's happening this way (or similarly, at least) elsewhere: EduWeb happened recently, and people were Tweeting and videostreaming (alternate) and liveblogging sessions, and it was almost as good as being there, minus a significant amount of in-person networking and fun. But it can be done. I've been caught up in this plus Jeffrey Veen's idea of an audience ombudsman for conferences and trying to figure out how this works in purely-online communities.
And it really goes back to the idea of an alpha user, I think. But the thing is that we've got a bunch of them here at Penn State.
More to develop on this idea. But it will have to hold: I've got a meeting for our campus tour podcast project coming up.
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