Web Teacher

SXSW: Monday Keynote: James Powderly talks to Virginia Heffernan

James Powderly is an open source evangalist. Virginia Heffernan works for the New York Times Magazine.

Almost 15 minutes late getting started. Not a good sign. The room is full. Two youngish women next to me trying to learn how to use Twitter.

Artists are visually interpreting today’s keynote. Two women artists.

James showed clips from graffiti research lab. He took a photograph of everyone in the audience flipping him off according to the norms of their own culture’s method of flipping off. Picture will be on Facebook.

He works to maintain and improve graffiti across the planet. He’s hilarious. Listen to the podcast, no way I can create it.

Graffiti includes LED stuff, big projects with light. He talked about LED Throwies, which is an LED, a battery, magnet, and you toss it on a magnetic structure. The Dutch government saw these and wanted to fund a project that turned out to be writing on a building with lasers. He showed some images created this way. All digital projecters, lasers beams and common things.

His latest project is called fatlab. Project for the public domain. Creative technology for the public domain. combining open source and pop culture. The strategy is release often, early and with rap music. He showed a video that was a rap video with lots of light effects and light writing.

Virginia. Asked him about being detained by the Chinese government during the Olympics. He talked about projects in Hong Kong and in China where the people he worked with were censored. He would be approached to work in a museum or create some art and it would be canceled by the Chinese government. The gov kept trying to ask them to be neutral, but they are a free speech organization. He made a tiny handheld device that could write on walls with light when in Beijing. A woman was following him around as they were thinking about putting up a display and a bunch of police showed up and arrested him. The Chinese kept them for 10 days with a bunch of people who had been protesting Tibet. He’s making a comic book that documents the whole process.

Virginia. His work is powerful and unsettling. It looks like a silly toy but it can be used for bigger things. There’s something about disembodied or floating or out of human reach message in light. Why is it so powerful?

James. I tell the lie that tells the truth. Technology approaches the level of magic. Laser tag is a convincing lie. But his point is that other people can duplicate the magic. He called himself a trickster.

Virginia. What’s the differnence between the prankster and the artist?

James. Loves the concept of the trickster. Artists have different goals and reasons for self-expression. But the trickster is willing to become the prince of thieves in order to get power among the gods. He sort of hacks the infrastructure while making his own mark. A DIY and hacker mashup.

Virginia. Online video is part of the grafitti artist’s arsenel.

James. My marker. My camera.

SXSW: Grokking Bloggers: It’s about Love and Underpants

Elisa Camahort Page.

Co-founder of BlogHer. Grok is to deeply know and understand something so well it’s internalized.

What’s going on in the blogosphere? Talked about BlogHer benchmark survey.

Blogs are now mainstream, addictive, and trusted. 53% of U. S. online women are participating in the blogosphere either reading or writing or both. Blogging is a part of daily life meaning less time on radio, TV, newspapers, etc. Time-shift to blog reading instead of other media is in the double digits.

Number who consider blogs trustworthy shows importance of community. Blogs have about 60% influence on purchasing decisions.

Blogging is more a cultural revolution than a commercial one. People are finding they are in love with what they can do with the blogging technology.

The underpants relate to a South Park episode where they convince a character that there is an underpants gnome who steals underpants. Phase one: collect underpants. Phase three: profit. Gnomes had no idea what phase two is. She wants to tell stories about phase two.

Blogging changes the way we survive, grieve, take action, make history, live. She showed some heath related blogs. Diabetes Mine and others. Gives a patients point of view, becomes influential in the medical community and design of medical devices. Sense of contribution and community.

Grieve. Find online community for help with surviving grief. Looney Tune. Her Bad Mother. Matt, Liz and Madeline. Amazing writing and online community come together to achieve other goals such as nonprofits and support groups.

The way we age. My Mom’s Blog. Forstalls mental decline by keeping you actively involved in creating media.

Changing history. Most history has been driven by war, government and commerce. Male dominated. Now people, ordinary people, are writing personal stories about how they live. Don’t need to make sweeping statements about policies and decisions: people are telling us what they are thinking.

