DevLearn 2007 Session
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/11/07
Here’s my presentation files from my session at DevLearn 2007 in San Jose today as .PDF (1.3mb) or .PPT (1.7mb) — Dave Wilkins of Knowledge Planet and I did a session called “Team-based Authoring: It’s About Time”.
Marching toward release of an open learning system…
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/09/05
I’ve been marching busily during recent months toward release of a 200+ lesson web based training system for the new phase of a clinical information system at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.
Hope to release details soon on the site so those of you in the elearning space can take a look.
The architecture of the thing should be very interesting to those of you who lament with me how learning management systems (LMS’s) too often function as walled gardens — and cut off discoverability and content re-use as a result.
Stay tuned for the hard launch.
Fake Steve Jobs is Dead, Long Live Fake Steve Jobs
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/08/06
My favorite anonymous blogger of all time has been unmasked. Yesterday the New York Times revealed that Fake Steve Jobs, author of the witty and sarcastically insightful Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, is actually Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine.
Scoble points to a cool insight from Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 on lessons to be learned by the whole thing —
Fake Steve proves that big media companies have the talent in house — they just can’t get out of their own way to experiment with disruptive innovations.
Couldn’t agree more, and to take it a bit further, I think there really is a place for anonymous posting sometimes.
The first time I ever began to appreciate the idea that there could be a place for anonymous internet posting was back in 2000 — when I participated in a lively online community for the first time. We got into a fun experiment where a pastor friend of mine used an anonymous character on a public church bulletin board to “spur on” some folks in his congregation.
It was the first time that I saw someone in a reserved organization say things that needed to be said with an over the top sarcastic wit that signaled through the noise.
It went well beyond the “nice” conversations you were “supposed” to have at church, and, funny enough, it captured a lot of attention (especially in a sub-culture where hyperbole seems to have been dropped from everyone’s literary toolkit).
The more I think about these experiences the more that I firmly believe that, while there are clearly dangers of anonymous postings (where people do not own their words), there are also clearly situations where anonymity can breed a level of honesty that can be, shall we say, quite fruitful at times.
FSB is dead — Long live FSB.
Mike Wesch discussing “Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us” video at Web2Open 4:00
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/04/17
So when I saw this video, I just about peed my pants. It’s a Ken Burn’s-esque animated screenshot/text/typography video that tells the story of the web up to today.
Just found out that the guy who made it, Michael Wesch, will be discussing the video at the Web 2.0 Expo today today at 4:00 pm.
It all takes place at the Web2Open gathering that is an unconference running in parallel (and in conjunction) with the main conference.
This is the kind of loosely coupled teaching/training that is going to take us into the next “age”.
Rives at TED: It is not a question of if you can, it’s do ya?
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/03/21
The TED conference videos are some of the most amazing pieces of free learning I have ever seen. While working out last week I was going through the que of them on my iPod when I came across this 4 minute piece by spoken word artist Rives — a riff on “If I Ran the Internet”.
Amazing — I watched it over and over again for 40 minutes on the eliptical.
As some of you know, I aspire to geek spoken word, and this, I think is the pinnacle of that admittedly narrow genre. Choice quotes –
- “It is not a question of if you can, it’s do ya?”
- “We can make ‘you’ve got hallelujah’ the national anthem of the cyberspace every lucky time you log on.”
Here it is from YouTube —
Creating Passionate Users: Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video…
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/03/16
God bless Kathy Sierra.
Over the last few months I’ve found myself trying to explain the deepening (and real community) aspects of meatspace interactions that my wife Jen and I have been drawn into as a result of participating in online community.
Usually we are trying to explain to business colleagues or friends or family or members of our church that, yes, indeed — online community is a part of real community and not the equivalent of social cheese-whiz that some describe it to be.
But, yeah — as I’m working to explain it I often see eyes begin to glaze over — and I can tell that folks are either not buying it or I’m not communicating very well.
Which leaves me — searching for ways to compellingly relate how online community has become real community for us — looking for the stories and patterns that engage both the emotion and the intellect.
Enter Kathy Sierra.
This morning I read her post from yesterday describing her keynote at SXSW. The post is called Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video… and is full of great passages on how all this social web software drives a deeper desire for face-to-face community.
My favorite quote –
…all our globally-connecting-social-networking tools are making face-to-face more, not less desirable. Thanks to the tools y’all are building, we now have more far-flung friends–including people we’ve never met f2f–than ever before. We now have more people we want to connect with in the human world, often after years of electronic-only contact.
Nice insight — sticking that pattern in my bag of tricks — something tells me the “online community isn’t real community, is it?” questions aren’t gonna stop anytime soon — this stuff is continuing to disrupt everything.
