Learn and Lead

I am sure you’ve heard this before, what with 54% companies banning social media sites. Of course, Twitter and Facebook are complete waste of time. Reading and writing blogs is a complete waste of time too. I also hear some executives say email is a waste of time too. And phone? What does everyone talk about anyway? They should get off the phones and just work (and I have had managers complain that personal calls were affecting productivity of some people). I think books are a waste of time too. After all what good could possibly come out of reading anything.

Social media is a tool, a medium. What you do with it constitutes the value you extract from it. Twitter can be a very useful productivity enhancer tool. However if you use it only to catch up with friends, chat about what you are having or review movies (and there is a lot of that going on on Twitter), then yes companies will see it as a productivity sapper. Facebook is a great way to connect with people. But are you spending too much time playing Farmville or answering who is the best looking friend, then yes Facebook is not exactly going to be popular with your boss. Blogs are a great tool to reflect what you have learned, great way to connect with other thinkers and great way to learn. But if you are overactive on your blog about movies, your landlord, or your blue umbrella (yes I have seen this posts with more than 50 comments on how someone got wet because they forgot the blue umbrella or something like that), then companies aren’t necessarily going to be thrilled by it. You can spend all your time reading John Girsham or Harry Potter, but companies would prefer if you read Good to Great, Built to Last or Wikinomics or something like that and implement your learning in your work.

So if you don’t want companies to ban Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites, then show your boss the value you are getting from them and how the company can benefit from it.

I have updated my list of Indian learning professionals on Twitter. I have included company Twitter accounts in the list. Feel free to leave a comment to suggest more professionals and companies who should be on the list. I have been less discerning this time and have included all professionals who have more than one tweet on the list. Also listed them in alphabetical order.

You can now use the TweepML link to easily follow these professionals on Twitter.

aanteladda - aanteladda Education Strategist, Coach, Bridge, Entreprenuerial Catalyst, Mum

abhijitkadle - Abhijit Kadle interests range from genetics, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, engineering, technology, computing to electronic games, media, communication, and design

Abhinava - Abhinava biker... dreamer... sapiosexual

amitgautam - Amit Gautam

atuljog - Atul Trainer,Executive Coach & a curious learner! Passionate abt adult learning, bringing fun and learning into training n designing content which are impactful ...

baxiabhishek - Abhishek Baxi geek / new media guy / photowalker / microsoftie / windows7 PC / blank noise guy / critical movies fan / windows mobile

bishtumesh - Umesh Bisht learning and development professional, digs web 3.0 , e-learning, and content

dbhasin - Dolly Bhasin Am a Knowledge Enterpreneur with focus on Small Enterprises, Travel, Tourism, Hospitality for eLearning and emarketing

deepak1279 - Deepak

dineshmagadi - dinesh magadi

dominicrajesh - Dominic Rajesh HR Professional with focus on Learning and Development. Motto: Help others help themselves.

elearningtyro - E-Learning Tyro Instructional Designer and E-Learning Specialist

followVasan - vasan e-Learning professional committed to making difference through learning solutions

gaganadlakha - gaganadlakha

gargamit100 - Amit Garg eLearning Outsourcing, Learning 2.0

GautamGhosh - Gautam Ghosh HR and Social Media geek. Perpetual Learner. Interested in how emergent technologies are changing Organizations. Organizations 2.0 if you please!

geetabose - Geeta Bose Run Kern Communications -a learning solutions & usability consulting company

gJaideep - Gerald Jaideep Innovation Initiator or Hunter/Gatherer for FireStarters

harmalbhu - Harini Instructional designer. Love: Fiction, techie tools.Sharing Knowdlege.

indug_72 - Indu Gopinath

Jax - Xavier Roy I get paid to write :-)

JosephineShobee - Josephine Shobana Delivery Manager at Element K. Interested in learning, innovation, leadership, strategy…

kamalbatra - kamalbatra

kanchanshine - Kanchan Shine Instructional Design Consultant

kapil1312 - Kapil Bhatia Enjoy discussing Education, web 2.0 , edupunk, elearning. Hate people who block youtube and twitter in schools.

