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Education vs Life | A Thought

education vs life

The answer to learning.

Most formal/traditional/current education systems provide lessons with the view the learners at some stage will complete some kind of test to prove understanding, skills, knowledge etc

Life on the other hand, provides tests and it’s up to us to make sense of the lesson (with the opportunity to pass that knowledge, skills, understanding etc on in some way).

Because I didn’t know better, the social media training I’ve developed and delivered in the past takes this test-first approach. Providing a problem to solve and a reflective space to discuss the lessons learnt (sometimes after failure), meant highly engaged participants with fantastic feedback plus obvious learning outcomes.

Would be fun to reverse the current educational paradigm of teach, learn, test.

Then again, that’s just my opinion—say otherwise in the comments below.

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Otautahi Youth Council (OYC) | Social Media Training

The next generation of story-makers / tellers / influencers.

Honoured to have delivered some training for Otautahi Youth Council (OYC) (who are supported by the fab Christchurch based White Elephant Trust).

“DK’s training not only opened up a new world of social media to us but motivated and empowered the young people participating to take action in their community with their new found tools.”

Netta Egoz, Project Coordinator—Otautahi Youth Council/ WE Care White Elephant Trust

The focus of the day was on several social media platforms as well as the strategic side of implementing their use. The following were the fundamentals (Golden Rule, Storytell, Digital Takeaways, Process):

If you’ve ever had the privilege of working with young people you will know of their quick adoption of these online platforms—the button theory in action—was a fun day.

Pay me to do something similar.

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Designing Processes / Experience / Brand | Closer To Launch

wireframesmall

Shaping the online offering (above is the wireframe of the site design)

Getting the product right is half the story, the overall brand experience and even the process of checking out needs due care and consideration.

Taking notes and learning from inspiring folks such as generalassemb.ly and:

“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”
Jeff Bezos

Related to The Best Damn Public Speaking Course On The Internet (Even The Planet) and Why Develop An Online Speaker Training Programme | The Purpose, The Why, The What
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The (Social Media) Lick

On the one hand echoes never tell you anything new.

On the other, they reinforce a fundamental.

The wisdom comes in knowing the difference between the two (in the cacophony of social media discourse).

Btw, the blog post above was more for me than you.
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KONY 2012

Lets make the bastard (in)famous.

For six years I’ve been telling the story of the Invisible Children in nearly all of the social media training I’ve delivered and some consulting sessions as well.

I do this for three reasons:

    1. 1. it’s a story which needs to be told
    1. 2. it highlights the idea of collective positive action to change the world
    1. 3. it illustrates the power new media and social technologies can aid distribution of the story and idea.

Even after all this time it still makes me cry!

Watch the film.

Support the cause.

Marvel at the boldness.

Note the new visual political discourse.

Celebrate the audacity and more important than that… share it wider!

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Google Has Gone All In | The Big Gamble

Will it pay off… or not?

From the clever fingers / brain of Marco Ament:

It’s easy not to “be evil” when you’re ahead. But when you’re backed into a corner and your usual strategies aren’t working, it’s easy to get frustrated, scared, and angry, and throw previously held morals and standards out the window.

Google’s foray into social networking was late.

They knew this. The reversal of some of their key policies, touted as differentiators (such as now welcomes young people, when it said it wouldn’t and now it allows pseudonyms, sort of, when it said it wouldn’t), smacks as a little desperate along with the ‘Google+-button-creep’ into all of their other product lines.

So why are they going all in?

Maybe, it’s not to create hoards of long term users (especially when you take into consideration how users only spend 3 minutes on the site last January, compared to half of the same time for Pinterest users or 7.5 hours for Facebook maniacs) but more the fact that it simply increases their ability to productise your ongoing use of their other platforms:

Google scrambled to build Google+ because it watched Facebook and saw users were willing to volunteer biographical data to their social network, and that data is crucial to serving accurate ads users want to click.

From the insightful Google doesn’t care if you ever come back post—which is why you’ve already cleaned out your Google data… haven’t you…

Being such a big Google fan and user, this is a fascinating scenario to watch play out.

Especially if you extend the metaphor a little further with the knowledge that you might get lucky, but in the end, the house always wins.

What do you think, will their gamble pay off?

My name is DK. And I approve this message.
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Nothing Is New | Pinterest Is A Remix / Redux / Mashup etc

The world does cartwheels for new.

The problem is it’s hardly ever that.

Most “newness” is just an element of it’s overall offering.

Just like Pinterest—the latest social media wonderkid (although it’s been going for nearly 4 years).

The idea is not original.

It’s a visual Delicious, a more ordered Tumblr / Ffffound / We Heart It / ImgFave, a girly Reddit / StumbleUpon… the UI/X is cleaner, more intuitive and due to this the user numbers has really ramped.

The fact is we’ve all been scrapbooking for years.

Now we just aggregate digitally.

Faster.

Tidier.

With more people.

Over wider topics.

New is rarely something monumental but rather a quiet shift and addition. A gentle increase to the discourse. And by adding in multiples of time and people, it appears more than it is.

This is replicated in the (misplaced) discussion about social media and how it’s constantly changing and morphing, when it should be about the fundamental skills not the platforms themselves. Seeing it as not a mountain to climb but a wave to catch totally shifts the thinking and approach.

Be careful of the smoke and loud voices because it’s what’s behind the curtain that counts.

Focus on what’s best not what’s new.

Everything is a remix.

A redux.

A mashup.

Nothing is new.

This is not a negative post about Pinterest. It’s a great site. Am playing around with it myself. Just wanted to move the conversation along.
UPDATE: although now I’m reconsidering being on there, you also should.
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The Freemium Model In Action | Steens Manuka Honey

steens manuka taster strip

Tasters. Teasers. Tempters.

Steens Manuka Honey is the best tasting honey on the planet. Not only is it rich in medicinal properties (you can put this stuff on your wounds and it will aid recovery) but as a brand they also understand how to entice a customer.

Above is a little strip of card with a sealed packet of the delicious nectar on the reverse. Snap the strip in half and enjoy a sweet sample.

This for me is the correct definition and real-life use of the freemium model—leveraging the quality of the product through a sharable short-form handout.

This has parallels with social media, as every tweet, blog post, video vignette etc is a taster to the larger brand offer. A cheeky flavour to excite those to want more.

Done well, with grace and quality, it’s a simple and sure-fire way to build up a customer / consumer base who advocate you further by distributing your free little contributions.

Develop and dispense tasters.

Simple.

Big thanks to Dom who first gave me the honey strips and a jar to get my hooked. Further thanks to Sheryl for being a wonderful soul through our contact on Steens Facebook Page and for sending me more tasters—my colleagues are going to enjoy these and I’m sure will be converted into customers as well.
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