Raw Data Now! Raw Data Now! Raw Data Now!

This is the phrase Tim Berners-Lee made the audience chant at his recent TED talk. I recommend you watch the video if you want to really understand why he did it.

I’ve been trying to understand my frustration with all things online. I think I’m starting to get somewhere. You see, we’re stuck. We’ve come about as far as we can with the current state of the Web. We know how to connect, we know how to communicate, market, brand and sell in this space. Now we’re out there teaching others how to do it too. We’re doing a pretty good job of it, and lots of people are catching on to the power of this new medium. Sure, we’re still working out the kinks. But we’re getting there.

To alleviate some of my boredom with social media, I’ve started thinking a lot about data, and about how to make information more meaningful. You see, it’s all fine and well that we have this wonderful Web with billions of pages of information. We have communities, and connectedness, and the ability to access nearly anything or anyone at the push of a button. But there are still really simple things we can’t do.

Imagine if you will…

You love the musician Beck. You go to his web site. You click a single button that says “Buy Tickets”. The site  knows what city you live in. It compares your Google calendar to the concert schedule. It discovers that Beck is playing in your city on August 18th and it just so happens you are available that day. It buys two tickets, sends you a confirmation, and inserts the event into your calendar on your behalf. It does all of this in one click.

Here’s one my students came up with…I added the shopping list bit.

You are surfing on Flickr and come across a picture of the most delicious looking chocolate cake you’ve ever seen. You want the recipe. You click on the photo, and up pops a list of recipes for chocolate cake. You choose your preferred recipe and the ingredients list is then placed in your shopping list tool on your iPhone. Don’t want to bake? Then just choose to have the cake custom made at your local bakery. The order gets sent directly to them, and all you need to do is go pick it up.

The Web, in all it’s glory, cannot perform these simple tasks in it’s current iteration. But it’s possible. And it will happen. What do we need to achieve this? Well, as Berners-Lee says, we need people to start releasing their data. By people, he means governments, corporations, organizations, and individuals.

Of course as soon as anyone starts pushing around ideas about releasing data people’s backs go up. They get defensive. They don’t want to give away secrets. They want to hang on to everything and share nothing.

But sharing data is what is going to make this new Web possible.

We are already good at sharing, right? We share on our blogs, we share on Twitter, we share links, contact info, we share what we know about stuff, and so on. So, it stands to reason then that we should already feel comfortable with sharing our data?

Making sense of information is going to be the next big step for the Web. As much as the onset of new media has revolutionized the way we interact, making meaning out of the Web will change things even more.

So, where do we begin?

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Last night I got to hang out with my family for a little pre-Christmas celebration. It was my brother’s Mother-in-law’s 80th birthday party. It was pretty important for me to be there, not only to help Pauline, a sweet and charming lady, celebrate this milestone day, but also because this is the first year that I won’t be spending Christmas Day with my immediate family. This was my last chance to see them all before I head out West tomorrow morning. Oh, I’ll still be having a great time, but I’ll be with my other family this year (hubby’s parents and sisters).

We all headed out for dinner at my co-Aunt’s stunning country home out in Carleton Place (a 25 minute trek from Ottawa). I call her my co-Aunt, because we are the only Aunts to my two little nephews (and we’re both named Sue). It was a crazy, noisy, chaotic, chatty, loud, laughing, boisterous evening, as most of our family events tend to be. Everyone was talking at the same time, the kids were running around using the whole big old house as a jungle gym, Dad was giving haircuts to the men (that’s a story for another time!), and we were all feeling thankful and fortunate that we could be together on this cold wintry night, with the food and the wine and the happy times. We were sharing and connecting and communicating. But want to know the craziest thing of all?

Not one person was online.

We spend a lot of time out here on the Internet trying to figure out what all this social media stuff means, and it’s possible that the answer is right in front of us and we just can’t see it. The problem is, we get so wrapped up in the tools and techniques and etiquette that we can no longer see the forest for the trees.

The truth is, social media is nothing more than an extension of that which we already know. In other words, everyone has the ability to be successful with social media. Why? Because we do it everyday, only in an offline sort of way. We do it when we go to work and interact with our colleagues and customers. We do it when we call an old friend on the phone just to say hi. We do it when we get together to celebrate with our families.

It’s called “social” media for a reason. It’s not called “keep to yourself and sit in the corner not talking to anyone” media. It’s called social media because it’s social. And we, as human beings, are inherently social animals. It stands to reason then, that communicating and sharing and connecting would be second nature to us, no?

When people who aren’t involved in social media look at it, they see a plethora of tools and an abundance of content and it’s completely overwhelming to them as to how they are going to decipher it all. But it’s kind of like the family dinner. The signal to noise ratio at the average family dinner is very high, as is the signal to noise ratio out here on the Web. At a family dinner, it’s mostly noise. But the signal is there, you just have to listen for it. And in the end, amidst all the chaos, there’s the calm of knowing that just by being there, listening, and contributing, you are valued.

As you gather around the holiday table with your families this year, consider this – we are all social beings. What we’re doing out here on the Web is merely an extension of what we are all already completely capable of. It’s just bigger now. The dinner table has a lot more chairs around it.

Happy Holidays!

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I was never the greatest student back in high school. I was miserable at math (still am), and miserable at English. I had to take makeup classes after school when I was in Grade 11, because my grammar was “atrocious”. Ironic that I’m now a writer (take that, Mrs. Dicresce!). I muddled through high school, managed to maintain about a B+ average, and escaped as fast as humanly possible once I was done.

