Off Course-On Target

@lrn2day: What did YOU learn 2day?

I'm not sure who first said it, but something I learned a LONG time ago is how smart it is to surround yourself with bright and talented people.  Based on this, (and this alone, I assure you), I'm a VERY smart guy because I am privileged to be surrounded by some of the best and the brightest. 

Case in point for this post is my long time friend and colleague Marcia Conner. Here is but the latest example of how bright and talented she is.  A few months ago, we had a conversation via some Tweets and emails on the topic of capturing and sharing the answer to the simple question of “What did you learn today?”  In my typical hyperbolic fashion, I took this simple idea and ranted and raved to my dear Marcia about a vision of how incredible it would be if we could start a movement that would change the opening status update question posed by the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Linked, etc. from “What are you doing now?” to “What did you learn today?” 

As I am all too want to do, I rambled on and on about how incredible it would be if every day, every person was to Tweet or otherwise briefly summarize what they had learned that day. Imagine if this was shared, circulated, reposted, referenced, stored, and searchable.  Imagine how much the rest of us could learn from reading about what others had learned that day. Imagine how much knowledge would be created by these insights and observations.  Imagine the follow-on conversations this would provoke. Imagine if …… well you get the idea.  Marcia listened/read patiently—she has all too much practice with me—and we reached an enthusiastic consensus about how stupendous this would be.

As we both like to do, we agreed to practice what we preach and also to do some experiential learning, and so we agreed to start trying to institute a self-discipline of ending each day with a Tweet that started with “Today I learned …”  Within the limits of my nomadic existence of late, where it is difficult for me to Tweet while out at sea and not constantly connected, it was a great experience and experiment. 

Both Marcia and I also championed the idea to our fellow followers and got more and more people answering this same question each day or as often as possible.  For me, just the exercise of reflecting back on the day was incredibly valuable as I posed this question to myself and tried to choose what was the most useful and valuable thing I had learned that day.  So too was the self-discipline I began to develop to ensure that I tried to do this every day and wouldn’t let myself end a day without such a post or Tweet.

But wait, there’s MORE!  In typical Marcia fashion, she took this simple idea and ran with it. This effort could be more than an interesting conversation between the two of us and a new habit for just ourselves and our followers.  And so it was that yesterday, when I was able to again get an Internet connection here on the tiny atoll of Hao** and I started to catch up on my backlog of emails and Tweets, I was delighted (though not surprised) to get the following direct Tweet from Marcia:

“We did it! Check out @lrn2day for a daily recap of what people are learning. You inspired the vision. Just took a little admin & help.”

Sure enough, I checked out @lrn2day on Twitter and my bright and talented friend Marcia has managed to create this Twitter address which now enables everyone—and yes that means YOU—to tell the Twitterverse what they learned today.  And in return we can all learn what everyone else is learning by following @lrn2day.  How cool is that?  How smart am I to have people like Marcia around me?

Run (do not walk) your fingers and thumbs over to the nearest Twitter keyboard and start following this fun thread by typing in follow @lrn2day. Then, return the favor and type in D @lrn2day and tell us the answer to the question: What did YOU learn today? And finally, do your best to establish your own form of self-discipline to do this EVERY day! Imagine what we’ll all learn!

-- Wayne

** copy & paste 18 05.937S 140 54.721W into Google Earth if you’d like to see where Hao is.

VMG

As most of you know, for the past two years I’ve been out conducting a grand experiment of learning, living, and working from my sailboat most of the time, as I explore and experience this phenomenal planet of ours from the vantage point of the sea. I am currently anchored at the small village of Rikitea on the Island of Mangareva, which is in the Iles Gambiers (cut and paste the lat/long pair 23 06.939S 134 58.098W into Google Earth if you’d like to see where this is).

One of my primary drivers for heading off on this new direction in life, was to turn myself into a truly fulltime learner and dive into the deep end of the ignorance pool.  I wanted to see if I could figure out how to swim and have fun doing it. It has been working extremely well too. Every single day is almost a nonstop set of learning experiences on just about every level you can imagine: personally, professionally, of other people and cultures, of geography, geology and archaeology, of all things mechanical, of the stars and solar system, of maps, of me and of the worlds above, below, and on top of the water.

