Malicious Compliance Birthday Cards

Posted on September 16, 2012 by whatsthepont

Last week it was my birthday.

The family now knows how I think.

Malicious compliance is well understood round here.

They got me these cards (twice).

There is no hiding place.

* Disclaimers……

1. Not the best ever piece of verse written for a birthday card, but I’m having a go.

2. The drilling in the pictures in no way represents my DIY abilities.

3. Neither does it represent any act of malicious compliance on my part (many years as a practitioner have taught me to be far more subtle).

So, what’s the PONT?

Malicious compliance is not a difficult concept to understand.
Some acts of malicious compliance can be very obvious (check out the links below).
Don’t let your family read your blog, they will know how you think.

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/malicious-compliance-i-hate-painting-and-filling-in-forms/

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/more-malicious-compliance-mastery-and-lessons-from-shed-building/

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/my-epic-communication-fail-the-4-foot-post-story/

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/sherry-and-twiglets-vrs-fence-building-how-shared-action-builds-relationships-and-why-i-want-a-walking-coach/

NeverSeconds, School Dinners, Social Media and some learning for Public Service

Posted on June 16, 2012 by whatsthepont

Single tweet, massive impact.

Situation.

30th April 2012 a 9 year old school pupil starts the NeverSeconds blog as a writing project with her dad.
Martha writes about what she gets for school lunch and takes photographs.
This is done with the approval of the school.
The blog also acts as a link to raising money for a school meals charity.
Blog gets some good attention, kids from other places send pictures of their own school meals and they are posted.
June 2012, negative press articles attract the attention of those responsible for providing the meals, the Local Council.
Thursday 14th June Martha is told to stop taking photographs of school dinners by the Council.
Martha publishes this on the blog in a ‘Goodbye’ message.
The world of social media, twitter in particular, erupts.

Social Media Impact

A very prominent school meals campaigner (Jamie Oliver) sends a message of support and encourages his 2.3 million followers to retweet it.
Twitter gets very busy with people talking about ‘#neverseconds’.
The story is picked up by television, radio and newspapers.
Politicians become involved, some via twitter.
Considerable pressure is put on the Local Council.
Friday 15th June the Council reverses the ban and Martha is allowed to use photographs of the school meals in NeverSeconds.
This all happens within a 24 hour timeframe.
……and the world of social media erupts even further.

A few numbers

Never Seconds blog had received in excess of 4,500,000 page view by 11am on Saturday 16th June (still climbing).
The page view counter on Saturday morning was flicking over at rate too fast to count. It was about 200 views per minute (12,000 / hour) when it had slowed down a bit.
The ‘#neverseconds’ hash tag attracted thousands of tweets.
The donations to the school meals charity have reached over £45,000, the fastest rate of donations they have experienced; and it’s still going on.
There are 2 more weeks until the end of term, plenty of time for more school dinner blog posts.

Some thoughts

The council has received a massive amount of publicity in a very short space of time. Most of it negative, using phrases like ‘bully’. It’s going to be an interesting day back at work on Monday.
Will this improve the quality of school meals? Particularly once social media has gone away? Who knows, but the fear of a return to this level of exposure might be a big motivation.
What happens next for Never Seconds and Martha?

So what’s the PONT?

Censorship is a risky activity in the world of social media. It backfired hugely for this council (even if they do claim good reasons).
The speed and scale of social media will cause problems for most organisations. Most public services aren’t equipped for this sort of 24/7 media pressure.
As an example of ‘citizen voice’ from within a group of generally ‘quiet’ people (primary school kids), this is a pretty loud and high impact. As part the ‘digital natives’ entering wider society and the world of work, there is an interesting future ahead for public services.

Interesting Links: Council Statement. http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/node/38630

Infographic: http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1105/lunch/flat.html Do students eat like prisoners? Well worth looking at.

