Concept Worker

Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future contains a description of new age - the Conceptual Age.



He describes how our society has gone from agricultural to industrial to the information age. But then he describes how we've really moved on past that to a new age where the dominant value for most organizations are created by high-end knowledge workers working on concepts. He calls them creators and empathizers. That is to make emphasis on his focus on the right-brain aspects. But, I actually think we should be focused on the emphasis on the type of knowledge work and the type of workers. In other words...

Concept Work
and
Concept Worker

I've often been a little bothered by the fact that we categorize the a person working in a call center handling customer service requests in the same category as an engineer working in R&D - they are both called knowledge workers. That's not as helpful as it should be. The person in the call center does quite a bit of routine knowledge work. They will occasionally encounter unusual situations and then need to do more conceptual knowledge work. To me it's all about how easy it is to obtain the answers. The harder it is, the more conceptual. Certainly our work around Work Literacy is all about concept work and concept workers.

I'm sure that if I went back and looked at Davenport's Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances And Results from Knowledge Workers and the various categorizations of knowledge workers he would have several ways to describe the difference between someone in a call center and the engineer and the doctor. And while these are more granular, I'm not sure I hear much of it being discussed. That's why I'm liking the idea of referring to work that involves figuring out unknowns as concept work and the people doing this work as concept workers. This more succinctly and clearly differentiates the issue for me.

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eLearning Learning Launched

I'm happy to announce the launch of eLearning Learning. This is the beginning of a community portal where the community will help to collect and organize the best content from blogs and web sites. The goal is to create a place where it's relatively easy to find current content and highly relevant content surrounding eLearning.

To be clear eLearning Learning is a jump off point. The content comes from other places. Right now these are mostly posts from bloggers, but you will soon see other kinds of content appearing. The bottom line is that eLearning Learning is trying to help find and navigate the world of eLearning.

I've selected bloggers who I've been reading and felt provide value on interesting topics.

The following blogs are helping me today to launch this and I've listed a few unsolicited comments on their experience so far.

• Tracy Hamilton - Discovery through eLearning

"simple"

• Collin Kromke - Web 2.0 Work

"I'm LOVING the way the label widget works!"

• Kevin Jones - Engaged Learning

"I like your widget a lot. Kind of a linear tag cloud."

• Wendy Wickham - In The Middle of the Curve

"looks pretty cool"

You will see that these bloggers and soon other bloggers listed as Featured in their blogs. They will show the following badge:



You will also see that most featured bloggers are including the eLearning Learning Organizer Widget. This widget is in my sidebar and it shows the topics that I blog about. As a blogger, this helps me keep my content organized, which has always been a bit challenging.

You might visit a few of the blogs listed above to see the topics they are writing about. For example, looking at top tools:

Wendy

• Moodle (45)
• Captivate (40)
• LMS (33)

Tracy

• LMS (23)
• Second Life (6)
• Twitter (6)

Mine are:

• Wiki (108)
• LMS (83)
• Social Network (57)

Boy, I talk about Wikis a lot.

I hope that you will find eLearning Learning to be a valuable resource. I welcome any thoughts or feedback on the system.

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Online Language Training

Over on the Big Question, we are discussing Network Feedback which is basically how can you reach out and get help around a question. Almost the same time I posted the question, I received a question from a reader around Language Learning.

The person works in a corporation in Turkey and is looking to find eLearning to teach employees English. I know there's a lot going on in online language training. In our brief exchange, I mentioned EduFire and Myngle - but the response is that these are more aimed at consumer rather than corporate.

Any suggested solutions?

And, if you have thoughts on how you would go about finding answers to this inquiry, you can use that as your answer to the Big Question. :)

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LinkedIn Facebook Twitter - Different Connection Style

As a result of my recent change in my Approach to LinkedIn Connections, I've actually met quite a few people who read my blog, but I don't believe had ever commented. They were comfortable connecting with me via LinkedIn and since it offers mutual value it was worth the effort. It truly does feel like a (virtual) networking event.

Interestingly, one of the people who connected to me suggested we might want to do the same on Facebook and Twitter. This really got me thinking. I described my approach to LinkedIn only having recently changed where I view my connections now as really being more of a combination of:

• PANs = Potentially Active Network
• CANs = Currently Active Network
• FANs = Formerly Active Network

I used to think of LinkedIn (and LinkedIn themselves suggest this is how to think of it) as containing only people who I have a deeper relationship with (CANs and FANs). However, for some of my primary uses Finding Expertise via LinkedIn and LinkedIn Answers to Get Help, it makes more sense to connect to people who it will be good to be connected with in the future (PANs).

However, this is not really the case with the way I use Facebook and Twitter. Both of these tools are much more conversational tools for me.

In Twitter, I have people that I follow in order to listen into their conversation. If you try to listen to too many, or if you listen to people who you don't really have a relationship with, you will experience what I describe in Twitter Mass Follow - Nevermind - basically it feels like noise.

In Facebook, it's much the same. I have my friends who I want to get together with, see what they are doing, have conversations with.

Both Twitter and Facebook really are my CANs and FANs. In some ways, the goal on both is to stay more closely connected with FANs to keep the relationship alive. Something I must say that I'm not good at. I can think of a bunch of folks who I really like, get along really well with and who I won't talk to unless something unusual happens. It's nice when we can get a bit of that ongoing conversation via Facebook or Twitter.

Yes, I could theoretically open up to a much larger network and somewhat ignore the noise. This would get the advantage of being able to broadcast. But, it's really not the way I use these tools today.

Now, it took me 2-3 years to change my thinking about LinkedIn. So, with all fairness, it could be that I've not evolved my thinking about Twitter and Facebook.