I’m finding that there is an incredible amount of very deep lessons to be learned, as well as some extraordinarily helpful concepts and models that apply themselves to so much more than “just” sailing and a life aquatic.  One of these in particular, is a term unique to sailing called VMG which is the acronym for “velocity made good”.  This one has really struck me as an enormously helpful conceptual model and it has stayed with me throughout my adventure. Now I’d like to share it with you here, get your comments on it and offer it as a model that I believe you too would find very valuable, both professionally and personally.  Bear with me for just a bit while I quickly walk you through what VMG is all about in the context of sailing, and then I think you’ll quickly see how well this can be applied to most other things in life.

VMG or “velocity made good” is the measurement of the speed at which you are progressing toward your intended destination. VMG is vector-based in that it requires TWO values—speed and direction—in order to determine what the VMG value is.

Now, to get from point A to point B in a power boat, you’d simply follow the common principal that a straight line is the shortest distance between any two points, and you’d steer the motorboat directly towards point B.  There would be no need for this special term of VMG because you’d simply measure your speed over the ground or through the water and that would be how quickly you were progressing toward your destination.

In a sailboat, however, you are dependent upon the wind for your motive power, and it is not always possible to follow the straight line to your destination. For example, if the wind is coming FROM the point B you are trying to get to, then you have a problem.  In fact, until relatively recently in the history of sailing, it was only possible to sail in about whatever direction the wind was blowing; that is, downwind. This is why, for example, all the historical sailing routes of the world went in similar directions and to similar destinations. You were essentially at the mercy of Mother Nature and you literally went whichever way the wind was blowing.

To this day, many people assume that a sailboat is “pushed” by the wind and therefore, can only go downwind.  But in fact, modern sailboats are not dependent upon being pushed, they can also and most often, be “pulled” by the same principle that enables airplanes to fly—lift. The sails are carefully shaped and angled such that they act as a wing and create lift, which combined with the similar lift being generated by the keel under the water, enables the sailboat to move forward. While it is not possible to sail directly into the wind, it is possible to sail within as little as 30 degrees off the wind, and therefore you can now move towards, although not directly at, your destination, even if the wind is coming straight from this point. The technique is known as “tacking” and if you were to observe it from above, the path of the boat would be a zigzag pattern, since the boat is steered first to one angle (say, off to the starboard or right side) and then back to the other angle (to the port or left side).  By maintaining this angle to the wind, the sails and keel generate lift and move the boat forward, and you are able to tack or zigzag your way to point B.

Because you are never advancing directly towards your destination, you’re always moving away from it to some extent; your actual speed on the water is of little importance. What you want to know is how much progress you are making towards point B and THAT is what VMG tells you. Unless you are moving in a straight line directly towards your destination, your VMG is always going to be less than your actual speed over the ground. But how much less?  In approximate terms, if you are traveling at an angle of 90 degrees to your destination, then your VMG would be zero; that is, you’d never get there. Greater than 90 degrees and your VMG would be negative. So angles less than 90 degrees have some amount of positive VMG; therefore, you’d be making positive or forward progress towards your destination.  How much would be a vector or combination of your actual speed and the angle. This is how VMG is calculated. 

Fortunately, on modern sailboats such as mine, there is a digital readout that tells me exactly what my VMG is at any moment and this reading is what you learn to pay the most attention to because it is the “bottom line” of how well you are sailing towards your next waypoint or destination.  Figuring out when I’m going to arrive at this next point then is not based on how fast the boat is moving through the water, but what the VMG speed is.  You therefore adjust your sails and angle of your heading not to get the maximum speed but to get the maximum VMG.

What I’ve been finding even more fascinating though, is that if you remove the context of sailing and treat VMG as a general conceptual model, it becomes extremely useful in many other situations. Destination can now be any form we like, such as a personal goal or an organizational objective. As in the case of  sailing, you are often faced with opposing forces that work against you and keep you from being able to move directly towards your point B. Some would simply “go with the flow” and let themselves be controlled and pushed by these forces, and therefore go in similar directions and to similar destinations that were all “downwind”.  But if you really want to get to the point B that you have set your sites on, then it is possible to develop strategies that allow you to head “upwind”, without taking the opposing forces on directly, but very cleverly using those same forces to provide the metaphorical equivalent of “lift” to you and your team, thus enabling you to make forward progress, and ultimately arrive at your destination. 

Does this sound familiar?  Do you recall times when you have purposefully decided to take an indirect path, meandering in different directions that move you closer but not directly towards your goal?  If done with purpose,  it can be extremely smart and enable you to go against the flow, to succeed in spite of opposing forces, and to get where YOU want to go. 