Also have a look at the Streisand effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect. An attempt to hide or remove a piece of information online has the unintended consequence of publicising the information more widely.

If Carlsberg did Physics Teachers…. they would make Alessio Bernardelli.

Posted on June 14, 2012 by whatsthepont

I am totally inspired at the moment. Of all things it’s about physics, education and blogging, all thanks to Alessio Bernardelli.

Last night Alessio spoke at a WordPress Users Wales meeting about his blog and how he’s been using blogging in education. Here is his blog, please go and visit you won’t be disappointed (check out The Hidden Particles of Fishy Tank, brilliant).

Just to give you a taste of why I found it so inspirational, here’s an example of the sort of thing he does.

Last year he was teaching physics to Year 12 students (16/17 year olds). The subject area was photoelectricity and energy levels. As a past A Level physics student it rings distant bells but I don’t recall it being particularly exciting….. How wrong could I be?

What Alessio got the pupils to do, was write an ‘Ode to Photoelectricity’, a poem. Not what we did back in the day, but something that certainly gets you thinking, and requires considerably more effort than a ‘cut and paste’ from Wikipedia. So far so good. Next, the poems are posted as blogs, and the homework ‘marked’ (opened up for comments). This is great, everyone gets to see what everyone else is doing, and you get some helpful feedback. This is more than just learning physics; it’s acquiring the ‘giving and receiving feedback’ skill that just about every workplace I’ve experienced values greatly.

What happens next is even better. The assignment was about energy levels and photon emissions. This would also be blogged and then reviewed by the Year 6 (10/11 year old) kids in the local primary school. This is a real challenge in terms of understanding the science, and also the ability to communicate what you understand (great life skills again).

The best way to see the impact of this is to view the outputs via Alessio’s post on collaboration cross phase through blogging. Have a look at this very scientific presentation from some of the pupils. Standard power point stuff; similar to what many of us get served daily at work.

The solitary response from Year 6 pupils says it all.

As a contrast here is a link to another piece of homework, which makes full use of colour and animation to communicate the message. The comments speak for themselves, here’s a selection.

Interestingly, today I was at a conference where the message was being given that public service organisations in Wales need to develop a culture of accepting challenge and feedback. Perhaps Alessio is already developing these people for the future by teaching them physics in a fun and inspiring was. He certainly inspired me, thanks Alessio.

So, what’s the PONT?

Inspiring teachers really do make a difference.
Having fun at what you do is a key component to learning and engagement.
Blogging is much more than just broadcasting your views. Looking for, accepting and giving feedback is a skill lots of people (I know) could usefully develop.

Social Media + Staff Ideas = Better Engagement? …. (a bank that says YES)

Posted on February 3, 2012 by whatsthepont

This is all about HSBC, not to be confused with the 1980′s advertising campaign about another bank that liked to say yes…… I’ll stop now…..

Recently I was at an IdeasUK networking event about the use of social media in staff ideas schemes. A big part of the day was about what HSBC are doing.

HSBC have developed a platform for the capture and management of staff ideas which builds upon social media ideas. If you’ve seen how things like Dell IdeaStorm works you’ll get it straight away. Like lots of social media, the HSBC platform is very open and easy to use system which encourages people to participate. People in the community can see what others have posted recently and the top / most popular ideas. You can also search though past ideas to check out if what you are thinking has been done before, or just look for inspiration. People can express an opinion by voting on suggestions and collaborate through the process of commenting. For very good reasons to do with security and financial services regulation the access to the platform is restricted to staff use only.

Have a look at the presentation by James Shewry on the IdeasUK blog for a good explanation of how it works.

A couple of things made me think about how this approach helps with staff engagement. These are to do with trust and giving people confidence to participate.

The fact that staff are able to vote on suggestions and freely comment, for me, is a huge expression of trust. Staff are trusted to have an opinion, and express it in a sensible and useful way. If you feel you are trusted to freely express your views, that’s got to be good for engagement. Unfortunately not all organisations would take this approach, and others would introduce moderation processes and ‘checks and balances’ to ensure nothing ‘unsavory’ (criticism of management) appeared.

