Alfred Thompson the Cyberspace People Watcher

Imagine you were a school teacher and the room you were teaching in didn’t have any heat. So suppose you call up the maintenance people and say “it’s 32 degrees in my room. The class fish tank is ice. The students can’t learn and I need you to fix it.” Imagine then that the maintenance person says “well we’re pretty busy here. You’ll have to work around it for a while. In the mean time if you find out what is wrong and it doesn’t take too much effort for us to fix it we will. Maybe.”

Never happen right? Someone would get fired pretty quickly. The school board would be in a tizzy, parents would be calling the school and the newspapers would have a field day.

Now imagine you are teaching computer science and the tech support has locked down the computers so tightly that your students can’t compile or even save their programs. You call up tech support and say “my students can’t do their projects because the systems are locked down so tightly that they can’t save their work.” And tech support says “well you’ll have to find a work around but if you can find a solution that doesn’t take too much effort for us to do we’ll fix it. Maybe.” That scenario seems to happen all the time. You would be amazed at how often I get email from teachers looking for solutions that tech support is unwilling to do any research on themselves. The people whose job it is to make the computers work so that teachers can use them to teach refuse to correct, or even look into, problems that are making life difficult or close to impossible for teachers.

Is it as bad as no heat in the building? Probably not. But teaching computer science or programming without being able to save and/or compile programs is like teaching writing without students having pens and paper. It’s like teaching reading without books. It’s like teaching how to speak a new language without allowing anyone to talk.

Do you hear any irate school board members? I don’t. How about irate parents? Me either. Are the newspapers covering it? Not that I can see. But I’m irate.  I just don’t know how to solve the problem. So in the mean time I do what ever I can to help teachers find solutions that tech support will either implement or allow teachers to implement. I do what I can to find workarounds and alternatives for them. But really we need to solve this problem in a way that scales.

I was reading through the comments of Mark Guzdial’s post What if computer science was required? this morning and wondered to myself “what if taking math were not required?” Would students take it on their own? Would parents make them? Of course math is important but a lot of people hate it. Same with English or history or geography. What subjects would students take if they were not required to take the “hard” ones? If school were not required would they even go?

Many would of course. Educated parents would especially make sure their children were educated. But could they keep pushing them there as they got older? Teens are notoriously poor decision makers. I think some would see the value and would continue but given how many students drop out in high school now I suspect even fewer would make it into high school if they were allowed to drop out earlier. This would be a societal disaster I think.

I’m thinking this would make an interesting book. Fiction I hope.

I guess I’m a little frustrated at people who view social media as something to hire people to do for them. They don’t have time you see. So they hire someone to blog for them. Or Twitter for them. Or “Facebook” for them. It somehow just seems wrong to me. I was thinking about that today and Twittered the following:

If people on Twitter are important enough to you for you to pay people to talk to them aren’t they important enough for you to talk to?

If you are looking at social media for marketing purposes you are looking to communicate with people, generally decision makers, and get them to buy your goods or services. These people are (or should be) important to you. You should see their time as important and valuable. I’m guessing most people think of their time as important and valuable. Are you broadcasting to them or conversing with them? Other than low level consumer products I doubt many sales are made without conversation. But even with consumer sales a company wants to create an attachment – a relationship – with their customers. Can you do that by broadcast alone? I’m not sure you can. At least not reliably.

The beauty of social media is that it is social. It is multi directional. Sure you can hire people to do this conversation for you. But all too often the customer binds to the person you hire rather than to you or your company. Think about whose personality is coming through. Is it the company image you want to project? If so maybe it can work. That’s probably more reliable as a plan if the person is a real full-time employee though.

I’m not a purist on this though. I’ve seen some cases of “hired guns” doing a good job. I just can’t see myself doing it. It seems risky. So I’m still trying to figure this out. Looking for opinions here. Thanks.

As I see it the Internet has the possibility to radically remake who we discover artists, consume art and support art. By this I mean most forms of art. Books, painting, music, theatre and on and on. Perhaps I’m stating the obvious but maybe not. I’d like to use this opportunity to state some of my observations and get feedback though.

First off it seems easy for established, main stream media people to make it big on the Internet. Oprah creates a Twitter account and it rapidly jumps to over 2 million followers. Ashton Kutcher has over 3 million followers. Wil Wheaton has over a million followers on Twitter but really started making a name for himself on the Internet with his blog - WWdN: In Exile. In his case I think that his Internet fame grew more because he is a very good writer and an interesting guy than that he was on TV for a while. But clearly his TV fame helped kick start things off. These people all see some value in interacting with their fans but is it key (or even really important to their careers? I think the jury is still out on that.

Where I see things getting interesting is with the so-called long tail of artistic endeavors. What does the Internet mean to people who are not big name mass media famous? For many I suspect it will mean the difference between subsistence level living and enough success that they can continue as artists as their main work.