When I step back and see the message, I'm sending, I'm a bit worried:

If we are connecting on LinkedIn based on a very loose relationship, maybe we'll have more conversations and get to the point where it makes sense to connect on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Does that sound bad?

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LinkedIn Connection Approach Rethought

If you read my blog much, you know that I use LinkedIn quite a bit to help me find experts and expertise. You can see how I do this in my posts/screencasts LinkedIn Searching for Experts and Expertise and LinkedIn Answers to Get Help.

One of the techniques that I show in the first is that you can expand the reach of your search by choosing to search groups. Thus, by searching the eLearningGuild or ASTD groups, I'm able to find people who can help answer questions.

The screencast then shows how I would go about formulating a request for help through an intermediate contact.

I've known for some time that my success rate in contacting someone who is 2nd degree (there's one person in the middle who will pass my request on) is roughly 80%. If the person is 3rd degree, it's low enough that I don't even bother. The problem is that no one connects or knows both parties and can somewhat validate the request. So, I really only contact people I either already am connected with or are 2nd degree.

I'm a BIG TIME believer in the value of this. And, I sometimes wonder what I did before I had LinkedIn as a resource.

But, here's what has recently dawned on me. When I do a group search, the same effect is there about only being able to tap into 2nd degree. With the group search, I can find out that someone exists, but I can't really effectively connect with them unless I'm fairly close by.

This started me down the path of rethinking how I connect to people. I used to heed the advice that you should only connect with people who you know pretty well. And that's the way I've operated. However, that never seemed to work all that well, and I think I've figure it out.

I listened to a podcast that featured Christian Mayaud in which he described PAN CAN FAN.

An individual's social network (online or offline) is divided into three groups:

• PANs = Potentially Active Network
• CANs = Currently Active Network
• FANs = Formerly Active Network

I used to think of LinkedIn as containing exactly my CAN and FAN. People I currently know well or have in the past. That's what LinkedIn tells you.

But what happens is that I'm constantly trying to reach into my PAN and it turns out that it's really only 2nd degree. Thus, my PAN is often feeling too limited. But, after listening to Christian, I've changed the way I look at LinkedIn connections and how I treat invitations. I now think of my LinkedIn direct connections as also containing PANs who I only know in a superficial way. I've changed where I'm willing to link to anyone who I feel may be a good person to know in the future based on their profile and possibly a limited messaging exchange. This is more in line with what people call a LinkedIn LION (LinkedIn Open Networker). I'm not sure I'm quite going as far as most LIONs who seem to link with everyone. But, I've certainly changed to be very open to linking even if I don't really "know" you.

The result has been interesting. It's a bit more like wandering around at a mixer. By putting it out that I'm likely to accept your link request, I get a chance to interact with a lot more new people. Most of the time it's a few simple emails based on what I see on their profile.

Oh, and I do subscribe to the one rule for LIONs, I no longer ever hit the "I don't know" button on an invitation.

Now, I don't know that everyone should change to look at LinkedIn connections quite the same way. My suggestion is not that this is the right course for everyone. In fact, my guess is that most people will continue to use it for only CANs and FANs as I did before.

However, if you are (a) reading this and (b) roughly in the world of eLearning, I would highly recommend that you make it your policy to connect with people like me who are likely highly connected in that world as well and who have said - I'm pretty open to linking.

So, what do you do?

You go to my profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tonykarrer

You click on: Add Tony to Your Network.

You can click on: Other.

And then put in my email: akarrer@techempower.com

I don't promise to accept your invitation, but I do promise to treat it a bit like I would if you walked up to me at a networking mixer. If you are trying to sell me life insurance, I may move on. But I generally chat for a while and maybe exchange cards and we've now connected. Hopefully that means we can help each other better use LinkedIn in the future.

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Jing Screencasts Bandwidth Limit

I had used Jing several times recently to create screencasts. I have been pretty happy with it as a tool, but I got a message from Jing that told me that I had nearly used up my monthly bandwidth. Basically, with the free account you get 2GB of bandwidth and once that's used up you have to wait for the start of the next month. Whew, it's almost Nov. 1. Luckily, viewing of my recent screencasts (LinkedIn for Finding Expertise and Searching for Expertise - LinkedIn Answer) will be pretty low over time.

Still the bottom line is that Jing works great, but it definitely is not something you can use if you plan to have more than a few people viewing your movies. So, as a blogger, you probably can't use Jing to record things.

So, I'm now back to searching for a free tool that works to create screencasts that I can use for my blog. I don't do it very often, so it needs to be free. The best thing would be if I could also do it while recording voice from myself and someone else. In other words a screen sharing tool with voice and screen recording. And it needs to be low cost or free.

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Web 2.0 Learning

I've read a bit from (here, here, and here) about Jet Blue's use of web 2.0 / social media tools to communicate between their staff of learning professionals. This is another great example of eLearning 2.0.



Jet Blue University (their internal corporate university that I recently heard being discussed on Knowledge @ Wharton) is using Awareness Networks' platform to work collaboratively on projects between employees in disparate locations and programs and to share best practices on how to train JetBlue crew members. The Awareness platform includes tools such as blogs, wikis and social bookmarking / tagging.



Jeanne Meister tells us that the software is being used to allow JetBlue faculty to share around broader topics that just improvements in learning & development such as sharing photos from family vacations, weddings and birthdays. This allows faculty to get to know each other socially in order to be more effective sharing and working together later. They also use the technique of posting provocative topics in order to engage people in discussions.

Overall, a big part of the intent here is for the faculty to become used to using these tools and methods in order to put them in position to use them with other parts of the organization. Something I talk about all the time.

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