Web2.0 World

Art & Science

2012-01-27T00:27:00.001-08:00

"How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers."

-Isaac Asimov

Learning Organization

2012-01-23T02:41:00.000-08:00

Peter Senge must be very happy with the growth and proliferation of Social Media and social networking platforms. After all , the gentleman pioneered the concept of Learning Organization decade back.

Let me take this concept of Learning organization to next level.

To my mind, in future the word organization would be replaced by word "Networks ".Let me highlight Key characteristics of Learning networks

1. Mashup of people with diverse skills, experience, competencies and capabilities
2. Woven into a matrix to solve key business issues / challenges on real time basis.
3. Real time Flow of information & valuable content embedded in context.
4. Co creating and consuming value together to achieve aligned buisness goals and objectives
5. Enabling participation and contribution and transparency on solid foundation of systems thinking.
6. Powered by Analytics for meaningful callouts, opportunity areas, insights to make it an iterative process.

Thoughts on my mind .....

2012-01-22T04:50:00.000-08:00

1 . Leadership is all about building bridges and not burning them.

2. One big shift social media will have on corporate sector is to democratize it.

3. Innovation in delivery of " Services " would be the key to competitive advantage .

4. Organizations would need to understand social media and build organizational capabilities to take full advantage for success in new economy. Digitization is the new buzz word.

5 .True Innovation is most likely to come from " start ups " in near future, this is what I anticipate.

I would appreciate views and counter views from readers , I believe that is the only way to learn better.

Letter to Mentee 2.0

2012-01-17T04:50:00.000-08:00

My Dear Mentee 2.0 ,

It was such a delightful moment when you chose me as a mentor. Instantly, i was in a new role and felt elevated . This is the hallmark of great people. They make other people feel great. In all its entirety, mentoring is so far one of the most humbling experience. One learns as much as a mentor just like a mentee. There is something special about this Mentor- Mentee relationship. Both explore together that new possibilities exist or can be created together.
You are doing the right stuff. Keep inspiring people for adopting Social Software . Keep collecting stories. You will be on your way to write a book too. Build your original thoughts. Start with blog/ journal. Think beyond what is available. How connected Leadership benefits individual & organization as a whole. Learn more about folksonomies, What impact organization E2.0 capabilities has on bottom line or top line ? Does it contribute to engagement factor in an organization ? Start exploring for your research . How E2.0 effects organizational behavior ? Observe and experience. In my experience, E20 is a moving target, keep setting new goals for yourself and simply share, interested folks will tag along with you & collaborate to accelerate the change.

Last but not least, Use your imagination for imagination is more powerful than knowledge.

Yours truly !!!
RB

Digital Thoughts !

2012-01-17T04:45:00.000-08:00

1. No man ever listened himself out of a job. As a step 1, participate in Social Computing as an active listener .

2. Start small , move some of your work activities which require maximum collaboration to online social spaces.

3. Build digital eminence.

4. Invest time first and derive value later.Like real world relationships, in any social networking platform , it takes time to build online relationships.Be genuine, be caring. Start with how you can contribute to your network .Grow your network through influence.

5. Share your expertise, experience and insights and learn from your Social network .

6. Social Computing is by design a Q2 activity. ( Not urgent but important activity ) , refer to Stephen Covey time management matrix. Effective people like to spend time in Q2 quadrant, which is the quadrant of effectiveness.

7. Begin with end in mind. Stay focused on your goals. Collaborate and Socially network for a reason.

8. Digital eminence is the currency you build today to en cash in future.

9. Remember KISS formula. Keep it simple , stupid. Don't spread yourself too thin trying to be omnipresent on all social networks. Plan what works for you.

10. Wish everyone in my present and future network a Happy Social Computing journey ! Stay networked , Stay Happy !

Succintly Social

2012-01-06T00:32:00.000-08:00

It is about

1. Deep Rooted Philosophy
2. Culture, Values
3. Transparent
4. Open
5. Collaborative
6. Networks and Relationships
7. User Generated Content , Emergent , Digitization
8. Word of Mouth Publicity
9. Listening, Engaging, Sharing
10. Co-Learning , Co-Creating, CO-nsuming , Co-inventing, Co-innovating, Co-mmunity.

