Minds on Fire - Learning to Be

From John Seely Brown ( co-chairman of the New Deloitte Research Center at USC) and Richard Adler of the Institute for the Future comes this timely article on the importance of conversations in stimulating learning in communities of practice. The primary audience for the article is academics in higher ed, but the message is useful for any learning practice.

John's whimsical cartoons like the ones shown below make the article much more entertaining and understandable.


Here is the link:


http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/MindsonFireOpenEducationt/45823

Yi-Tan on FaceBook and Widgets

http://www.yi-tan.com/

The Gladwellian Connector pictured above is Jerry Michalski, founder of Yi-Tan, a collective which uses the chinese symbol above to mean: Conversations About Change.

Here's how Jerry describes what his collective is all about:

"We're here as part of a larger network to explore, prototype, adopt and recommend solutions around social media and technologies that are going to change the way people communicate, collaborate, engage with each other and organise for work and play."

I met Jerry last year at Meshforum 2006, and today accepted his invitation to listen on his weekly Yi-Tan community conversation - sort of a dial-in radio talk show with Jerry as the host. The subject of today's call was a timely exploration of the meaning of the "new" FaceBook
Platform and how it may effect the solution set that Yi-Tan has been exploring.

If you didn't get the invitation in time to hear the conversation, the link above will take you to the podcast archive of the call. Given time, I will attempt to synthesize the conversation, so you won't have to listen to the full hour to get the gist - but here is my takeaway:

"Facebook is emerging as an important player in the intersection between social networks and how people communicate through conversations".

I have just joined as a member of Facebook as you can see from my sidebar, and intend to learn as much as I can what all the buzz is about.

Logic+Emotion - moving the needle on the Experience -O-Meter

David Armano - a graphic designer based in chicago has uploaded this brilliant PPT on slideshare.net Here are a few examples. Click on the images for a larger version where you can more easily read the smaller typefaces. Then scroll down to the embedded presentation to see all of David's Visual Library. Outstanding!