Thanks to the top people at Learning Pool, here’s a great video of Donald Clark talking about learning theory through the ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7t4uDHQqWk
Building my own community
Apologies for the light blogging of late. I’ve just been super busy and – if I am honest – a bit lacking in inspiration.
Anyway.
I’m starting a new online community based around people like you: folk who read this blog, get my newsletter and take part in my webinars.
I’m guessing that we all have quite a lot in common – problems, solutions, stories, knowledge – and that it makes sense to share what we have as a group.
Also I will be creating special content to go into this community that won’t be on my blog or other online spaces – all of which will be created based on what you, the community, ask for.
Right now for example, there’s a video tutorial explaining how digital capability is being approached at the Department of Health, where I am working at the moment.
I’m not building something huge here. My aim is to have a nice, small, manageable group of people who all contribute and help each other out. I’ll leave the empire building to others 🙂
If this sounds like something you would like to be a part of, just head over to the community where you can sign up for an account.
I look forward to chatting with you!
Minimum viable community
I was invited by James Cattell the other day to accompany him to a meeting to talk about what the best community software platforms are.
I think we rather disappointed the people we talked to, in that neither of us could recommend a particular system.
Instead we both advocated, in effect, a minimum viable community. Start with the simplest, lowest common denominator technology available. Something you know that everyone has access to, and they are used to using.
When people start bumping against the limitations of the technology, they might start suggesting new ways of doing things. This is the time to start thinking about what else could be done – when there is a user demand within your community.
The point is that picking a technology winner too early will put off some of your users – whether because they don’t like what you’ve chosen, or they aren’t comfortable with it, or because it doesn’t work for them.
Concentrate on getting members for your community and get them engaged, and when they start to want to do new things, let them guide you.
If you’re interested in building and managing online communities, you might like to sign up for my free upcoming webinar on the subject!
Webchat – what next for digital engagement? 10th November at 11am
It’s been a while since I’ve run a live chat, so it’s probably a good time to do another.
As for a topic, I think it would be really interesting to have a look at digital engagement and where things might be going in the future. After all, we are all pretty comfortable with doing commentable documents, online surveys, Twitter chats and the like – but what’s the new thing? How can we make this really useful?
If you’re interested, the chat will be happening on this page, on 10th November at 11am and will last for about an hour.
If you visit the webchat page, you can sign up with CoverItLive to get a reminder nearer the time.
Look forward to seeing you there!
Be opinionated
To make things happen, it helps if you have opinions.
Apple are a great example of a company that has opinions. They express those opinions in their products, and like most opinions, some people don’t like them – but that’s fine.
For instance – lots of people moan about the lightning cable used to charge iPhones and iPads – why don’t Apple just use micro-USB like everyone else? The answer is because Apple is of the opinion that micro-USB isn’t good enough, hence the need to design their own.
Apple have made lots of similar decisions based on opinions – like whether the original iMac needed a floppy drive (nope) or if laptops need CD/DVD drives (nah).
GDS is equally opinionated. As an organisation, they have views on the way websites should work, and how they should be made. You might not agree with them, but there’s no doubting where they stand.
Opinions help in two ways. Firstly, they set you apart from the crowd (this can work in a good and a bad way, of course, depending on how appalling your opinions are). Secondly, they help you to move on.
Here’s a real world example. At the Department for Heath, I’m working on digital capability, as are lots of other people in lots of other organisations. Everyone has different views on what digital means, and what capability means.
Again, that’s fine. What we’ve done though is to have an opinion on what those things mean, and how they should be delivered. Quickly coming to this opinion has enabled us to move forward quickly, with the confidence that comes of having a good idea where we want to get to.
We’re not so opinionated, of course, that we can’t change direction if we need to. The joy of an agile approach is being able to respond to feedback and experience.
By taking a position though, and executing on it, we’ve been able to kick start our capability programme. Not everyone may agree, but then they probably never will.
So if you find yourself in a situation where a project is stalling, perhaps the thing to do is to have an opinion about it. After all, you have to start somewhere.