Heidi Allen Digital Strategy

Michael Tamblyn, CEO of BookNet Canada, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to innovation in the Canadian book industry describes 6 initiatives that could make things better for publishers and those with an interest in the future of the book.  A humorous and insightful presentation, including the impact of the likes of Kindle to the Plastic Logic Reader.

Phrases that stood out for me:

• Many people stay in publishing having developed a high degree of skill but with specialization can come resistance to change
• We need creative technologists to build things
• A creative idea can often be met with: “We’re really excited about your new idea, all we need is:
  a full specification
  a fully developed test plan
  a testing model
  and if you’re not sucessful you’re fired”
• When was the last time you saw (beta) on a publishers website
• Encourage experimentation
• Let generalists in – bring people from different backgrounds
• Place a lot of little bets and place them quickly

Imagine you are researching a particular topic.  How can you tap into what others are researching on the same topic? How can you keep in touch with what your peers are talking/bookmarking/looking at? How can you do that easily, regularly, w good search facilities?
I (@dreamingspires) decided to ask the question on Twitter which resulted in a 3 way discussion:

Discussion 22nd April on Twitter:

@dreamingspires: How can you keep in touch with what your peers are talking/bookmarking/looking at? How can you do that easily, regularly, w good search …

@AllergyNotes: ‘How can you keep in touch with what your peers are talking/bookmarking/looking at?’ – FriendFeed, if they use it…

@dreamingspires: thinking from a research perspective: how would say 7 researchers share & store data/ info in a social media environment

@AllergyNotes:  Google Docs, Zoho, etc. Shared G account?

@dreamingspires: for me the key is share, store/bookmark and be able to find/search again. The latter is not easy i think

@AllergyNotes: Researchers want more than bookmarks, they need database and writing environment plus file upload

@dreamingspires: Researchers need database and writing environment plus file upload -maybe this is the next step needed for ‘social research’

@AllergyNotes: Re “social research” – But again, could anyone have predicted the Twitter phenomenon?

@AllergyNotes: Even in 2009, people still find tools they never knew they wanted and/or needed, such as Twitter…

@dreamingspires:  New tools means Global: interconnectivity, sharing, fluid, information stream = on cusp of new ways of working, info rich

@troy_anderson: on the topic of “social research”, my advisor is working on a research grid for sharing data: http://www.cvrgrid.org/ (the cardiovascular research grid)

@dreamingspires: Love the new tools and ways of working that are beginning to emerge

@troy_anderson: in research it seems the tools are outpacing the willingness to share data

@dreamingspires: it seems the “gadgets” or tools often come first and are used by the early birds before more embrace new ways of working

@dreamingspires:  I think we are on the cusp of new ways of researching and working

The upshot of this conversation for me was:

Three useful tools for keeping in touch with what information your peers are posting:

• Friendfeed — which keeps track of all the information being posted by those you are following, whether websites they have bookmarked on del.icio.us, or Diigo, or information they are posting on sites like Twitter
• Google Docs or shared Google Accounts and similar applications like Zoho
  
  
• New initiatives, such as the CardioVascular Research Grid — the need for new tools to allow researchers to contribute to a global database with a writing environment and the ability to upload.

Not bad for half an hour feedback on a question.  New ways of researching, storing and sharing information being changed by the needs of many, or as Jeff Howe might say ‘Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business’, next on my list of things to read.

Following certain steps when using twitter can yield high quality uptodate information on topics relevant to you.  Following on from my How To Use Twitter for Research Video, these are some of the steps I take.

Step 1 Find The Right People To Add To Your Network

• The most useful people to add are those who post links and information regularly on topics that interest you
• Take the top 5-10 people you find the most useful of the people you follow and look at the profiles of the people they follow and add them to your network
• Look at the profile of each of your new followers and decide if you want to add them to your network by following them back
• Don’t feel obliged to follow everyone who follows you – you’ll end up with a twitter stream that is full of twitter noise and not of much use to you
• When you get to the point you can no longer keep up with the twitter conversations go through your list of people you follow and decide if they are still relevant to your twitter info stream.  If not unfollow

A note on Unfollowing: When using twitter in this way unfollowing or following should not be taken as a personal slight (and the same goes if you are unfollowed) – your followers may be grateful for a warning if you let them know you’ll be posting on a particular topic that may not be relevant to them (eg conference proceedings) and let them know when to follow you back should they want to.  Comment by Teresa Blaes on my last post:

‘I find it interesting that you only return follow some people, while other people in the social media space like to return the twitter love. I guess, that it is as you said, it all depends on what you want to use twitter for.’

• MrTweet, or a TwitterSearch can help you find people although the results can often be too general

Step 2 Managing Your Twitter Conversations

• Applications like TweetDeck help manage and organize various twitter streams (for example I have several twitter groups I follow: Professional; twitter users who live close to me; and friends.  (Linking to twitter users who live close to you can open up new avenues of conversations and physical meet ups which in themselves can be very rich in the information they provide.)

Step 3 Finding Information

• Consistency and regular use is important in getting the most out of your twitter stream
• Depending on the number of people you follow, log onto twitter and open every link your twitter network has posted.
• To do this efficiently hold the control key and then click on the link – this opens a new window for each link while keeping your original twitter window open.
• You can then decide whether to look at the link then and there or click on all the links first and then look at them window by window (which I find is a more efficient use of time)
• A very quick scan of the website will tell you if what has been posted is useful or not.
• If the link is to a blog or website that will be useful add the RSS feed

  to your GoogleReader or Feedly or email subscription and you have added a regular new source of information to your news feed.

