I’m happy to be at the point where the first outcomes are visible, after this long period of readings and discussions, of questioning and asking to experts and friends about online social networks as learning environments.
I’m really excited on the possible results of the analysis I will do once I receive the information from you, the experts. At the same time, I fear I won’t ger enough responses from all of you.
This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about the web 2.0 tools and to have a better picture from this new and still unknown Network Society. I have found in this study one of the most exciting intellectual activities I’ve ever had. It has stressed from me all the rational and intellectual abilities I had, if I ever had one. It has kept me connected to the issue all time I was awakened and sometime in my dreams too.
Thus I want this project to finish with a set of conclusions that can help us all, users, academics, experts and, in general, followers of the web 2.0 and the social media and of e-learning to get more from it.
I’d like to invite you to participate in this survey that is directed to all those professionals, business people, academics, consultants, experts and lovers of tourism, that use online social networks to communicate and learn.

Here’s the link for the survey in SPANISH and here’s it ENGLISH.

I want to thank you in advance for your help by answering to this survey, that will take you only 15 minutes of your time.
I WISH YOU A PEACEFUL XMAS TIME AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

I want to go through the positngs of most participants in PDF_EU and then make a broader and deeper report on what has been discussed in this forum, though I’d like to advance that many new things have been said in PDF_EU that will, probably change the attitudes and hopes of many of the activists that make e-democracy posible in Europe. Or at least, I hope so!

There’s a perverse strategy that music and film companies are using in this regard. They pretend to compare file sharing with stealing cds or dvds. This strategy goes parallel to a campaign to convince, first the authors that they got stolen, and second to governments, drawing a false picture that says that this is a crime and it has to be prosecuted.
I call this a perverse strategy because it places a completely new way of communicating under the law of old ways of commeerce. But even so, their strategy is fake and corrupt, because they’ve never prooved that there’s a direct consequence on the decision of people to stop buying cds and dvds with file sharing. In fact there is not s direct relation between these two facts. The growth of the music business in Internet has not stopped file sharing, thus we can see rather a direct cuase of these changes in the first rule of commerce: “value for money”. Cds and DVDs don’t provide to the customers enough value foe the money they have to pay.
Could we imagine a campaign like this sixty years ago, where record companies could have started a cmpaign against broadasters because they were pushing people out from buying vinil records? Obviously not, and for two main reasons: first, because music producers had not such control over the market, and second because they saw an oportunity rather than a threat in broadcasting music over the radios.
Why do these companies do not see in Internet an opportunity as they saw it decades ago. Just because the Internet is giving much more power to the consumer than ever before, and they are reluctant to become more flexible and invest money in new strategies.
Though we all know that companies like iTunes or Spotify, two major succesful services of music on the Internet, have reached agreements with the biggest music producers. Music cpmanies have more than one strategy: supporting the emergence of new markets in Internet and lobbying to force governments to prosecute file sharing.

In my opinion they want to get rid of their stocks gaining time for it, while they know that the present situation has no turn back. Music or video file sharing cannot be a crime or cause dammage to any author, because it is a social action. I’m convinced that this idea will prevail because it has been the grounding philosophy of Internet and the engine that has made of this networking tool the global miracle of the last decade. What cosnumers will be reasy to pay is “value for money”. IN music, as in other industries, Internet has cuased de-intermediation and re-intermediation, and this is the oaradigm that companies have to gace to find their opportunity.

It ’s true that Internet has pushed many people to change their jobs, and many companies to change their strategies. The same as in earlier times did the steam engine . The only difference is that this changes have occurred globally and in a much shorter lap of time.

El otro día, des de la web de CitiLab en Cornellà presentaban la entrevista a David Starck, profesor y experto en innovación en las organizaciones. David Stark, tiene en alguno de sus artículos referencias a la importancia de que las organizaciones deben ser abiertas para innovar. También afirma que a veces funcionan mejor las colaboraciones transversales que las jerárquicas y si son de departamentos diferentes, pueden complemenbar su conocimiento para generar nuevo.
Aunque en la entrevista que le han hecho en CitiLab de Cornellà (http://es.citilab.eu/actualidad/opinion/stark) el título diga: “En realidad no son los individuos los que innovan, sino las organizaciones”, els siempre entiende que han de ser grupos abiertos los que generen conocimiento. Parece lógico, que en un sector compuesto mayoritariamente por empresas pequeñas y medianas (con poco más de 15 personas), como es el turismo (del cual me ocupo en mi investigación) resulta a menudo difícil generar conocimiento colectivamente dentro de estructuras tan herméticas. Sin embargo si las empresas colaboran en los procesos de producción o en la cadena de valor, entonces la generación de conocimiento es más posible a través de la interacción.

Hoy, a través de Twitter, Dolors Reig anunciaba su post en el blog El Caparazón (altamente recomendable) bajo el lema: “Empresa abierta como condición necesaria para el aprendizaje también abierto”. Para mí éste es el paso más difícil para las organizaciones. abrirse a sus proveedores, su competencia, sus clientes, su entorno, en general. Dolors hace referencia a un estudio de Deloitte sobre “más de 400 empresas, incluyendo algunas en la lista Fortune 100″ muy interesante donde se ve el interés de las empresas por potenciar las comunidades en su interior.

Aunque como dice ella respecto a los resultados (respuestasde las más de 400 empresas) del estudio de Deloitte,

Aprendizaje, Conocimiento, parecen no aparecer todavía, posiblemente por falta todavía de aplicaciones empresariales adecuadas, en el marco de la web social. Los PLEs, cuyo desarrollo en entornos verticales preveo importante en 2010, pueden cambiar el panorama, aproximarlo un poco más a la idea del Aprendizaje abierto. Empresa abierta como condición necesaria para el aprendizaje también abierto.

