An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

Columbia University, Rodin's Thinker, via flickr user wallyg

Yesterday, Mark C. Taylor, chair of Columbia’s religion department, wrote in a NYT Op-Ed piece, End the University as We Know It:

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

From this controversial opening, Professor Taylor argues for a hgher education system that follows an interdisciplinary, collaborative model that mobilizes scholars around problems and produces scholarship in a more consumable fashion. 

Social media applications/tools have enabled its users to do what Professor Taylor is advocating. Twitter enables the rapid mobilization to address problems. Wikis result in information in a consumable fashion via real time collaboration. All of this consumer generated media (CGM) creates a body of knowledge whose value comes from the integration of various perspectives. Holding the appropriate context and understanding how the various pieces fit should be a driving force in these collaborative processes.

Do graduate students and scholars miss the point if they think that their training prepares them only for the profession of their graduate degree, be it academia, journalism, law, planning, business, etc.?

Yes. Absolutely yes if they cannot connect what they know and what they are learning to value creation and problem solving. Thinking about the process of learning, what is being learned and what that means are some of the values of a liberal arts education. Does this create students who can apply their skills in different contexts?  Will these students have more options than those who cannot?

Professor Taylor leaves us with valuable advice: 

“Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” 

Applying this entrepreneurial perspective higher ed will enable it to evolve with society.

  

Robert Matsui United States Federal Courthouse by flickr user Rojer

IMO, blog policies R 2 make legal dept feel better, the style guide is more important 2 me when comes 2 work blog #blogchat 

The above comment came out of last night’s #blogchat, hosted by Mack Collier. Later that night, I read an article in the WSJ, entitled “Corporate Blogs and ‘Tweets’ Must Keep SEC in Mind: Social Media Offer Immediacy and Spontaneity to Communications but Risk Running Afoul of Regulations.” From the article:

Blogs and tweets can run afoul of Securities and Exchange Commission regulations on corporate communications. But sanitizing such posts risks hurting credibility with online audiences.

Hrm. blog policies and post sanitation aren’t just to make legal departments feel better (although they probably do) - they protect the organization and its employees. Because organizations are held to different standards than consumers and those standards depend on the type of organization, I understand why companies take their time regarding social media adoption. 

That said, organizations like Dell, EBay and Comcast have done an amazing job adopting a social media strategy.

What About Startups?

Startups have a unique advantage when it comes to blogging - they aren’t publicly traded so they aren’t subject to the same SEC regulations on corporate communications. 

Startups can be scrappy, making much out of very little, figuring out how to get more for their money. The runway is only so long and business considerations like user acquisition, monetization, scalability and revenue generation tend to be high priority. 

Blogging, while time intensive, consistently generates fresh content for search engines while sharing the organization’s story, thoughts, opinion and values. That said, startup bloggers should also watch what they say… litigation ties up resources, such as time & capital, and can distract from progress on user acquisition, revenue generation, etc.

Keep the style guide in one hand and your legal-approved blog policy in the other. Be bold, yet thoughtful.

If your online audience is turned off by you protecting yourself, use your blog and your tweets to explain to them why you need to include the un-fun* language. Alternatively, you can take a page from Virgin America’s book and figure out how to add the fun back.

*as used here, fun refers to unsantitized content. Your brand personality may or may not be fun. Write in your own brand voice, as it makes sense for you.

Then yes.

Earlier this week, Danielle Morrill and I gave a talk about Twitter to a group of entrepreneurs in Seattle. I wanted them to take away that the social value and the business value of Twitter went hand in hand. I also approach Twitter as a channel to find brand-evangelists, discover opportunities to help others, and share useful information. As a data nerd, I like to attach metrics to pretty much everything.

Some quick metrics to take away from Twitter include # of following to # of followers. The closer those numbers are to 1:1, the more likely it suggests reciprocal relationships, assuming that those you’re following are following you back and vice versa. DocuSign has nearly a 1:1 ratio of those it follows to those who follow it:

DocuSign's Twitter Metrics 368:374

Tweetstats, from Damon Cortesi, generates a lovely graph that tells you how many @replies you tweet (indicating conversation) and to whom you interact with the most.

