Letter to the North Pole, what class I want at BGI

If I were designing a class, I would like to learn skills that I could apply immediately, readings that are timely and relevant, a assignments that build upon each other in a logical manner and a project that has meaning and positive impact.

Wait I just took that class....

In order of magnitude of what worked:

Incorporating video as a medium of expression and Frank Lopez as a speaker, the combination unleashed a creative force within me. Since I found Adbusters, I have wondered if I would ever be able to create art that also be part of some greater change, now I know how.

Blogging, all of it drove home the discipline necessary to be successful as member of the online community and the tools to do so. The Beat blog generated alot of synergy for me as I began to focus on where to find my right livelihood. I needed some examples of the types of posts to get me started otherwise I felt inspired to get my voice out there.

The tagging exercise should be in LPD, it opened my eyes to how others saw me and how close that aligned with what became my personal brand. The branding was much harder, felt rushed and was one of the most timely parts of the class as it setup nicely with Right Livelihood.

The Social Change Project simply the most important assignment as the sole desirable outcome is change, which is why I am here. To see how social media can immediately impact a community was empowering.

Organizing my online presence at Linkedin Google, Youtube and Twitter offered me great insight into aligning my social networks so they respond to one another.

I loved the readings, so this is where I see room for improvement. Organization, too much information on one page, since we read about simplicity and complexity and how it affects influence made me think, less text on the syllabus and put more of the readings in a resources page with links to them for that week.

I am not sure Delicious deserved the hype it got. It seems right now someone else benefits from my tags and I can't find what I am looking for, I did not see the application of Delicious put into practice in class so other than putting my bookmarks on the web and off my computer.

I think a wiki should come out of this with all the terms listed. Post Mortem reminds me of CSI and something dead, I prefer After action revue or something else.

This is the first course to link me back to Adbusters and how I can participate in the revolution.

Thank you Christopher ! I hope the future BGI'rs will be able to take your class.

Cheers,
Matt

Bonnie commented on my last post and offered some great opportunities for synergy with what we learned in Social Media to enhance intergrated learning with LPD and CRL.

'Matt-- and Tomas--
This makes sense to me. I am always conscious that under each complaint is a commitment: in this case I believe it is a commitment to get maximum value from our time at BGI, and for the school to be everything it promises to be, in every sense. Yes, BGI is a young school, and while the growing pains are felt by all of us, the opportunity to take this kind of complaint to action is huge.

So for the record, I also feel that these Personal Learning Journal blogs have been not only of the kind of great value to me that I think both LPD and CRL are intending, but in fact have been a MORE effective space for the kind of free reflection those two classes aim for.

My vote is more coordination between LPD and CRL, and that we find a way to integrate pretty much all the first half of Christopher's class into the curriculum of the entire school, primarily through LPD and CRL. Then EVERYONE gets the benefits of these skills and tools-- it kind of kills me to think that only some of us have access to this class-- and then when Using the Social Web for Social Change is offered again as a DLM course, the participants are starting with a well-established base of skills and can get going directly into what is currently the second half of the course. I would be happy to talk to anyone in the faculty or administration to tease out the details.'

Beth is incorporating our learning from this class and trying to integrate it right now;

'Emailed Taj tonight about using this blog as a medium for my CRL portfolio... we'll see what she says. I think it would be a great experiment in how to use the learning journal blog concept across various classes and types of assignments.'

Manan and Karen also seek more rigor and execution so I see a use for AI and bring it forward in our LPD/CRL as a commitment to making our last two semester count and leave a legacy as competent change agents for future cohorts to look to for inspiration of what is possible. Table topic, next steps?

And the beat blogs on

Tomas started a dialogue that resonated with a few people about the open ended blogging in our learning journals versus the channel posts. I see an opportunity to change from Apathy to Action and it begins with (I kid you not) pulling Kegan/Leahy off the shelf and turning the complaint into a commitment. We wish to unshackle our postings and open them up to a more creative forum where the room to explore might be infinite.

To answer the call of self directed learning, we call upon our learning circles to come together and set thier own agenda with the help of PDPs and faculty to align with the direction of the overall course and allow for deeper exploration. Each learning circle can run their own creative session to help flush out their short and long term goals and what will help get them there. Faculty help with a framework to focus the effort and we use what we learned in this class to spread the knowledge.

I see Fogle's video blog(vlog) as a new medium to open up how we engage with our post and response program. Many of us seem to be fully engaged and excited about the new skills and tools we learned how to use. I feel we can expand on that by carrying it forward to the next semester  and role modeling what Christopher is trying to get BGI to do for the next incoming class.