If your product, service, campaign, initiative, program has above features then you are leveraging the Social space . There are variety of Web 2.0 platforms which amplifies and scale up these conversations .However, The best of breed / web is yet to emerge.

Inspirational Stories and rise of Social Media

2011-10-19T04:46:00.000-07:00

I am sharing my thoughts on Rise of Social Media which i shared in the form of a comment on Sukumar's blog. Wow. Reading this blog post itself was so inspiring .

#

Allow me to digress and propose a Theory. For sometime I have been pondering over the real reasons for phenomenal rise of Social Media , so called Social Media Revolution, in our Society , all over World from last few years. We can say, It is a very recent phenomena . I guess, as I read more and more blogs, I have found answer to my own question. Leaving Commercial & Economical reasons aside, i guess , People all over the world were really fad up of depressing stories like Corruption, Crime , Stock market crash ( while some of it may be real, more often it is seen that truth is far far behind and wrapped up in several layers to benefit certain sections of society ) . People want to hear stories which are authentic, real, genuine, inspiring. What other way could be better than to give publishing power to every individual on this planet. And the ability to connect people to each other via networking platforms. Combine it with the people’s ability to choose. So now people can hear real stories in the form of blogs ( hearing, passing on and sharing stories which is an age old tradition in itself across cultures ), create their own "media" and collaboratively consume it too via Networking platforms. Coming from such forums, say blogs, we know, we are listening to genuine stories from real people who have no other motive but to share their own stories and personal experiences which appeal to mankind. One may argue, why not books serve the same purpose. I understand , the main distinction why blogs are popular is the power to network . While books provide great content , blogs provide content, context and the network. Had it not been for this blog, I would not have had heard the stories which need to be told and preserved and cherished forever, not just by select few but across cultures, geographical locations. Every now and then , I visit this blog, in search of a great story and i am never disappointed any time . I usually don’t spend more than 5 min on a website, not only I stroll here , I comfortably bring my chair and sit here for long hours going through posts, comments to the extent of having conversations with great minds. You would have noticed, I am often tempted to leave my footprints here cause of the truly absorbing blog posts which I get to read.

Sukumar, once again, Thank you for sharing the story of this event you attended. Truly inspirational.
# Quote
Sukumar (subscribed) said October 9, 2011, 8:32 pm:

Thanks for the kind words Ruchi. Glad you liked our posts. This particular event was a spectacular one and very inspiring. Your theory on blogging is insightful. Good one.

Sir Ken Robinson on "Do schools kill creativity" ?

2011-09-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

Few Learning from the video " Changing Education Paradigms"
1. ADHD is a non real epidemic in US
2. Divergent Thinking is a precursor to creativity
3. Collaboration is the key to success outside schools
4. Schools still run on production line approach suited to industrial age.
5. Change is required in public education systems around the globe which nurtures creativity, natural abilities of children to suit the information age
6. Can we make our learning process so engaging which enhances aesthetic experience of the learner ?
7. Why do we still categorize students as per their age group or tenure not as per their abilities ?

Ruchi as defined by a Tag Cloud

2011-09-02T14:30:00.001-07:00

31 Questions I ever wanted to ask a Chief Learning Officer

2011-08-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

Leaders of past knew the right answers, Future Leaders will know how to ask the right questions.
Managers ask How, Leaders ask what and why ?
Peter Drucker

here is my list of favorite questions that i always wanted to get answers from L&D Leaders.