Elisa talked about her grandmother, who fled from the Nazi’s in the 1940s. She said none of the stories around this bit of family history are known. No oral history. But now we are getting history from difficult places and difficult times from people who are finding a way to blog. It changes what we can retain about our own life stories.

Mommy bloggers are taking off the rose colored glasses and writing about the whole truth of motherhood.

Changing the way we make a living. The professionalism of the blogosphere. Simply Recipes makes a living from her blog. The blog is about food as a way to spread and share love. Most successful bloggers are writing about something they love and who can keep at it.

Changing how we take action. Galvanize people on line. The election, Hurricane Katrina. Grace Davis’s blog Hurricane Disaster Direct Relief. It’s a form of power. Fundraise, raise awareness.

Power to be heard, power to build your own playing field, power to participate, power to change the world, power to empower your user.

It’s the evolution of community. Trust is important in building an online world. What are you doing to be trustworthy?

New BlogHer benchmark survey will be released soon. These figures are for 2008.

Opened for questions.

Sunday at SXSW

I didn’t blog sessions today quite so much. There were several reasons for this. One, I watched one of the founders of BlogHer, Elisa Camahort Page (pictured above) be interviewed.

Two, I spent over two hours involved in an education lunch with a gaggle of people interested in the way web design is taught. Three, I went to a couple of core conversations—one on the web in higher ed and one on blogging. The core conversations are difficult for note taking. They are conversations and jump around like, well, conversations. And the rooms where they are held have almost no chairs, no wiring, no mics and no projectors. You just hang out and talk.

I also hung out in the trade show, voted on the AIR entries for this year, talked to Knowbiiity’s Sharron Rush several times, and generally had a great time.

Tomorrow is the day for the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT of the WaSP Curriculum Framework, Interact. You’ll learn the URL on the new site housing the curriculum and I’ll be tweeting up a storm during all the announcements about it. @vdebolt.

SXSW: Blackboards or Backchannels: The Techno-Induced Classroom of Tomorrow

Diana Kimball, Alex Leavitt, Kabren Levinson, Archana Ramachandran, Kelly Sutton. All students. They talked about social networks in education.

All are working on something as students that relates to technology in education.

Ramachandran. It is possible to reach masses of people through systems available now. It can connect both faculty and students. Not all people use every technology, which is a drawback. If the idea for the techology comes from peers rather than faculty, students may be more open to it. She sees it more for social use rather than classroom purposes.

Sutton is playing devil’s advocate for low tech. keg parties and no need for social technology to participate in class or meet people.

Levinson. An open laptop in class is a huge wall. An obstruction to the talk. Maybe Sutton’s not the only Luddite. He sees the best use of technology in the classroom outside the classroom in off hours. Creating a class blog to use outside the classroom. Comment on other peoples work outside of class. Relationships start in real life but are carried beyond that.

They then took a question from Twitter! (this cracked me up!) Having a conversation about personal coversations based on something from Twitter.

Kimball. The Internet accelerates serendipity. The more people thinking about the same thing at the same time, serendipity happens. She runs a question tool for the class where she’s TA. It’s the backchannel for the class. She said it gets very lively and that she learns a lot from being in the backchannel. The backchannel chatter shows that people are intentionally engaged. People in the class don’t use the backchannel at all. It’s almost like two classes going on at the same time. Can have one professor and a bunch of mediators to help aggregate information and questions. There’s no absence, only presence when only the active people are visible. You may see that other people are participating passively, but they aren’t visibly passive or pulling down the class atmosphere.

Kimball. Does the Internet make the unimportant things easier so that the important things can be productively difficult?

Sutton. LMU bought 60 laptops for K-12. Says no one knows how to use them. Is he talking about students using them? Ramachandran says kids don’t have the maturity to use techology like laptops with good results.

Kimball. Think of it as murder mystery and look at everyone’s motives. Kids want to convince teachers that they need laptops, but teachers don’t understand that need or maybe are techno-phobic. Will kids get the idea that teachers don’t understand anything? Leavitt. Students with resources teachers don’t have use it against teachers.

Woman to watch in tech: Diana Kimball. She’s bright, articulate, knowledgeable. I predict a bright, shiny future for this young woman. Not that the rest of the students on this panel aren’t bright, but she really makes sense.