karthicku - Karthick

KavisMusings - Kavi Blogger. Dreamer. Optimist. Coach. Believer in people and potential. Citizen of the world. Ranter in general.

lakshmanr - lakshman rajagopalan Learning professional, Management, Leadership, enthusiastic trekker, amateur photographer, follower of techie news, avid reader

lakshmik_92 - Lakshmi Krishnan Learning and OD professional

manishmo - Manish Mohan Collaborative and Informal Learning, Management, Performance enhancement, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Amateur photography

Mohammedhb - Mohammed HB

mrmwrites - swamimo Technical Writer, Blogger, Web Admin, Secretary - ITC SIG of STC, Employment Manager - STC India Chapter

MuhammadAnas - Muhammad Anas

preetamrai - preetamrai Tracking tech and music from Africa, E.Europe and Asia

poojajaisingh - Dr. Pooja Jaisingh eLearning Professional

rajesh_pankaj - Rajesh Pankaj

RaviBramha - RaviBramha AVP Technology, 24x7 Learning

rjaideep - R.Jaideep elearning professional,tech lover,future enterpreneur

rnarchana - Archana Narayan Constantly evolving as an instructional designer at Kern Learning Solutions (www.kern-comm.com) to ensure richer learner experience

rucsb - rucsb Web 2.0 buff,IBMer,Learning professional, Indian, geek,netizen, thought leader, luvable !

ruparajgo - Rupa Rajagopalan Instructional Designing - My Passion

sahana2802 - Sahana Chattopadhyay Learning evangelist, instructional designer and social learning enthusiast. Believe collaborative, participative learning is the future...

sekar_jd - sekar_jd

shaji0508 - Shaji Design Specialist at NIIT

shana1729 - Nishana Senior Flash Developer

shishirsh - Shishir Sharma Project Management, Technology, Instructional Design, Learning Solutions, Amateur photography, Sketching, Languages, Astrology

sreyadutta - Sreya Dutta Instructional Designer by profession, working at Oracle.

sundararajt - Sundar Thondaman An ardent fan of social media..learning consultant in the enteprise space..venturing into management consulting, and life skills training...

svsm67 - Sonia Sant

thoughts - Geetha Krishnan Learning professional

togetherinlife - kaushik Love.Life.Great Parents.Training,Blogger.Speaker.Travelling.See India.Trekking.Himalayas.Reading.Long Drives.Yoga.Beer.Making Mistakes.Explore Life Everyday!

VaiVai - Vaishnavi An Instructional Designer by profession, passionate about literatures from across the world and enthusiastic about new experiences!

vijeesh - Vijeesh Shankar learning - mobile, classroom, web, social, informal..(a-z of learning :-)

write2tg - Taruna Goel “A learning professional” – an instructional designer, trainer, recruiter, supervisor, mentor, coach, change initiator, training manager…and more.

Learning Companies

24x7Learning - 24x7 Learning 24x7 Learning is India’s premier Intellectual Infrastructure partner

Astutix - Astutix Learning Effective Learning - Delivered!

niitimperia - niitimperia NIIT Imperia Center for Advanced Learning has been specially created to provide quality Management Education to working professionals.

NIIT_Imperia - NIIT Imperia NIIT Imperia offers world class senior management programs with IIM Calcutta available for working professionals and organizations at NIIT-Imperia.

NIITLtd - NIIT This is the official Twitter site for NIIT Ltd.- leading Global Talent Development Corporation and Asia's No.1 IT Trainer

niituniversity - NIIT University The NIIT University is a not-for-profit institution offering UG, PG and Doctoral Programs in IT, Edu Technology, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology.

trainingdotcom - Training.com Training.com is an eLearning initiative by NIIT to provide convenient, personalized and affordable training to students and working professionals.

After trying out Twitter for some time, I started experimenting with Yammer sometime early this year. I would say we are still in the experimentation phase with micro-learning. I started with sending some invites and broadcasted some messages. It was a slow start with me invite some colleagues and then the pace picking up quickly as the joining went viral. People invited other colleagues and the membership soon grew (we now have more than 90 people on our Yammer network). Messages started to flow. The Yammer platform was used to generate ideas and brainstorm their implementation. The micro-learning environment opened communication between departments that traditionally had little or no interaction. People exchanged tips about frequently used software tools. Links to interesting posts were shared on the network.