The Crisis of CRL opened up what my learning has been from LPD, CRL, People and Teams and we can use these tools to design and persuade people that we are learning what the tools are and how to apply them for maximum effectiveness. Do you feel this could open up your learning for the reminder of the year?

Growing up 2.0

I read Danah Boyd's piece on her recent experience with the back channel while presenting and shocked at the level of maturity in which twitter was used. What does it mean to be a professional at one of these conferences? One of the comments came from an individual who attended a scientific conference and the norms for their back channel set the bar a bit higher and a result was a cleaner, more present chat.

After 4 semesters at BGI , I noticed chaos ensues when norms and expectation are not articulated and written down. This is true of BGI as well as everyone else, which connects to the Dunbar Number and seems to represent a boundary between good and bad behavior and the requirements to setup best practices. Brian Weller brought up some great research regarding memory(after 40 minutes recall fades), attention spans(20 minutes then focus wanes) and use of a figure ground which has the power to shock and refocus people's attention just when they drift off.

The crowd at Web 2.0 seemed to suffer from ADD and a need for everything to entertain to have value.  Through the many presentations we do at BGI, remembering to be authentic and own what you know helps empower the speaker and engage the audience. Does the IT profession need a courtesy lesson followed by sometime behind the lectern to help with empathy? Maybe the Unconference needs to go mainstream to engage the speaker with the audience at a more personal level to create a collaborative learning enviroment.

my appreciation to the faculty and staff at BGI for role modeling what this looks like to give me the tools I need to affect change in the world.

Who is in Control?

I read Miriam's blog entry about Youtube and wondered who is really in control? I think this is a valid question and Justin Tilson and Tomas had a very interesting points about the topic. In other countries control and public access/space take on a different reality.Our  Anglo/ Saxon/Puritan perspective is apparently quite different from the Southern/ Mediterranean European point of view. Their idea for an internet community center was articulated by Umberto Eco, a professor of Semiotics, satirist and author who was interviewed recently in Wired and had this to say, 

• 'I don't see the point of having 80 million people online if all they are doing in the end is talking to ghosts in the suburbs. This will be one of the main functions of Multimedia Arcade: to get people out of the house and - why not? - even into each other's arms. Perhaps we could call it "Plug 'n' Fuck" instead of Multimedia Arcade' 

So that southern perspective brings a more intimate, almost sensual environment, in contrast to the loner on a bar stool mode found on the Northern Euro/North American web experience.The 'Loner' archetype is already prevalent among the under 30 generation in Japan and slowly taking root in North America. Eco also comments,'You have to be careful to distinguish mass delusions from underlying causes.' I think that is important when looking at who is in control. 

I also see while the governments could try to put some controls in effect the borderless web and the volume of participants guarantee these action will only slow not stop the exchange and flow of information. In what way can we ensure our access to information?

From Milton Freidman to Satish are we ready to make room for change?

In the amazing synergy I found with Youtube, Google, Twitter, Facebook and blogger, I found another challenge, podcasting.  I interviewed a friend about her company, Crooked Trails, which is one of the only companies practicing honest sustainable travel and recorded the conversation. An hour long rich conversation brought the realization editing is a great equalizer to enthusiasm. Chris mentioned a ratio of 1 minute of video to i hour of editing, enough time to flatten most dreams with the reality of hard labor. The class videos really inspired me to use the footage I have shot over the last 4 years and make something with it. I am working on a video for Adam Justin's shop to start the video conversation with his customers, who hopefully want to respond with their ski videos and create a visual journal of the ski season.

What is becoming clear, I hold winter in high esteem, a character flaw interwoven to my core. Through my conversation with Yogi during the CRL Eluminate, he brought forth my passion for exploration and education as a way to build and maintain community. I see my entrepreneurship project going into the future revolving around these elements.  Through all this one struggle I am in the middle of, how do students in a school designed to train change agents resist change? With this thought emerged the Social Change project that Justin Fenwick, Karen Goat, Brian Trunk, Tomas Amodio and I are engaged in.

This made me think of Adbusters, the Journal of the Mental Environment. I think this is the where I love exploring the most. The poster below reminded me of my resistance to Microeconomics,

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

J Krishnamurti

namaste!

Video Branding

Elyn inspired me to step up to the mic and put myself visually into cyberspace. Authenticity of her video and Julie's made me step back and look how I could capture my brand. I went back to the branding exercise and let imovie inspire me to try different things without fear it would be swallowed up without a trace. I wasn't, so enjoy and post comments!