James Wanless

February fitness in review

James — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:29:23 +0000

Found via http://www.jasonclark.ws/

I guess the best I can do in blogging is to write an entry once a month tracking my fitness progress this year. After all, the last entry was in early February, showing better progress for January than I did for February. It sort of goes with the territory of completing my thesis. The entire past month has pretty much been given over to the task of qualitative data analysis and, as such, mental capacity for doing much else is pretty low. Much like the match to the right, I’m pretty burnt out these days.

I’d like to think the writing frequency and subject matter will improve here soon, but with the first draft of my thesis paper due one month from now, it may not improve much in the short term. I do, however, think I have a post in me coming shortly about the process I’ve gone through doing my data analysis. It’s been such an utter slog that I feel the need to unload.

Totals for the month

I saw some good improvements in running. My average pace and number of runs was the same, but my mileage went up and the amount of time went down. Cycling saw a drop in rides, pace and distance, but the aforementioned commuting reduction and some wacky GPS/cadence stuff on my Garmin basically screwed with my measurements. I spent considerably less time in the gym, too. It’s entirely possible I missed logging a couple workouts, but whatever. I had one particularly bad week and my overall weight drop of only one pound would seem to back that up.

Totals: 27 Activities (10 runs, 13 bike rides, 4 gym visits), 138.39 miles, 18:06:07 h:m:s, dropped 1.0 lbs.

Running

Count: 10 Activities
Distance: 64.49 mi
Time: 7:57:42 h:m:s
Avg Pace: 7:24 min/mile
Avg HR: 154 bpm

Cycling

Count: 13 Activities
Distance: 73.90 mi
Time: 4:58:25 h:m:s
Avg Speed: 14.9 mph
Avg HR: 136 bpm
Avg Bike Cadence: 91 rpm

Gym

Count: 4 Activities
Time: 5:10:00 h:m:s

Back on the fitness horse – January in review

James — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:00:56 +0000

Beyond my sub-standard 2009 Boston Marathon, my training and fitness has been spotty at best for the past 1.5+ years, due in part to the MA degree I’m doing, and some significant left groin and right knee issues that are mostly gone now. Throw a little inguinal hernia surgery into the mix last August and you can get a sense of where I am. While I finish the MA through June, I’ll be doing a slow build back to decent endurance and speed, while getting back to a weight I’m happy with.

Below is the first monthly post tracking my journey back to reasonable fitness, focusing only on broad monthly averages for now. I’d like to see the average monthly mileage slowly go up, while the average paces and heart rates go down. The numbers below are only approximations, as some of the trainer rides have GPS screwing with speed/distance sensor data and some of the stationary bike and treadmill runs lacking HR or accurate pace/distance number. Since most workouts include accurate GPS and HR data, the overall averages are good enough to see general trends.

For the month

I got a couple days of bike commuting in and that number will definitely increase. Even though the round trip is only eight miles, that equals up to 176 miles of cycling without a lot of extra effort. I’ve agreed to captain a Vancouver Sun Run team so I’d imagine I’ll be motivated to pick up the pace a little and test a few speed and hill workouts going forward too.

Totals: 29 Activities (10 runs, 11 bikes, 8 gym visits), 122.19 miles, 19:11:34 h:m:s, dropped 4.8 lbs.

Running

Count: 10 Activities
Distance: 44.22 mi
Time: 5:26:42 h:m:s
Avg Pace: 7:24 min/mile
Avg HR: 151 bpm

Cycling

Count: 11 Activities
Distance: 77.98 mi
Time: 4:34:51 h:m:s
Avg Speed: 17.0 mph
Max Speed: 21.5 mph
Avg HR: 130 bpm
Avg Bike Cadence: 92 rpm

Gym

Count: 8 Activities
Time: 9:10:00 h:m:s

Turning the corner on a new decade and year

James — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:31:14 +0000

This was originally going to be a post about beginning to track my workouts again, tackling a new year by getting fit and all that kind of crap. The workouts have been a bit haphazard though, so I thought I’d just reflect on the past few weeks and where things are going in the next while.

My ability to sit down and write anything meaningful has generally been hampered for some time by the MA I’m doing. Reading and writing a lot of very focused material so you can prepare another paper or do a literature review doesn’t leave much brain power for updating your journal online. Sometimes it’s two months or more between posts right now. I’m going to try to change that by just doing a little reflection. I think it will help me as I head into the crunch period of my thesis. Future reflections will be shorter and more focused, but what follows is akin to taking out the mental trash that’s been sitting at my cerebral curb for the past bit.

In no particular order

The things that sustain me and probably bore you my dear reader …

Fitness

A lot of my usual activity has been curtailed by the injuries and surgery I’ve sustained over the past year or two. I’m pretty healthy now, but do still suffer from a little left groin tightness if I run hard or long. I’m still exploring options on that, but I may just have to deal with it. It’s a lot better than it was while training for Boston, my inguinal hernia is all healed up and even my right knee is behaving with the right exercises and a couple daily glucosamine dosages. For the longest time the effect was essentially to stop getting out with my running friends, stop playing ultimate, stop going for road rides, etc, etc, etc. Given the amount of coursework I was doing during this, I felt that the timing was OK.

Now that I’m feeling well enough to train again and I’m keeping track of my workouts through Garmin Connect, I’m in the throes of data analysis and have absolutely no time to anything other than my job, my thesis and some forced workouts. Group runs and a possible return to ultimate will have to wait until I’m past the data analysis stage and strictly working on the never-ending writing and revision process that will begin in a few weeks.