You can see how well this all fits into my long time focus and the namesake of this site—the strategy of being “off course” and yet very much “on target”.  Yet for me the real lesson of VMG is in the value of having an accurate measurement of what my VMG is.  This is where I think we can also gain the most advantage in using the concept of VMG in other applications. What we need is a VMG meter for all of our other pursuits in life!

In many ways, I think it can be relatively straight forward to create a VMG meter for any application. First, of course, we need to have a clear and accurate sense of where point B is. What is the end state we are trying to achieve?  What are the coordinates of point B?  Then we need to know our current location, where we are now.  And finally, we need to know what is our actual speed AND at what angle away from our determined destination are we moving?  Put all these together and you get a very simple, but profound, guiding metric of your true progress. 

Think how well this would let you make adjustments to your strategies and implementations, and how quickly you could find out what effect this has on your VMG. For example, moving faster often seems to be a good thing: “We must be doing well, look how fast we are going!”  But how often has it turned out that you were making LESS progress towards your goal, even though you were “going faster”?  When would it be smart to choose to go slower at a different angle to reach maximum VMG? 

As with many of my “off course, on target” stories, including the original Apollo mission example that got me started with this whole line of thinking, it is all about getting good at constant course correction, which requires that you know where you are headed and how far off course you are at any given point in time.

So give this VMG idea a try in YOUR context. How well have you quantified the specifics of your “point B” destination?  How would you measure the “angle” away from the direct line towards your point B? How do you measure the speed that you or your project are moving at? If you can measure these, then you can put them together and create your very own VMG gauge, which will let you make constant course corrections and successfully reach that elusive point B destination before everyone else.

Would you rather join the rest of the crowd, go wherever the prevailing winds blow you, and let the external forces determine your future?  Or would you like to chart your own course?  Do the impossible and sail upwind. Fashion your own version of a VMG gauge, and you can purposefully put yourself very much off course, but equally much on target!

Happy sailing!

w
a
yne
=====

Snowstorm of News (Continued)

In my last posting, I noted a recent example of mass personalization or the Snowflake Effect taking hold of news. I just ran into another and perhaps even more significant example, which some are referring to as “printernet”, described as custom printing for newspapers, magazines, and even wikis.

PBS’s MediaShift web site, “Your guide to the digital media revolution” hosted by Mark Glasser, had a good overview of “printernet” in its recent posting “'Printernet' Vision Brings Custom Print Publications to Masses”:

“Publishing means newspapers, newsletters, books and posters in mass market quantities, but versioned and personalized for specific communities and individual users.”

Glasser’s article also notes the ties with another example of personalization, Time Inc.’s Mine magazine, which my fellow Snowflake Erik Duval recently noted in his blog post “Snowflakes at Time Magazine”.

Glasser’s article is very much worth reading because he goes on to show how “printernet” affects magazines,  newspapers, and wikis.

This is not only of interest to me because it is yet another example of the Snowflake Effect taking off, but also because of my fascination with how interesting and useful it is to mashup old models, such as print in this case, with new models such as the web, networks, etc.

It’s worth checking out to see what you think.

The Snowflake Effect on News

I’m seeing a virtual snowstorm of recent products and services that are trying to find ways to “snowflake” their offerings.  My fellow Snowflake Effect partner (and one of my favorite snowflakes) Erik Duval recently posted an example  “Snowflakes at Time Magazine” showing how publishers are sticking their toes into this space.

These newer examples are also incorporating and addressing the context of “attention”; that is, what do we as unique individuals pay attention to, want brought to our attention, etc.  Read on to see what I mean.

Ohpan, a free personalized and interactive feed of breaking news, photos, weather, etc. is another recent example of a new service for highly personalized news from the web design company AType Studios. TechCrunch, which I find to be an excellent source for such news, had a good review of this on March 6th called “Ticker Feed Ohpan Offers Uber-Personalized News”

We’ve seen some earlier attempts to help us get “just the right” news items—ones where where you indicate topical interests and can build your own newspaper with GoogleNews and many other offerings. However, I see examples such as Ohpan’s technology as being a significant step up in the evolution of this kind of Snowflake Effect decision support, because it is adding more context from us individually, something it learns from our online behaviors: which sites we visit, what we save or forward to others, etc. 

