• Analysis Skill
• Business Knowledge
• Change Management Skill
• Facilitation Skill
• HPI Understanding
• Influencing Skill
• Project Management Skill
• Questioning Skill
• Relationship-Building Skill
• Systematic Thinking Skill

It also lists these attributes:

• Behavioral Flexibility
• Comfort with Ambiguity
• Objectivity
• Self-Confidence

That sounds like what people want social media managers to have! If you are looking for someone like that, I know lots of people graduating with this sort of degree in the next six months….

Some friends and I have been discussing this lately – what will be social media’s downfall in the Enterprise? Some people think it will be the lack of measurements, some people think it will be a company disaster because of a slip-up attributed to a social networking site.

I don’t think it will be either of those things. I think it will be viruses planted by hackers and phishers that turn corporate laptops and desktops into zombies. Just this week came report that hackers are using twitter as a way to control botnets, so I don’t think my theory is too far-fetched.

Here’s my attempt at a relatively non-technical description of how I think the zombie infestation could play out:

1. You get fooled into clicking on a link that installs a virus onto your machine.

   Most of the time, this is the result of a phishing scheme. The most recongnized example is you get an email from your bank saying they need you confirm some personal details. The email has all of the images and wording an email from your bank would normally have. But when you click on the link, it does not take you to the bank website. Instead, you have clicked a link that will download a little program to your machine. The program may do something really nasty like gather passwords to all the sites you use (banking, credit card, etc). Or, it may turn your machine into one of the virus creator’s zombie minions.

   

   zomg!!!

2. Your computer is now a node in a botnet

   A botnet is simply a collection of processes running on lots of computers. The compromised computers (or zombies) can be controlled by one master computer. Many times the zombies are used to send spam and cheat the pay for click sites. Maybe the worst use of zombie botnets is executing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks flood web servers with so much traffic that they are not able to operate. Twitter was brought down a couple of weeks ago by a DDoS attack. If you are able to trick enough people into downloading the virus that will turn their computer into a zombie, you can control your minions to do all sorts of very nasty things.
   This is actually how Twitter is being used by the zombie overlords. They set up twitter accounts for the sole purpose of sending updates that are used to direct the zombies.

3. The zombie-making viruses can be very tricky

   Lots of times, you won’t even notice you have turned into a zombie. The virus hides itself. It may prevent you from getting to anti-virus sites or the Microsoft Updates site. So even if there is a fix, you won’t be able to apply it.  You may notice that your computer is running very, very slowly. This could be a sign that you have been turned into a zombie.

   Or maybe your Instant Message, email, Twitter or Facebook starts posting lots of messages to everyone in your friends list. A message with a link that says “hey I wanted to share this with you!!” (or something like that). Your friend thinks, oh cool wonder what this link is all about? They click the link and BAM now they are a zombie too!

4. You need more than a boomstick to clean up a zombie infestation

   Cleaning up zombie machines is very labor intensive. If the IT folks can’t clean the machine completely, they may need to just reinstall the Operating System, which could mean a loss of data. And it takes a good bit of time. The entire time the IT person is working on your machine, you can’t work. And the IT person isn’t working on anything else either. If there is a zombie outbreak, and you have a project that has dependecies on IT, forget about making your dates.

   And we’re not just talking about the desktop IT support folks. If multiple machines on a corporate network have become zombies, they could also clog up the internal network with spam or DDoS traffic. Your network team goes into overdrive to shut this traffic down. Depending on how the virus that created the zombies is written, servers can also become infected.

   So zombies cost time and money, two things that are scarce right now in most Enterprises. If a company gets infested with zombies caused or controlled by a social media site, you can be sure they will shut down access to these sites.

5. What you can do to ward off the zombie infiltration

   First of all, make sure your anti-virus software is up to date. You may also want to run something like SpyBot Search and Destroy. I like this program because it will immunize your browsers against evil zombie-making programs.