DocuSign Replies ~ 61% of its tweets

In the Twitter Talk, one of the attendees said:

This is a way for me to broadcast what my company is doing

Um, share. Absolutely Twitter is a way to share what your company is doing. Why? Because people (potential customers, users, employees) care. However, they don’t care if your only interest is one way data flow. They want to know that the feedback they’re giving you is going somewhere, being considered, and possibly having an impact.

Twitter is a one-to-many content sharing application. It’s like having a back-and-forth conversation in a public space. You are having a directed conversation that is indexed by Google and then searchable.

Starting social media with listening, understanding what the audience wants/needs and then generating content gets you to…

PARTICIPATION

If you aren’t comfortable with putting out, you should start by listening. Integrate feedback into product development, messaging, customer service…

Listening alone creates value for business. Actually participating enables you to create and realize even more value.

CRAVE has invited Danielle Morrill and I to speak at this month’s Coffee Chat, called Twitter Talk.

Learn about how Twitter came into existence and how it fits with other social networking and social media services, such as Facebook, as branding tools. Even if you’ve never used a service like this before, discover the power and simplicity of sending short messages (140 characters or less) to a group of friends and followers interested in what you have to say. This talk will include discussion of how to create an engaged community on Twitter, how to develop an audience of relevant Twitter users, and how to share valuable information about your products and content in an appropriate fashion - often referred to as “Twitiquette” (Twitter etiquette). 

It’s this Sunday, 4/19, from 2-4pm, at Dreamclinic, 902 NE 65th, in Seattle. Register at Seattle 2.0 or on the CRAVE Web site.

Hope to see you there!

Garrett Ash, Swarthmore '05

Swatties have talent. I just got a sneak peek at Swarthmore ‘05 Class Notes from Jessica Zagory, which included this juicy tidbit:

Garrett Ash’s organization Running Across Borders is making great progress: they have arranged sponsorship for a training facility in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. This allows Ethiopian youth from rural areas to come to the city and benefit from opportunities in professional athletics, English education, and specialized training in alternative careers. If any Swatties are interested in coming for an extended stay and contributing to our teaching programs please contact Garrett. All information is at www.runningacrossborders.org.

Pretty rad - Garrett Ash used to run circles around me (literally) at practice in college. Now he’s turned it into his mission and co-founded a non-profit with Malcolm Anderson. 

Cheers to Garrett in his entrepreneurial venture!

Earlier this week, TechStars launched HackStars, a program for 

UI/UX guru[s] and/or a strong coder[s] with PHP, Java, Flex, .NET, Ruby/Rails, or Javascript skills…to help interesting startups for a summer in exchange for meeting all the mentors and founders and sitting in on the mentorship sessions

and I read the public comments following the announcement and on Hacker News. Many concerns, with words like “exploit” and “unethical” included in the discussion. Andrew Hyde, the Director of Community for TechStars, is listening and he also makes the point that he is where he is because he figured out how to participate and contribute to TechStars after not being chosen as a TechStars team.

As a bit of anecdotal evidence, I’ve had both paid and unpaid internships with organizations including the federal government, a Fortune 100, and nonprofits. They spanned research and analysis as well as teaching and mentoring. When I went unpaid, I also got a paying job to pay rent and keep my personal lights on. 

So why did I take unpaid internships when I could get paying ones?

I learned the most when I engaged. I engaged when the problems were interesting and hard. They weren’t problems I’d have access to absent the internship(s). When I really cared about the problems, I figured out how to make the math (and my bank account) work. Granted, I’m not a hacker/developer/coder - the market context is different. My skills in C++ and scheme are Z-team at best. I think the fundamentals still apply though. 

Someone develops skills because s/he does. Yes, s/he listens or pays attention, figures out the needs, and seeks to fulfill them. Listening is not enough. Taking action (including hacking) is not enough. Connecting action to the business needs (uncovered via listening) provides the real value and makes the experience valuable.

While unpaid experiences aren’t for everyone, we each can make our own choices. Those choices depend on our own personal situations. If both parties see mutual benefit and assuming no fraud/deception/legal violations, are they not free to enter into whatever arrangement they so desire? 

You can hack on a project, learn those skills while figuring out how you can meet people who want you to realize your potential…

or

You can hack on a project, learn those skills while meeting people whose goals you’re helping to realize. 

Which do you think will make the impact you desire?