1. Is there someone in your team who manages informal ( social) learning formally ?
2.Do you have a Leadership Development Program which is tied to Succession Planning ? Who designed that program ? Who delivers that program ?
3. What do you value more if the focus is to develop say Collaborate Globally competency , heavy content loaded deck with case studies which is just sufficient to last for a 2 day workshop or 1 hour session which focuses on lab training to learn new tools usage of which percolates new behaviors amongst target audience .
4. Share an example of one of a good design you have seen in recent times for an LD Program.
5. What are the present tools, resources, process which support Leaders Learning from Leaders in your organization ?
6. Where is the focus on LD in your organization ? On Formal classroom training sessions or informal social learning ?
7. What are the tools & platforms which support knowledge , best practices sharing ?
Does a training calendar gets published on recurrent basis for LD Programs ?
8. How many LD sessions got cancelled last month due to less enrollments ?
9. What is the average duration of a LD workshop in your organization ?
10. Do you leverage assessment center for assessing Leadership competencies ?
11. Would you rather prefer a short duration sessions at regular intervals for Leadership Development or one several months long intervention ?
12. How is the response to Blended Learning from senior leaders in your organization ?
13.What is the ususal response from Leaders in your company to a Leadership development program ? Do they consider it gyaan or fun ?
14. What makes Leaders take interest and be curious about a program that has been designed to address specific business challenge ?
15. What is the most pressing People / Leadership problem that you face in your organization ?
16. What keeps you wake at night ?
17. What when someone performed brilliantly well on your team last time ?
18. What was your response when one of your team member had a perfect recipe for disaster ? or actually had done a blunder ?
19. How often you spend time with your team members ? formally & informally
20. Do you like to coach ?
21. Do you have Executive Coaches capabilities developed in house ? Do you plan to invest in developing these capabilities in your team for organizational success ?
22. When was the last time you had much fun on a project at work ? Describe how did it feel like ?
23. Did you enjoy going through the above questionnaire ? then , go through some more...;-)
24. Is the focus on quality of LD program or operational efficiency or something else ?
25. What gets measured for your team performance ?
26. How does a typical scorecard for your team looks like ?
27. How many dollars were wasted due to non- participation by Senior Leaders in LD programs that were designed to solve business problems.
28. Are workshops conducted in house or at outside location ?
29. Which is that one book that you like going back to often ?
30. What does success look like for your team ?
31. Do you write , tweet , share yourself online ?

Program for Online Teaching POTCERT11

2011-08-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends, I am Ruchi, a HR consultant from India. More about me Twitter @rucsb
Wow. Just as i expected the program to be, I am very very happy and excited to be part of this wonderful , online, open program. I Thank Lisa M Lane and Jim Sullivan extensively for this wonderful initiative. I hope to make many friends, meet plenty of brilliant minds , educators, teachers, students, via this program and make personal connect and relationship with each one of them. These are the kind of friendships i would cherish for life. I am here to learn. And i intend to Learn as much about pedagogy as about technology. I have spent last 2 years and a half learning about Web 2.0 , emerging technologies , Social software platforms ,user generated content and as i learn more about it, i think there is no stoppage to it. I consider myself an early adopter of technology. Technology , which i can comprehend eg Web 2.0 ;-), excites me. Enrolling into this program is a deliberate attempt to learn as well as internalize to put pedagogy before technology.

I already have a blog , so i would post relevant posts with potcert11 tag.
I have setup DIGGO account for keeping track of bookmarks.
I have setup a separate Face book account for making friends with participants of this program.
I have purchased book online. "Teaching Online by Susan Ko and Steve Rosensen"
I have started aggregating content via RSS Google Reader .
My PLE for this program mainly consist of

1. POT on Facebook

2. Pedagogy First Blog

3. Diggo MCCPOT

As i was going through the introductory blogposts from other participants of this program , my confidence is just doubled that together we will Rock and make this program a success. Cheers to all of us !

One Love One World - Peace through Music

2011-08-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

What are you waiting for !

2011-08-26T00:34:00.000-07:00

Another favorite song of mine from A R Rehman.

Inspiring "Hum Mein Hai Hero" - Music by A .R . Rehman

2011-08-25T23:25:00.000-07:00

A True Story

2011-08-23T04:26:00.000-07:00

A lady in a faded grey dress and her husband, dressed in a home-spun suit walked in timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University President’s outer office. The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard and probably didn’t even deserve to be in Harvard.

“We want to see the President “the man said softly.

“He’ll be busy all day “the secretary snapped.

“We’ll wait” the lady replied.

For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away. They didn’t and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president..

“Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they’ll leave” she said to him. The President, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple.

The lady told him “We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus.”

The president wasn’t touched….He was shocked. “Madam” he said, gruffly, “we can’t put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery.”

“Oh, no,” the lady explained quickly ” We don’t want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard.”

The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, and then exclaimed, “A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard.”

For a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now. The lady turned to her husband and said quietly,

“Is that all it costs to start a university? Why don’t we just start our own?”

Her husband nodded. The president’s face wilted in confusion and bewilderment. Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established the University that bears their name: - Stanford University, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about.