Giving people the confidence to participate is a tricky one. I recently heard the expression ‘micro participation’ to describe the like / promote / demote button approach. Letting people take these ‘micro’ steps is a good way of building confidence and introducing people to the ‘two-way conversation’ world of social media. Again, there are unfortunately a few organisations about that would be horrified at the thought of this type of ‘push button democracy’ in the hands of staff.

Here is a slide from the HSBC presentation to illustrate what I’m saying:

There were 183 ideas submitted in March 2011 which received almost 2400 votes and 495. That seems like a pretty good number of staff being engaged in ideas to improve the organisation. Anyone who’s ever written a blog will know that comments are like gold dust, they give so much added value.

So what’s the PONT?

Trusting staff and improving engagement go hand in hand.
Using social media approaches to handle staff ideas gives an opportunity to build trust amoungst staff.
It’s a win, win, win. Engaging this many staff in business improvement has got to be good for customers, good for staff and good for the bottom line.

Linked post: Crowdsourcing, could this be the groovy new name for staff ideas schemes?

Mission Impossible Community of Practice…..a Movement?

Posted on September 11, 2011 by whatsthepont

A friend has been given mission impossible, “you are required to”………:

Bring together a large group people from diverse and often
competing sectors;
Across a wide geographical area and un-specified
timescale;
Get them to share skills, knowledge and resources;
All for the greater good, there’s no money in it;
There aren’t any obvious or immediate benefits from participation;
You must make this happen with no real resources;
You need to call this a Community of Practice; and
There is no option to refuse the mission……

You’re doomed friend!

Actually I think the core proposal is good, so I’m sticking with it and I’ll try and help. (By the way, it’s not Big Society or anything; I don’t have those sort of friends).

In talking this through we identified some of the likely problems, particularly if it’s treated as an extension of doing traditional business. Hierarchical, command and control structures won’t be effective in what looks like a complex adaptive system. To meet expectations we’d need something less formal and more unstructured. Light touch governance arrangements, safe to fail pilots and Trojan Mice. Certainly not PRINCE2 project initiation documents, milestones and a risk register.

What we want is something more like a “movement”……………. Oh dear!

An alarm bell went off at this point….I could hear the questioning voice……. “a
movement you say?…….. That’s all a bit 1960′s….”

Actually a movement or social movement is very modern and just what we need: “large informal groupings of individuals and/or organisations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out a social change.”

To help my friend in their task here are two movements that show what can be achieved. One is a hugely successful global movement and the other Cardiff based (which I think is going places): TED and Cardiff Blogs.

TED: Ideas worth spreading, describes itself as “a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading — through TED.com, our annual conferences, the annual TED Prize and local TEDx events.”

This is a very modest description for something that since 1984 and has attracted speakers that include US Presidents, UK Prime Ministers, numerous Nobel Prize Winners and just about anyone important and influential on a global level you can think of.

The best bit is that their ‘ideas worth spreading’ really are ‘spread’. Videos of the talks are freely available via the TED.com website. In September 2011 there
were over 1000 talks available that had been viewed over 500 million times.
This is incredible and I would recommend looking at what’s on offer (it will pull
you away from watching TV).

The other expansion of the movement has been into the TEDx events that take place
in over 60 cities globally. There have been about 750 of these free events that follow a format defined by TED and are hugely popular. I was lucky enough to attend the TEDx Cardiff 2011 event, which nicely links me to a local Cardiff movement, Cardiff Blogs.

At the last Cardiff blogs gathering ‘doing it for love not money’ was the topic of discussion. I think this really gets to the heart of a movement and why do a bunch of diverse people get together to share knowledge, skills and experiences for no obvious benefit to themselves? The short answer is I don’t know. There is no compelling campaign or cause to fight against or support here. It’s about like-minded people who happen to be bloggers, in the Cardiff area linking up to share ideas.