And then things began to settle down. The pace at which new members grew has slowed down. The messages are now just about trickling in, only a few each week, mostly sharing external links. In the micro-learning usage hype cycle, I think we are somewhere in the shaded area in the Yammer usage hype cycle below.

Some of the challenges to micro-learning adoption:

• Culture: Actually it is the culture of broadcasting yourself. Not everyone is used to broadcasting what they are doing. This takes some time to develop. We have a few champions and power users who are trying to push the usage and keep the networking going. It is important to identify as many champions as possible to get conversations going on the environment.
• Training: Ok, let’s face it, not everyone knows how to get the most of a micro-learning environment. We haven’t done any training for the people using Yammer. In a survey of Yammer users, we found that most people use the Yammer web page and very few actually used the desktop application. Using the web page is cumbersome and can make participation daunting. Desktop application is ‘always on’ and provides alerts on new messages. And, more importantly, training required is also required on how to benefit from micro-learning environments, what people can expect and what is expected from them.
• Competition: Micro-learning environment is new and faces competition from other more used services like email and instant messages. Yes, there are clear distinctions between the services, but people are more comfortable with email and IM. People need to see distinctive advantages of using a micro-learning environment.

The benefits of micro-learning environment are many and we will continue to push for its usage.

• Opens communication across various departments of the organizations.
• A great way to generate and build on ideas, not limited by the people in a room.
• Easy to share links and useful info with everyone.
• It’s a great tool to engage everyone in the organization.

In spite of the benefits, I am still not sure how to make convincing case for actually spending money on Yammer or another micro learning environment. I haven’t figured a compelling business case for me to go to my CEO and ask him to spend thousands of dollars on this, especially in times like these. Till then our experiment continues with the free service provided by Yammer.

Would love to hear about other experiences about micro learning in the corporate environment.

Now that I am using Twitter more frequently, I am bookmarking links on Twitter as favorites. I don’t save all the links on del.icio.us. Here are some of my Twitter favorites.

 

cammybean RT @eduify The Top 100 Education Blogs http://tinyurl.com/36ou27 (via @GarinKilpatrick)

hjarche Gloria Gery: Why don't we weigh them? - a classic for the learning profession  http://www.gloriagery.com/articles/whydont

jtcobb Free online course: Instructional Design for the Subject Matter Expert (SME):  http://www.kineolearning.com/60minutemasters/

jtcobb Whether for e-learning or content marketing - How to create your own online course: 100 tools, guides, and resources:http://bit.ly/12T2by

thoughts  RT @KathySierra: In Defense of Eye Candy -http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy

jagoinvestor Be careful when you pick a domain name... Top 10 Most Painfully Funny Company URLs http://is.gd/sigE

rnarchana Ruth Clark's Give your training a Visual Boosthttp://bit.ly/43rOGJ very precise, to the point, and effective... must read

Quinnovator RT: @eduinnovation: 3 Brainstorming Problems Faced By Professional Learning Communities... http://is.gd/qJC5

JaneBozarth How to bypass most firewall restrictions http://www.buzzsurf.com/surfatwork

arnoldbala How to form a company? - http://tinyurl.com/c9eggb

cammybean Tough love for instructional design:http://tinyurl.com/bxx64l

hgetson 10 ways to measure social media success.: Is your social media strategy helping your business? How do you know? ..http://snipurl.com/d9pd4

narayananh Awesome Facebook profile photo hack - http://tinyurl.com/bbafhs

I came across the following tweet from someone who I am following:

Is twitter a social networking or a professional networking tool? I really dont want to know ur progress through the day unless ur a starlet

 

The choice is really yours, the users. What you absolutely can’t control is what others tweet. You decide who you want to follow. And even the people who tweet ‘professionally’ are also humans (unless you are following a bot or a company/publication, in which case this conversation doesn’t hold good). And humans are rarely uni-dimensional. Even professionals have families and friends and have other interests besides work. There will be tweets related to family and friends, movies they recommend, walks they walk, runs they run and hikes they take. Spouses will say funny things to be shared, children will fall ill and best wishes will follow. The beauty of the open architecture of twitter is that you can decide not to follow someone. However asking others to tweet to your tastes is expecting too much.