   Secondly, stop trusting everything you see in social media sites! Yes, I know this is contrary to the “everything is open” mantra of social media. But come on, even in real life you aren’t supposed to trust everyone the first time you see them. Stop clicking on links without checking them out first! Hover over an embedded hyperlink and look in the bottom of your browser for where the link will send you. Use a Twitter client like Mixero that will preview the real URL behind a tiny URL. Consider blocking spammers who try to follow your stream (this is a controversial subject, so use your own judgement).

   Remember, sometimes you can’t tell someone else has been turned into a zombie until its too late. So always protect yourself!

To wrap this up, if we don’t want IT blocking access to these tools, people have to start thinking more about how we are using these tools. We can’t blame IT, the only way to prevent a zombie outbreak is to quarantine those who aren’t infected. If we don’t want it to get to that point, we have to be a little smarter as we use the tools. Because zombies are out there – waiting to turn you too.

So one way we know ourselves is by our relationship to others. Now that there are new ways to connect with others, we have new ways to know others. Does this mean we are finding new ways to know ourselves?

What do you think this means for education?

As I’m adding the slides in, I can’t help but think about the Analysis part of ID. We write training for a very wide range of audiences. My team usually seperates this into three big audiences:

• Internal
• Partners
• Customers

We usually break those big audiences down by role: support folks, implementers, pre-sales, etc. But when I think about *how* the products we’re producing training for are used, we really have a diverse audience. Our products are used by pharma companies, banks, financial services companies, hospitals and other healthcare, and government agencies just to name a few. How in the world can we do analysis for customers if our products are all about storing, optimizing, managing, and securing information? Its pretty daunting.

How can we make our training relevant to each of these audiences? Right now I think we depend heavily on our instructors for that. They are CTT+ certified, and they know how to poll the class to see what everyone is looking to get from the training. I’m still wondering if that’s enough.

I starting thinking about this because I came across an interesting pharma blog. I used to work for a pharma company, its where I learned all about change control and compliance (nothing like having to fill out 6 change control documents to replace an ailing server…). The blog is called The Pharma Marketing Blog. The author, John Mack, gives an insider view of how tricky social media is for the pharma industry. He talks about FDA influence into what can and cannot be tweeted, and how Adverse Events are keeping the pharma industry from embracing social media.

Lots of stuff you may not have considered if you’re a “social media expert”.

It really is all about your audience….

The thing that struck me from the interview is now this very conservative company is probably even further from using social media than they ever where. When Jeremiah asked the spokesman if Janet is a real employee would her twitter use be ok, Mr Jeffers said (in part):

“It’s not really relevant, there are only people that are authorized and not-authorized, even people with the best intentions, may not know what the appropriate position is or the facts”

Jeremiah listed his key takeaways:

1. Lack of identity confirmation continues to plague the web
2. Companies must monitor their brand
3. An opportunity for the real Exxon to step forward
4. The community (myself included) need to first validate identities
5. Legal and Trademark issues complicate

I think the central issue here is evaluating sources. How can you be sure that the source you are reading is a credible source? (Determining this type of information is Information Science 101, so hire an IS major today!!) There are many ways to determine authority, in fact the question of Janet being an Exxon representative was answered because someone reached out to real-world contacts to talk about the Exxon twitter account, and found out the company was not sponsoring the account.

I’ve found a couple of accounts and blogs that at first glance seemed to be officially sanctioned by our organization, but when I did a little digging I found out they have been put up by our customers and partners. I think it’s important to manage your brand, but it’s also important to have a strategy when you have a brand that people like so much they won’t wait for you to initiate social media contact.

I also think as educators we are going to bear the burden of helping people understand how to evaluate information. Especially in a competitive industry, our learners must have the ability to determine if information they read on a blog (or from a tweet) is credible, or if the info contains unsupported information.

