Overwhelmed? Ya think?

I blogged earlier about attending the National eXtension Virtual Conference.  It was an amazing conference, and I took away a lot from it.  It meant I haven't had time to concentrate on readings for Change11, but I'll get back to that next week.  I think the NeVC will have recordings up, check here. Two other speakers at the conference connected to what we are doing for Change11.  Clay Shirky and Stephen Rosenbaum  both had some really good observations on curation. (I'll talk about Rosenbaum later; missed Robin Good's talk).

Curation, after all, is what I am doing here.  Picking out the best of what I've found this week, and passing it on to a group of people I hope will be interested.  How else are we going to handle all this noise?

The important part about curation, I think, is to create dense nuggets of information that users can connect to what they've found, or file away for later.  The basics, for me includes tags ("Shirky" "curation"), a short but intensive summary, and a picture.  Here's mine, just a sketch for a start.  Perhaps I will hone it down or develop it as I learn more.

Clay Shirky speaks at the
National eXtension Virtual State Fair,
19 October 2011 

 I cropped this photo to be sure only the essential information is seen.  I'm adding a paragraph that's cropped in the same way:

 Clay Shirky speaks. (books: Here Comes Everybody = organizing without organizations and Cognitive Surplus = creativity, generosity in a connected age).  Takeaway: communications technology is allowing our society to self organize.  The natural result is a gift culture based on reputation that encourages creativity and democracy.

This need to curate and share information is something seen quite often virtual worlds.  People love to pass on what they have learned.  We're all teachers, I guess.  Blogged on this a while ago.

Institutional Change:

I attended Tony Bates' talk last week, and it was really useful.  Problem is, it was also depressing, because all the institutional problems he described are alive and well at my own huge university. I get a sense of unrelenting doom just thinking about it.

I was still mulling over Tony's talk on Tuesday, when I attended Howard Rheingold's talk in Second Life, for the National Extension Virtual Conference (check here for recordings of the talks).  Could be that the reason Howard made more of an impression on me than Tony was because Tony was talking through Elluminate (which is like taking a bath with your clothes on) and Howard was talking through Second Life (which, for all its failings, does convey a sense of human connection).  Anyway, Howard said some things that seemed to continue the discussion that Tony began, so I thought I'd mention them here. This is what I remember from the talk, plus a few notes, so don't quote me, but the basic message was "convert or subvert."

• Howard was talking about the problem of big institutions controlled by powerful individuals.  His advice: go for that individual.  Convince them that change is positive. Howard Mentioned Lou Gerstner's influence on IBM, and how that company transformed itself under his leadership. 

• I really liked what he said about the web -- how we wouldn't have it today if a lot of engineers hadn't ignored their own companies' rules to communicate with each other through Usenet.  He argues that open systems and open resources are the way to continue that kind of creative growth. 

Tony's talk allowed me to see that I was putting a little too much faith in my institution's capacity for change, and he suggested ways of dealing with the problem.  Howard's talk gave me more ideas; encouraging, but we've still got a long row to hoe, if you ask me.