In conversation with my good friend Mrs Motivator we’ve compared what is happening to the intellectual flowering of the ‘enlightenment’ that took place in the London Coffee Houses in the 1650’s. A fluid network of varied people coming together to discuss interesting things.

Where it will end up is anyone’s guess but it does feel a privilege to be part of it. This TED talk from Steven Johnson on “where good ideas come” from gives a description of the important role of fluid networks in creating innovation and change. It’s why I think things like Cardiff Blogs are important to the future of Cardiff and Wales (no pressure on the Admin Team).

Back to my friend with mission impossible. I think there is a globally successful movement in TED we could learn some lessons. More locally there is something flowering in Cardiff Blogs you could look at for inspiration and perhaps become part of? Go on start your blog.

So what’s the PONT?

Applying traditional business approaches to Communities of Practice
can inhibit them, and disengage some of the people you want to attract.
Fluid networks are more likely to enable the growth of a movement.
Have a look at what TED and Cardiff Blogs do for inspiration.

Picture Sources:

Cardiff Blogs http://itvwalesblog.com/2011/08/23/guest-blog-cardiff-blogs-for-love-not-money/

TEDx Cardiff http://huwdavid.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/hdd-makes-a-creative-mark-at-tedxcardiff/

Mission Impossible http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/title/36422/Mission%3A+Impossible

Stop the Social Media Arms Race in School

Posted on July 21, 2011 by whatsthepont

Julian Assange - former pupil of.....?

This week I have mostly been a field ethnographer. Basically I have been talking to my kids and finding out what they do with social media in school.

This came about from Mondays post about the use of mobile phones in schools. I also read a post by William Stites about why we need social media in schools on edSocialMedia . What prompted my field ethnography was the phrase,‘arms race’ …….”by blocking these sites and not embracing what they have to offer we are only creating an arms race with our students and missing out on using these tools to connect with and provide new learning opportunities for our students.”

Preliminary report on my field ethnography week as follows:

Observation 1: Banning mobile devices is unenforceable.
This was a simple test. I sent a few texts to one of my kids. I got responses very rapidly. I’m not sure if these coincided with break times, but it was a quicker way to get hold of him than via school reception. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. In urgent
situations I always use this channel first.

I did ask a few questions on the mobile phone ban. It seems that the approach to enforcement is extremely variable, to quote…..”some of the old fossils go mad about phones, but most teachers are OK”

Observation 2: The kids will win the social media arms race.
My questioning was directed at Minecraft Boy. He knows a bit about the internet, and how to reskin minecraft , whatever that involves. Key findings:

Computers are very common in school (thank you Tesco School Computer vouchers).
Pupils pretty much have free access for ‘school related’ things they need to do.
Any social media platform you can think about is blocked. Not just Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc, this also includes anything that looks remotely like a blog or a forum.
BBC i Player and all of YouTube are blocked yet they watch videos in class……….?
Twitter is also blocked, yet the school and individual departments tweet. Errr……. who are they tweeting to?
Internet searches are banned for unknown reasons, including random pages on Wikipedia.
The kids have found multiple ways around the system. At a basic level this involves ‘tricking’ the filters to continue your search. For a history project on the Titanic all searches were being blocked (first three letters of the name apparently), so they used RMS Titanic. I have heard of other schools where kids routinely hack around the firewalls.
Despite the blocks, everyone participates in some sort of discussion forum or plays games on-line. Once the authorities have found the latest area of activity and blocked it, the crowd just moves on to a new one. The whole cycle just moves on, an ‘arms race’ or what!?

William Stites makes the point in this post that “technology is ahead of the laws and ethics… the world of technology is changing quicker than we can keep up…… Content filters, policies and guideline aren’t the final answer. If we are to have our students become true citizens we need to it though teaching.”

