In my last post, I challenged the community to think of ways to link social networking to real business challenges.  Today, Business Week took some great strides in that direction in an article called:  "The Water Cooler is Now Online."  I suppose someone thought this was a clever way to capture the essence of community as an HR function, but it diminishes and cheapens the depth of the article.  Water coolers are associated with gossip and sports scores.&n ...     Read entire post

  I recently read an article in the WSJ about the “Talent Gap” and what to do about it (http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB118841695428712511-lMyQjAxMDE3ODE4NjQxMTY2Wj.html). In addition to the usual (and accurate) doom and gloom about the retirement of the Baby Boomers, they raised two other issues that I hadn’t previously considered: The need for leadership and talent within *emerging markets* -- just consider the issues Mattel is facing right now w ...     Read entire post

I have three Second Life accounts.  I don’t really need three Second Life accounts.  I’m not even sure that I need one Second Life account.  So why do I have them?  It’s simple really:  I wanted to understand the environment and more importantly, I wanted to better understand the possible impacts on learning and community.  So I created an account.  I used it a couple of times, mostly just goofing around.  And then I promptly got slammed ...     Read entire post

The Social Learner -- what does it mean, who does it describe, why is it so important? What does it mean? The Social Learner describes a concept as old as learning -- you learn more in social contexts, whether it's collective debriefing after an instructor led class, preparing and packaging your knowledge for others to consume, or sharing and consuming information in an online subject matter community. Who does it describe? All of us.  People are, by nature, social learners, and alw ...     Read entire post