Teaching learners these skills is the topic of my first brown-bag Knowledge Worker Skills presentation this quarter: how to find, scan, and evaluate information using RSS feeds and readers.  I’m trying to do my part to get everyone up to speed on these topics.

So, what do you think? What can the Exxon twitter scandal teach corporate learning professionals?

Before I start let me say something to my group. I am just using our collective painful experience to illustrate a point. If you disagree with anything I say, please leave a comment and set the record straight!

I am in a class this summer called “Designing Online Collaborative Learning”. To the best of my recollection, there were no technical prerequisites for the class. I took the class because I wanted to become more familiar with how the principles of group theory could be applied to a Learning 2.0 environment.

After completing a survey, we were put into groups to create a lesson that has learners define factors that make Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) successful, create causal maps, create a shared theory of CSCL, do research to support that theory, and finally create a web page.

Now my group are self-professed non-techies. And they really are not very technical (it’s true guys!!). About 75% of my time has been devoted to helping and coaching everyone to learn some of the social media skills needed to complete our project. We used a wiki, slideshare (which went down for most of the weekend the project was due!), polldaddy, meebo, and  edublogs.

Now I’ve been using tools like this for about 12 years, so I can figure out the nuances between different sites. If you don’t use them all the time, those nuances are huge barriers. It takes time to figure them out. And if you want the project to look professional, it may take even longer!

My classmates became frustrated because they had to learn these web 2.0 skills PLUS the academic information. I am frustrated because I had to spend so much time coaching my teammates that I don’t feel I learned the academic information at all.

So how does this tie into my corporate life?

Learning 2.0 will not be successful unless it is implemented with good design principles.

Opening up collaboration and communication with the web 2.0 tools is not as easy as just pointing students to one of these sparkly tools and telling them “Go! Learn!”. Asking non-technical people to just learn a new technology places an unfair cognitive burden on those learners. It also places an unfair burden on the technical person in the class.

If the class truly becomes a collaborative group, and I feel mine was, the techie will try and bring the others in their group up to speed. That may take up all the time alloted for instruction – meaning the team learned to use a shiny toy, but did not learn the materials assigned to the course.

I think there is a lesson here too for those people who think Web 2.0 is going to save the world. You may have grown up using a computer, but there are many people in this country who can not afford a computer. There are people who can’t afford to pay for an Internet connection, or they can only afford dial-up. These people are entering the workforce too, and they don’t have the skills you have because they didn’t have access to the tools you did.

I have not heard much lately about the Digital Divide, but it’s still there. Aside from not being able to afford the Internet or equipment, there are lots of people who have to work 2 and 3 jobs to pay their rent. I can guarantee you that if they are able to be online, they aren’t worried with managing their brand. They get online to relax – play poker with their friends, play games, send stupid chain letters even though their techie daughter has told them a million times to look at Snopes first (ok off topic rant, sorry!).

What I am trying to say is, not everyone has the Web 2.0 skills because not everyone has access to the tools, and not everyone has time to get online and develop the skills. This has to be taken into consideration when creating training for a global audience.

I am NOT saying that we should avoid Learning 2.0 in our curriculum. I think these tools are powerful and should be harnessed. I AM saying this new way of instruction must be implemented thoughtfully.

We cannot afford to create instruction that requires the learner to learn how to use the instructional tools as well as learn the class materials. We either have to make the technology transparent, or we have to start teaching some of the Web 2.0 skills to our audiences.

Whew I feel better now that I’ve gotten that off my chest! Let me know what you think of these ideas.

Objection #12 was “How Will you measure that it’s working”?  Basically, how do you go from recording each course consumed in the LMS to measuring informal learning?  He suggests using web analytics to see what learners search for, share, and comment on.

Objection #13 was “How do you measure ROI?” He suggests we really don’t care what the learn, if they don’t use what they learn to benefit the company, so we should measure the benefit we think the company will get from the training.

I wish there were more concrete ways to measure ROI. Maybe actually defining the investment needed is a step towards that measurement?