Mark Greenfield

Clay Shirky is one of my favorite commentators on the social and economic implications of the Internet.  His book “Here Comes Everybody” is a must read. He recently gave the keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York called “Information Overload is Filter Failure”.

Shirky’s take is that information overload has been around since Gutenberg invented the printing press.  What has changed with the Internet is when you filter for quality.  In traditional media, this filtering for quality is done by the publisher.  Whether it’s a printing press or a television tower, it costs a lot of money to get started and stay in operation. To stay profitable, a publisher needs to be responsible for filtering for quality.

With the Internet, we have entered what Shirky calls post-Gutenberg economics. The cost of producing anything has fallen through the floor and you don’t have to filter for quality before you publish. The filter for quality has moved way downstream – to the user. This has helped fuel the exponential growth of information on the web. Information overload is here to stay and not only are our tools to filter information inadequate, our social systems to handle both inbound and outbound information is broken as well.

As college web professionals, we need to focus on creating credible content that is easy easy to find.  As Peter Morville stated in “Ambient Findability” , findability is more important than usability.  You can’t use what you can’t find.

Here is the video of Clay Shirky’s keynote at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo:

Matthew Levy and Rachel Beanland did an excellent job of covering the Web 2.0 Expo on both Twitter and at their web site He Types She Talks. Mike wrote this great summary of Shirky’s speech and the implications for higher ed.  I’m planning on attending the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco in November. It should be quite a show.

Random thoughts from my first trip to the eduWeb conference:

• First, I’d like to thank Shelley Wetzel for the invitation to speak at the conference. Kudos to Shelley and her staff for the time and effort it takes to run the conference.
• For those of you interested, Matt Herzberger has done an amazing job of collecting all of the web resources related to the conference. See All of eduWeb 2008. (Thanks Matt, and sorry you couldn’t make it this year.)
• As I have said before, I have recently seen the light regarding Twitter. This was the first conference I’ve attended that provided a real-time commentary on the proceedings via Twitter. It takes the idea of live-blogging to a whole new level. The level of activity was so high that #eduweb2008 showed up as a trending topic on search.twitter.com Many people who couldn’t attend said that following the conference on Twitter and watching the ustream channel was almost as good as being there.
• My keynote speech generated considerable buzz both online and offline with the segment on the future of e-mail getting the most attention. For the record, I don’t believe e-mail is dead. I do believe that e-mail is broken. I’ll be writing about this more in the coming weeks. My goal is to think strategically about how e-mail fits into the myriad of communication channels now at our disposal.
• The “Join the Conversation” workshop on social media I taught with Brad Ward was well received. I enjoy teaching workshops because the additional time allows me to go into greater detail. I look forward to working with Brad on future endeavors. In fact, we’ll be heading to a conference out west together in a couple of weeks.
• I had numerous conversations with several people from the United Kingdom. It was great to get their perspective on the web and interesting to see the differences in how social media usage differs across the Atlantic.
• I found Karine Joly’s closing keynote to be a wonderful conclusion to the conference. In addition to the references to Marshall Mcluhan, I particularly liked her idea about “Build it (with them), and they will come”.  Well done Karine!
• Much of the talk of the conference was around social media. I am a big fan of social media, but I am starting to get concerned that too much attention is going to the social web and some of the basic building blocks of good, effective web design and development are being ignored. Usability, accessibility, information architecture, web standards, etc. still matter. Let’s not lose site of that.
• Finally, the main thing on my mind as I drove home was that the higher education web profession has a bright future. I had the chance to meet and interact with many of the new faces in our profession and was thoroughly impressed. These young guns bring passion, excitement, optimism and talent that will help move college web sites forward.

The eduWEB Conference is now only a couple of days away.  Here is some additional information on social media use at the conference:

• Everyone should use the tag “eduweb2008″ on all social sites (del.icio.us, flickr, youtube, blogs, etc.).
• You can follow the action on Twitter
• Brad Ward has created a Flickr Group for the conference. (Thanks Brad!)
• Brad and I will be broadcasting a small segment of our workshop on a ustream channel

See you in Atlantic City.

I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming eduWEB conference in Atlantic City.  I’m in the process of finishing the keynote speech.  There have been numerous new tools emerging recently so I’ve completely revamped the speech since the last time a gave it just a couple of weeks ago.  One of the themes I’ll discuss is the relevancy of .edu websites as the web continues to evolve.  For those of you who didn’t see this on bloghighed, here is a 3:00 video clip on the subject:

In addition, Brad Ward and I will be teaching a preconference workshop called Join the Conversation: Social Media in Higher Education where we will be providing an in depth look at how higher educational institutions can leverage the full power and potential of social media.

And one final reminder, the bloghighed meetup on Monday, July 21 at the Poolside Cafe, located on the 5th floor.  See you in Atlantic City.

eduWeb is now less than a week away.  Brad Ward and I are teaching a workshop called Join the Conversation: Social Media in Higher Education where we will be providing an in depth look at how higher educational institutions can leverage the full power and potential of social media.

We are using a wiki to compile a list of colleges and universities using social media and we  would like your help creating this list.  Please visit http://higheredsocialmedia2.pbwiki.com/ .  The invite key is located at the top of the page.

Thanks in advance for your help.  I hope to see many of you at the workshop.

Registration for the 2008 eduWeb Conference is now open. The conference is scheduled for July 21-23 at the Trump Marina Hotel in Atlantic City. The conference program is also available. In addition to giving the opening keynote speech, I will be conducting a three hour workshop with my colleague Brad Ward from Butler University. Here are the titles and abstracts for both:

Opening Keynote

Title: It’s the End of the Web as We Know It Redux

Abstract: A seismic shift is underway. Exponential change will make tomorrow’s technology unrecognizable. The mobile web is making always on – always connected a reality. Prosumers are driving the move from Mass Media to My Media. The weapons of mass collaboration have laid the groundwork for the Participation Age. It’s no longer about one-way communi-cation to an audience. It’s about two-way conversation with a community.

It’s time to rethink a few things.

Completely updated for 2008, this award winning presentation will focus on the (r)evolution of the web and the implications for higher education web professionals. A review of the latest trends will be followed by strategies on how to fully leverage the full potential of emerging technologies.

Workshop

Title: Join the Conversation: Social Media in Higher Ed

Abstract: The social web is here. Dialogue has replaced monologue. The conversation is the message. Communities dominate brands. It?s time to join the conversation.

This workshop will provide an in depth look at how higher educational institutions can leverage the full power and potential of social media. In addition to examining the many advantages of social media and an analysis of the current tools available, case studies will be reviewed on a social site built for prospective students, and a niche social network created for higher education web professionals. Learn first hand the experiences that Mark and Brad have had in launching these successful social media sites and how this knowledge will help you in your social media efforts.

I look forward to seeing you in Atlantic City this summer.