MySpace was the first big platform for artists that I’m aware of. Musicians especially seem to have been early adopters there. By using it as a space to share their music, connect with fans, and promote themselves I think many of them helped themselves along.

I know more than a few visual artists – painters, sculptures, photographers, etc – use their own web pages to promote their art. Hugh MacLeod started building his fame online as a marketing guy before he made art creation his main gig though. These days he sells all his work online. (I own this piece and love it BTW) Hugh continues to promote himself (all selling is basically selling ones self) online through Twitter, his blog, his books and interactions with other online personalities. And make no mistake about it Hugh is himself a personality. The Internet gives him the opportunity to get his personality across. People like his art work in part because they like Hugh. This (people getting to know his personality) would not be possible on any reasonable scale without the Internet. I’ve recently come to the conclusion that for most people the value of art is much more about the artist than the intrinsic nature of the product. Rational or not it seems to be the case.

Which brings me to another point. Selling art is not a matter of simply putting up a web site and having people find it. For the Internet to be really helpful for an artist it has to be a tool for the artist to communicate with people. IT has to be an extension of how they communicate who they are, why they do what they do, and what sort of personal connection they make with people through their art. Then you can get people to support you directly by buying art and indirectly by providing feedback, emotional support and in the cases of performing arts – attending performances. The Internet is, as it has been since the world wide web and even before, about making connections and weaving things together.

I’ll give one more example of this. John Herman is a New Hampshire artist. I’m not sure how to characterize him because he is in to so many things. His home page banner says “Artist, writer, teacher, web adventurer” while his Twitter page (@JohnHerman) says “Artist, Writer, Teacher, Media Strategist, Creative Content Producer, Founder of NH Media Makers” From his home page or from his Twitter feed interested people can branch off to a surprising number of artistic endeavors. I have no idea if he makes money from any of this artistic work BTW. He makes a living as a high school teacher which is how I first heard about him. But clearly the Internet and modern technology gives him creative outlets and connections to people that would be all but impossible otherwise. I suspect that there is more of this going on than I am aware of but I also believe there is a lot more of it to come.

Is it sustainable? I hope so. We need art and other creative outlets for people.

One of the places I learned the most about teaching and about education and actually many other things over the years was in the faculty lounge. Oh sure we’ve all heard stories of “toxic” environments in faculty lounges where all that goes on is complaining and gossip and negative things. But for me the faculty lounge was mostly a very positive experience.

It was from more experienced teachers that I learned how to handle teaching issues – what do you do with cheater? What do you do about tests or assignments that don’t work? How do you evaluate students with special needs? And on and on and on. The lounge was also a place to learn about current events from a deeper background. There are an awful lot of teachers who have a wealth of knowledge to bring to a conversation. History teachers bring one perspective; science teachers another; world languages teachers still another. And the list goes on. There are not many learning environments like a healthy faculty lounge.

Today my virtual faculty lounge is Twitter. Yes, Twitter. It is there where I engage with and learn from teachers, not just from one school, from all over the country and the world. Lately I have taken to asking questions there. Just throwing out items for discussion. Questions like “what is basic goal of HS?” which is the basis for another blog post I’m working on BTW. I’m getting perspectives from all over and people are explaining not only their views but the ones they hear expressed locally.

I’m also hearing (ok reading) observations from other teachers. For example one teacher is taking a week long workshop and feeling a bit overwhelmed. The questions she is asking though are along the lines of how can she help her students avoid that feeling? Teachers are working through issues with the help of others and they are doing it online and in a somewhat public forum. There is a huge benefit to this I think.

I am reminded of a cartoon I had hanging in my classroom for a couple of years (I wish I hadn’t lost it). The cartoon showed a classroom of students. All were thinking the same exact thing in the thought balloon overhead. Panel one “I am so lost” Panel two “Everyone else understands this so well” Panel three “I dare not ask a question and appear stupid in front of the class”

Doesn’t that happen all too often in life? Not just in school BTW. It happens in business meetings as well. The value of Twitter, well one of them, is that we have people feeling safe enough to pose questions and express concerns. In return others are providing answers (at best) and sympathy and sounding boards (at worst). Everyone participating benefits and learns.

What is the value of Twitter? Conversation, support, learning, community, friendship – well I guess I’m finding multiple benefits.

Note: You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AlfredTwo I do chat a lot though. :-)

The new TV show Royal Pains is bringing some attention to an area of Long Island the media likes to call “The Hamptons.” I was born there and growing up we referred to the area as “the south fork.” Or perhaps “the east end [of Long Island]” When I was growing up there were summer people – artists, writers, actors, miscellaneous rich people – who had big summer homes but there were also baymen and farmers – lots of farmers – and it did not get the media attention it does today.