 

Following up on my post on blogs by learning professionals in India, here’s a list of Indian Learning professionals who tweet a little more frequently on Twitter. My criteria for selecting: minimum 50 tweets and must have bio text. Mind you, not all tweets are about learning/elearning. You can catch me on twitter at @manishmo.

Here’s the list of Indian learning professionals on Twitter, sorted on most tweets:

1. Ruchi Bhatia @rucsb: Web 2.0 buff,IBMer,Learning professional, Indian, geek,net addicted, thought leader, luvable !
   
2. *Abhinava @Abhinava: biker... dreamer... sapiosexual
   
3. Geetha Krishnan @thoughts: Learning professional
   
4. Archana Narayanan @rnarchana: Constantly evolving as an instructional designer at Kern Learning Solutions (www.kern-comm.com) to ensure richer learner experience
   
5. Sahana @sahana2802: Instructional designer and social learning enthusiast. Believe collaborative, participative learning will be the future of e-learning and workplace learning.
   
6. *R. Jaideep @rjaideep: elearning professional,tech lover,future entrepreneur
   
7. Sreya Dutta @sreyadutta: Instructional Designer by profession, working at Oracle.
   
8. Kapil Bhatia @kapil1312: Enjoy discussing Education, web 2.0 , edupunk, elearning. Hate people who block youtube and twitter in schools.
   
9. Geeta Bose @geetabose: Run Kern Communications -a learning solutions & usability consulting company
   
10. Rupa Rajagopalan @ruparajgo: Instructional Designing - My Passion
    
11. Amit Garg @gargamit100: Co-founder - Upside Learning India. Interests - Outsourcing, Instructional Design, Sales, Marketing, Social Media.
    
12. Taruna Goel @write2tg: “A learning professional” – an instructional designer, trainer, recruiter, supervisor, mentor, coach, change initiator, training manager…and more.
    
13. Gerald Jaideep @gJaideep: Innovation Initiator or Hunter/Gatherer for FireStarters
    
    New additions to the list:
    
    
14. *Swaminathan Moorthy @mrmwrites: Technical Writer, Blogger, Web Admin, Secretary - ITC SIG of STC, Employment Manager - STC India Chapter
15. *Kavi @kavismusings: Anything that hits the fan is not evenly distributed
    
16. Sathish Narayanan @elearningtyro: Instructional Designer and E-Learning Specialist
    
17. Kaushik Chakraborty @togetherinlife: Love.Life.Great Parents.Training,Blogger.Speaker.Travelling.See India.Trekking.Himalayas.Reading.Long Drives.Yoga.Beer.Making Mistakes.Explore Life Everyday!
18. Sundar @sundararajit: An ardent fan of social media..learning consultant in the enteprise space..venturing into management consulting, and life skills training...
19. Abhijit Kadke @abhijitkadle: interests range from genetics, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, engineering, technology, computing to electronic games, media, communication, and design
20. Vijeesh Shankar @vijeesh: learning - mobile, classroom, web, social, informal..(a-z of learning :-)
21. Vasan @followVasan: e-Learning professional committed to making difference through learning solutions
22. Gautam Ghosh @gautamghosh: HR and Social Media geek. Perpetual Learner. Student of Life.

* less frequent tweets about learning/elearning

Feel free to add to the list. I will update the list every now and then.

10 reasons why should you be on Twitter:

I have been getting a lot of Twitter newbie followers, some folks who I am inducting to Twitter and others who read my blog, or have worked me at some point of time. I try to get them started by giving them tips and introducing them to people they can follow. So what’s my advice to get started on Twitter? Well Twitter is different things depending on how you use it and you need to experiment to figure out what works for you.

Here are 10 tips to get you started with Twitter.

1. Be human and introduce yourself to the world: When you set up a Twitter account, the first thing you should do is to write a short catchy bio about yourself and your interests. The second is to upload your photo or an avatar. I personally prefer a photo. These two things make your Twitter account more ‘human’. Remember, there is nothing more irritating than to be followed by a bot, or a profile that doesn’t appear to be human. Tip update: Provide a link to your LinkedIn page in your profile.
   