Most of the time we judge people by their outer appearance, which can be misleading. And in this impression, we tend to treat people badly by thinking they can do nothing for us. Thus we tend to lose our potential good friends, employees or customers.

Virtual Learning: Changing face of Learning

2011-03-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

How Does Enterprise Social Networking Change the Role of Learning Professionals?
Enterprise Social networking platforms have the power not just to change the way how people do their jobs but also how jobs roles are getting evolved for professionals especially in the Learning organization.
If we talk to any learning leader today, one of the biggest challenge or fear is training sessions getting cancelled due to fewer nominations. As participation in classroom sessions goes down, learning professionals need to resort to innovative methods to complement formal learning events so that learner’s performance on the job goes up.
Generation Y is entering into the workforce who has grown up using the emerging technologies. They are the digital natives and like to embrace social media and social networking technologies with ease. People like to connect and learn from one another. According to US Dept of labor and commerce 80% of the learning happens informally, outside the classroom .Social learning or informal learning is one of the oldest forms of learning being propelled and catalyzed even more due to rising social networking platforms. I can safely say that Social learning is increasingly becoming prevalent. The role learning professionals can play in this changing context and environment is very critical and important.
I’d like to take a little more time here to start a discussion about how I expect individual job roles in the learning organization to change as social learning becomes increasingly common.
At the same time, I think that it’s really important for learning professionals to remember that no matter what new technologies come along, formal learning will always have a role in enhancing business performance. We, learning professionals, must think how we can strengthen existing learning process and embed the new Social learning process into existing learning programs, courses or curriculum as we ourselves witness a Social revolution both within and outside the organization.
Taking the larger context of formal and informal learning in a socially networked world, learning professionals have the opportunity to play a critical role: that of a community facilitator and / or community curator.
Community design is such that it puts the focus back on learners/ workers. The job of community facilitator isn’t necessarily an easy one – team will have to continuously ask the right questions and find new ways to encourage participation. As a matter of fact, learning organization most likely already has the skills and capabilities needed to serve as effective community facilitators – they just need to apply these capabilities towards a new way of thinking about learners and the learning process.
I believe the solution to existing challenges faced by learning organization lies in thinking how our role as learning professionals change with the changing demands , learning styles and preferences of our learners/workers. Facilitator’s role must evolve from being on stage to a virtual guide by side. :-)

IIM-C EPHRM Program begins !

2011-01-29T03:09:00.000-08:00

I applied for IIM-C Executive Program in Human Resource Management . Yippie, i got selected. The competition was tough. This program is meant for working professionals . Only total of 100+ professionals were selected from the total pool of 500 + candidates . The selection was basis academic profile,statement of purpose, and achievements . Next year onwards, there will be a CAT like examination as entrance test.

The program will be delivered via Satellite technology in partnership with Hughes.
Yesterday was the first day for Orientation and technical briefing. We got a virtual tour of IIM-C campus / auditorium .

Most of the features are of live virtual classroom are same as Centra and Elluminate, so it was pretty easy to participate. Candidates were jubilant as we all were excited about being part of IIM , one of the most prestigious management schools in India/ Asia Pacific.

Thanks to proliferation to Social networking sites,we, participants decided to quickly form a Linkedin group to stay connected with each other throughout the program.
Next class is briefing session by Program Director from IIM-C. Look forward to exciting journey .

Windows Live Writer

2010-07-05T08:52:00.001-07:00

Test Blogging from Windows Live Writer. Enjoy my pic.

Social Hotspots

2010-06-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

I just coined the term "Social hotspots" ( Inspired from Lynda Gratton ) ! Social hotspots occur in collaborative spaces when people are aligned to common shared GOALS and when Social Neworks & Social platforms are the enablers & act as catalysts to fasten the process.
See diagram below and tell me from which quadrant do you think it is easy to move to Q4 ? if Innovation is what Business want in present times .

How Smarter Leaders collaborate !

2010-06-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

Being a part of IBM feels so great as one not only experiences the best environment not just in terms of the technology , but in terms of ideas as well .Enjoy this , have fun and learn as much.

newintelligence on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Times Reader 2.0

2010-03-01T07:54:00.000-08:00

Times Reader 2.0 is the latest innovation in newspaper delivery . It is powered by Adobe Air client . ( Same what tweetdeck is built upon ) and it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

And on NY Times site, it is cited as the latest innovation in newspaper delivery.

