Google Blog Search Problems

I rely pretty heavily on Google Blog Search to help me find people who are citing blog posts of mine so that I can see that kind of conversation. Unfortunately, it looks like Google Blog Search has decided that they will now include the entire contents of the web page rather than just the contents of the RSS feed. What this means is that I now get links to every post where the author includes my blog in their blog roll.

This completely defeats my purpose. I want a nice clean RSS feed of any posts that include links to my various sites.

I can't tell if this is something that is intentional, but it's been happening for a while.

I actually left Technorati for Google because Google appeared to be doing a better job. Time to evaluate my options?

Any suggestions on what to use for this?

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Help Create Resources for Keynote?

I'm doing a keynote presentation at ASTD TechKnowledge in January on New Work Literacies and eLearning 2.0 and another session on Learning 2.0.

I would really like to be able to point attendees, blog readers, and realistically a lot of other folks to a set of resources that would help them on these topics. But, I really don't have time to create what I want to create.

Are you willing to pitch in to help me create some interesting resources?

I'm not sure how we will create these (Google Docs, Wiki, Mindmap, etc.). I'm fairly flexible, but at the end of the day they need to be web pages that attendees of TechKnowledge and other folks can access. I definitely will post them to my blog. And chances are they will get quite a fair amount of page views.

I will certainly give credit to anyone who contributes in a meaningful way both in my blog and during the keynote (assuming this happens).

Here are the two resources that I'd like to see us work on ...

Work Literacy 2008

A set of resources for concept workers who are not early adopters to help them be aware of relatively newer methods and tools that they should consider adopting to help them in their day-to-day work. These would be organized around the following categories:

• Search
• Keep/Organize/Refind/Remind
• Leverage Expertise (Network)
• Collaborate
• Scan (Continuous Awareness/Learning)

Learning 2.0 for Workplace Learning Professionals

A set of resources that would help workplace learning professionals get up to speed on:

• Introduction to Web 2.0 tools and their implications for Personal and Formal Learning
• What Learning 2.0 means to them both personally and professionally.
• Opportunities to apply Learning 2.0 in their workplace
  

I think that the resources collected as part of the recent Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals are a great starting point. For example, look at the following:

• Introduction to Social Networking
• Introduction to LinkedIn
• Introduction to Facebook
• Introduction to Ning
• Using Social Networks for Personal Professional Development
• Using Social Networks with Learners
• Social Networking and Privacy
• Managing Your Networks and "Time Suck"
• LinkedIn Tips and Tricks
• Social Networking Wiki

Because these are tied into forums, it makes them a bit harder for most people to go through. I'm also not sure that I buy that this quite tells a Workplace Learning Professional what they should do in terms of their personal use and in terms of how these might be used in their organizations. It was more intended as a introduction to the tools and likely does a good job of that.

Please drop me a comment or email me: akarrer @ techempower.com if you are willing to work a bit on this.

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Evaluating the Performance of Knowledge Workers

I've recently been talking to people about evaluating performance of Concept Workers. I want to thank Dave who has provided thoughts in several posts such as Getting to Exemplary.

Evaluating concept worker performance is an interesting challenge:

• No right answer - Most often there is no single right answer. Which authoring tool, LMS, etc. we should use in a particular situation - you can't possibly get it exactly right. You are trying always to arrive at a reasonably correct answer given all the other factors (amount of time you can spend finding an answer, etc.)
  
• Evaluator knowledge limit - In most cases, the person doing the performance evaluation knows less about the subject that the performer. So, they can't directly judge the answer, but may be able to sense when answers are possibly not correct.

The interesting bottom line has been that the way you evaluate a concept workers performance is by looking at signals such as:

• Process - They went through a reasonable process to arrive at their conclusions.
• Reasonable - Their conclusions are reasonable in your opinion (if you can formulate one).
• Compare - If you took what they did and compared it to what you would expect from other similar performers, would they have arrived at the same result.

To me this has heightened my sensitivity to the need for concept workers to reach out to people for knowledge work tasks in order to ensure they will receive a good evaluation. It reinforces the fact that Leveraging Networks is Key Skill. I'm coming to believe this is the most important Knowledge Worker Skill Gap. This makes this things like: Network Feedback, Finding expertise, Using Social Media to Find Answers to Questions, Learning through Conversation very important topics.

What I've been saying in recent presentations is that going to Google and searching for information as your primary mechanism leaves you open to criticism. Instead, having a conversation with a peer can give you feedback on:

• Was my process appropriate?
• Is my answer reasonable?
  
• How does my answer compare?

And if you want to be mercenary about it, the real bottom line is that if someone challenges your answers, you have already done their evaluation for them. You can say, "Look, I talked to a couple of people who have done this before. They said I've gone through the right steps. I've looked at the right stuff. My answer seems pretty reasonable. If they would have done it, they would have come up with the same thing."

There's a beauty in this!

But it does require better ability to reach into networks for help.

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ASTD TechKnowledge

ASTD TechKnowledge 2009 is coming to Las Vegas in January.

I'm doing two sessions including a keynote / general session - descriptions below.

