Education.

Kenny, or rather MTV, has partnered up with some folks to work on GetSchooled.com. Essentially, the site hopes to work on the problem of the school dropout rate, and secondarily, the college admissions rate. The stats that Kenny gave me were staggering (and as I immediately forget numbers, they were something like 30% of all kids who enter high school don’t finish or some similar – you can correct me). They made my head fog up as I thought about what it’d mean to try and solve those problems.

Evidently, our education problems cost us something like 350 Billion US Dollars a year in lost revenue (or similar – again, I don’t remember such things well). That’s crazy. So essentially, just fixing a few bits of education, just improving a few parts, would change the way this country works.

Faith, it turns out, has all kinds of knowledge about the education system and she and Kenny started riffing on all the cool projects. She told me about GetIdeas.org and TeacherTube, and how Cisco is working on 21st Century Schools iniatives. Kenny and Faith told me about Big Picture Schools and Green Dot SChools and Marc Ecko’s Sweat Equity enterprises, and several other great projects.

The question remains:

How Could New Ideas Change Education?

In a way, I’m already noodling with this. With Whitney Hoffman and Christopher S. Penn, I started PodCamp as a way to teach about media making with alternative methods. This is the unconference model, but it’s started me down a path to learn more about the DNA of Disruption, and what I could do by applying alternative education models to other situations.

I’m not interested in becoming a teacher. In fact, I’m not much interested in the existing systems. I’ll let others figure out how to fix those from within. However, I am more than interested about what else can be done outside of the boxes. I’m curious what we could do to change the laws, change the rules, make new games, and create success from cradle to grave.

Think about this: my 3-year-old boy knows more about navigating the web than most school computer programs. My 7-year-old daughter’s fascination with the Titanic would give her a great springboard for learning engineering, forensics, and many other sciences, though the original assignment was simply to read a few books for the sake of reading. Neither of my kids are being taught leadership (directly), nor are they being taught entrepreneurial studies (directly). The old system, make factory workers, is still firmly in place, and we’re trying to patch that. I don’t think that’s how I want to roll.

I was talking with Dr. Lynn Dorman tonight on twitter, and as she nears 70, she’s facing the same fate that lots of people fall into: younger generations don’t understand how to learn from the body of work of their successors, even if their only learning is in which systems have failed in the past. How can we marry up all the great resources of people who know something great to those of us who could stand to learn more?

I’m also interested in educational models for business workers. We’re in a society where HR is less and less about career development and more and more about benefits management. Companies are no longer the stewards of your development and career. How can I help those of us who lived in the cubicle farms, and what can I do to share that information in a way that will empower others?

I’ve no idea where I will go with this in the larger context. I just wanted to put the thoughts out there. I’m curious as to what you’re thinking about it.

How can we build new learning models? How can we equip our youth and/or our students and/or our business professionals? How do we share what we’ve learned with these new tools? How do we equip our kids to do something with all we’ve learned from social media?

What’s your take on all these kinds of projects? If Kenny Miller’s working on it, I know it’s important. I’m also wondering what else would could do with our combined knowledge. We’re the smartest people around supposedly, right? How can we help?

You can also follow @sanderssays on Twitter.

I just added a few more things to my own personal Alltop. It’s a feature Guy Kawasaki added to his service so that I can pick and choose which of his many aggregated sources I want to check in on easily. Mine has a lot of marketing and PR sources in it. Yours can have whatever you like, maybe poker? (Don’t forget to check out my Dad’s poker blog, if you like poker.)

Just browsing My Alltop this morning gave me three new tweaks to my own marketing strategies. I added the ideas to an Evernote file for later.

I still use Google Reader and RSS for several hundred other sources, but Alltop is a good way to get a fast glance and pick up some ideas. Have you tried it?

On Twitter, I pointed out a great article by Jack Neff about Unilever CMO Simon Clift. Several people appreciated the article, but one person responded back that they felt Unilever was morally bankrupt. I’m not sure from where her stance came, but that was her take.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but where you run into a potential risk is by letting your opinions get in the way of learning something new. I learn best by paying attention to how others do things, especially when I’m learning how not to do things.

If we don’t look for models, if we don’t separate our feelings from our efforts to learn, we miss many opportunities. That last bit bears repeating slightly differently: If you can break out the concepts from the content, the entire kingdom becomes yours. Learn about what people are doing, versus what exactly they’re talking about.