Can new delivery platforms revive the dying US newspaper industry ?

I doubt ! In the age of Web 2.0, people have the option to generate content ,blogs, wikis, microblogs ,in addition to consuming content, which wasn't prevalent in previous years !)

It may be a different case with Indian Newspaper industry since internet penetration is not as widespread as US. And by the time, penetration reaches a tipping point , Indian newspaper industry would be prepared to face the challenge and would have innovated and/or learnt from US market.

The 2009 Edublogs Award

2009-12-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

My Nominations for The 2009 Edublog Awards are:

Best Individual Blog Gautam Ghosh
Best Individual Twitter Manish Mohan

I am nominating Gautam & Manish for Edublog awards as both contribute to my PLE (Personal Learning Environment ).

Regards,
Ruchi

How to find blog of your interest : Screenr

2009-10-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

By now you must have already heard of Twitter , which has taken the Social Media world by storm or already using it , If the answer is NO to any of the above, then you must be living under rock age.

Well, as educators, many a times , when we are helping learners to use the online technologies, we need to share screencasts with them. Screenr does a brilliant job in capturing screencasts upto 5 min with audio feature to be posted on Twitter or You tube.
1. Screenr is a Web basec recorder, you dont need to download anything.
2. It can be used either with Mac or PC.
3. Plays anywhere on Web, even iphone.
4. Moreover,it is free.

Relatively simple tool to educate learners to use Social Media sites, and tools , who are new to google reader, tweetdeck. It can be used to deliever simple 5 min powerful learning. Like using a google reader, using a tweetdeck for twitter and so on.

Share with me your thoughts as to how you would like to use screenr in your job .
Please see this 2 min 30 sec demo of Screenr without audio to see how a tweetdeck can be used to find blog posts of your interest.

Apture : Collaborative Media Tool

2009-09-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

In my quest to search new tools to facilitate the process of Learning much more interactive, today i have discovered a fairly amazing tool for both educators, bloggers and learners alike. I am not sure how many bloggers are already using it or how many elearning professionals are already aware of it, the fact that it allows search for variety of media without having the need to leave the site is unique. In my view, it is going to be the next big thing in Social Media World.

Word Widget for Educators

2009-09-20T01:24:00.000-07:00

My love for words...i got this link from one of my twitter friend. She has contributed to this site this website. Wordahead.com . Neat idea to teach new words through a short video. I found it super cool.
Watch it in action .

Web 2.0 & ROI

2009-09-20T01:12:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has been in Corporate world for sometime would agree with me that more often than not , one of the buzzword which catches everyone attention is ROI, yet it is the most difficult thing to measure. Be it a project on Web 2.0 or quantifying efforts on L&D , training. Here is a simple, yet effective presentation which offers a paradigm shift wrt ROI.
Thanks to Manish for tweeting about it.

ROI: Return On Imagination

View more presentations from Mitc Ditkoff.

Blogging

2009-09-20T00:55:00.000-07:00

I am one blogger who shifted to microblogging ( Twitter) after spending decent time with private blogging and then returned public blogging. I intend to stay committed to both Blogger and Twitter. 23,000 new blogs are created everyday. Source ( Technorati) . That's an amazing number. There has to be something magical about this process that so many users on the internet are immersing themselves into this process. 4,00000 posts are written everyday ! Can you beat it...it tells something deeprooted about human nature. Something fundamental.. that we want to share, we want to let it go, at more neuroscience level, our brain craves to give form to our thoughts.

Watch these 2 gr8 gentleman talking about the phenomena of blogging. It explains it all.

Hello World !

2009-09-20T00:44:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Web 2.0 Learning. After blogging for 5 years and keeping my blog as private, i decided to go public. There are quiet a few reasons to do so.Firstly, I witnessed a shift in my writing from personal ramblings to professional ones and i wanted to share my thoughts on Web 2.0 world which has become my passion from quiet some time now.I am starting a blog series “Web2.0&Learning” , where i would be sharing my views with the world on Web 2.0, Learning and other interesting stuff on internet and invite people to join the conversation.

Cheers,

Ruchi