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Category: SOCIAL MEDIA & IT

How I learned to blog

Published May 2, 2010 by Jo Jordan

What I promise

27 September 2009

I think I have kept my promise

flowing motion is approaching its 2nd birthday – well near enough for me to think about its party.

It deserves a party.  Blogging has been fun – more fun than I thought it would be.

From the outset, flowing motion was my miscellaneous blog.  I had purposeful projects elsewhere.

This is where I posted notes on books I was reading, and things I was thinking about, as they came up and without much of a plan.

flowing motion rapidly became my best blog.  It blossomed as I followed what I love.  And as I followed what I love, it blossomed too.

Two years’ ago, my preoccupations were

1.  What is positive psychology and how will working positively change my core trade – work & organizational psychology? (I can’t say occupational psychology because that is a protected label now in the UK).

2.  What is the mytho-poetic of management and can a strait-laced work & organizational psychologists wander around the corporate world talking about poetry?

3.  What is social media?  What are the hacks for using it efficiently?  How will social media change the way we work and in turn, the work of work & organizational psychologists?

4.  Why hasn’t the thinking of complexity theorists made great inroads into management practice?  Or, have I been missing something?

These themes may feel disparate but I knew enough about psychology and management to know that they have a common core.  What was missing was some plain-language renditions.

So, I read. And I wrote

And I wrote often.  It is so much fun writing knowing that occasionally somebody reads what we write – voluntarily – not because I told them to.

And I watched my stats and I set goals.  I was reminded of the variability of performance metrics.  It is good to apply our psychology to our own ventures.  And I noticed myself become more fluent.  Gradually, I began to explain the complicated notions of my field in simpler language.

After two years

I have well over 1000 pages.  Some are badly written.  Some repeat what I said in earlier posts.  I have enough material for a book or two – if I cared to write one.

Next

Because blogs are basically a chronicle record – organized by dates (despite pages, categories and tags), it is time to organize the work of the last two years and see what might emerge from the effort.

I’ve created a server on my desktop, downloaded a copy of WordPress, and ‘slurped’ my old posts.  I have an index in an excel file and I need to start printing, discarding, organizing and rewriting.

I think I will experiment with a magazine format or wiki, in lieu of a an ebook.  We’ll see.  Content first.

Will the effort produce worthwhile insight and clarity for a noobe to the field?

Carrying on

And in the meantime, I write on.  I chase my metrics, and set new goals for my content.

My blog leads me.  It shows me the path.   It allows me to truly achieve that terrifying feat suggested by positive organizational scholars:

build  a bridge while I walk on it!

Hopes

Next for me is carving out the work & organizational psychology of  social mediated business and business in social media companies.  Next for me is thinking of work & organizational psychology as design.  Next for me is integrating the new world of psychology with sound principles but at the same time jettisoning the ridiculous adherence to positivism – not to be confused with positive scholarship.

Time for a new world.   Time for another exciting two years.

Original Manifesto

I love working. I love doing my work. I like the idea of work. I like what we do with work. I love our audaciousness in flying aeroplanes and operating on hearts. I love our gritty planting of crops each season. I love the optimism of a youngster looking for her first job. I love the depth of knowledge of a person who has tended his craft for decade after decade.

I’ve made working my living. Not only do I put in the hours, as a work psychologist, that’s all I do. I think, live and breathe work.

This blog is not going to be organized. There is nothing in particular that I want to achieve. I am just going to blog useful tidbits that I find out about work from day-to-day. Or that I remember in response to something that I read, hear or do. I hope you find it useful. Use what you like. Give me a shout if anything is wrong. Offer a guest post if you have something to say.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

26 June 2008

I’ve been running this blog now for just over 7 months.  I am thinking now to focus it a little around a simple project

“what it means to train yourself as a positive psychologist to work in the 21st century with managers and organizations who developed in the 20th century”

  • What are the challenges of the positive psychology?
  • How do we do positive psychology at work?
  • Is there a positive HR?
  • Is there a positive management?
  • What are the challenges of the 21st century?
  • How is positive psychology influenced by these changes?
  • How does positive psychology contribute to a positive 21st century?

