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The web and social networks are evolving their own conventions of appropriate behavior.

People have learned to avoid cluttering mailboxes with broad cc’s. Flames are far fewer than in the old days. Most bloggers no longer feel they must blog every day. Most people know that it’s worthwhile to lurk when joining a new community to identify its standards before jumping into the fray.

One area that noobs fail to understand is that it is not cool to “scrape” other people’s blogs. By scrape, I mean taking an entire web post rather than taking an excerpt and linking to the original.

Google Alerts emails me when sites take my content lock, stock, and barrel. Every week I come upon sites that break one or more of these taboos:

• Do not re-post someone else’s blog posts in their entirety.
• Do not imply that you wrote a post if you did not.
• Do not strip out author names and links.
• Do not use frames to make it difficult to get to the original post.
• Do not remove links to the original material.

I’ve been happy to share my thoughts in blogs and free articles for more than a decade. I enjoy the exposure. But I don’t enjoy being abused.

One association takes my every post, puts it behind a members-only wall, and puts its copyright notice on the bottom of every page. A now-defunct university posted an entire white paper by Clark Quinn and me but stripped our names from it. Several automated blogs repost my work with ads alongside. My colleagues at Internet Time Alliance are experiencing the same phenomena.

What’s your take on this issue?

If you take the cynefin approach for working in complex environments you first Probe then Sense and then Respond in order to develop emergent practices. Backward-looking good or best practices are inadequate for changing complex environments. Constant probes of the environment are necessary to see what works.

Enterprise performance should be looked at from the perspective of perpetual Beta. The values and culture can remain stable while the tools and practices keep evolving to take advantage of the situation. Perpetual Beta means an acceptance that we’ll never get to the final release and our learning will never stabilize. This is quite different from perpetual Alpha, or never getting to something concrete, as Jay Cross commented here several years ago:

What’s beta and what’s not is a state of mind. Many people try to go into release prematurely: they put defective product on the market. (By productizing people, I mean locking in on attitudes, structure, opinions, etc.: becoming rigid.)

Life as beta is uplifting. You have the opportunity to streamline things, to respond to feedback, to become a killer app.

Lots of alphas are claiming beta status now. They debut on life’s big stage long before they’re prepared to play the part.

Does perpetual Beta equate to doing lots of pilot projects? Ross Dawson is a strong proponent of pilot projects for implementing Enterprise 2.0 and lists five characteristics of great pilots: Enthusiasm; Roles & Functions; Skills; Personality & Network:

5. Network
The primary way in which pilots projects will become visible to other people the organization and adapted to new issues is through the personal networks of the pilot team members. Strong personal networks within organizations emerge through both personality, organizational role, and work history (e.g. having worked in multiple divisions or locations). In most organizations networks are fairly strongly correlated to longevity in the organization, meaning that recent recruits are unlikely to have strong personal networks.

On the other hand, Gartner’s Anthony Bradley says that piloting does not make sense for social media projects:

This practice is not prudent for social media where the software complexity should be minimal and the primary goal is to get people interacting. Community participants are fickle and unforgiving (especially external communities). You may only get one shot at catalyzing community formulation. Don’t pilot, test, prototype, or experiment on the community. Don’t artificially restrict participation. The law of numbers is a critical factor in building a thriving and productive community.

A key factor I see in these two articles is that it is important how you define a “pilot” project. If it is viewed as something done on the side and not part of the real business, then it may be doomed to failure. If being involved in pilot projects is a normal part of work, then it fosters a culture of life in perpetual Beta. You can still cancel projects or go in a different direction, but there is a cultural commitment to learning by doing. It’s the difference between our pilot and your pilot.

Cash & Startup at TECH cocktail SXSW!

Dan Pink’s Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, provides convincing arguments in favor of intrinsic motivation. We have had too limited a view of what drives performance and we need a whole new operating system for some of the places where science says one thing and business does another. The patches are just barely holding the old beliefs in place.

The book’s website puts it this way:

Most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, his provocative and persuasive new book. The secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that’s precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges.

Most if-then incentive systems do more damage than good. Give somebody a contingent reward and they lose interest after a short while. That which had once been fun is transmuted into work. Pink gives one example after another of paying a contingent bonus and seeing performance decline.
Setting goals can backfire, too. People who put the goals first often cut corners to accomplish them. Also, goals fight against self-determination.

The new values displace the shareholder value maximization mandate, making its workers/partners part of the larger whole. HBS MBAs are signing a pledge to be principled and weigh the balance of profit and what feels right.

Students today do things just for the hell of it. Money is not as big a motivator as doing the right thing. They live and breathe networks. They aren’t about to stay still because they know how to leverage the powerful of information and timing.

Dan Pink, photo by Jay

Dan has a following; I expect he’ll raise enough of a ruckus that execs will take action. Higher salary and smaller bonus. Or bonus pays your contributions to charity and churches.

People need free reign in making their work what they want to do; that’s what works with intrinsicly motivated workers. The big payoff arrives when companies are doing the sort of greater good that makes a team proud.

