Impacto dos 10 primeiros anos da Internet [USA]

A USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future tornou público o estudo “Ten Years, Ten Trends”: "Center for the Digital Future Identifies the 10 Major Trends Emerging in the Internet’s First Decade of Public Use" [via António Granado]. Espanta-me que o capítulo dedicado às comunicações via internet só refira o correio electrónico?!...

Weblogs no contexto I&D

A constante exploração do ambiente que nos rodeia, sobretudo para quem está ligado à investigação, não se pode desligar de uma actividade contínua de monitorização de diversas fontes. Só sabendo o que existe é possivel inovar e contribuir para novas reflexões. Os blogs, enquanto espaços de discurso individual, são uma dessas fontes. Ver What is Future Now?:

"(...) hidden in the daily flow of information coming from newspapers, magazines, scientific journals, conferences, books and blogs, are articles that can be read as signals from the future, signs of what the future could be like."

Ao registar num blog as pistas dessa monitorização, de acordo com a nossa área de investigação (ou de interesse), passamos a fazer parte dessa rede interligada, a que vamos dando sentido à medida que a tecemos.

E porque é que um instituto de I&D poderia estar interessado em instituir os blogs como ferramenta de trabalho dos seus colaboradores? Talvez porque esteja implícito ou explícito na sua própria missão, tal como na que transcrevo:

"(...) the Institute is a non-profit research institute, commited to communicating our research and thinking to the public at large. White papers are one way to do this; but it can also be useful to have a more modest but regular scan of the horizon.

Implicit in the Institute's mission is a mandate not just to release findings, but to share something of its way of thinking, and to encourage others to think more regularly and systematically about the future."

Os blogs, pelas suas características, nomeadamente pela sua informalidade prestam-se a um tipo diferente de divulgação e de envolvimento da comunidade:

"Publications are often like buildings with the scaffolding removed: you see the finished object, but can't see how it was built. In contrast, the informality of blogs makes them a great venue for authors to share works in progress, or to think out loud.

The informality of blogs also means that they can serve as a cross between research notebooks and venues for testing ideas."

Weblogs enquanto vozes da Organização

Este artigo merecia mais comentários, mas as passagens assinaladas dão corpo ao que tenho andado a ruminar ;-) É engraçado como cada um de nós terá tantas histórias para elucidar o segundo parágrafo...

George Dafermos (2003) Blogging the Market: How Weblogs are turning corporate machines into real conversations:

"The weblog became the place where employees shared knowledge, jointly created a shared context for their work, and through which they defined their company." (p. 58)

"In many companies, workers are reluctant to share what they know because they feel their bosses might hijack this knowledge and present it as their own. (..) With weblogs, it is made clear which employee is responsible for contributing which piece of knowledge, so credit and acknowledgement are given where appropriate." (p. 63)

"The revolution will not come overnight. In fact, I believe it will not come at all. The transition will be as silent as email, mobile telephony and instant messaging. But it is poised to be similarly disruptive." (p.81)

A propósito de inovação... ou talvez I&D

conversations in real time fueling all kinds of knowledge in the blogging world:

"Having conversations in real time by sharing information is fueling the birth
of all kinds of knowledge in the blogging world. "

Blogging search and discovery" ou a Big List of Blog Search Engines.

BlogWalk visto à distância

No rescaldo de mais um BlogWalk (dedicado ao tema: Social Software in Organisations - Inside the Firewall), a que não consegui ir, apanho alguns dos pedaços:

"(154)... Equally important threads revolved around value and productivity: How will managers react to people spending time blogging?(...)"

"The overwhelming majority of issues discussed on the day were around people, interactions, emotions and the psychology of blogging in business (...) many of these issues are those that relate to any organisational change. However I think it would be dangerous to think that there are no technology challenges left at all. [...]"

"In discussion about the barriers to introducing blogs and similar tools, there was some amazement that senior management could possible fail to see the benefit of such powerful collaborative tools. [...]"

Ver ainda: "When will corporate blogging be recognised as a desirable skill? e o agregador de entradas em Channel 'blogwalk' . Porque é que aqui coloquei isto? Já expliquei aqui.

A propósito da Taxonomia de Bloom (1956)...

É curioso percorrer as diversas categorias propostas na Taxonomia de Bloom (1956), pensando na prática de manutenção de um blog e relacionando-a com os processos de aprendizagem.

