Wikinomics, Crowd Sourcing, Wisdom of Crowds

The readings for week 8 were about how new groups form, and what types of structures they acquire. Next week ’s readings delve deeper into how these large groups work. As you read, any of the three books, try to understand:

1) What is the phenomenon we’re looking at? What is: mass
collaboration, peer production, crowd sourcing? Be able to define, describe, explain it to others.

2) How does this phenomenon work? What are its guiding principles?

3) In what aspect of society does this phenomenon occur, where (else) can it
be used?

4) What is one illustrative example? (don’t be predictable & use the
one from ch 1; search a bit deeper in the book)

Read chapter 1, the last chapter & two other chapters of choice from the book you pick. Please read these parts closely, and try to grasp specific ideas. Browse as much as you can from the rest of the book.

In class, be prepared to explain to the people who didn’t read your book, what your book was about. As you read, think about how you will teach the main ideas from your book to others in the class.

As always, blog your takeaways, and write 2 other blog posts on other topic relevant to class. If you have never done a new tool review, try one. Sidewiki from Google might be a good one to look at.

How to be a successful grad student

Head over to PR Connections for a post & discussion re: How to be a successful grad. student.

Born Digital

Remember, in this class we set out to understand 3 things:

1. What are the principles of social media culture?
2. What are the effects of social media on various aspects of society, work, life, etc.?
3. How is social media used in specific contexts? How should it be used?

The book Born Digital focuses on effects. What are the effects of these new technologies on a generation of Americans (digital natives)?

As you read the book, try to identify how digital technologies (broader than social media) have changed this generation, digital natives.

Select 3-5 characteristics of digital natives, as described in the book, and write a blog post to comment on them. Do they ring true to you? (are you a digital native?) Is it good or bad? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this effect for society, and for the specific individual?

Please read the Introduction, 3 chapters of your choice, and ch 13, Synthesis, very carefully. Skim the other chapters, which means, read:

• the first 2 pages of the chapter;
• the first sentence of the following paragraphs in the chapter;
• the last 2-3 paragraphs of the chapter, or the chapter conclusion section, if there is one.

See also: How to read a book in 2 hours.

Tech621 mentors

And the social media mentoring is a go! Below are the mentor-mentee pairs.

So, what do you do as a mentor?

It would be wonderful if you:

• comment on the student’s blog posts now and again
• provide advice about blogging & twittering
• be there for the student, so he/she knows it’s OK to ask questions.

What do you do as a student?

• ask questions
• engage your mentor in conversation, and through that, meet new people

Thank you so much to the kind people who are helping students out!

@RuudHein – @Zheng_Zhou

@xybrewer – @Scott_SC

@laurelhart – @spwoodall

@mindofandre – @smockstweets

@sradick – @a_branum

A big thank you to @horovice, who also volunteered to mentor a student.

Final project pre-proposal

Starting next week, we’re putting together pieces towards your final project for this class. Please check the class schedule to see when things are due.

The first part is a project pre-proposal. In the pre-proposal, which you will write on your blog, you need to explain as much as you know about what you want to do for your final project. I’ll help you narrow it and focus it.

Keep in mind that the final project should be an original research project about the impact of social media (or a social medium) in a context of your choice (e.g. government, personal relationships, interface design, etc.).

I advise you to set up a meeting with me to discuss your project idea, after you submit your pre-proposal, but before you submit your proposal.

Here is how to think about a research project. You need to determine the following:

Interest Area

What is your broad area of interest, or the context that you want to study? Is it government, usability, environmentalism, etc.?

Focus Area

What about the interest area? What about government? Narrow it down to a small, focused part of the interest area.

Problem

What is the problem you want to solve with your research? Identify the problem. The problem should be relevant and important – worthy of your time and effort.

Research Question

What is the specific question you hope to answer in your research? This should be a simple, elegant, clear question. It can be descriptive:

What are the … [main user behaviors on Twitter]?

How do … [people come up with ideas to post on blogs]?

Or it can ask about the relationship between two or more variables:

Is there a relationship between A and B?

What is the relationship between A and B?

If A happens, is B more likely to happen, too?

Plan of Action

What do you need to do to answer your research question? You will need to become familiar with existing research in your focus area. What do you need to read? Literature about what topics?

What research method(s) should you use to answer your research question? A survey? Focus groups? Something else? Why is this research method appropriate?

Please do your best to answer these questions in your project pre-proposal. Then, set up a time to meet with me and discuss your ideas, so we can draft a proposal.

Social Media Mentoring

A student in TECH 621 got my attention about adopt a blogger, one of the projects of the Social Media Club.

So, since this is a very small class (5 graduate students) I thought it might be worth while to launch this question out there:

Would you be interested in being one of my students’ social media mentor this semester?

Out of my five students, four are graduate students in Computer Graphics Technology (4 Master’s, 1 Ph.D.), and one is studying for a Master’s in Public Health Administration.

They are all new to using social media professionally. They have just started their professional blogs and twitter accounts, and the course requires social media immersion.

It is my belief that social media is a bit like a foreign country – there are social norms and codes of behaviors, and it is less intimidating to travel there with a guide, or mentor. You know this country. Their job is to learn about it.

If you were a student’s mentor, you would commit to answering questions by Twitter or e-mail, reading the student’s blog and advising about it. See the blogroll for student blogs.

So, are you interested?