There are also links to social sites that more of us are using, such as Facebook, as well as links to Gmail and Twitter. Of particular note is their provision of a feedback loop, so I can interact and provide more context by indicating individual news items I particularly like and either want more or less of, plus the option to share these choices with others. In my experience, this linking capability adds significantly to the overall “network effect” of improvement. I’m also increasingly delighted by the way this is providing the critical serendipitous discovery of news, sites, people, etc.

One of the more noteworthy items, which AType is apparently going to offer next, is the same feedback loops for advertisements, enabling us to indicate ads that we like, want more or less of, use, recommend to others, etc.

All of this is VERY much worth watching. This whole area of decision support is something I highly recommend that we all  keep an eye on as these sites develop, improve, and evolve faster and faster and get better and better.

The Snowflake Effect and “Just Right for Me” Decision Support

Here’s another Snowflake Effect example of how sites are starting to catch up on ways to help people deal with the abundance of choice and on providing what I like to refer to as “decision support”—helping all of us to make “just the right” choice and decisions at just the right time, etc.

This example is from BestInClass.com, which provides assistance on how to choose “just the right” digital camera.  In our previous world where products and solutions were mass produced, we saw “shootout” types of testing and reporting in magazines.  These publications would purport to inform us which camera was the “winner” and the best choice for us. But this information was completely devoid of individual context: what factors, such as price, picture quality, size, weight, convenience of controls, etc., did I care about the most?  Without these factors being taken into account, and with the combination of answers to all these preferences making what’s “just right” for me increasingly unique, then how could they possibly know which camera was best for me? 

Of course they couldn’t, and so we learned (often the hard way) that we still needed to try to sort through all this testing data, as well as opinions from friends (and strangers), and hope we could figure out the best choice.

In the coming era of the Snowflake Effect, where things are increasingly being mass customized—witness for example the continuing growth of more and more choices of digital cameras and their options—we need more help than ever to find just the right camera, or whatever product, service, person, or content that we are seeking. Increasingly we “know” that a “just right” choice is out there, but finding it and choosing it is the big new challenge.

While BestInClass is but one small example, consider how this offering is trying out ways to help us with decision support in selecting “the best digital camera for me.”

In addition to checking out the BestInClass web site, you can also find other reviews about it online, such as the March 15, 2009 posting on TechCrunch “BestInClass Tries To Help Consumers Find The Perfect Digital Camera”

While they are focused on electronic equipment and expect to add more types to their offerings, it doesn’t take much extrapolation to start to imagine this same type of service being offered for other kinds of decision support (e.g. Who is the best person for me to ask this question of?  What’s the best thing for me to read/listen to/watch to learn more about this?  What’s the best way for me to get up-to-speed on using this piece of equipment?

I’d be curious to know what other examples of decision support you are seeing, and I’d especially like to learn about your experiences with them.  What kinds of choices and needs do YOU see coming next or want to see?  What are YOU or your organization doing to offer this type of decision support to your clients, members, students?

We “snowflakes” need all the help we can get, so we can “get better at getting better” with our decision making. I see this kind of support becoming increasingly available and I expect it will continue along an exponential growth curve.

More on Mashups

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how long it takes to get articles published, and even less so, how I make it worse by taking much too long in letting you know when they are.  However in spite of the delays, I’m delighted to finally let you know about a recent article I wrote for BECTA, the British “government agency promoting the use of information and communications technology; news, projects and resources on lifelong and special education.” They have been doing outstanding work for many years, and have a section called Emerging Technology for Learning (ETL), which is one of my regular “feeds” for learning and technology.

I was therefore most honored to be asked to write an article on mashups, which I titled “The Snowflake Effect: The Future of Mashups and Learning”

The key point I try to make in the article is that in order to realize the true power and potential of mashups, we need to understand and treat this as a conceptual model with fundamentals that can be applied to almost anything. To make this point I used as many existing examples, technologies, and applications as possible to help illustrate how mashups are already being used with great diversity, albeit on a small scale so far.  This subject exemplifies Gibson’s great quote that “The future is already here, it is just not very evenly distributed”, and I hope that the article will help to “distribute the future” a bit more evenly by encouraging you to consider using the concept of mashups for many more applications than you may currently be doing.

Please take a few minutes to look over this article, and more importantly, all the other great topics within the BECTA and ETL sites.  Please also be encouraged to add your comments to the articles that you do read, as this adds immeasurable value for all of us.