I may re-jig this as I go and I would be happy for comments – on the blog and on the journey to become a positive work psychologists in the 21st century.

5 January 2009

I am looking at what I said 6 months ago and I think I have answered many of these questions.  I’ve been feeling for a long time that I need to organize my posts and my good friend and web solutions provider, Paul Imre, agrees.

In the last few weeks, I’ve got into the numbers game wanting to drive my hit rate up.  Oddly, at the same time I achieved a little more interest in my positive posts which have gradually overtaken ‘law of attraction’, ‘batman’, “am I good looking” [a lesson in SEO for me’ and the recession.  I’m pleased about that.  And I am pleased to be gettting a lot more comments.  Oddly my page rank has dropped though that might be because I cleaned up some old blogs.

So where to next? Ned, loyal writing coach, thinks I should concentrate on what ordinary people want from work.  He makes the point that ordinary people don’t associate positive with work.  Yes, that is why the positive movement in management and psychology is growing.  We like our work and we don’t see why you shouldn’t too.  In fact I am outraged that isn’t the case.  I believe it should be possible for everyone to carve out a career they love and any unhappines should both strictly temporary.   So maybe that is what I should write about.  The question will be whether I can shuck the habits of academic and bureaucratic writing.

There is also the question of the recession.  It seems that more and more people think it will be “deep”.  The jury is out on its length.  Probably only a minority believe that it really challenges the economic system as we know it.  They are outweighed right now by people who have faith in Obama’s ability to lead us to a fairer world order.  Navigating our way as individuals will  be very hard without a good grasp of what is going on and how it is reshaped the opportunities we had and offering new opportunities we had never imagined.

So maybe I am going with Ned.  Then, I will need a much better layout and even a forum.  Hmm, don’t want to abandon the page rank that I’ve got.

And should I remain anonymous?  I know that is frowned on but there were reasons at the beginning and really people should read for content!  But if I am am offering advice rather than hust sorting out my thoughts, then people should know who I am.

Nothing like writing to clarify ideas.  So decision made.  I am going with Ned. I probably need an elementary game plan.  It won’t be much, but it will be more than I had when I started 14 months ago.  And people who stop by, thanks. Today, first working day of 2009 was a record day for hits here.  Really, thanks.

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Noobe gets started on Aviary’s free online image editor

Published April 16, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Graphic Design

No, this is not an advert but it is a blog of acknowledgment.  I had some graphic work to do that needed more power than the Paint program that comes with Windows and with Paint.net that can be downloaded free.

Aviary

I’ve been exploring Aviary, which drove me up the wall ,but since I have learned to use it, I think it is fair to blog what I learned as a vote of thanks and to help the next noobe.

Free and online

Aviary is a a free, online powerful graphics editor.

Modularized and beautiful looking

Aviary is broken up into modules named after birds which is one of its irritating features ~ I could never remember which was which. It’s beautiful to look at, these are graphic designers after all, and it certainly seems that we can make beautiful creations with it.  You can even sell your creations through them.

Getting started

But first, we noobes have to get started.  After you have joined up (all free and painless), you will find a set of modules.  I used 4.

Aviary’s Modules

Raven is the vector image editor

Vector images, for a noobe are “not raster” and “not pixel” based.  Basically, you slap down shapes and push-pull and overlay them to make sytlized images.  Once you are done, you can save on Aviary for later use and export in various formats.

Pheonix is an image editor

Once again, assuming that I am speaking one-noobe-to-another, an image is a .jpg or .png file.  You are used to these.  These are files that you saved when you exported your vector image.

You need to understand two things here.

  • First, when you save your vector image, it is now an image.  You can’t go back to treating it as vector and push-and-pull its shapes around.
  • Second, you use .png formats if you want transparent backgrounds.  .jpg formats save solid backgrounds.