How to succeed in TECH 621

You may feel a bit of information overload and a bit of confusion about TECH 621. This is normal, because this course probably is very different from others you have taken.

You are trained to succeed in your typical course, but may not be sure how to tackle this one. Here’s some help:

To succeed in TECH 621 you need to create a set of social media habits.

You need to do certain things regularly, just like you brush your teeth, drink coffee, etc.

Here are the social media habits that you need to succeed in this course:

✼

1. Keep up with your RSS feeds

Aim to clear your feed reader daily. Skim all posts, read a few, comment on a few. Please sign up for backtype so I can keep track of your online blog comments.

✼

2. Save & Share useful info

Share with the class and with the world whatever you believe is interesting/important, from our class perspective. Share on twitter and save on delicious if you need to use it for your final project or for the class wiki. Remember to use an URL shortener when sharing links on Twitter (a few good choices: bit.ly, is.gd, cli.gs; there are many more).

✼

3. Use Twitter

Use it whenever you can. I understand you’re not at your computer all day long, like I am, but aim to use it at least once a day. Use it to get a grasp of Twitter culture.

Share links, thoughts, talk about what has your attention, engage in conversations with others. Use it just for the sake of using it – because that’s how you learn the social norms of Twitterville.

Note that you can use twitter from your phone, even if it’s not a smart phone, but please be sure not to exceed your plan’s number of text messages.

✼

4. Blog

Aim to write at least 2 blog posts every week: one on a required topic (class readings), the other on an elective topic.

Of course, you also need to keep up with the class readings. There’s no way you can do all this unless you learn to skim. I’ll teach you how in class, and in a different blog post.

And finally, one more word of advice:

Give it an honest try.

If it’s clear that you are trying honestly and trying hard, you’ll come a long way. Meeting deadlines is one way to show you’re trying honestly. There are others, you can brainstorm in the comments section of this post.

Questions? Want to know why I ask you to do these things? Comment below or e-mail me.

Your blog for TECH 621

I was just about to write a post about how to plan and write a successful blog for class, when I realized… it’s already in the syllabus!

I’m pasting below the relevant part from the syllabus, in an attempt to direct your attention to it.

Comment on this post within 10 hours (ask a question, or somehow indicate you’ve read the post) to be entered in a drawing for a small prize.

“…

Each student will write a personal blog (readable by only class members, or open – your choice). The blog will be professional, which means you’ll write about work (and a bit of work-related fun), not your personal life, food and movie reviews (unless they’re relevant to your work).

Your blog will have 2 categories of posts:

1. Required topic blog posts:

• notes on readings – YOUR takeaways – What are the 3-5 points that are important to YOU? What did YOU take away from the reading? What did it mean to YOU? How is it relevant to YOU? What questions & critiques do you have?
• notes on social media tools – identify, write about, and review social media tools you come across.

2. Elective topic blog posts:

• Ideas, thoughts, opinions, commentary on anything you see/read/hear that is or can be related to class and/or your work. For example, you may view the videos I posted on the Ning network, and write your thoughts about them. Or you can post your thoughts/opinions about something that was discussed in class, something that happened, etc. You can post videos, photos, etc.
• Some mix of personal or humorous posts ad spice to your blog and show your humanity and complexity. Just keep it work-appropriate
• Questions, fears, unfinished ideas – blogs are most interesting when they document your thinking process rather than when they show a finished, polished “final paper.”

Keep the writing simple, concise, clear, and grammatically correct. Remember, this is (part of) your online resume.

…”

Twitter & WordPress resources for TECH 621

TWITTER

• Setting up your account, finding people to follow
• Twitter use tips
• Advice on how to twitter

WORDPRESS

• Setting up your WordPress blog
• WordPress TV help

Also, if you need help with Google reader, see these posts.

Evaluation

As promised in the lecture, here are some tools you can play around with to monitor online conversations and analyze sentiment for free:

Twitter

• Twitter search – type in Clemson and see what people are saying about your university.
  (here’s a bonus search for you You can also use search to keep track of conversations on twitter. For example, PR practitioners engage in a weekly conversation they mark #pr20chat. By searching for #pr20chat you can follow the conversation, and find PR practitioners to follow on twitter).
• See an example of monitoring Twitter with detailed instructions from Chris Brogan
• Twendz is a fun tool – type in a search term, wait for the tweets to load and watch the instant sentiment analysis on the left side. The interface is not very precise and scientific, but it gives you an idea of what can be done with more expensive software.
• Here’s a blog post describing a few other tools for monitoring twitter conversations

Blogs

• The easy way to monitor blog conversations for free is to use a search engine that searches only blogs – for example, Google Blog Search. (Similarly, you can use Google News to search for news. Clemson has been in the news lately, check it out.)
• Google Alerts – You can very easily set up an alert and Google will send you an e-mail every time a certain topic of your choice (say, Clemson) is mentioned in the news. This can also be delivered to your RSS feed reader instead of your e-mail. You can use Google Alerts to monitor news, blogs, group discussions, even online videos. Awesome tool – and it’s FREE!
• Technorati – is another famous blog search and indexing service. Try searching the blogoshpere using Google Blog Search and then Technorati, using the same search term (i.e. Clemson). Note if the search results are different, and if so, how.

If you want to learn more about PR measurement and evaluation:

• subscribe to Katie Paine’s Measurement Blog – also check out the blogs she links to from her blogroll (on the left side)
• read Katie Paine’s book Measuring Public Relationships