Today there are sort of two dimensions (dimensions in the science fiction sense that they occupy the same physical space but hardly interact) to the Hamptons. There are the rich and famous who occupy one dimension and the other people who live in another. For ease of use I refer to the first group as summer people and the second group as year-round people. Strictly speaking many of the “summer people” come out more than just in the summer and may even live here (I am in East Hampton as I write this) most of the time.

The media (TV and movies) mostly presents a fictional view of the summer people. The year round people are kept in the background. I can’t say I am very familiar with that dimension of the Hamptons though. The year round people a bit more. While I haven’t lived in the Hamptons full-time for 50 years I do visit regularly and my father still lives here. I like to think of myself as a “displaced Bonacker'' who knows something of the area.

The TV show Royal Pains is fairly unique in that it does show some local, year-round people types. The hospital administrator who was born and raised in Southampton (not explicitly stated but the only hospital in the Hamptons is in Southampton – I was born there) for example. The most recent episode showed the star helping a sick fisherman. Why they didn’t add some authenticity by finding a way to refer to him as a bayman I don’t know. Baymen is a general term for people who make their living from the bays and ocean around the Hamptons. That is a word I would have liked to see in the show’s “Hamptons Glossary” but I guess as it is a local word not a summer people word it didn’t make the cut.

It’s going to be interesting to watch this show (Royal Pains) to see how it treats the year round people. My suspicion is that the writers and the people working on the show are more generally influenced by summer people. There are many of them in the TV business. I’m not sure how much interaction they have with year round people other than to buy from them, hire them to do work around their houses and see them in the streets. Will they take on the number of immigrants (legal and otherwise) from south and central America? How about the summer workers from Ireland who come to the area in droves? And what more of the hard working baymen will we see?

I actually wonder how they will handle the rest of the year – not the summer. Will the late season events like the Hamptons International Film Festival (October) be an opportunity to have a bunch of high profile cameo appearances?  Will the Hampton Classic show some international beauty (ever notice how many gorgeous young women need treatment on TV shows?) falling off a horse?

Yeah, I guess I like the show. The doctor is a good guy. The young rich kid he befriends is really interesting. The hospital administrator is more attractive than most of the rich people but is still a strong and complex person one can respect. The brother and the physicians assistant add something good to the mix. The USA Network does seem to do characters well. Plus I like to keep my eye open for places I know. :-)

Note: Strictly speaking a Bonacker is from Springs, a village in the town of East Hampton, but more general usage tends to include the most of the town including the village of East Hampton.

Note: If you go to the East Hampton Village page on Wikipedia you will see a picture of the old Hook Mill windmill. That picture is very close to the view from my bedroom window when I was a small child. Our current house is close by but doesn’t have that view.

There is a saying that knowledge is power which in many ways is quite true. Related to that is that the control of knowledge (information) is also a great power. I’ve seen this several ways in my personal experience. Most recently I was on a jury. Over and over we were told to make our decisions based only on the information (evidence) that was presented to us. We were not to do any outside research on our own. No visits to the scene, no reading in newspapers, no Internet searches, nothing outside the court room. The clear goal is to let the lawyers with some help from the judge completely control the information we had.

That is the way the system is supposed to work and I guess it is mostly a good one. But for someone who likes to look up thing and dig deeper it was a little frustrating. I don’t like it when others control my access to information. But I played by the rules even though I felt like I was missing information.

More in the past was my involvement on a school district budget committee. In that role I and the other members were charged with setting the annual budget for a school system. The administration (business manager and superintendent) had almost complete control over the information we had available to do that work. Oh we could ask other people (principals, department heads, and teachers for example) but even with that for much of what we needed the administration was our only option. I remain convinced that there were times when we were “played” to some extent. Not that I suspect the administration of ill intent just that in order to get what they thought was important then controlled what we knew,

The great myth about the Internet is that it removes or bypasses the filters to information. That it empowers people by providing information they did not always have. It’s a nice story and to a great extent there is truth there. But some information is never going to be fully available online. It is in people’s heads and passed by word of mouth. It is hidden in obscure language and/or jargon. Over time some of it will be exposed but there is so much out there. Which brings up information hiding. The old stick the needle in a haystack principle. Search engines can only help so much.

Ultimately you have to be able to trust people. Trusting the powerless is so much easier than trusting the powerful though. Insisting on more transparency and holding people accountable for providing information will help. Setting standards of transparency will help create an environment were it is expected. But I think it will take time. The powerful do not relinquish power easily and the power to control information is a temptress.

I’m the son of a pastor so I could really relate to this. Funny because of the bits of truth in it.

I spent four nights on a cruise ship last week. For a couple of reasons I gave in to buy some Internet time. I wanted to post a daily blog entry on the trip, I had some important things I needed email for, and I sort of wanted to check in on twitter – mostly to promote the blog posts. So I bought 100 minutes to use over the four days. That’s 25 minutes a day total. It forced me to closely conceder what I was doing on the Internet.