Past Meets Present to Create the Future of Easter Island

I am as remiss as I am delighted to be able to finally get around to sharing some of the fascinating work taking place on one of the world’s most remote locations, Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, and to introduce you to some of the even more fascinating people doing this work. 

Most of us are probably familiar with the mysterious stone carvings on Easter Island called Moai (pronounced mo´-eye) and they are indeed impressive.  Some of you may recall the book “Collapse” by Jeffrey Diamond and recall how he used Rapa Nui as a blueprint or roadmap to societal implosion, all of which seems all too relevant and most valuable in these current times.

However, even more impressive is the story of the people and the history that lies behind the blocks of stone. It is in part a story of great sadness and devastation as the residents desecrated the island (and nearly themselves) by clearing literally every tree in order to create these statues. Yet this is also a story with great hope and inspiration as these challenges are being resolved with remarkable human ingenuity and determination augmented by some of today’s hardware and software. I continue to be more and more fascinated by the whole new solutions and results that emerge when we mix or “mashup” the old with the new, and these efforts on Easter Island are yet another great example.

Jeff O’Brien has recently done a great job of telling this story in his Jan. 13, 2009 Fortune magazine article “Saving Easter Island” and in this accompanying video interview.  I am very confident that you will find it a good use of your time to take a few minutes to read the article and watch the video.

You will be introduced to Sonia Haoa, a 55-year-old native of the island and the lightening rod for efforts to capture the history of the island and save it from further destruction. The article and video will also introduce you to my friend and colleague Pete Kelsey who has been instrumental in helping Sonia and others on the island take advantage of some of the benefits of modern technology and techniques to create a much more in-depth and accurate capture of the geography and history of the island. They have used this technology to see whole new connections and ways forward for the future.  Pete works at Autodesk Inc. and is the resident expert in the software, such as AutoCAD Civil 3D, and the whole area of civil engineering

Together Pete, Sonia, and a team of other people from local and from other technology companies are in the process of digitizing the whole island to create models so accurate you can now see the original chisel marks from when the Moai were carved out of the volcanic rock blocks. It is from lessons like the ones coming out of this work on Easter Island that Autodesk and all of us can learn more about how to combine the past with the present to make a much better future.

Pete originally went to Easter Island out of pure curiosity and to check off one of the items on his “Bucket List” (name of a highly recommended movie BTW) of things to do and places to see before he “kicked the bucket”.  However his curiosity and talent soon led him to connect up with Sonia. And the rest makes for a great story that is still unfolding, but you can get started on with the article and video. 

* You can also track the whole project on the Easter Island project diary blog.

Best of all, I will soon have the great privilege of meeting some of these people in person and seeing their work first hand, since I am about to set sail for this remarkable remote island this month. I’m currently in Costa Rica finishing preparations on my 50’ sailboat “Learnativity” and expect to set off later this week for Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands from where I’ll turn south and make the open ocean crossing to Easter Island. If you get out your atlas or fire up Google Earth, you’ll get a better sense of just how remote Easter Island is and develop a bit more appreciation for the importance and the challenge of the efforts being made there to build a whole new future for the island and for the rest of us.

I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to read this article and watch the video. I think you’ll soon become as fascinated with this as I am and a bit more aware of the wonderful diversity and vitality that is on this planet we share.  There are lessons for all of us and on many levels including geographical, historical, sociological, and personal to be gleaned from the history of Easter Island, as well as its present and prospective future. 

I look forward to reporting back to you when I’m on Easter Island with more photos and stories of some of my personal experiences, interactions, and perspectives.  Until then, enjoy some virtual traveling and some learning from the comfort of your chair, and please join me in a salute to the ingenuity of people like Sonia, the energy and spirit of people like Pete, and the great mashups of old and new that can help make this a better place for all of us.

Wish Upon a Star(fish)?

In a previous posting on September 21, 2007 called “New Perspectives: Looking Down and Under”, I wished for a “sea” feature to compliment the “sky” feature Google Earth had recently added back then. While I have no illusion that I had anything to do with it, you can still imagine my delight when Google Earth recently did just what I was hoping for... and then some!

With the new update to version 5, Google Earth now gives you the ability to explore and see the sea—you know, that stuff that covers more than 70% of the planet and of which we know embarrassingly little of?

But don’t take my word for it, go get this major update to an already fantastic tool and check it out for yourself.  If you already have Google Earth installed, then just go to the Help menu and choose “Check for updates” and it will install version 5.  Otherwise, head on over to the Google Earth download site and install it now.