Kimball. Use tools you like just because you like them. (kick ass, eh Kathy Sierra?) Then students can learn a lot from each other. Levinson touts outside of class projects again. Ramachandran. Future students will learn more on their own and the teacher needs to be more of a mentor than a conveyor of information.

Questions.

SXSW: Edupunk: Open Source Education

Jim Groom, Stephen Downs, Gardner Campbell, Barbara Ganley

Edupunk an approach that results from a DIY attitude and brings the attitude of 70s punk rock bands to the classroom.

Campbell. Tools to put course content online in the 90s we are problematic content delivery model. It’s become a business system rather than a relational driven system.

Groom. LMS is a corporate logic system. It isn’t about learning. Need to think about going other ways.

Downs. Internet teaches us that we don’t need to preserve power authority to learn. Ed designed by people doing the learning is what he’s advocating.

Groom. WordPress Multi User is a communal sharing of resources in education. It’s not about a course, it’s about an individual.

Ganley. It is no longer working inside schools, but thinking in communities of learners.

They talked about open courseware and ways to interact with people without using LMS and if there is a way. How do we access the culture? Do we understand our rights to education and information? How can everybody make stuff?

Audience member suggested the library as a way to structure learning outside the classroom model.

Ganley. Working with rural communities to pool resources from libraries and other community resources. Says it creates a sort of homogenized culture where there’s only one way to think.

Groom. Talked about Black Mountain College in the 50s where there was no structure. Just people in a library who wanted to learn. Public open spaces for learning are dwindling.

A guy from Washington U talked about the tyranny of nostalgia. He asked if universities are still worth it; if not, what are the other models. How do you justify the cost of university education when the content is available in other ways?

Campbell. The conversation needs to start and end with how we realize our human potential.

Downs. Taught an open course, a free course with 2200 participants. 24 people paid tutition because they wanted credit.

Audience member. How does a public school teacher help students do their own learning? Public schools need tools and standards to support them.

Groom. University education and what’s happening in K-12 are not unrelated. Can we imagine a way that people come out of universities without $100,000 in debt?

Ganley. There are ways to work with kids in public schools and to work with parents. Move outside the walls even when you’re in them.

Downs. Personal Learning Environment (Personal Learning Networks) collects people who are practitioners in a given are and have them do their work in an open enviroment. Those who are interested in that area can watch and listen as practitioners create their work. Some tools that put people together in these ways are coming but are not widespread.

Audience member. Universities are mired in tradition. How can they set up a system that gives easier access to new ideas? Campbell. Stop hosting on the .edu server. He uses his own server. Groom. Used his own server space and got things started from there. No channels, open source. WordPress blogs. Not tied with sign-on or university id. Completely separate. Audience member. What if you did something like this successfully on an .edu domain? Wouldn’t other universities follow?

School of Everything.

Ganley. We don’t take advantage of people in our own neighborhoods who are experts in things that could provide expertise.

People are walking out. What does that mean?

Downs. Don’t need a new model for schools. Need to turn schools over to the community.

SXSW: Everything I Needed to Know about the Web, I Learned from Feminism

Julia Angwin, Danah Boyd, Betty Sue Flowers, Heather Gold.

The explosion of social media is entirely a feminist thing. Gold talked about how long the 3rd wave of feminism has taken and how it led to social media.

Flowers: the personal is the political, everything is connected, gossip makes the world go round.

Angwin: My Space was created by men, but is actually about girls. She went to My Space and all the guys were reading Seventeen and Cosmo to try to figure out what to do with My Space. The audience was girls and men had to learn to speak the language. What used to be called women’s work is now just the way the world is.

Boyd. Social networks are strong tie networks, which is a more feminine thing. and weak-tie networds, which is a more male thing. Interactions take place in more formal structures. Social networks shift all the time.

I’m having trouble getting the point of the discussion. Heather Gold keeps asking questions, but leaves no time for answers. Things are jumping around a lot. She’s encouraging the audience to share.

Angwin. Need room for a personal space online. Not public. For extended conversation.

Will government catch up with social networks? When everyone has grown up on it? Flowers is at LBJ Library and says they have trouble just getting archives of Presidental Library online, much less social networks.