Está claro que hay trabajo para convencer a las empresas en que el aprendizaje forma parte del proceso de innovación tal como Wenger, Starck, etc. ya han afirmado. Importante tarea, pues, el difundirlo.

Llevo unos años trabajando en ello pero no había realizado ninguna pregunta abierta a la comunidad Hosteltur. Creeis que entre las empresas turísticas se genera conocimiento de forma colectiva?

Me explico: las comunidades de práctica son concidas por su importancia a la hora de generar conocimiento de forma colaborativa. Dichas comunidades pueden existir por muchos motivos, sin embargo las dinámicas que se generan, si funcionan de manera normal, suponen unas condiciones de colaboración ideales para la generación colaborativa de conocimiento.

Continuar leyendo aquí

I’m working on a model that wants to understand what factors inmpacta positively in generating knowledge in a virtual community that uses online social apps to communicate. My research wants to study a specific VC, that is a VC on Tourism Professionals,. because this is an Industry where professionals seldomexchange knowledge and thus where innovation is scarce among the small and middle sized companies, qhch are de huge majority of the industry. Only big oturism companies (groups or chains) are using internal knwoeldge management tools and innovate.

So I decided that Connective learning could be also a way to learn outside the classroom. Professionals could use it and I wwanted to see if these professionals use Connective leraning as means to generate knwoeldge, or at least if they are aware (or recognize) that they’re using connective knowldge inside their VC.

I asked to Stephen Downes on the factors that would be determinant to consider that a VC is achieving a coonnective learning. A sort of success factors for connective leanring communities. I must thank Stephen for his quick and generous answer. The fundamental factors like Autonomy, Diversity, Openness and INteractions / connectivity have been integrated in my analysis model tha I will use ion a survey to the members of these VCs.

Todau, though I got a mail from another participant to the CCK08 last year (Dolors Reig) and great  expert in participatory communities of knowledge who sent me her feedback to my research proposal and suggested two new issues to be considered in my research: Find relations in benefits for thr organization vs. benefits to the individual; and the second: learning vs. knowledge sharing. I will have to work on those comcepts to integrate them in my model.

Finally I knew over Twitter about the Post of Prof. Valdis krebs about the Connections of the Chicago 2016 Commitee and the reasons of the failure. And after thinking his conclusions (he could proove after a SNA, that there were two different clsuters with different interests) that this showed a lack of leadership in the Chicago Commitee which probably influences he decision of the CIO.

So it comes to my mind a questions: do connective learning communities leed any kind of leadership? What do you think?

Sorry for making it so long.

Criminals do seldom work alone. There are always groups. that in form of social networks, are giving support and taking advantage from their crimes. Social networks do not only function for good means, but also for bad ones.

In mids of this globalized world, there exist many people that can easily get tempted to delinquish. The amount of legal rules that are functioning in our countries is high and we do not always know them, though, many “smart” experts know how to break them, and they know,who to convince or tempt to act in name of others.

I could go further and talk about how criminal organizations have extremely complex networks of complices and how these networks often reach very important people, often politicians, who should refuse to take part in such illegal actions. This is how people think that corruption works. My interest on this issue was stronger after some scandal that this week has been on the title page of the newspaper of Barcelona and affects one of the most prestigious cultural institution of the city: the Palau de la Musica.

There is an interesting study published last july (Jamie D. Collins, Klaus Uhlenbruck, Peter Rodriguez. (2009) Why Firms Engage in Corruption: A Top Management Perspective. Journal of Business Ethics 87:1, 89-108) where the authors conclude that there is a strong relation between corrupted firms and their relations to the administration.

Social relationships exert their influence on firms
through the actions of managers and others within
the firm (Adler and Kwon, 2002; Scott, 1995).
Through a history of interaction, individuals develop
personal relationships with others, which Nahapiet
and Ghoshal (1998, p. 244) describe as an individual’s
‘‘personal embeddedness.’’ One’s personal
embeddedness within a family, organization, or
other relationships creates identification with the
group that leads to shared norms, develops trust, and
creates the expectation or obligation to support
others in the group (Coleman, 1990; Uzzi, 1997).

The relation between individuals (nodes) and the “personal embeddednes” within the firm and the group of these firms determines strongly the compromise of individuals with the firm’s principles, or culture. In the case of small societies, firms can, thus, gain a relatively tacit tolerance with corruption and this can easily spread a culture of corruption. Collins et al. state in their paper:

The social context in which crime
takes place shapes attitudes as well as propensities
toward criminal behavior (Canter and Alison, 2000;
Maguire et al., 1997). Social relationships shape our
views of what constitutes appropriate behavior,
including our view of the duties and obligations
inherent to social relationships (Greenwald and
Banaji, 1995). Indeed, our frameworks of comprehension
are formed by our social environments,
including one’s family, membership in organizations,
etc (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Blau, 1964;
Levine and White, 1961).

Networked corruption is an interesting field for research where criminal departments should work on, and that should also be taken in account when designing rules to scanction- and policies to prevent corruption.

French prexy Nicholas Sarkozy convened a blue-ribbon panel of Nobelish economists to find an alternative to the GNP as a measure of national well-being. They reported this week that the key was to measure “the quality of our social connections and relationships”. He also discovered that immigrants sponsored by kin tend to have better luck in finding jobs, getting started. (via Doug Saunders, “When in need of a happy immigration
policy, it’s all relatives“) Toronto Globe & Mail, Sept 19, 2009