I’ll let many of my fellow bloggers and reporters provide you with reviews and details to help you find some of the new nuggets that may be lurking below the surface (sorry!).  A quick search will give you lots of choices, such as this review in the NY Times and this one from the BBC and these videos over on CNET News.

I thought there were some very telling quotes from the Google Earth staff, such as:

“We had this arbitrary distinction that if it was below sea level it didn’t count,” recalled John Hanke, the Internet entrepreneur who co-created the progenitor of Google Earth, called Keyhole, and moved to Google when the company bought his company in 2004.”

And as fascinated as I am with the sea and this major addition to Google Earth, don’t let me limit your exploration of the new version to just the underwater world.  Google Earth has many other new features that are almost as exciting, such as “Historical Imagery” which let’s you go back in time and scroll through satellite images to see a time lapse visual display of things like the spread of disease or urban sprawl (or maybe those are the same?)

And for those like me who are also interested in the learning aspects of all things, be sure to check out new features such as a function called Touring which the NY Times article described as:

“.. let’s you create narrated, illustrated tours, on land or above and below the sea surface, describing and showing things like a hike or scuba excursion, or even a research cruise on a deep-diving submarine.”

And as Christopher Dawson reported in his blog on ZDnet Education

“Google has partnered with National Geographic, the BBC, Cousteau’s Ocean World, and several others to provide a wealth of information about everything from the global fishing crisis to footage of shipwrecks. Marine life census data, scientific expeditions, and countless links to information outside Google Earth make this a free treasure trove for science, social studies, geography, and even math teachers (how better to learn about coordinate systems?).”

OK, enough from me. Stop reading this and fire up this latest offering of Google Earth and have fun doing your own exploratory and experiential learning.  Enjoy! 

Lucky for me, I am off in the morning to help a friend sail his boat from St. Martin to Miami. While you are in Google Earth, you may also want to check out this area and get a bit of a geography lesson while you’re at it.  Meanwhile I’ll be busy doing an even more intimate form of exploring and experiential learning. Which, by the way, is part of the reason for my limited access and postings of late, something that will continue for another week or so while I’m making this 1400nm crossing.  "Sea you" on the other side!

CNN “The Moment”: 2nd time’s the charm with MS Photosynth?

Since I received a lot of responses and follow up (thanks!) to the posting Photosynth: Mashups of Our Collective Intelligence via Photos, I thought you would be quite interested to know the most recent use of  Microsoft Photosynth, which creates 3D spaces from a mass of 2D photos. 

CNN is using Photosynth to create a 3D space they are calling “The Moment”, when Barack Obama raised his hand to officially accept the position of President of the USA.  To do so, CNN is asking everyone to send in at least one photo they took of this defining moment in history, and CNN will then use these to create a 3D environment with Microsoft Photosynth. 

CNN recently experienced a very different kind of “CNN moment” when their systems were unable to cope with the spike in demand for their live streaming of the event.  So here’s hoping that this new “moment” that they are proposing is a much better experience! 

It's worth checking out.  Since I wasn’t in the country or near any TV coverage (other than in airports),  I missed seeing the inauguration, so I'll be interested to see “the moment” myself.  And I’ll be curious to learn what your experience with this new capability is like. Looking forward to reading your responses.

Twitterpated

When my kids were very young, we used the term “twitterpated” to describe a person who is particularly taken with something or somebody else or are falling for something or somebody, and are in that state of infatuation or excitement that comes from discovering something special.

According to the Urban Dictionary, twitterpated is “1. The happy jumpy feeling you get that causes you to smile uncontrollably, and 2. The way birds and other animals act during mating season (as seen in the Disney movie Bambi).”

So I immediately thought this was the perfect word to describe a phenomenon that I’ve been observing for almost a year now. It seems like the whole blogosphere and tech world is all “a-twitter” about Twitter, the latest communication utility.

This new form of communication is something most everyone I know seems to be using (myself included). If you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend that you do. Today I’d like to share some of my experiences with Twitter, and some of what I’ve learned from talking with others who have used it.

What is Twitter, Really?

Twitter is actually quite a challenge to explain. The facts about it are pretty easy really, but understanding how, when, and where to use it is the harder part. You’ll find LOTS of very good and varying descriptions about Twitter online. Twitter gives you the ability to send out short text messages called “tweets” that you type on your mobile phone, PDA, or personal computer, and then they are broadcast to anyone who would like to read them. Tweets are limited to 140 characters so they are quite short indeed. For those accustomed to using SMS or “texting” to send messages from their mobile phones, Twitter is essentially the same thing, but with some significant twists along the way.