Getting caught up in the little things or falling into the story instead of paying attention to its structure means a missed opportunity to learn. There are lessons around us daily, several of which we can apply to what we do. From that excellent restaurant server teaching us how to blog a better offering of dessert, to the observations gleaned from paying attention to our rivals, we have chances to learn.

Are you separating out the lesson from your other feelings and emotions?

Photo credit omniNate

So go here and watch the videos (the little links in the post).

(And Battelle’s team on AMEX Open: wouldn’t you entertain embed codes? I get the goal, but please?)

Most people use this as a way to share a more enriched experience with friends and colleagues. But I think there’s a business opportunity in using the tool for collaborative business. Remember, Friendfeed can collect your status information, your presence, media from several sources, your bookmarks. There are many ways to use that. Here’s one set of use cases to consider for that purpose.

How to Use Friendfeed as a Collaborative Business Tool

1. Sign up for an account on Friendfeed.
2. On the “me” tab, on the right where it says “services,” click “Edit/add.”
3. Add appropriate accounts. (See below).

Here’s where it gets interesting. You can do lots of things at this point. Let’s list several possible use cases:

• Add any company blogs of relevance.
• Add any external blogs of relevance.
• Add search terms via Technorati and Google Blogsearch.
• Add search terms via Twitter Search (here’s how to search Twitter).
• Add any Flickr (or other web-based) photo groups.
• Add location-based data via Brightkite.
• Add relevant news services using their RSS subscription URLs.
• Add YouTube videos.
• Add Delicious.com for social bookmarks.
• Lots more.

So, pick a few things from the about to think about. If you had lots of people in multiple locations, one way to dashboard their locale would be to have all of them add a Brightkite account, and you could “friend” them and invite them into a group. Pow, instant location-status-presence. There are many ways to configure the 43 or so apps that plug into Friendfeed to be useful for your business.

3. Add your coworkers’ accounts as friends.
4. Create a group and invite those friends to the group.
5. Send private updates to the group. Send more public facing ones to the public timeline.

Friendfeed provides many opportunities to go further than just collecting information in one place. I’m sure there are some other ideas for application of what I’ve just covered that you could improve upon. What do you think? How else could you see this being used?

Photo credit, foundphotoslj

20 Free eBooks About Social Media

1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing – David Meerman Scott
2. Marketing Apple – MarketingApple.com
3. Masters of Marketing – Startup Internet Marketing
4. Podcast Marketing eBook – Christopher S. Penn
5. Google Adwords Secrets – SEOBook
6. Get Viral Get Visitors – Stacie Mahoe
7. Marketing With Case Studies – Dynamic Copywriting
8. How to Write a Marketing Plan – Geisheker Group
9. SEO for WordPress blogs – Blizzard Internet
10. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics
11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter – Geekpreneur
12. The Zen of Blogging – Hunter Nutall
13. What is Social Media – iCrossing
14. A Primer in Social Media – SmashLab
15. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence
16. Introduction to Good Usability – Peter Pixel
17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program – CRM Transformation
18. We Have a Website. Now What? – Craig Rentmeester
19. Blogs & Social Media – PRSA
20. The Podcast Customer Revealed – Edison Media Research

Have any more that you’ve found online that you like? Share them in the comments section. And if you want to re-post the list to your site, by all means, please do! Just please be kind and link back to 20 Free eBooks About Social Media.

***Update I really love Brian Solis and all he does. He pointed out a few of his works that I would highly recommend these, as well:

• 
  The Essential Guide to Social Media
• The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
• The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media

  Not sure if I’ll keep updating the post, but I figure Brian’s great works deserved attention. Feel free to keep adding your finds in the comments.

  
  

  Related articles by Zemanta

  • Article Marketing – Top 5 Article Marketing Tips You Can Use to Leverage Your Articles
  • Start a Viral Marketing Campaign Using Ebooks as Your Viral Salesman
  • Search Engine Marketing- an Effective Way of Realising More Sales

Bill’s advice: know when you are just shuffling things around, and get back to the fundamentals. It’s perfect advice. I think what’s best about it is that I can apply it to my use of social media tools.

Know When You’re Just Shuffling

• Are you editing your profiles and pictures on all your social sites? Is this really worth it?
• Are you reading Twitter just because you have nothing else to do?
• Are you signing up to the next shiny object just because?
• Are you over-subscribed to blogs and podcasts?
• Are you just focusing on your stuff and not the larger community?