• Add twittersearch to your google search box – see what people have said about a particular product or situation around the globe – it’s powerful feedback

Step 4 Sharing information

• Sharing information lets people know what you are interested in and adds to your followers information stream
• Posting links on Twitter, applications like TinyURL shorten the links (TweetDeck will also do this automatically for you)
• Microblogging: increasingly twitter can also be used to post links which can then be collated together into a blog post
• Posting good information on Twitter will also mean people of similar interests find you which results in an informative Twitter network of people that you may not have yourself thought to seek out
• Use key words when you post your link.  Simply posting: ‘This is good http://tinyurl.com/d8welt‘ doesn’t tell your readers not very much: but ‘Video on how to use Twitter for Research http://tinyurl.com/d8welt‘ will not only let your readers know what the link is about but enable others who are searching Twitter to find you.  For example, mentioning the word Sydney in my posts has meant a lot of Sydney twitter users have linked to me which has been useful for me
• InstaHelp:  there has been many an occasion I have asked a question and had top rate answers and links back – far more quickly and specifically than a Google search
• Having Fun: as with most things, if you’re enjoying connecting with people and sharing information, the chances are you’ll get a lot of rewarding conversations with Tweeples as a result.

Attending a conference with Nic Lucas (@Webutaries) resulted in an impromptu video interview on how I use Twitter for research.

“How do you trust what you’re reading is quality?”  “When does quality become quality?” These are recurring themes encountered with regard to some of the websites that offer free content. However, aggregator sites gather content of a certain standard or type which may offer an alternative to some of the more traditional ways of peer review or defining quality.

Academic Earth

This is an excellent new educational resource which gathers video lectures from leading Universities such as MIT, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley.  Lectures are free to use and download and there is plan to include social features for users.  As an example:

Private Equity and the Financial Crisis — Yale University lecture by Stephen Schwarzman Co-Founder of Blackstone Group

For a more detailed description on Academic Earth see also Life in the Fast lane’s Academic Earth Open Source Lecture Series.

Science Blogs

This site features bloggers from a wide array of scientific disciplines and only includes those posts which have reached a high academic standard. Launched in January 2006, ScienceBlogs claims to have the largest online community dedicated to science.

Research Blogging

Research Blogging  automatically aggregates only blog posts about peer-reviewed research, many of which appear in Science Blogs and can be recognized by the green tick telling reader they are reading a blog on peer reviewed research.  If you don’t know this site I can highly recommend having a look – topics covered range from Computer Science to Psychology.

YouTube EDU

Newly launched, YouTubeEdu collects all the educational content being uploaded on YouTube by Colleges and Universities.  However, in this case there is no guarantee being made of educational quality and the standards will undoubtedly vary but it is another excellent resource.

Universities providing free content

Although not aggregator sites as such, it is probable that top Universities offering content on a variety of subjects will have reached a certain standard.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in addition to providing OpenCourseWare recently opted to publish their research articles free online (in addition to sending them to journals for publication) in order to give greater access to the university’s scholarship. Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences have also decided on a similar policy.  The Education Portal lists some of the best free online University courses available.
Overall, does content go through as rigorous a review process compared with more traditional routes – maybe, maybe not. There are new ideas like GPeerReview being developed, however, for sites such as Academic Earth, ScienceBlogs, or MIT to be able to continue to draw traffic by virtue of hosting only the best means they must ensure that content meets their standards – much in the same way as happens in the more traditional routes of peer review.

For more information on the role of blogs as institutional educational tools which also tackles the issue of quality control very well see an article published by PLoS Biol: Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy.

Changes to the way content is sourced and paid for has led me to search for new startups and business models, some of which I will list over the next few weeks.

Connexions

Connexions allows educational materials to be organized in small modules that can that can be be linked and arranged in different ways according to how the user wants to learn.  They currently have over 9000 modules woven into almost 500 collections. All content is free to use under the Creative Commons ‘attribution’ license.

Collaboration is encouraged – creators of new content are listed as authors, who can assign others to help maintain the content, work groups can be created to look over each others content, changes can be suggested.  If a user wants to take the content in a different direction they can change the original work and derive a new module (while still recognizing the work of the orginal author).
Their business model:  Connexions is supported by money from foundations, people, and companies and is a registered trademark of Rice University – it’s a great way to advertise your University and encourage students to attend your courses.

Maketextbooksaffordable

A site for open-access textbooks — free online or printed for a low cost. The content of open textbooks is licensed to allow anyone to use, download, customize, or print.  The site is run by a coalition of students who are campaigning for free online textbooks – they declare their intent to:

•    Seek and consider open textbooks and other open educational resources when choosing course materials.
•    Give preference to a low or no cost educational resource such as an open textbook over an expensive, commercial textbook if it best fits the needs of a class.
•    Encourage institutions to develop support for the use of open textbooks and other open educational resources.

Free.Ed Net

Free.Ed.Net has been providing free courses and education resources since 1997 and have now ventured into the learning world of Second Life.  The courses cover vocational and academic subjects which students can take at their own pace and use it to supplement their other learning. The site is developed and maintained by David L Heiseman, Sweethaven Publishing Services and makes money from ads and donations.

FlatWorldKnowledge

What is impressive here is that learning really is in the context of social learning.  Their books are also free online, users can buy audio books, chapters, self-print options all for under $30. Books are open for instructors to modify for their own courses, and authors are paid royalties from the money earned.  Books become the hub of a social learning network where students learn from the book and each other. Students can earn money if their study aids are good by uploading them into the ‘market place’ and naming their price per download.  FlatWorld books has just received funding of USD 8M

Nixty

Nixty are relatively new players but their site looks great.  They are creating a global learning environment, providing educators and colleges free tools and students teaching themselves with open free education in a community.