People who want receive these messages sign up to “follow” you. You can decide to allow anyone to receive your messages or you can control who receives them by approving only those you want to follow you. And you don’t need to follow all those who follow you, so you can find the balance that works for you.

To use Twitter, you assign yourself a username so people can know where to send their “tweets” to you. The username is used much the same as an email address or phone number. However be advised that because the username is the first text in EVERY tweet you send, your name counts as part of the 140 character limit so keep your user name short (My thanks to Marcia Conner for this thoughtful advice!) The messages themselves are simple text strings—no @ symbols or other special syntax is required)—and you will quickly start to acquire the skill of finding a way to say something meaningful in a very few words.

• Some of Twitter’s other features include the ability to:
• Add links (the URL can’t exceed the tweet’s limit of 140 characters)
• Feed tweets to a blog.
• Tag tweets, such as those that are all associated with a particular event.
• "Re-tweet" a tweet you’ve received to all those following you, which leads to a networking effect where information is spread and people get connected.

As I said earlier in this post, the hard part about Twitter is figuring out how, where, and when to use it. Frankly, I know of no other way to do this than by experiencing it yourself. It’s another great example of something we’ve talked about a lot here on OCOT: experiential learning.

Twitter is a great additional form of communication and a great awareness-raising tool. I’m particularly intrigued by this new “bulletin board” model of communication. You’re not talking to anyone in particular. Basically, if you choose not to control your broadcasts, you’re leaving a note that anyone who might be interested can look at. This is another form of indirect communication which is similar to Facebook and MySpace, where people can put up thoughts, ideas, and notes about themselves, and then leave it up to others to choose to read it or not.

I’m also finding that it’s a New Age version of a diary or more accurately a logbook, which is one of the ways I’ve been using Twitter. Because it is so quick and fast to send out a tweet, and because you can do it from either your mobile phone or computer, you are more likely to capture a thought in real time, just as it occurs to you, and share it with others. You do it with no expectations about who is going to read it, nor that anyone will read it, nor are you expecting a response. I guess you might hope that you get a response, but that’s not really built into the Twitter model. The model is simply one where you send information out and receive information in kind from those you are following.

Twitter is an intriguing mix of the personal and the professional, at least it is with most of the people I am following. People share what’s going on in their lives. While this capability can be abused or misused by those who seem to feel it is important to let everyone know what they are eating or every little thing they are doing, this ease of sending out a quick thought has is very valuable as not only a record of your thoughts, but also it increases the likelihood you will get around to capturing and sharing them with others. As more and more people do so, you can see how the network effect becomes exponentially powerful.

As you start using Twitter PLEASE consider whether what you are about to tweet is really of interest and value to others. Clearly there is a lot of inconsequential stuff being broadcast and I’m sure some of the hype and negative press about Twitter is based on this type of misuse. Because it is annoying, you might simply stop following people who only send out these types of tweets.

But at the same time, Twitter can be used in a more “serious fun” way, as my friend Erik Duval would say, and a professional way. I follow people who are sharing their great ideas, links, questions, suggestions, and “pithy comments”. Some of this is very professional, job related, etc., but much of it is also about something significant going on in their lives, and this connection provides me with an awareness of how things are going for them.

This sharing of ideas, thoughts and insights into each other’s lives has the net effect of helping me to get to know people quite well, not necessarily in any kind of profound way, but I’m seeing them in a different light or dimension, filling in blanks, and gaining a fuller understanding of who they are.

Trying to describe the effect and effectiveness of Twitter is even more challenging, and that’s why you’ve just got to experience it to really find out. I like to say that you simply let all of these messages wash over you. It doesn’t take that long to read them, and you don’t have to respond to them, and over time you develop a peripheral awareness of others and what they are doing. Twitter may even be replacing something we didn’t realize we had lost.

When we were typically more physically present with others in our offices and homes, I’m not sure we were aware of the information we gathered almost subconsciously about others. You might have noticed that Sally was on the phone a lot today, or Bob was looking kind of worried, or Sally, Fred, and Mohammed were having a meeting today at 10:30. It’s this kind of information that you get as these tweets wash over you.

Is Twitter-ing Just a Waste of Time?