   
2. Don't start with a blank slate: Start off with some tweets before you actually start following people. Going to a Twitter page with no updates is a great turn off, and you aren’t really going to get any connections with an empty page (other than auto-follows). (I personally don’t like the term ‘followers’, I prefer connections. I am okay with the term ‘following’ though.).
   
   
3. Start with simple tweets: Wondering what to start tweeting about? If you are going to use Twitter to build a professional identify, DON’T start tweeting about what you had for breakfast or dinner etc. You could tweet about an interesting link (that is relevant professionally or newsworthy). Note, I say ‘tweet about’. That means you should write your two-cents worth about the link to tell the world why you are sharing the link. You could also start by re-tweeting (RT) something you found interesting on other people’s tweets. You could even start by responding to other people’s tweets (@ replies).
   
   
4. Stay within 140 character limit: Use URL shortener to reduce the length of the link you are sharing. Twiter web page, which I am assuming you will start with when new to Twitter, doesn’t have any URL shortener. Once you graduate on to a desktop Twitter application, this shouldn’t be a problem since most apps come with some (or many) URL shortening options.
   
   
5. Start following the right people: Who are the right people and how do you know who to follow? Well, I am assuming that you’ve been introduced to Twitter by someone who is already on Twitter. So follow that person. Next look at who this person is following or who are following this person. Look for the bio and tweets to see whose tweets might be of interest to you. I would recommend following people who are more active, both in terms of frequency and number of tweets, and who have a healthy mix of conversation in their tweets.  You could also use Mr. Tweet to get additional recommendations after you have started following a few people.
   
   
6. Chose who to follow based on your threshold: Initially you may want to avoid following people who tweet a lot (like more than a few tweets a day). Use followcost to check tweet frequency of who you want to follow. This is really helpful since of the things you’ll need to learn is how to deal with info overload. I mentioned in a previous post, if you have trouble with dealing with your email (“Oh gosh, I have so many emails to respond to…”, which BTW is a function of your ability to deal with transactions, not a function of number of email messages you get), Twitter is NOT for you.
   
   
7. Follow back selectively: Don’t get too worried you don’t get many connections (followers) initially. Not everyone who you follow will follow you back. And you don’t HAVE to follow back everyone who follows you. Follow back only if you think the tweets will be of interest to you. This is contrary to the general ‘twitiquette’ that you may read elsewhere. I feel you should follow those whose tweets you find valuable, and people who find your tweets valuable will follow you.
   
   
8. Install a Twitter desktop application: I recommend TweetDeck. However this needs higher RAM. You could also use Twhirl.
   
   
9. Be consistent: It takes a while to ‘get’ Twitter. Give yourself time and be consistent - consistent in logging on Twitter, consistent in following people, consistent in tweeting. Do this once a day preferably, or at least three-four times a week. 
   
   
10. Join the conversation: If you feel you aren’t getting anything out of Twitter, remember you will get what you put in. If you aren’t contributing to Twitter conversations, you won’t get much out of them.
    

Bonus 11th tip: Be patient.

Update: You may also find Gina Minks' Twitter Cheat Sheet useful.

Image by: nico.cavallotto

It’s time to update my top 10 learning tools and techniques list. This time I’ll try to focus more on tools and services. You can view my previous lists of Aug 08 and Jan 08.

My top 10 learning tools in April 2009:

1. Google Reader – I read blogs via RSS feeds. I have tried Google Reader, NetVibes, Bloglines and Feedly, and I have stuck to Google Reader. It also allows me to share interesting articles from my feeds. In case you are interested, you can view my shared items here. I still find many people who don’t really know or use feeds. I don’t lose any opportunity to educate them to the merits of feeds and using a feed reader.
2. Twitter – I will complete one year of Twittering next month. It’s been a great learning tool. I read somewhere that Twitter lowers the barriers of communication. Completely agree with this. Have made more connections on Twitter than on any other network. Connect with me on Twitter @manishmo.
3. TweetDeck - can’t just complete this list without talking about some of the Twitter tools I use. TweetDesk desktop app helps me organize twitter contacts in groups and helps me manage tweets easily.
4. Google Chrome – IE feels extremely slow and archaic after I started using Google Chrome. I love the simplicity of the interface. And the best feature is ability to type anything in the address bar to search for it. No need to actually go to the search engine website.
5. Google search engine – Googling is now a verb. This is my most used search engine.
6. Compfight, a flickr search engine – Love this as it allows me to quickly search Creative Commons images that I can use on my blog.
7. LinkedIn – Okay, perhaps it is not a tool but definitely a network that I have found invaluable. I have made some great connections through the eCube forum.
8. Blogging – Blogging continues to help me reflect on my thoughts and crystallize my learning. I prefer self hosted Wordpress platform more. I still use Blogger for my personal blog and have moved to hosted Wordpress for my team blog.
9. Bubbl.us – Love this collaborative mind mapping service. Simple interface and great collaborative features. I have been using this to collaborate with my connections.
10. Mr. Tweet – this Twitter service has helped me identify new folks to follow based on my network’s network. I have found it quite useful in identifying new folks to connect with.

Image: Imagination by tjtrewin

Everyone’s talking about Twitter. So here's my addition to the conversation based on my experiences with Twitter as @manishmo.

What is Twitter?

To me it is various forms of IM, asynchronous chat, chat room, email, SMS on the Internet, blog (micro-blog) depending on how you use it.

I also like this explanation by Chris Brogan:

Twitter is a stream. Facebook is both a stream and a stopping point (but mostly a stream). Your blog is a stopping point pretending to be a stream.

It’s important to think about where you want information to live, and how you want it to impact the world. For everything you toss into a stream rolls past, and if I’m not at the stream when you throw your leaf onto the waters, I’ll miss the leaf entirely, or perhaps catch only the ripples.

How do you get started with Twitter?

Rohit Bhargava explains 5 stages of Twitter acceptance:

I think I am somewhere in stage 2, 4 and 5!!! I have had some 1x1 conversations, published some useful information. I have made met new people on Twitter, just like I did when I started to blog or using Facebook. But I still don’t really get why people love it SO much.

Tools I used for Twitter?

I started with using Twitter in the browser. I tried Twhirl client. However I have now settled on using TweetDeck. TweetDeck is an AIR desktop application. It provides up to five multiple column display (if you set it that you can set to to Narrow columns in Settings). I usually have one column for replies, one for friends, one for search results. Remaining two column can be used for Direct messages (don’t have many so don’t use it for this), another search result or seeing info about Twitterers (!). Update: Now that I have used TweetDeck for a while, I have figured that it allows you to organize people you are following into groups. You can add columns for your groups. This really makes it easy to manage the large volumes of tweets.

Other interesting tools/utilities about Twitter?

I found some useful and some completely useless but fun stuff services/utilities that give you information about Twitter accounts.

follow cost provides you with useful information about average number of tweets by a user. Useful to know what you can expect when you start following someone.

TweetWheel in an interesting application that shows how your friends are connected to each other. This may take a long time if you have many friends.

TwitterFriends provides some stats about your conversations. Not useful if you are just starting out.

 

Bottom line:

If you are feeling bogged down with email, don’t even think of trying Twitter.

Would I recommend or encourage Twitter’s usage in corporate environment? Well, I am not really sure but I am tending towards a ‘No’ at this time. If there was a Twitter behind the firewall with only employees of the company as users forming a reasonably homogenous user base, then maybe. But in its current state, Twitter can be a real distracter. It needs quite a discipline to manage your follow list. So if you typically work with 10 tabs open in your browser and multiple windows open on your screen, then yeah sure. But Twitter is not for everyone.

 

Update:

Based on inputs from Tom, I have started Yammer in my workplace. It was slow start initially but seems to be picking pace now. I started with introducing a few people to Yammer and the tribe has now grown to 55 of us on the Yammer network for our organization. The message are now starting to come in from more users.

This post is part of the Work at Learning/Learning at Work blog carnival hosted by Dave Ferguson on his blog Dave's Whiteboard.