Peacock is an effects editor

Someone kindly wrote out a tutorial for me.  Basically, you pick a shape, generate some kind of image, and edit it with various effects.  I didn’t use it but I put the tutorial on the Aviary forum.  Hope you can find it.  It’s tough to find stuff there ~ no tags.

Image Markup

The image markup is separate from the image editor.  I used it to bring in images (.png and .jpg) for cropping and rotating.  I could save temporary versions of my images on Aviary and my hard drive.  Then when I was done, I selected Advanced Editor and was transferred automatically to Phoenix, the image editor, without losing my image.

So what could a noobe like me achieve in Aviary?

Time-sink

First, be warned that this is a time-sink.  This is a great program to learn if you are trapped somewhere, like an airport, with a WiFi connection and nothing to do.  If you are a rank noobe, budget on 30-100 hours before you achieve very much at all.

Get your head around what the modules do for you

Second, think like this.

  • Draw in Raven/vector editor by adding, pushing and pulling shapes.  Save as .jpg and .png.
  • Crop and flip in Image Markup.
  • Mashup images and add text in Image Editor (Phoenix).

Hard learned tips

Overlap images.  There is one variation to this pattern.  If your images will overlap each other, you will need to treat them as shapes in the vector image where you can push them to bottom or top (as you can in Office).  Or you will have to change the order of your layers in the Image Editor.

Delete backgrounds.  Another useful tip is how to delete the background of an image (.jpg). Bring an image into Image editor, pick the wand, then go to Edit/Cut.  The edges might be a bit rough but you can save now as .png with a transparent background and mash the cut-out bit in with other shapes or backgrounds.

Getting canvas size exactly right. When I had to mashup shapes with canvases of specific-sizes, then I found it useful to reduce an image to the right size, save it, and bring it onto a fresh transparent canvas of the right size.

Delete parts of images.  Another useful edit was to bring in an image, use the color box (bottom left) and color picker (eyedropper) to match the color, go to square and enter the number manually and draw matching colored boxes over what I wanted to wipe out (like unwanted text).

What did this noobe achieve?

I found the program a little temperamental and could never figure out whether “it was me” or “it”.  That said, I managed to produce a bird and edit professionally made vector images that I wanted to mashup with some text and another back ground.

Tutorials needed – let’s put them up on Aviary

If you do take this on, it would be nice to keep some notes and put a noobes tutorial on Aviary.

We all need an online graphic editor that we can use occasionally!

If you are stuck in an airport this weekend waiting for the volcano to die down, here’s your chance!  Learn to draw online!  You will more than pass the time.

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It’s over! Not even cats are interested in mice, mazes and cheese. They haz an iPad!

Published April 14, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Our changing times: interaction has got so easy the cats get it!

This is how much we have changed.

Baby Boomers:  Looked for the cheese.

Gen X:  Ask: who moved my cheese?

Gen Y: Looks for there mouse

Gen i:  Is polite to their elders and asks “What is a mouse?”

But you will have to be old to follow these references.  At least 2 years old anyway.

  • A year ago, we noticed kids automatically touch screens expecting them to be interactive.
  • Last week, YouTube trended a two year old ‘got’ the iPad within 30 seconds.

There is something profound in this sequence.  Cat’s play with iPad’s.  Mice? Cheese?

I suppose I am a little relieved.  I live in England and English cheeses are really good.  Cheeses are made to be enjoyed at the end of a long day in the company of friends. So maybe changes in the world order improve my lifestyle.  More cheese for me.

But change the world order has done.  The game of mice in mazes hunting cheese is over.  Not even the cats are interested now in mice, mazes and cheese.  They haz an iPad!

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Ushahidi is working!

Published March 16, 2010 by Jo Jordan

TEMPORARY POST:  I couldn’t post this on the forum and it is late.  So here it is for people working in the next few hours.

FIRST, please note that I am no expert.  Just stubborn and two days of searching found me this post.  I thought I had tried this before but evidently something has changed and this time it has worked.

PREVIOUS ISSUES

1.  The map on my main page was not showing incidents.
2.  I was getting cache errors when I used tabs to approve/verify incidents.