A lot of people in audience said they would like to spend time online in a protected space. Boyd. People with less influence have more trouble negotiating context in social settings. There’s a convergence between contexts now.

Unitary identity online. Do you have more than one online identity.

Lots of women at the audience microphone. Too many topics to follow. Maybe I’m just too tired to figure out what we are supposed to be talking about here.

SXSW: Saturday Opening Remarks: Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh is from zappos.com. Last year when it rained zappos handed out rain ponchos. Impressed me. This year, no ponchos. Oh, well.

I’m surrounded by a sea of people in zappos t-shirts here in the second row of the second section. Yikes. Gotta watch what I type or the guy next to me will confiscate my computer. On the other hand, I can fill my time while waiting by reading the personalized messages hand inscribed on the backs of all the t-shirts.

Hugh is welcoming everyone. He’s recognizing sponsors. Yea sponsors. Yea staffers. Yea volunteers. He’s talking about how sxsw listens to the bloggers and tweets. Which is why they are so successful. rate.sxsw.com is where to leave your feedback.

Hugh is talking about the rain ponchos. He explained that a mix up meant there were no ponchos this year, but that meant there WOULD BE rain this year. He thanked zappos for bringing the rain.

Tony came out and talked about zappos in Las Vegas and said they were giving away a trip to Vegas. He said more women than men shop at zappos, and one woman spent over 60,000 there. He apologized for causing any divorces.

Tony said that it was pizza that got him into the idea of zappos. He worked in a pizza place and a guy kept coming by and getting large pizzas, which everyone thought he ate. But he was taking them upstairs and selling them by the slice. This guy is now working for zappos.

He and another guy bought zappos as part of another deal, but he realized that zappos was the most interesting and successful and took it over full time. From the beginning, they wanted the zappos brand to be about customer service and customer satisfaction. So they don’t want to be about shoes, as they are now, but about the very best customer service.

Most of their orders (70%) come from repeat customers. Happy customers come back. Repeat customers spend more. Do you hear that, Sprint?

What is customer service? An 800 number on every page of the site. The telephone is one of the best branding devices because you have the customer’s undivided attention It you get it right, the satisfaction grows from person to person. They offer free shipping both ways and have a 365 day return policy.

What is customer experience? Fast, accurate fulfillment. surprise upgrade to overnight shipping for repeat customers. Everything that improves the customer experience is a marketing expense. Sometimes direct customers to web sites of competitors when they don’t have something in stock. Do what’s right for the customer. Call centers have no scripts, no quota of customers to handle per day, lots of training. One customer phone call was four hours long. The warehouse runs 24/7.

Their number one priority is company culture. If the culture is right, then everything else falls in place. Hiring emphasizes culture fit. Can be fired as bad for the culture. Training lasts 5 weeks and includes working in the call center and warehouse before you can get to your ‘real’ job. During the training period, they will pay you $2000 to quit. In 2007, 3% took the offer. In 2008 only 1% took it. Maybe the offer isn’t big enough, they keep increasing it. The people are there because they want to be there! They have a 500 page culture book that contains paragraphs from employees about what the company culture means to them. Twitter helps company culture. They rolled it out to the entire company and have Twitter classes during the training. Over half the employees are on Twitter. Can see at twitter.zappos.com.

Culture and brand are two sides of the same coin. Customer service is the entire company, not just a department. So money goes into the hiring process and the training process instead of other places. They want to own clothing, customer service, and culture. The 3 C’s.

Zappos delivers happiness.

The zappos culture includes committable core values: deliver WOW, embrace change, create fun and a little weirdness, be adventurous and creative and open-minded, pursue learning, be honest, be positive, do more with less, be passionate, be humble.

It doesn’t matter what your core values are, as long as you commit to them.

Steps for building a brand that matters. Decide if you are building a long-term brand. Figure out values and culture. Commit to transparency. Chase the vision, not the money. Build relationships. Build your team (hire slowly, fire quickly). Think long term.

He asked us to think about what our goal in life is. He talked about happiness being perceived control, perceived progress, and two more that I didn’t get. Two or three minutes to go, but my battery is gone. Zap me.