Get Back to the Fundamentals

• Keep a steady and established habit and pace.
• Be clear about your goals.
• Fish or cut bait, but not both.
• Do big work first.
• Stop whining. (Loved Bill’s advice here).

See? I got that out of a sales post. Where else could I find influence? Where else could YOU? Keep your eyes open for how to apply learning from other fields into what you’re doing. It will round out what you’re doing. I promise. What do you think?

Read Bill’s article for more ideas about sales, and maybe, think how it applies to you.

——-

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.

Get Up and Take Your Turn

Bob and his wife play music at house parties (I forget what they called them, but the name would make more sense than “house party”), and he had quite a repertoire to choose from. Having had lots of shots at the microphone over the last several months, Bob felt confident to get up and do his thing.

As a media maker, getting up and taking your turn (to blog, podcast, etc) is easier if you find lots of opportunities to try yourself out along the way to the main gig.

Complete the Motion

At a few points, Bob didn’t remember the words to certain songs. We were an encouraging audience, and what got me was that Bob didn’t blush and crumble under the pressure. He paused, said a few words, and then went on to the next song.

As bloggers, if you mess up or forget something, just keep going. There’s always another post and another chance to do a decent job.

Be Charming, Not Depressing

When Bob had his forgetful moments, he didn’t collapse in upon himself. He knew that he could just move on to the next bit. This doesn’t come easy to everyone. Lots of people get hung up on self-analysis and can’t quite make the next move because they’re stuck analyzing where things crumbled.

Make your mistakes, accept them, and be outwardly charming about matters while you pick up the pieces.

A Friendly Audience Helps

Bob played for us on a boat of peers and friends. We were out on the water, having food and beers, and the mood was very light and cordial. When he forgot a line, it didn’t matter to us, because everything he’d done until that point was great, and after the first time he missed a line, we were on board with laughter and applause and encouragement. He knew we were his friends and wouldn’t laugh AT him.

Build a community that cares about you, and you can experiment and try new things without fear of ridicule.

Finish Strong

Despite a few forgotten lines, Bob finished with a really great song about a motorboat, that was funny, engaging, and had lots of clever use of words. The music that accompanied it was great, too, and we all got into the song quickly and deeply. Bob had us right where he wanted us by the end of his very small set of songs, and he made an impression on me and lots of others on the boat.

When you’ve taken your shot, make sure you finish strong in your work.

Lessons Learned

At the end of it all, Bob’s performance was a great metaphor for how we all struggle with understanding social media tools, business communication, collaboration, marketing, and all the other things we’re facing in our day. I learned from Bob’s charm, poise, and commitment, as well as his ability to stay confident and positive throughout the experience.

Do you follow Bob’s advice, such as I’ve written it out here? Would you be just as confident and charming as Bob in those situations? How do you conduct yourself in moments where you’re trying a few things out, and everything might not be 100% perfect?

And by the way, Bob writes an interesting blog about the world of Canadian PR that’s worth checking out, as well.

A few months back, I flew to Chicago and participated in her SOBCon event, which was subtitled Business School for Bloggers, and ever since, I’ve been taking her advice there (and the advice of others I spent time with) and running with it. I’m thinking you should, too. I know that Liz is working on several projects, including some useful information for bloggers to consider in bringing their game up, especially if they’re considering business blogging, or blogging as part of their business. I can’t wait for that.

And in the mean time, I want you to start thinking about the skillsets you have on board, and the ones you need to add. For instance, I’m a great writer. I’m a great thinker. I’m great at relationship building and maintaining. I’m a pretty decent marketer. I’m not great at sales. I’m not great at negotiation. I have nothing with regards to legal or financial issues, except the understanding that I don’t know much about them.

If you were to need business skills as a media maker, what would they be? And if you were to be a business type looking at how blogging and other media might impact your business, what are some of the tools you would want to better understand? I’m sure Liz will be able to help you out a great deal, and in the mean time, I just wanted to start a conversation and understand what matters to you.

Are you already subscribed to Liz’s blog? It’s worth spending some time and getting to know her. She’s done a lot for me, and she’s where I look for advice and inspiration lots of times. And, if you are a decent sized corporation looking for some help in understanding the landscape, the educational requirements, and the business impact of blogging, Liz is a great resource to consider.

What do you need to know about business and blogs and vice versa?