If you are planning to go to the conference and read this, please drop me a comment because Get Together at Conferences - F2F Still Matters.

Better yet, go take a look at:

• Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee
• Better Questions for Learning Professionals
• Continuing Thoughts on Questions
• What Questions Should We be Asking?
• Session Hopping a Practical Guide

General Session -

New Work Literacies and E-Learning 2.0
Thursday, 01/29/2009 8:00AM - 9:00AM

Over the past 20 years, there has been an explosion of information sources, greatly increased accessibility of experts and expertise around the world, and new tools emerging every day. These changes are continuously transforming the landscape for knowledge work. How are we doing at keeping up with these changes? The results are in, and most knowledge workers are struggling to adapt to new forms of work and learning. This situation represents the challenge of our age. As learning professionals, we have an opportunity to take a leading role. To do so, we have to look beyond formal learning solutions toward solutions that support self-directed learning.

In this keynote, Dr. Tony Karrer will look at the transformation of knowledge work into concept work and the implications for the roles and responsibilities of learning professionals. We will look over the shoulder of a modern knowledge worker using e-learning 2.0 methods to see examples of where and how tools such as social networks, social bookmarking, wikis, blogs, and RSS readers fit into day-to-day knowledge work and larger learning solutions. Tony will also discuss the big picture implications for learning organizations and how to get started as you begin to focus on this important opportunity.


Learning 2.0
Thursday, 01/29/2009 4:00PM - 5:30PM , Room Brasilia 2/3

As described in the keynote on Work Literacy, there is an incredible revolution happening in knowledge work and learning. A big part of this revolution is a move towards Learning 2.0 - a shift in the way that knowledge workers work and learn. Personal, collaborative, and informal learning methods are emerging that leverage tools such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, and RSS readers. This session will explore these Learning 2.0 tools and their implications on personal and formal learning. We will look at adoption trends and examples of eLearning 2.0. We will discuss common barriers and ways to work around some of these barriers. Come to this session to learn about these tools and methods and immediate opportunities to apply them in your organization.

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No More Little Sandwiches

End of the week and end of a little weirdness. At the start of the week, I found PBWiki Putting Image Over My Images - at least they were cute little sandwiches. But as someone commented, it is a little weird to have a sandwich floating over your head. I had spoken to the Founder of PBWiki in the past and had very nice conversations. I must admit that I felt a little surprised by the sudden change with no notification.

I created my post and immediately felt remorse when Mark Oehlert immediately (via Twitter) asked, "Did you contact them?" That would have been the smarter thing to do in hindsight, but this has been a learning week for me (euphamism for making lots of mistakes).

PBWiki's Founder and Chairman, David Weekly, explained -

Here's what happened

1) You were comp'ed a premium version of the service a year ago as a way of saying thanks for past feedback.

Being nice to me - their first mistake - and this is starting to feel like I'm not going to look very good at the end of this story.

2) This premium comp expired.

He was too nice to say that likely I received a notice about that which I may have ignored.

3) Our product places the sandwich in the corner of third-party-hosted images for free wikis as a general way of gently deterring people from using us as free image hosting. There were quite a few wikis that were using us to host very large images on MySpace a year or so ago.

4) To fix this problem, we've reupped your wiki to the paid version.

Yeah, I don't look particularly good in this story. Sorry, David and the PBWiki team. I felt blindsided, but the reality is that likely I got a notice telling me that my premium account was expiring. I assumed that didn't mean any changes as I pretty much only use the basics on PBWiki. So, I ignored it. Whoops.

David also said something along the lines of - "owing to your influence" - "appreciate if you'd alert us of problems" - this is a bit of a mind shift for me. I don't think of myself as "influential" - I'm one of a lot of signals out there.

I've been a PBWiki fan and saying what I said was more of a factor of surprise. At the same time, this is the second time in a couple of months that someone has told me something similar (that I said something not flattering and it may/did have a negative impact). So, I think I need to factor that in a bit as I post. I don't want to gate myself too much, but I definitely should have handle this differently. Again, apologies David and team.

The other thing he said was "I think you'll find our support is speedy and helpful and you'll be able to quickly resolve your issues." In fact, several people had already said that to me independent of David. Certainly they were very responsive in this case. And I don't think it was because I'm "influential." My sense is that they are responsive.

So, bottom line - I learned something in this process. Little sandwiches are gone for me, but will be there if you use PBWiki for image hosting (display on external sites). And, I'm going to stick with PBWiki.

What's that old axiom about customers who have had a difficulty that gets resolved are more attached than those that never have had any issue?

Oh, and I'll try to pay attention to messages a bit better. Ah, who am I kidding, if it didn't say that little sandwiches are about to appear on top of all of your images in the subject line, I probably still wouldn't catch that the expiration of premium would do that.

Now, maybe I need to go back through my posts and figure out who else I may have said bad things about. For example, Twitter. And at the start of my story when I mentioned that Mark suggested to contact them. That was through Twitter. Hmmm ...