RIAT Destino Digital

Amanhã tem lugar em Setúbal o último seminário de lançamento do projecto RIAT Destino Digital, uma Rede de Informação e Assistência Técnica para PME do Turismo:

"Através de acções de informação e sensibilização em todo o País (incluindo Açores e Madeira), da selecção de um amostra de empresas e da aplicação de um pré-diagnóstico a esse conjunto de empresas, o resultado final e com maior impacto será o de erguer planos de acção individualizados, para essas empresas, que permitam extrair o seu potencial de desenvolvimento através de uma adequada endogenização das TICS para capturar as oportunidades providenciadas pela economia digital [continuar a ler...]"

[mais aqui, aqui e aqui]

Encorajar colaboradores a manterem Blogs

Esta entrada não precisa de comentários. Sun Microsystems Blogs:

"Sun encourages its employees to contribute to blogs (weblogs). The individuals who post here work at Sun Microsystems. The opinions expressed here are their own, are not necessarily reviewed in advance by anyone but the individual authors, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them." [via Alex Halavais]

Revistas em acesso livre na SAGE Resources open until Oct 31

A propósito desta dica do António Granado ("A EDITORA Sage tornou a abrir o acesso gratuito às suas revistas científicas..."), seria interessante perceber até que ponto é que uma campanha, aparentemente destinada a cativar novos utilizadores no início de mais um ano académico, não poderá ser uma forma de avaliar o impacto das publicaçõeses em regime de acesso livre versus pago. O Fernando reuniu numa só entrada algumas considerações sobre a propriedade intelectual onde menciona um artigo que vale a pena ler: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing de Jean-Claude Guédon). No quarto da tralha a Filipa vai continuando a recolher apontadores para o Movimento Open Source e claro, diversas publicações e revistas de acesso livre.

Weblogs as personal refining filters

Since the beginning of B2OB I’ve been looking for barriers and opportunities for the use of weblogs (blogs) in organizational environments, contexts. My mainly focus as been looking to blogs as tools.

As my own experience of maintaining a blog grew (along with other blogs in a collaborative effort, and talks about them in different contexts), I’ve came to see blogs as empowering people on their quest (their need) of continuous learning. In that sense blogs offer us the opportunity of refining our own lenses to filter all the information we came across according to our different expertise area of interests. But further, by allowing the «attraction» of more information just by «knitting the blog».

Puzzled? For someone who already maintains a blog, the answer is obvious after a certain period of time: by expliciting some of our thoughts (through posts) and relating them with other pieces of information (through links) we had semantic value, all according to our interests, that latter became indexed by search engines (like google) becoming part of the digital information ecosystem, being built everyday in the internet. The greatest part is being able to be found and engage in conversations that once where only possible according to our geographic mobility. In that sense we come to cross borders, scanning a richer and wider environment and filtering the information in manageable chunks that became part of our daily learning experience.

What does this have to do with blogging in Organizations? Everything! If you do not foster an environment for the adoption of blogging in the organizational context, your employees will be blogging somewhere else.

Remember how difficult it is to maintain a portal (either intranet and/or internet) updated? One of the main difficulties was «translating» useful information into digital arranged bits according to no one satisfaction (the beauties of living in democracies or was it technocracies).

That might not be the problem anymore if you come to meet, some of your employees labeled bloggers. For them is the normal way of working (remember when you first had e-mailers in your organization?). Like searching for experts on journals, in conferences, on the corridors, on the library, at a meeting, they also connect much further on their normal daily routines inside organizations – discussing with pears, making questions to experts, commenting on others works, making connection to useful resources (the open source movement has got a lot more than software), finding new solutions for old and new problems, but with a difference: they leave their traces so one can follow (or engage) with what they are doing.

It’s been a wonderful more than a year experience. To account for all the learning that occurred during this time would have been difficult, but gladly all is blogged in here for that purpose. All the people whose work I connected, all the conversations that took place, all the bits and the resources that allowed me to start this journey on understanding the value of weblogs in organizational contexts go much further that the once start up point of blogs as tools. They are much more than that. They are personal refining filters that connect us with the social fabric being built at a larger scale around information artefact's previously uncontexted.

In case you haven’t notice, this is my silly way of thanking all of you, part of my window to the world, for this last year’s learning. This is the real blended learning ;-)