FIX

1.  The problem is in the .htaccess file as usual
2.  I found this [url= http://webdevnetwork.co.uk/category/kohana/] link[/url] . It links through to other sites. Coders might like to check this out for us.
3.  Precipitating Condition:  Kohana running on some versions of Apache servers
4.  Quoting now from the above link.

No input file specified’ – Kohana/htaccess Error
November 1st, 2009

When using .htaccess to remove index.php from urls in Kohana sometimes you may find yourself getting a “No Input File Specified” error. This had my head in a pickle for quite some time until I found this post.
If PHP is running on Apache as a CGI module then Apache won’t support “PATH_INFO” which is used inside Kohana (CodeIgniter too).
There’s a simple fix, edit the .htaccess file and replace the last line like so:

#RewriteRule .* index.php/$0 [PT,L]
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?kohana_uri=$1 [L]

STEPS

1.  For other noobes lik me, first make a copy of your existing .htaccess file with a different name such as original.htaccess.  (Just in case you want to go back to it.)

2  Open the .htaccess file in Wordpad (not Notepad which lays out in a continuous thread.)  Be careful. Detail matters.

3. Read down the file and note that our .htaccess has some stuff after this Rewrite rule.  We are not working on our last line. Look For the Rewrite rule similar to the first line of the couplet above.

4. Now edit. Add a # to the existing Rewrite Rule to turn it into a comment.

5.  Then cut and paste the second line of from the couplet above.  It should look like the couplet above.

6.  Save and run.

IMPROVEMENT?

I hope so.  A lot of my bugs a gone. I can see a few left but I can see my incidents on the front page (yay) and I am basically functional.

GOOGLE MAPS

I don’t know if this will work without changing the API.  I had already replaced mine.

I am running on ‘localhost’ so when I went to get a Google API, I typed in http://localhost/mysitename.

Again for noobes, on my own computer mysitename is at c://wamp/www/mysitename and all the Ushahidi files are in that folder.  e.g., c://wamp/www/mysitename/application.

COPY OF MY .HTACCESS

# Turn on URL rewriting
RewriteEngine On

# Installation directory
RewriteBase /mysitename/

# Protect application and system files from being viewed
RewriteRule ^(application|modules|system) – [F,L]

# Prevent schedulers from being accessed remotely
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^127.0.0.1$
RewriteRule ^.*/scheduler/.*$ – [F,L]

# Allow any files or directories that exist to be displayed directly
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

`# Rewrite all other URLs to index.php/URL`
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$0 [PT,L]
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?kohana_uri=$1 [L]

# Protect the htaccess from being viewed
<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all`
</Files>

# Don’t show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory.
Options -Indexes
[/code]

SUMMARY: THINGS TO CHECK

The problem is caused by Kohana running on some Apache servers and is fixed by modifying a Rewrite rule in your .htaccess file.

Check Lines 2, 4 from top are correct (carefully) and edit lines 8&9 from the bottom (not counting blank lines).

MORE HELP & SOLIDARITY

It’s close to midnight here.  I’ll check in first thing in the morning to see if I can help anyone who is still stuck.

THANKS

Thanks eyedol for your quick response to our tweet today and to Charlie for working together this evening!  Hope to see your on Dreamhost soon!

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Step 3: Get Ushahidi going in your community – install the code (about 1 hour)

Published March 11, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Ushahidi

Ushahidi is the white label for Crowdsourcing Crisis Information.  It was originally thrown together to track electoral violence in Kenya in 2008 and its founders have made it available for all communities.

6 broadbrush steps for installing Ushahidi

I’m documenting what I am doing to get it up and running in non-geeky language – and hopefully clearly – but I am writing as I go. You are about to catch up with me.

Step 1: Download WAMP to turn your PC into a local server.  The instructions are on LifeHacker.  The rest of you computer is unaffected.