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Learning Communities List

As we are wrapping up the week for Learn Trends, one of the questions we faced was what to do with the Ning community that sprung up to support the conference. I'm pretty sure we are going to leave it up, but I'm also pretty sure that it will sit fairly dormant until the next learning event.

The discussion today suggested that it would be nice if there were a way to transfer the connections being made during the conference out to other networks or learning communities. I would highly encourage everyone who I connected with during the conference to connect to me on LinkedIn. I've connected to a couple of fellow bloggers.

But the issue of other learning communities was raised. This relates to the discussion of Getting Help. In that post, I suggested some places (learning communities or networks) when I need help.

I've not seen a good list of learning communities to go to in an on-going basis. So, I'm trying to form a list of on-going learning communities that learning professionals should know about. I'd prefer to add online communities that have fairly substantial membership, with active discussions and/or good ways to reach out to the members to get help.

Please add comments below to help me flesh out this list.

• TrDev - Large, Moderated - Training and Development Discussion Group begun in October 2000. Discussions deal with a wide variety of topics. Assessment, benchmarking, competencies, content development, course development, e-learning, EPSS (electronic performance support systems), evaluation, instructional systems design (ISD), job aids, knowledge management, learning characteristics, learning outcomes, learning styles, needs assessment, objectives, performance improvement, return on investment (ROI), strategic analysis, task analysis, tools for training and learning, train-the-trainer, training and development.
• (E-)learning network - Fairly active LinkedIn group/network for professionals working in the (E-)learning industry and informal learning industry.
• ASTD National - ASTD's LinkedIn group. Lots of members and discussion.
  
• Courseware Development - Smaller LinkedIn group started by Ted Kopp interested in courseware design and development. Some discussion.
• eLearn - Fairly large LinkedIn group for sharing ideas, concepts, and technology for eLearning. Discussion varies.
• Learning, Education and Training Professionals Group - a large LinkedIn group for training professionals, including project managers, instructional designers, developers, learning environment engineers, learning officers and classroom trainers. Fairly active.
• The eLearning Guild Linked In Group - LinkedIn group for members of The eLearning Guild. Fair amount of discussion on design, development, and management of eLearning.
• DEOS-L - The Distance Education Online Symposium. Listserv for professionals and students in the field of distance education and provide a forum for discussion of all aspects of distance education.
• ASTD Discussion Forums - Fairly active discussion forums on wide variety of topics such as e-Learning, consulting, OD & Leadership, Performance Improvement.
• LearningTown! - Large, active Ning community hosted by Elliot Masie with monthly questions that spark discussions. Some subgroups emerging.
• Chief Learning Officer Network - Fairly active Ning community that has broad range of topics.
• Classroom 2.0 - Very active Ning community looking at web 2.0 in education including tools, curriculum, integration, design.

Learning communities in related areas:

• Content Management Professionals collaborative community with 7731 learning professional members who practice advancing the field of content management

What am I missing?

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Real-Time Collaborative Editing

A while ago I asked in several places if people knew of a text or document editor that would allow real-time collaborative editing during a conference session (or workshop, seminar, course, etc.). My main requirements were:

1. Easy to use
2. Easy to distribute (give everyone a URL)
3. No download required
4. Support chat and document editing

At the time, I didn't get very good responses. OneNote and Gobby require installation. MoonEdit and TwitterNotes were suggested as well. None quite fit.

Well I think I just found it... and it's called EtherPad. It's pretty ugly, but it does exactly what I asked for. People come in easily and just put their names in there.



Couple of notes:

• I've only used this for a small test. If you use it for anything bigger, please let me know.
• I think that a key ingredient is setting things up ahead of time so people will know what to do. Random notes may not be a great effect. It needs to be used with a purpose.
• Still it may be more interesting to get a collective set of notes and chat, especially with some structure. (More on this below.)
  

Doesn't Google docs already do all of this? Actually, no it really doesn't work that well for what I want. When you have several people editing a document at the same time in Google Docs, it takes about 5 seconds for an edit to show up. That latency causes lots of confusion.

Google Spreadsheet handles real-time editing (using the cells as protectors) much better.

Also, I still don't understand why Google Docs don't have notifications of changes like Google Spreadsheet. That has to be one of the worst decisions they made on the product. But now I'm on a tangent.

Google Docs are much harder to share with other people. Trying to share it at a conference would be a lot harder. And people need to have a Google account.

Google Docs doesn't highlight who is doing what.

In short, Google Docs isn't really made for real-time editing.

While I'm on the subject of real-time collaborative editing, I just had a fantastic experience via Robin Good where he used MindMeister to allow participants to collectively edit a Mind Map during a session at the Learning Trends.


This mind map started with just the first level nodes that represented the categories. He asked people to add to those and people started typing in all sorts of things. It was very interesting to see.

I still think the most powerful work example for this has been real-time collaborative editing of Google Spreadsheets that contain project status reports. You get the team online at the same time and you can all talk and edit to get the status updates, next steps assigned in a very short period of time. It's really a fantastic effect.

It's exciting to see real-time collaboration (something I worked on 15 years ago while I was a Ph.D. student) finally taking off in the real-world.

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