Despite popular opinion that Twitter is a waste of time (and it certainly can be), my experience is that it’s proving to be a significant productivity and performance tool. It’s saving me time and is enabling me to do things that I probably would not have done and are of great value.

I’m certain that one of the biggest benefits of all this “twittering” is how it is significantly adding to our collective knowledge. Simply the capturing of all the ideas, thoughts, and observations (many which ordinarily would not have been captured or shared with others) is enhancing the record of what’s going on, not for use as an audited record per say, but as a way to tap into all of this collective intelligence. For example:

• When you’re reading something in a book, magazine, or on the web, you can immediately let others know about it and also record your reflections, observations, and neat ideas about it.
• As you’re going about your day and you have an experience, or make an observation, as something puzzles or intrigues you, you can share it with others who have similar interests.
• You can use it:
  • As a log of your activities and your life as you go along. As a kind of mini-blog at a conference so others can gain from those immediate observations from the event.
  • To display tweets from the audience on a screen. Done well, it can help to tap into the pulse of the audience at a conference event, class, or other venue.
  • To ask a question or solve a problem you have. I usually get some very good suggestions and answers back very quickly.

I’m sure if you try it that you will find your own unique ways of using it. There are certainly many more examples than what I’ve discussed here.

One of the most effective ways that I use Twitter is as a kind of research tool. When I’m writing an article or I have something I’m pondering, for example, the ability to throw out a quick question and get responses from others out there is becoming extremely valuable for me.

I also use it to update others about what’s going on with me professionally and personally. On the professional side, I share things I’m pondering about OCOT and the Snowflake Effect. And personally, as many of you know, I’m off on a grand world tour on my sailboat, so particularly when I’m under way, others find it intriguing to find out where I’m at, what have I observed, and what’s going on.

A kind of interconnection starts to occur among all these “twitterati”. Even though you don’t necessarily know who’s following you (but you can if you like) and then who’s following them, still there’s a loose connection between all of us. And over time I’ve notice an indirect feedback loop where something I’ve talked about earlier shows up somewhere else along the chain of tweets and re-tweets.

I’ve also noticed that my use of Twitter is different depending on the device I’m using to receive or send tweets. For example, I like to use Twitter from my laptop when I want to:

• View a link that is attached to a tweet.
• Send out a tweet related to something I’m reading on the laptop.
• Review a lot of tweets with one of the many Twitter readers who are available.

But it is most extraordinarily effective for me when I use it as a mobile application on my cell phone or PDA. For example, I can be so much more impromptu about sending or reading a tweet, and do it when it is just right for me. And yet, Twitter also makes me be more conscious and conscientious about sharing my thoughts and ideas with others, since it’s so convenient and I can more easily choose when to send out a tweet or read those coming in to me.

And perhaps, its real power is in the brevity it imposes with its 140 character limit. My good friend Marcia Conner wrote recently in her article “Can Twittering Create An Economy of Words”, “… if you’re still stuck on the actual be brief part because you’re a member of my friend and colleague Wayne Hodgins’ ad-hoc club, ‘Why use a sentence when a paragraph will do’”, you can rest assured that if I can Twitter, so can you.

What’s Next for Twitter?

What I’m really hoping is that the Twitter folks won’t mess it up by adding more options or making it more complex. The beauty and effectiveness of Twitter comes from its simplicity. You type out a message and it’s done. No pictures, no options to extend. It’s just the essence of good ideas and thoughts.

Twitter is another great tool to add to our growing communications quiver and another example of how many of us are privileged to be living in an age of abundance. Having additional ways to communicate better is a great thing. The trick is to figure out how and where and when to use this tool in the right way at the right time. In this age of abundance, I believe that one of the most critical skills we can acquire is that of making smart fast decisions and choices from the plethora of options we have. Deciding when a tweet is the best choice or a phone call or an email or an in person chat is something we’ll all need to get much better at doing. It’s another great example of the Snowflake Effect because it can be used very differently by each of us. The goal is to use just the right tool at just the right time in just the right way for just the right person.

So go to Twitter and sign up for a free account. If you’d like to follow me, my Twitter username is wwwayne. Once you’re signed on, you can search your address book for others you might know and want to follow.

I hope that you too are about to be “twitterpated” with Twitter and that you’ll soon be more productive, will contribute to this mass collective intelligence of ours, and that just in general it will help you and the rest of us communicate a little bit better as a result.