Step2: Get the code from Ushahidi

Step3: Install Ushahidi (looks complicated but an hour’s uninterrupted concentration will do you)

What you have already: WAMP

  • At this point you should have WAMP running on your computer.  You should see a little half-shell in your systems tray.  You will also have discovered by now that you must left click and select “Start all services” to make it work.   Go to Localhost at the top and you should see the wikipedia that you created.

What you have already: Ushahidi Code

  • You also downloaded the Ushahidi code.  Where is it?  Maybe you created a directory under c://wamp/www/ushahidi ?

Prepping: Set up a sub-directory in your server root directory

  • We will begin by making another directory to contain all the code for the website.  Think of your domain name and create a directory c://wamp/www/yourdomainname

Prepping: Create a database

  • This is the similar to the database you set up for your wiki.
  • Left click the WAMP ‘shell’ icon in the system tray and go to localhost.  Select phpmyadmin.
  • Look for the input form in the middle that says ‘Create a new database’.  Enter “yourdomainname” with the quotes.
  • Look for “privileges”. Select.  Check the privileges for both “root” and the “username” you set up for yourself when you made your wiki are to yes.
  • Check your database list. You should see yourdomainname there.
  • To keep yourself working smoothly, write down the name of the database, your username and your password.  These will be different from the name and password you get into the Ushahidi website.  (Think website and database as two separate places that speak to each other.)

Prepping:  Unzip the Ushahidi files

  • Now unzip the Ushahidi files into the directory it is in, or, into c://wamp/www/yourdomainname. It doesn’t matter where for now as long as you remember where you sent them.
  • This should take 10-20 seconds.
  • Now copy everything in the sub-directory Ushahidi into c://wamp/www/yourdomainname.  In geek-language, we are putting the code in the root directory.

Prepping: Check your PHP extensions

  • Before you go on, there are four little things you must check on you WAMP server. Left click on the shell, go to PHP settings and then PHP extensions.  Go down the list and make sure the following are “on”.  Mine are marked with an arrow: php_curl, php_mbstring, php_gdr, and php_mcrypt.

Prepping: Thinking about you website users

  • What is the name of your website?  Maybe it is the same as yourdomainname or maybe the label at the top left of the first page will be different?  You can have two names or you can use the same one.  This is choice about communication not a requirement within the Ushahidi platform.
  • What is the tagline for your website?
  • What email address will you use on the front page of the website for people to contact you?  It is visible so maybe set up a fresh gmail account.  You may have a second password now.  Write them all down!

Installing Ushahidi

  • At last! You are ready to install. Go to your browser (Firefox) and type http://localhost/yourdomainname/installer
  • Choose “basic” and we are going to fill in some information.
  • Ushahidi will have found yourdomainname and entered it for you.  If you want to change it (see 5 bullets up), then do that now.
  • Enter your tagline (required).
  • Enter your (very) public email address.
  • Now enter the name of your database (that you set up above).  And the username you use for databases and your database password (all set up on Step 1).

And you are done!

  • You should see a fresh installation of Ushahidi in your browser at http://localhost/yourdomainname.
  • Go to http://localhost/yourdomainname/admin (remember this for future login’s).
  • Enter admin for user and password (don’t forget these.  Why not write them down with the usernames and passwords for your email and your database?)
  • Well done!  You can explore now.  Don’t change anything yet.  You are tired and you might make a mess.  I did and had to pull everything off and start again.  Now is the time to think about what your new site is for and what you want it to accomplish.

HELP:  If you have got stuck, leave me a comment.  Within the limits of my competence, I’m happy to try to help.

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Step 2: Get Ushahidi going in your community – get the code

Published March 11, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Now the easy bit.  Get the code for Ushahidi.  Five minutes work and the possibility of a day or two elapsed time while you wait for the link.

  1. Go to the Ushahidi download website.
  2. Email Ushahidi saying why you want to use the platform.
  3. When they send you a link, download a zip file and store it wherever you store downloads.  Alternatively go to the C:\wamp/www directory that you made when you set up your local host, create a directory called c:\wamp/www/ushahidi and store the zip file there.

All done.