Did I mention that my mom who just got her first computer for Christmas is now IM’ing all the time — the world really is getting flat.
Great Primer on Open Source Folkways
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/03/15
A couple of weeks ago I noticed that two good friends of mine here in Seattle were cross posting on their blogs about Flash/Flex momentum and how a healthy open source governance structure might be helpful in pushing momentum even further.
My natural question — have you guys met face to face? Wanna grab some food?
So last night I met Ted Leung and Ryan Stewart for dinner down at Ivar’s on the waterfront. Great time, great view, great conversation.
Though Ted and I both work in the tech industry and have been friends since Mind Camp 1.0, I had never heard him talk about his long history with open source communities and governance (Apache, et al).
All I can say is that I learned a ton about that and distributed project/team folkways in general.
Great, great evening.
‘Made to Stick’ Cover Design
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/02/17
My wife Jen and I were at Powell’s in Portland today and the first thing I saw when I walked in the door was this book ‘Made to Stick’ with a piece of duct tape on the cover.
Psych.
That’s cool cover design. And it got me to look at and buy the book. The six points of stickiness it covers –
- Simplicity
- Unexpectedness
- Concreteness
- Credibility
- Emotion
- Stories
I was just having a ‘discussion’ the other day about stickiness with a colleague of mine — what are the things that get an idea or a presentation to stand out and stay with? What are the characteristics of ideas that, when released into the world around us, make them take flight and establish a life of their own?
Hard questions — especially amidst all of the ‘noise of the age’ that clutters our current generations, from MySpace to Baby Boomer to Seasoned Citizens.
Me? I come down with most of the things on this list — so it’s timely.
Him? Not so much — instead he called catering to such things entertainment — and, well, he’s in the education business, not the entertainment business.
I was surprised again at how some lies die such slow deaths.
If you are in any kind of educational endeaver please drop this from your language — we are not in the entertainment business — we are in the attention span business.
And if you are not working to make your material sticky, then you are just wasting a lot of people’s time.
Udell on ‘Video Knowledge’ and my riff on the death of the specialist
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/12/20
Father of screencasting, Jon Udell has great post on the move toward video as a knowledge/rapid-documentation repository. After a few technical points, he hits this gem that completely jives with my experience on getting into the flow of screencasting –
…you have to overcome the same natural reticence that makes dictation such an awkward process for those of us who haven’t formerly incorporated it into our work style. You also have to overcome the notion, which we unconsciously absorb from our entertainment-oriented culture, that video is a form of entertainment. It can be. Depending on the producer, a screencast documenting a disaster recovery scenario could be side-splittingly funny. And if the humor didn’t compromise the message, a funny version would be much more effective than a dry recitation. But even a dry recitation is way, way better than what’s typically available: nothing.
Just another step toward the seamlessness of media where real headway means that this will be less and less of a specialist skill — who is a ‘word processing’ specialist these days?
No one — every one.
There is a point in the future (near? mid? far?) Jon alludes to here where things like screencasting will be a natural repository for business/education/whatever knowledge — a time when this stuff will not be a specialized skillset.
Last night with the wife and kids, I brought YouTube up on the family TV and searched for my wife’s username and my daughter’s name. We all sat mesmerized for 30 minutes while we played the various clips Jen has uploaded over the past 6-8 months.
It’s content that I, as a professional multimedia producer, had little to do with — All video my wife produced on her own through mostly self developed knowledge and a digital camera (not a miniDV camcorder).
What does TV look like to my daughter and my wife? Something much less specialized than I could ever imagine — and I’ve got a good imagination.
On with the flattening of the universe…
Ignite Seattle videos now ablaze
Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/12/14
Had another great opportunity to shoot some rapid turn around video last week. This time it was for Ignite Seattle. All I have to say is what a night.
I’d call it a snapshot of this grand moment we are experiencing in the Seattle geek entrepreneurial community. Lots of fun from my end to help the momentum along.
Where to start? So many highlights — you can see all 25 of the five minute sessions over on the Ignite Seattle Blip.tv page. One’s that stood out were –
- Scott Ruthfield (embedded above) from Amazon talked about doing re-design in a “Megacorp”. Scott was at our Mind Camp 3.0 Discovery Slam and is a great presence on stage — very funny and engaging. Blip.tv video is here.
- Brian Aker was great as he told the story of ripping up his new house to install his own computer based phone system — it’s as much a tutorial as it is an essays on geek relationships with your wife. Very funny. Blip.tv video is here.
- Scott Berkun did a session on ideas and innovation and, as always, did a great job. Very cool visuals. Blip.tv video is here.
So many others were great — go take a look at the other sessions when you get a chance.
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