This list is a result of a series of tweets, initiated by Janet Clarey who referred to a Top 50 list of educational technology blogs. Shortly after that, Maria Anderson suggested that I create a list for workplace learning. I don’t like creating “Top 50″ lists so here are my current favourite sources of information and knowledge about learning, especially for the networked business environment. These are not all the blogs I read and I have another set of blogs that are more academic and purely learning related.

First of all, I follow my colleagues because that’s how I met most of them, by reading what they had to say [and I liked it].

Informal Learning by Jay Cross (US)

Learnlets by Clark Quinn (US)

Social Media in Learning by Jane Hart (UK)

Performance, Learning, Productivity by Charles Jennings (UK/AU)

Wirearchy by Jon Husband (CA)

Internet Time Blog another one by Jay Cross (US)

Blogs about Workplace Learning, in the broadest sense of the term

(in alphabetical order)

Anecdote AU: A blog focused on “putting stories to work”.

Bunchberry & Fern UK/JP: Simon Bostock’s blog on information engineering, learning, and organizational development.

Cognitive Edge UK: Dave Snowden focuses on rejuvenating management practices especially when addressing intractable problems.

Corporate eLearning Strategies & Development US: (the title says it all) by Brent Schlenker (includes a very long blog roll).

Dave’s Whiteboard US: Dave Ferguson (also a Canadian citizen) is an experienced workplace learning practitioner.

Donald Clark Plan B UK: Donald always gives us something to think about and question our assumptions.

ELSUA ES: Luis Suarez talks about knowledge management, community building, social computing and living in a world without e-mail [a very good thing].

e-Clippings: Learning as Art US: Mark Oehlert has particular expertise in gaming and learning.

eLearning Technology US: Tony Karrer has a deep and wide-ranging blog on all things learning and technology.

elearnspace CA: George Siemens is well-known in academic circles but also discusses business and workplace issues.

Green Chameleon SG: Blog of knowledge management consulting firm Straits Knowledge.

Growing Changing Learning Creating US: Tom Haskins’ insightful blog ranges from learning strategies to business models.

Janet Clarey US: Janet discusses emerging technologies in workplace learning with a strong research focus.

Karyn’s erratic learning journey UK: Karyn Romeis is an independent learning & development consultant who shares her passion for workplace learning.

Knowledge Jolt with Jack US: Jack Vinson blogs about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints, and more.

Mark Sylvester US: Mark writes about social networks, working together, learning together and being together.

Mathemagenic NL: Long-time blogger Lilia Efimova writes about personal productivity in knowledge-intensive environments,  PKM and more.

Networks, Complexity and Relatedness US: Patti Anklam specalizes in organizational network analysis and knowledge management.

The Obvious UK: Euan Semple is a deep thinker focused on helping people understand the web.

The Smart Work Company UK: Anne Marie McEwan writes about workplace trends and new ways of working, or working smarter.

Interdependent Thoughts NL: Ton Zylstra writes about knowledge work and management and the tools and strategies that help us navigate the networked world.

Trends in the Living Networks AU: Ross Dawson talks about opportunities for business and society in a hyper-connected world.

Will at Work Learning US: Will Thalheimer is focused on the research behind workplace learning practices.

Workplace Learning Today US/CA: Brandon Hall’s multi-author site that always has something of value.

This is not a complete list but all of these bloggers post regularly and I have followed each one for more than a year and some for many years.

I’ve posted a rough summary of my talk at TEDxNYED on my connectivism site: Collapsing to Connections

TEKRI is hosting a conference on Making Sense of Social Media in Education, Government, and the Enterprise, April 25-26 in Edmonton. Dave Snowden is our keynote speaker.

We are issuing a call for presentations. Deadline is March 21.

The conference will run two days – Sunday is a social media bootcamp: a quick way to get up to speed on various emerging technologies and implications for organizations. Monday is the more typical conference day – keynote, panels, presentations.

As part of the Big Question this month Open Content in Workplace Learning?, I’m exploring whether Open Content can be used by for-profit companies.  And, since Open Content comes in under the Creative Commons license structure.  Actually, I’m curious if Open Content ever is not Creative Commons?  It’s by definition Open, but theoretically you could choose a different open license. I’ve just never seen it.

In any case, to understand the use of Open Content, it’s important to understand Creative Commons licensing.

Creative Commons licensing terms.  All CC licenses start with:

• Attribution (CC-BY) – Allows others to copy, distribute, display and perform a copyrighted work – and derivative
  works based upon it – but only if they give credit. All CC licenses contain this condition.

Licenses may have one or more of the following permissions or restrictions:

• Non-Commercial (NC) - Allows copy, distribute, display and perform a work – and derivative works
  based upon it – but for non-commercial purposes only.
• Share Alike (SA) - Allows others to distribute derivative works but only only under the same conditions as the original license.
• No Derivative Works (ND) – Allows copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of the work, but not make derivative works based on it.