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Step 1: Get Ushahidi going in your community – turn your pc into a localhost

Published March 11, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Step-by-step instructions for setting up Ushahidi for your own community

I am setting up Ushahidi for a community and recording what I do step-by-step in the hope that other non-geeks like myself will find it easier to follow.

Ushahidi

USHAHIDI is a crowdsourcing crisis information website that is available on an white label.  You can download it and customize it for your own community.

Set up a local host on your PC as a development environment

If you have never done this before, the first step you must get done, before you do anything else is to set up a “local host” on your PC.

What do you need?

You need nothing more than your ordinary household pc with an internet connection.

Broadbrush steps and jargon

To set up a local host on your PC, you are going to download a WAMP server that runs with Apache, MySQL and PHP.  This is a commonplace procedure used by anyone who develops a website on on their own PC before they move it to a public host in what is called a production environment -that is, a publicly accessible website.  Your local host will be your development environment.

Follow LifeHacker‘s instructions to make a WAMP servier

To make your WAMP server, I am going to refer you to an old post on LifeHacker.  That is what I used and it works just fine.  It will show you how to develop a wiki on your own computer.  That’s fine.  You will learn the whole process and a wiki on your own PC is useful for notes you need when you don’t have an internet connection.

So step one:  Make a “local host” so you can develop a website off line.  I am sending you to Lifehacker for instructions. Follow them carefully and in one hour or less you should have a working wikipedia on your PC.

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6 broadbrush steps for getting Ushahidi going for your community

Published March 11, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Disaster happens in a moment

Breaking news in 2010 were the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. They happen suddenly.  They are disastrous.  They bring ruin for families.   We feel dreadful from afar and that is nothing to what the people in their midst suffer.

Ushahidi: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information

USHAHIDI is a platform that allows ordinary people to pool information about what is happening, who needs help and who can help.

Iwas developed ‘on the fly’ to report electoral violence in Kenya in 2008.  The Ushahidi team have since developed the platform and made it available as a white label for other communities to use.

You can see it here raising money for Haiti, monitoring elections in Norway, and cleaing snow in Washington, DC.

It needs a little IT know-how to use, but it is not beyond the skills of any household PC user.

6 broad brush steps for getting Ushahidi going for your community

This is the first of a series of posts showing you how to use Ushahidi.

I am going to assume you have  similar IT knowledge to me and step you through the steps as simply as possible.

I am currently upto Step 3. So bear my noobe status in mind and chip in, if you wish.

What you need to get started with Ushahidi

  • An ordinary household PC or laptop running Windows
  • An internet connection.

Later on you will need a website to host Ushahidi for the public.   If you don’t have a website address, or domain name, you might like to think of one, register it and arrange for hosting.  But one thing at a time!  Look at these 6 steps and see what is involved.

6 broad brush steps for getting Ushahidi going for your community

Step 1: Before we download Ushahdi, download software to allow you to develop your website on your PC.  In IT parlance, create a “localhost” on your PC.

Step 2: Ask Ushahidi if you can use their software.  They will send you a link.

Step 3: Install Ushahidi on your PC.

Step 4: Customoize Ushahidi for your community.

Step 5: Launch your version of Ushahidi on a public server that can be accessed by the public.

Step 6: Mobilize your community.

Get started early

You can see that if you intend to use Ushahidi to help with emergency-responses, you should probably have it all set up in advance and have practiced using it in simpler, less stressful circumstances.

Some very obvious applications would be organize something like Comic Relief.  I am sure you will think of others.

Next post will be to set up your PC as a local host.

Disclaimer:  I am up to Step 3 – so bear that in mind!

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Work in old organizations and socially-mediated organizations at the same time?

Published March 8, 2010 by Jo Jordan

What does it feel like to learn social media on the double?

My computer knowledge is like that old fashioned holy cheese that you never see in the shops any more.  It joins from end-to-end, and thankfully, it rests on a solid foundation of computer science, but it has holes from years where I’ve either worked with someone who was very good with computers, and they did everything, or we had little to no IT at work, and we were back to taking our work home at night or working on the back of an envelope.

