Tuesday 31 March 2009

conversation

I recently started a blog at work (as part of a test of some "enterprise 2.0" solutions).

Here's what I wrote today...

During an early morning conversation at work with McColleague last week (by early morning, I mean before 8am), we got talking about her experiences the previous day.

She'd been at a youth project in a less-illustrious part of Edinburgh helping some young people do some mock interviews and found the experience a little frustrating.  It seems that when asked questions like "tell me about a time when you worked as part of a team", a fair few of these young people only had short answers - like "when I played football".

It was like they had lost the art of conversation. These young people didn't know how to share their story in a way that would demonstrate who they are and what makes them different.  I could go on a rant about upbringing and the importance of family and community in shaping our young people, but I won't.

In a culture that loves headlines, short, sharp updates, sound-bites, extracts, summaries, text messaging and, yes, twitter, I find it interesting.  I'm aware that I don't hold a conversation with *that* many people everyday.  I probably only talk with three or four people for more than 30 seconds, the rest of the time it's a passing comment, sharing a joke, asking for help.  It can be difficult to have a real conversation when we are all under pressure to deliver results and juggle umpteen tasks.  It's those real conversations where experiences are shared and each party knows they have learned something new (about themselves, about someone else?).

I think we can lose the art of conversation when we don't have (or make) time to understand our experiences and the information that we are surrounded by.  Can we listen if we struggle to interpret and filter what we are hearing.  Can we speak if we don't really know what we are talking about?! (case in point, some Football Pundits and politicians).

Not for one minute do I think we're all to be experts in rhyming meter or hold great oratorical discussions when we want to ask how our colleagues got on trying that new recipe out last night.  I

So, what does that have to do with work?  Well, if we are in a bite-sized, on-demand culture where we have more information around us than ever, how do we organise the apparent chaos/how do we make sense of all the *stuff* we are bombarded with so we can have coherent thoughts that we can share with people?  I think the value of being able to tag/rate/comment and generally socialise information (or *content* as it might be described) has become apparent.

In our organisation we have loads of information, loads of talented people and a lot of intellectual capital tied up in our heads.  We can use social tools to make this kind of information searchable, trackable and ultimately more decipherable.  It won't make us all more intellegent, but may help us get better at filtering the froth that we don't need.  I can find more relevant content on del.ic.ous or digg or evern twitter when I search tags, than if I just sent a few words out into the googlesphere.  Okay, maybe Google will give me better ranked results than ever, but it's the social aspect that can lead us to the put our trust in the content - removing some of our need to filter everything.

Maybe.

What do you think?

Monday 23 March 2009

windows & worship

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of sharing at the Knect AM gathering of the church we're part of. 

I've finally managed to get hold of the audio and you can download it from here.  The slides used on the day are on slideshare here.  (use the Notes tab under the slides to see the time for when the slides should change).

Here's a slides and audio (not sync'd as I've not had the time yet!) if you want to watch online:

I've got my learns from the experience, however would welcome any feedback, comment or general input.  Let me know what you think as a comment, or on twitter if you like.

Peace,

W

Sunday 1 March 2009

restoring dynamism

One of the many RSS feeds I track in Google Reader is from Tom Peters.

I read this commentary on the current economic stuff we're all living through and (while he's really having a go at East Coast journalism) there's some good stuff here.

Especially this quote from a Peggy Noonan column:

"I end with a hunch that is not an unhappy one. Dynamism has been leached from our system for now, but not from the human brain or heart. Just as our political regeneration will happen locally, in counties and states that learn how to control themselves and demonstrate how to govern effectively in a time of limits, so will our economic regeneration. That will begin in someone's garage, somebody's kitchen, as it did in the case of Messrs. Jobs and Wozniak. The comeback will be from the ground up and will start with innovation. No one trusts big anymore. In the future everything will be local. That's where the magic will be. And no amount of pessimism will stop it once it starts."

That's the future that I believe in.  That's the hope that I have.  It's that we are all here with a gift/talent/strength/ability/whatever - and we can use it to make an impact on the world.  And that impact can be good.

behind the PA desk at KC mixing live sound. It's all good.


Posted via email from theweir's posterous

out for a wander in the Spring sunlight. babyB waving at our shadows. v cute


Posted via email from theweir's posterous