The blog posts were easy. I drafted them using Windows Live Writer and then used but a few minutes to post them to the web and quickly check traffic and comments on previous posts. Email was also easy. While I was posting to the blog Outlook was downloading incoming email and uploading previously written replies and other messages. Likewise reading blogs, which I didn’t do a lot of, was also easy as RSS Bandit downloaded posts for later offline reading. But Twitter? Not so easy.

What I did first with Twitter was to post about my blog post – an addin handles that automatically.  I then quickly looked at Direct Messages and @ Replies so that I could quickly and briefly respond to those as appropriate. And maybe I scanned the most recent Tweets from the people I follow. But other than that Twitter was not something I could participate in as usual.

While blogging and email probably seemed as normal to most people I’m sure people could easily tell that I wasn’t Twittering much. Well if they were paying any attention at all – not a sure thing. But for me I felt like I was missing a lot. There was none of the usual conversations or casual banter I am used to on Twitter. I missed it all very much. I think I could easily handle rationing my online email and blogging activity but that is because there are tools for that. There is nothing to really gather a lot of Twitter traffic for reading and responding to while offline. Maybe a coding project for me? Could be but I need to find the time. Anyone know of something like this already out there?

Twitter seems to have started with the geek world but these days I think it has grown beyond that. Today I see a lot of celebrity twittering, business tweeting (in a good way mostly) and conversation in various circles that may or may not be geeky in the way we normally see geeks. A couple of examples.

This post in the Washington Post called Twittering Leaders To Learn From is one example about what is happening with business twittering. Yes there are two tech companies on the list but there is also a congressman and two leaders from the publishing industry – newspapers and books. Yes, people who print things on paper. If you do a search engine search for “comcastcares +twitter” you will find a lot being written about Frank Eliason from Comcast. Yes Comcast is about cable TV, Internet and phone service with is somewhat tech related but Frank’s work is customer service – business work that any business has. More and more companies are using Twitter to put a human face on their company and their business. This is much the same way as blogging has been used but somehow blogging still feels more geek-world while Twitter feels more real world. Perhaps that is just my perception but maybe other people see it the same way.

And then there are small sub-worlds in Twitter. take education for example. There are huge numbers of people talking about education on Twitter. Yes, some of it is edtech related but much of it is broader – school reform, charter schools, classroom management, and general “water cooler” talk. Check out the list of people who have tagged themselves with the education tag at WeFollow for example. Over a million people have used that tag there. The edtech tag at WeFollow has fewer than 200,000 people. Still a large number but small compared to the over all education total. If you look at WeFollow’s tag list you’ll see a lot of huge groups though.

But it seems like celebrities are really taking over in the area of huge followings. Ashton Kutcher (aplusk) has over 700,000 followers.  Demi Moore (mrskutcher) has over 400,000 followers. Ubergeek Robert Scoble (scobleizer) has only 78,000+ followers. What a contrast!

Now of course celebrities use Twitter differently than business twitters and in fact differently than the traditional models of using Twitter. In some ways it is still about building personal brand of course. So the goal may be similar. Businesses want to make friends and influence people, solve customer problems and promote the company. Celebrities want to build a larger and stronger fan base. It’s similar in some ways but in other ways I think it is different. First off companies are usually coming from behind. They have to win people over. They have to fix customer issues, present a more human face and generally work to improve their image. that means they have to follow more people, use direct messages at times and more directly interact with followers.

Celebrities are building on a relationship where people already like them but that want to see a more personal side. They can interact with each other (other celebrities – apparently conversations between Ashton and Mrs. Kutcher are particularly popular) and less with followers. They don’t have to follow a lot of people themselves. Now if they do interact with followers (and apparently Shaq O'Neil (The_Real_Shaq) does that a lot) so much the better. But more people are probably wondering about what is going on between Mark Cuban (mcuban – owner of the Dallas Mavericks) and Shaq that what he is saying to general fans. (BTW I recommend a blog post by Don Dodge (@dondodge) titled Celebs on Twitter Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Britney Spears top the list for more on how celebrities are using Twitter.)

The edge cases on Twitter these days are probably not the geeks like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki who follow as many people as follow them in large numbers but the people like Ashton Kutcher who are followed by completely insane numbers of people.

This doesn’t mean that Twitter isn’t there for the rest of us though. Personally I am loving interacting with a lot of educators, friends, co-workers and even family on Twitter (at AlfredTwo). I’ve avoided most of the celebrities, cut back on the pure tech/geek plays I follow but added some news sources. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with news sources (NY Times, PBS, CNN, etc) on Twitter in particular and online in general over the next year.

I expect to see general business grow as well as informal non-business circles of followers and friends. Twitter is a platform and there is room for a lot of interesting uses there.