So holes, I have. I know what it feels like.  But I have surrounding ‘cheese’ to guide me and some sense of the basics.

I look at people who are hastily climbing on the social media band-wagon.  And I wonder what that feels like.

How quickly can someone learn to use social media?

  • How happy are they to use a computer, or do they inherently distrust the box?
  • Do they use Google and email?
  • Do they have the first idea what to do when “everything changes”? Do they even have somebody to call when their router mysteriously stops working?
  • Do they use YouTube or Flickr?
  • Do they have their own website?
  • Do they use Skype?
  • Do they know anyone on Facebook or Twitter?
  • Do they blog or know anyone who does?
  • Have they set up a web2.0 community?

And this is on the technical/use side.  What social skills do they have?

  • When was the last time they spoke to a stranger (about something meaningful or useful)?
  • When was the last time they were surprised by a stranger or formal acquaintance?
  • Do they relate as readily to a 15 year old as to a 45 year old as to a 75 year old?
  • Do they talk easily to people of all walks of life and cultures or do they get confused?
  • When was the last time they worked in a group when they were not “in charge” or “following orders”?
  • Can they make the distinction between ‘letting things unfold’ and ‘being lazy”?
  • Do they make the distinction between stiff “politeness” and warm “courtesy”

How quickly can someone take up social media?

My own best guess is that it would be a couple of years to learn social media from a good start.   For many people making a standing-start, it might take a decade because they need to learn a whole new set of social skills.

I don’t even think training courses are sufficient.  Training is for people who have the basic ‘education’ needed to turn general skills into specific, contextual skills.

We can train a geek to set up social media and we can train a community organizer to use social media.  For a deeper understanding, and wider reach to the larger community, we need systemic change.

We need a roll out which helps change the way we do business with each other and increases the use of technology on a day-to-day basis.

Which firms will win the social media race?

I know this is a big ask.  And that is why it is a revolution.

Firms which don’t go through a big re-think are likely to be overtaken by ‘new kids on the block’ who aren’t carrying the baggage of old ways.

Individuals should just get moving using social media at home for personal business and doing community work.  Then move to socially-mediated organizations as soon as they can.

Investors will be watching.  Many are disbelieving that life is changing.  Well, I have seen that before in other contexts.  They will lose their shirts.  Early adopters, though, will not necessarily make much money but they will make a lot of contacts.

Timing is of the essence.  But as we cannot switch without skills and experience, gaining both is key to our future prosperity.

For all of us, doing ‘two’ both at once is key – continuing to make  living from the old (which will get overtaken) while investing in the new.

While the big institutions don’t manage the change, we will have  to do it ourselves – work in old organizations and socially-mediated organizations at the same time.

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Haiti: where is social media in disaster response?

Published February 25, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Social media in disaster response

Yes, where were we?  Social media was in Iran .  .  .   but not Haiti.  Or did I miss something?

This week, I listened to a very good “post mortem” on our response to the earthquake in Haiti.  A surgeon had mobilized an entire team, got funding for a plane and then discovered the realities on the ground.  First, they were diverted to the Dominican Republic. Then they found conditions in Haiti very different to what they imagined.

These were my three takeaways.

#1  Western professionals are very accustomed to have a system around them that they forget that someone has to organize the lights, the water, the diesel, the cleaning.  In other word, the system in the west has become so taken for granted that it is invisible.

#2 The doctors lamented that no one seemed to take charge and coordinate.  There seemed not even to be a map (though there might have been) to help first responders see where different services were located.  It’s not enough for us to each take the initiative, even if our initiative is breathtaking in its brilliance.  We must have a way of coordinating ourselves.

#3  The doctors didn’t mention social media.  It is likely that cell phone towers were destroyed by the quake. But where was the social media response?  Don’t we have the capacity to move in with temporary towers?  What kind of dashboards are up-and-ready to go?  Do the Red Cross, UN and Medicins sans Frontiers, etc have social media packages ready to roll?

Does anyone know?  Who is working on social media in disaster response?

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