One final comment from Minecraft Boy. “They would be better off allowing us to
use this stuff and learning about it. There are 100’s of us working on this stuff every day. A few geeks in the Council IT department will never stop it. One of us might be the next Julian Assange or some mega hacker……..”

So, what’s the PONT.

Mobile phone bans in schools are unenforceable.
Banning access to social media is an arms race that is unwinnable.
We would be better off engaging pupils with social media and mobile technology, exploiting the learning opportunities and teaching Digital Citizenship .

Image source:

http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/jan2011/6/3/julian-assange-pic-pa-96346945.jpg

Avoiding shock, denial, and dispair…………how can I write better content?

Posted on July 11, 2011 by whatsthepont

Last week I had a blog post reviewed and got some good honest feedback. You know, the kind only a close friend or relatives can give you. This was absolutely necessary, but it’s a bit like the change curve thing of: shock and denial; progressing to uncertainty and ending up at acceptance and moving on (eventually….I hope). The bottom line is I needed to improve my content.

In my quest to improve, I did my usual things, looked around for ideas to ‘borrow’ and tried to find out what ‘good’ content looked like. While looking for ‘borrows’ I searched on, ‘how to write good blog posts’. Not bad, 400 million results in 0.15 seconds……. but where I do I start? Pick a highly respected name? YEEES!….. a post from Seth Godin, with fantastic advice. It was only 8 lines long and 63 words, and I completely got what he was saying, brilliant. But I do crave a bit more detail, and if you are like me, I’d recommend Neil Patel at Quick Sprout. One of the things Neil says is the importance of including detail, ‘the nitty gritty’, because readers like it. But I find it’s a tricky balance between the amount detail and holding people’s attention. Other places to look for really good advice are problogger and copyblogger.

So, onwards to my ‘what does good look like’ quest. Thanks to WordPress.com I’ve been reading huge numbers of blogs. Principal lesson….. there doesn’t seem to be a magic formula for success. I’m sure someone could find a statistical relationship between the number of views, comments, tweets, subscribers and how blog is put together, but it eluded me. What attracts people to some blogs, and drives others away is complex territory. I guess you need to know your readers are and what they like.

After the research I did my next favourite thing and wrote a list.

My checklist for good blog content:

It must flow. I use the Engage, Inform and Call to Action format which I heard Russell Amerasekera speak about.
Keep it short. Think about what fits on a screen (optimum 500 words, max 800).
Break it up. Use headings, paragraphs, lists and tables. It helps people to scan.
Include Detail. Give people some ‘nitty grity’ detail they can use.
Use Images. If they help explain the message or liven up the text.
Spelling & Grammar. Obviously.

Taking ‘be critical’ bit far?..... link to gapingvoid below

All good so far, but in the end this all brought me back to this post by Mrs Motivator, “Be Critical: the 1 Essential Skill for Content”. This was missing from my list. The advice was absolutely spot on and exactly what I’d missed and should have been doing. I need to add #7 Critical Self Review, “is what I’ve done any good?” To be honest I‘d rather put myself through the change curve stages alone, and if I can, avoid some of the pain from external feedback.

So, what’s the PONT?

If I want to improve my content along with using my checklist I need to continuously carry out critical self review.
Like Neil Patel at Quick Sprout says there is no perfect blog. You just need to keep trying and learning.
All this advice is great, but do what works for you. It’s not a competitive sport.

Link to image source from gapingvoid: http://www.gapingvoidgallery.com/gallerycubegrenades-limitations-p-1904.html?utm_source=Gapingvoid+Daily+Cartoon&utm_campaign=2c0d32a83b-%23354+%27Limitations%27+June+29th%2C+2011&utm_medium=email

Just my luck!

Last week the Wales Blog Awards issued guidance on what makes a good blog. Just my luck!

What's the PONT

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Malicious Compliance Birthday Cards

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