Friday links

Here’s a few links for a Friday afternoon:

Simplicity quotes from Commoncraft

A virtual whiteboard application Twiddla from Academhack.  

A great example of visual reflecting by Geoff - and I know it’s accurate, cos I was there!

A podcast from Matt Moore and friends on Blended Facilitation. 

Comic Life enables you to make comics from your photos. 

Not another *#%! application

I’ve written recently about how I like Twitter. Here’s why I don’t like Facebook as much (hat tip to Paul Z Jackson and Andrew Rixon).

More on Twitter

Sometimes the planets just align. Here’s a video from those Commoncraft folk on Twitter in Plain English. Commoncraft rocks - and so does twitter.

Officially a fan of social networking

As of today (for no particular reason) I’m now officially a fan of social networking. When the Applied Improv group moved it’s web presence to ning I started to understand the potential of social networking. Since then I’ve set up four social networking sites of my own using CollectiveX - initially to play around and see how they work, and more recently as a part of my facilitation practice.

For the uninitiated, I think the benefits are:

1. Having all the discussions and other relevant info for a particular group available in the one location. This makes it easy to keep track of discussions around a particular topic or with a particular group without having to dredge through a whole bunch of emails.

2. Opportunity to have links to web sites, videos etc and to upload documents, and have discussion threads that are easy to opt in and out of.

3. Potential for warming up a group to an event, post activity evaluation, and continuing discussions. Enables transitions.

4. An opportunity to build community amongst a diverse group of people who nonetheless share a common interest, for example users of Open Space Technology.

5. I get email alerts of any activity so I don’t have to remember to check all the time to see if anything new is there. And I can manage my settings to get those alerts in a way that suits me.

6. When I log on to CollectiveX it lists all of my sites in a summary bar - makes it really easy to keep track of all my groups.

7. It’s free.

I’m not yet a fan of wiki sites - and the jury is still out on Twitter, but stay tuned.

Uses for Twitter

Thanks to Brenda for the heads up on this article about academic uses for Twitter - raises all sorts of possibilities inside organisations as well. If only we could get some of the more pedestrian ones to recognise the possibilities around social media instead of fearing that staff will ‘waste company time’.

Tuesday morning inspiration

On a surfing trip through the blogosphere I found these inspiring:

From Stephen Shapiro: When individuals are incented to “do the right thing” rather than hitting targets, you will find increased creativity, improved performance, and a happier workforce.

From ChangeThis: a manifesto about ‘Ideacide’ - why ideas die and what you can do to pitch them using lessons from the movies. I particularly liked this quote: “If you’re working on a truly original idea, there is no way on earth to prove ahead of time that it’s going to work.”

From Seth Godin about a shortage of digital coaches. Isn’t that the truth!

Michelle Martin and Christine Martell explore the Social Media Spiral.

Twitter

OK - I’ve finally succumbed and joined Twitter. My friend Johnnie Moore says ‘it’s like water cooler conversations for those of us who work alone’. And he also describes it as ‘nano blogging’ (cos you can only use up to 140 characters per post). He’s written some interesting blogs about Twitter too - so if you’re not sure what it is and why bother check out some of these posts:

Making big meaning of trivia, and why it matters explores how twitter exchanges can help create a ’story’ that can lead…well, anywhere really. 

And this one - Missing the point of twitter - makes some interesting observations about ways we connect.

It would also be cool to play around with Twitter with some people who read my blog - so if you’re interested in giving it a go, I’ll see in Twitterland.

Written into spoken

Leif Hansen writes about a gizmo, thingy (that’s as technical as I get!) that turns anyone’s written blog into audio that you can even listen to on your iPod. Eeeeeekkkkk!!!!!! I can’t keep up.