Despite my former lack of enthusiasm for school, I love to learn. And the best way I have found to learn, to REALLY learn something, is to teach it to someone else. That’s how I learned, really learned television production. By teaching my volunteers at the cable station the finer points of lighting, camera, audio, directing, and producing. It’s how I learned web design. By being forced to learn HTML, Dreamweaver and Flash in 2 weeks back in 1999, and then showing 20 college students how to do it.

I read a lot of blogs and interact with a lot of people online. And I’m always learning. There are plenty of great teachers out there. A secret to success? Teach people something. Share your knowledge and experience.

Here are some things I’ve learned about what makes the difference between a good teacher and a great teacher.

Doing Is Better Than Showing

I fondly remember my Grade 11 History class as “nap time”. If I was actually awake while the teacher droned on endlessly about the war of this and the revolution of that, I most certainly wasn’t paying attention. However, when I was in my earlier high school years, I lived on the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) and our history classes took place in the wilderness, up close and personal with majestic totem poles, carved canoes, and longhouses. Our field trips took place in the same places where Emily Carr created her famous paintings. Haida elders would come to our class and teach us their language, legends and art. It was captivating, breathtaking and you’re damn right we learned a lot.

It’s one thing to blabber on to people about a topic, to subject your learners to death by PowerPoint. It’s entirely another take them, show them, make them do, see and experience. People learn so much more when they are an ACTIVE participant in their learning. Great teachers make their students take action and participate. The result is, the students retain what they’ve learned and are excited and enthused to pass it on to others.

Beyond The Comfort Zone

My friend Dave is a piano player and singer. He can play ANYTHING on the piano, in pretty much any key. He’s an extremely talented musician with years of experience. And he can’t read a note of music. The best part about being a musician who can’t read music is you don’t have any rules to abide by. Dave is free to experiment and explore and create. (Incidentally, Paul MacCartney can’t read music either.)

Every class I have ever taught has an underdog. The one person that walks in and you can just tell they feel perplexed being there. Since I do a lot of technical training, my underdogs are usually those people who don’t feel comfortable working with technology, who have been forced to attend the course by their employer and really don’t think they are going to be able to learn anything.

Underdogs are most rewarding people to teach, because they are the like the musicians who can’t read music. They are completely open to learning, because don’t have any preconceived notions. They are a blank canvas.

It takes tremendous patience to teach the underdog. But being a great teacher requires that you not only share your knowledge, but that you encourage people to break out of their comfort zones, to explore, experiment and create. Like my friend Dave, and Sir Paul, breaking down the barriers of rules and preconception leaves one free to experience true understanding.

Passion, Passion and More Passion

Have you ever been completely captivated by a speaker? Check out Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk and you will see an excellent example of this. In her talk, she goes from laughing hysterically to shouting to talking softly to crying. You walk away and I guarantee you will be thinking about it for the rest of the day.

I had a Math teacher in Grade 11, Mr. Hanley. Now, as mentioned, I HATED Math. Was lousy at it. But I LOVED Mr. Hanley’s class. Why? Because he was absolutely passionate about his subject. In his world, there was nothing more beautiful, more incredible than algebra, calculus and functions (shudder). Every day he found a new and interesting way to get us worked up about it. And even though I still completely sucked at Math, I was having fun. I learned something, too, because I ended up with a B.

Being passionate is the single most important thing you can do to be a great teacher. If you truly are passionate about what you are teaching, your students will be excited about what they are learning. It’s that simple. Passionate teachers create passionate students.

Learn to Share, Share to Learn

There is something about sharing knowledge with other people that allows it to really sink in to your brain. If you can explain it well, it means you truly understand it. But teaching is more than that to me. The best part of teaching is seeing what people can create once the have the knowledge.

You already know a lot. Now is the time to share it with others.

photo credit: talldude07, MorgueFile

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I have been thinking over the past couple of days how much things have changed online in the past several months. Social networks have gone from early adoption stage to pretty mainstream, and now the early adopters of business are starting to really grab hold of social media as a way to enhance their online presence. Within the next little while, the business community at large is going to start to catch on in a big way and then it’s going to really get interesting.

Along with this shift has come a shift in the way that people use the Internet. For example, online media and communications wizard Jeff Pulver talks here about how he uses Facebook as a business communication tool. Lots of people, like Collective Thoughts’ Brian Wallace are talking about why Twitter is so important to the new Web.

A year or so ago, my Internet experience was as follows. My home page was the Google Home page, in which I had customized widgets for reading the CBC News, my horoscope, TechCrunch, Wired Magazine and a few others I can’t remember. If I wanted to find information on something I went to Wikipedia. I chatted with people using Windows Messenger and Google Chat. If I was bored I hit the StumbleUpon button a lot and looked at some LOLcats and cute puppy pictures.

Today, my surfing experience is entirely different. My home page is Google Reader and I follow over a hundred blogs and I comment on several blogs a week. I write my own blog and people read it and comment often. I follow and connect with people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pownce and FriendFeed, and I share lots of bookmarks in del.icio.us and lots of photos on Flickr.

Notice the words I used to describe my surfing habits a year ago. Reading, finding, looking, bored. Notice the words I used for today’s version of surfing. Following, commenting, connecting, writing, sharing. Which do YOU think sounds more fun and worthwhile?

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