These get combined into one of six licenses:

• Attribution (CC-BY)
• Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY-SA)
• Attribution No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND)
• Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC)
• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA)
• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)

I took a bit of a sampling of various sources of content found via the OER Commons and from the OCW Consortium:

• SERC – CC-BY-NC-SA
• Learn NC – CC-BY-NC-SA
• MIT OpenCourseWare – CC-BY-NC-SA
• Utah State OpenCourseWare – CC-BY-NC-SA, but some specific courses such as Intro to Instructional Design has a CC-BY-SA
• Johns Hopkins OCW - CC-BY-NC-SA
• Notre Dame - CC-BY-NC-SA
• The Open University – CC-BY-NC-SA

There’s a definite pattern here.  Most of the OCW content appears to come under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.  There were a few exceptions such as Stanford Engineering Everywhere with a CC-BY license.

But, I think this really turns into a question of the implications of CC-BY-NC-SA.

Creative Commons noncommercial licenses disallow “commercial use” – i.e., they preclude the use:

… in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.

From what I’ve read, it’s intentionally fuzzy what this exactly means and I am by no means an expert (or a lawyer) around this stuff.

Creative Commons themselves conducted a study to understand commonly held interpretation of this definition – which is itself important from a practical standpoint.

The study itself tells us that people generally consider the following unacceptable:

• Promotional use (advertising)
• Use makes money

Perception is that greater scrutiny is required as you move from:

• Private or individual,
• Charitable or social good,
• Non-profit,
• For-profit

In other words, generally use by an individual (i.e., self-study is considered okay).  If it’s for a charity, social good or non-profit, you are generally safe if you are not making direct revenue / donations from it.

I interpret that putting up links as a means for employees to access the content themselves would generally be considered safe.  I would be curious if anyone disagrees with this.  Of course, you can always find a corporate attorney who doesn’t want to do that even, but you probably can’t access common websites from that company either.

Here’s the tricky questions.  Maybe there are clear cut answers, I just don’t know what they are. 

What if I want to use the course content or part of the course content to teach employees or partners behind the firewall.  Is that commercial use?

A question from the study:

“Work would be used by a for-profit company, but no money would be made”

• Definitely commercial - ~33%
• Can’t say - ~40%
• Definitely noncommercial - ~27%

Shows that people are generally split on the question of whether the scenario I describe is considered commercial or noncommercial.  So it’s a bit of a gray area.  And likely it’s even fuzzier based on whether you are linking, copying, modifying, etc.

Any thoughts on the practical answer here?  If I want to create eLearning for use by my employees, can I use CC-BY-NC content as part of it?  Under what conditions?

Share Alike has some interesting challenges in interpretation for this situation as well.  From the Creative Commons FAQ:

If you are combining a work licensed under a ShareAlike license condition, you need to make sure that you are happy and able to license the resulting work under the same license conditions as the original work.

This suggests that if you use ShareAlike licensed materials in a course for your employees, then the resulting work must be licensed the same way. 

There’s a lot of gray around this as well.  First, likely the course is being provided only behind your firewall.  There’s nothing specifically that I can see that says you have to distribute the resulting work or make it widely available.  However, there is a clause that causes a bit of concern:

You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the Work from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the License.

Of course, the license would allow anyone with access to the work to distribute it themselves.  Thus, an employee could theoretically make a copy and distribute it.  Doubtful that an employee would do this, but since it would be consistent with the license, I’m not sure you could pursue.

In practice, I’m pretty sure you would want to approach the use of this content a bit differently.  If you are taking ShareAlike content and either using a subset or modifying it, you might just want to create a derivative work that is ShareAlike on its own.  It can be fully redistributed, and you wouldn’t care.  Then you can link to that work within your broader course.

It’s somewhat a loose coupling of content, but it is consistent with the spirit of the ShareAlike license.  Create new, public works based on the original work.  Don’t put stuff in that new work that is specific to your organization that you don’t want shared.  That creates a new ShareAlike work.  And you can link to a public instance of that.

If you think about it, having a large collection of these smaller chunks that could be used by employees probably could provide value to others.

Of course this same question comes up about a whole lot of other content.  For example, Flickr provides access to images according to Creative Commons license.  See Flickr Creative Commons.  The images under the Attribution license obviously give you a fair bit of freedom to use in your eLearning.  How about those under Noncommercial?  Can you put one of those images inside your internal corporate training as long as you provide attribution?

It’s really the same question as the noncommercial use as described above.

ShareAlike would seem to be a bit problematic for images.  You are very likely using it as a copy inside the course.  Doesn’t that run you into the problem described above?

Again, I’m by no means an expert on this stuff, nor an attorney.  But what would be good is to have some people who know more about this weigh in with help on how to proceed.

I’m also curious to find out what corporate attorneys are deciding around this?

Working Smarter, the 2010 Edition, is priced like lobster in an upscale restaurant. The price is whatever we feel like.

Current price of hardcopy = $16   After March 16, $20

Current price of download = $10  After March 16, $16

Enlargement