I just saw this new “Twitter is over capacity” message. I suppose I would rather see a cute image that makes me chuckle (on a seemingly regular basis) than a generic server error message!

I upgraded my blog to the most current version of WordPress at the beginning of this week, primarily because I was inspired to approach technology with a new emphasis after being inspired by Nancy White’s facilitation skills in the Connected Future (CP2tech01) workshop that is now in its fourth week.

While the upgrade went well, what I did not expect was to get slammed at work and with teaching and preparing for a conference and academic stuff, etc., so that I would need to take a few days off from following my colleagues’ posts, Tweets, and discussions.

As I will not have Internet access over the long weekend, I will instead catch up with everything tonight. Here comes my responses and thoughts!

Better late than never! Even if I missed their deadline, at least my growing hair can now be seen.

I have been saying for some time now that Twitter is one of those phenomena that come along from time to time that changes the very way we communicate. It does not allow us simply one more way of doing what we have been doing. Instead, it alters communication itself.

Those of us who Tweet often think and share and communicate and interact differently from before we started with the application.

I used the example in my graduate Leadership class on Tuesday night, “How many of you have cell phones?” Yes, all their hands raised. What surprised me was my follow-up, “How many of you do not have land-lines at home?” Half raised their hands. HALF! In only a few short years the importance and modality and paradigm of using a phone has changed, and in the process our connectivity and expectations and ways of communicating have changed as well.

Business Week seems to be leaning in this direction as well with their article in this week’s issue. Those of us who have been using Twitter find our ways of interacting different as well.

Case in point. I Tweeted on Tuesday night, in my graduate Leadership class, while I was demonstrating Twitter. I sent a Tweet and asked anybody out there to say hello to my class. I received 5 replies from friends and colleagues around the world who were reading Twitter and sent their greetings and encouragement in return. FIVE people. Unscheduled. Unplanned. Real-time. Try communicating to a group in any other medium and getting a response back so quickly. The speed of information exchange, idea development, collaboration, and our very approach to communication itself is now put on its head.

Where is leadership in all this? I think the question is more along the lines of new possibilities for leadership in ways we never considered. With communication increasingly flat, the sky is the limit.

Do you agree with my assessment?

Looking for a Twitter image for my class slides, I came across these. Let’s see, which ones ring most accurate?

and finally, one that feels like me around most of the people I know:

Will the useful and interactive Twitter applications never stop? Thanks to the wonderful Twitterholics website, I just discovered TweetWheel.

This online application analyzes all of the followers we have and then identifies which of them in turn follow one another. In other words, this visually shows relationships between those people I follow. Bring the cursor over each name, and colored lines appear that link them to one another based on their relationships. While some relationships I know, a number of them were a surprise.  As followers and relationships are dynamic while the TweetWheel takes a snapshot in time, you may want to generate this repeatedly. One word of caution, depending on the number of people you follow, this can take some time. As I have recently added a number of new people I follow (from the Connected Futures CP2tech01 workshop), this program helps me understand those people’s relationships a little better.

Click my TweetWheel image to see it full-size.

What community-building or other uses can you imagine for this?

A colleague accused me (or rather busted me, to use her words!) of mulitasking during one of our Connected Futures CP2tech01 field trips, to which I responded that multitasking is more about “working to capacity.” I like framing mulitasking in that way better - mulititasking is working to capacity!

Of course, work and capacity are both words that can be defined in many different ways. Ask any mother, student, knowledge worker, or community of practice technology steward!

I found a new use of Twitter–quickly connect to an entire community.

Well, I did not necessarily discover this on my own, as it has been a recent topic of discussion on one of the discussion groups I follow, Online Facilitation. One of the members of the group sent a Twitter follow request / email invitation to the mailing list itself, which in effect invited anybody and everybody in the community to click the link to then follow this person via Twitter.

Brilliant idea, I thought–how better to communicate with a group of people with similar interests than by sending a Twitter invite to the entire group! If we share this interest in online facilitation, as I thought about it, then perhaps sending this sort of Tweet to everybody in the group may in fact move the communication to a more public area (Twitter) , where people can continue to connect in another forum. Isn’t this what facilitating community is all about?

However, the issue of this being discussion board spam or an accident has also been raised. Here, I thought it was a brilliant community outreach (there are many people on the list I do not know nor have I ever met or seen) that tried to bring people together, while others perceived a similar outreach as more discussion group clutter. I know I usually do not actively seek people out on Twitter or any of the other social media (a bit shy, fear of rejection, or desire to be unobtrusive?), so when I get these invitations from others who have some similar interests, I am usually appreciative of their efforts.  That this came in a spam-like blanket that does not offer any immediate benefit for the current community (Twitter conversations would, of course, occur outside the current community) is also a very real concern. This is like sending donation emails, self-promotion communications, or even adverts to a discussion group, most of which are frowned upon. What surprised me the most was how little discussion this really did generate at all. 

That once again Twitter (I Tweet here, by the way) is used in an unintended way that sparks discussions that previously did not exist is a testament to how significant I really believe this technology to be.

What do you think?

I am really looking forward to attending the online Connected Futures (cp2tech01) Workshop that begins today.

Sponsored by CPSquare, the Community of Practice on Communities of Practice, John Smith and Bronwyn Stuckey have been doing all of the visible pre-work for the workshop. The workshop leaders include Beth Kanter(who I have spoken to numerous times online, but never in this context), Beverly Trayner, Bronwyn Stuckey (who I finally met a couple weeks back while she was visiting NYC), Etienne Wenger(who I read 2 graduate degrees ago as a former professor was fond of his work), John Smith (who laughs more heartily than his screen shot avatar indicates), Nancy White (who I also took an online class with and met and worshipped twice while at Northern Voice), Nick Noakes(who I have read but have never met), Shawn Callahan, Shirley Williams, and Susanne Nyrop.

I will be focused on this workshop for the next five weeks (while I am not working, finishing a most interesting class I am teaching, Project Management for Training, and preparing for a graduate Leadership course I am teaching). What is most interesting is that I have been increasingly looking forward to this class, even more than I thought I would be. Good sign.

We are having our opening teleconference call this afternoon, and one of the questions we were asked to consider is: “What brings you to this workshop?” Simple question to be sure, but one that I have the most trouble answering because there are many reasons. I want to learn from this group of experts. I want to increase my experiences because I find myself drawn to this area. I am looking to continue even more higher education, and think this may help me grok some additional distance possibilities than I previously considered. I want to consider ways to bring this into my teaching. I want to consider expanding some of my professional opportunities with consulting and my full-time work. I hope to get some new research ideas and perhaps additional research partners. I want to be exposed to the people pushing this field along. I want to be involved at this point where this is starting to become more of a field at all. These are just to name a few, and as a reflective practitioner, there will undoubtedly be additional ones as I further consider this today.

Now, we need to consider creating a logo for this workshop . . .

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