Haiti

I can’t help but thinking right now, about two events at polar opposite ends of the spectrum. Due to my particular circumstances I’m not able to do much about or with either but they strike an odd juxtaposition in my mind. The Haiti quake of nearly three weeks ago still is present in my mind almost constantly. My wife and I donated some time ago and I’m dumbfounded by the generosity of Canadians. Some $90 million and counting. When you think of how many people don’t or can’t give and we’ve still give roughly $3 for every man, woman and child, it’s quite astonishing. The suffering and need is immense and I am hopeful that progress begins to escalate soon, as infrastructure is hampering aid getting to those who need it.

The Olympics

Then there’s the Olympics. Polls show that British Columbians are more pessimistic than anyone else in Canada. I know that the mildest January on record is giving John Furlong and his ilk convulsions and, as a taxpayer bound to foot the bill, I am very hopeful for a finanically successful games. What gnaws at me, however, is that locally most of us care more about that than the death toll and human suffering in Haiti (and many other places around the world). While the human ideals embodied in the original Olympic movement should be what international athletic competition is all about, what it has become about is money. Corporate money, government money and the economic spin-off we’ve been told is to come, but which may ultimately not, due to the lagging world economy. The timing of the warm weather and financial meltdown has been a bitch for Vanoc, but then again I bet the mild nights are nice for the homeless folks that Vanoc promised would get all kinds of help as a result of the games. I have a feeling we’ll be waiting a while to see that one.

Work

My brain doesn’t stop there. When not occupied with thesis research, international sport or disaster, I come back to what takes up 40+ hours of my week. Two big projects on the front burners mean there’s not much space for reflection during the day either. Rolling SharePoint 2010 out to BCIT is finally taking shape and I’m beginning to do needs analysis on a new Part-Time Studies course catalogue for the BCIT web site.

While finally settled into my new role doing my old work, the trailer I call home during the day gets no better. It’s a difficult physical space in which to work, with bad lighting, bad furniture and a persistent faint chemical smell emanating from the carpet or floor. It is what it is, but a creative or productive space, it is not.

Going forward

The training break I’ll be taking for five weeks to do a big chunk of my first thesis writing draft is coming in two. What probably gives me my fair share of stress right now is that I likely won’t have either my work projects or my thesis data analysis to the point where I’ll be productively writing the first draft of my paper right off the bat. It’s not due until the beginning of April, but that time will come more quickly than I expect.

I don’t expect most of my reflective posts to be rambling like this one and in a perfect world each of the ideas above would have been a more timely created piece of well-crafted prose. That’s the hope for future bits of mental flotsam but for now this one will have to do.

Clearing cobwebs and groinal eggplants

Images of Haiti – please donate

James — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:36:40 +0000

From the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies on Flickr …

Or, from nj.com …

The CBC has put together a micro-site with regular updates on the status of the Haiti quake. Please take the time to donate to this terrible tragedy. There are a number of organizations that do exceptional work on the ground, who are accepting donations. Following are just a few:

The Humanitarian Coalition (Oxfam, Care and Save the Children
Medicin Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders)
Plan Canada (formerly Foster Parents Plan)

No related posts.

Getting to the thesis research

James — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:47:40 +0000

Here I am, about a third of the way through my thesis year and I’m finally getting to the fun stuff, in that I’m actually doing research interviews as we hit the Christmas season. I’ll admit that, from the end of summer when I was really beginning to finalize my thesis proposal until now, I’ve felt disconnected from most things while doing this. I chose this road, so I’m not complaining, but it was a disconcerting change from year one.

In the Royal Roads University (RRU) MALAT program you bang through six courses in your first year, two of which happen during a six week pressure cooker that includes a two week residency. This is followed by four more courses over roughly another forty weeks, which include a lot of collaborative group work and enough discussion forum posts to choke a horse. While groups will use a variety of tools of mostly their own choosing to get through it, the lifeblood of the coursework are the Moodle discussion forums. Due to the schedule and pacing, you don’t have much time to think in year one and there’s always some assignment or activity coming up, which forces you to stay focused.

Contrast that with a year two thesis route, which is really all about how well you can determine what you need to do and when. While I always felt the thesis route would probably give me a more useful artefact after it was over, and I felt that doing a thesis would help me get better at research (my big goal for doing an MA in the first place), fatigue with what I view as an over-dependence on coursework discussion forums was the tipping point for me – I’m kind of self-directed and very much an autonomous learner. However, back to the disconnect.

Approvals

Getting to the point that I could actually begin research was no small task. In late summer I started revisiting the research proposal I’d done during my coursework last year, to round it into shape as an actual thesis proposal. It was probably a little heavy on lit review, compared with a proposal from a more seasoned researcher, but it was also extremely light on operational details and virtually devoid of anything that made it look like a case study, which is what I’ve chosen to do for my thesis research. This necessitated really getting familiar with case study methodology and a better understanding of qualitative research techniques. I’d say my actual research proposal was a very different document from the one I produced for marks last spring.

By the time I had a proposal that met with approval from the RRU program head it was well into October. That was approval one, but there was still the small issue of Research Ethics Board (REB) approval at both RRU and BCIT, as my research is situated in a department there. While RRU turned my application around in 1-2 weeks, the same cannot be said for BCIT. It’s somewhat immaterial now, but a ball was dropped somewhere along the way, as an expedited approval request took well over a month. In the big scheme of things it’s not the end of the world, but conducting interviews is considerably more involved than running a survey or other quantitative research. I view the process of recruitment as still another approval of sorts, as interview subjects have to want to do it and be genuinely interested in helping you do your research.

Instead of conducting interviews mid-term, what this has all meant is that I’ve had to try and get faculty interested in, and booked to do interviews at one of the worst possible times of the year. With a Christmas break looming, papers to mark, final exams and some serious fiscal and budget issues at BCIT, this piece has been challenging. Most interviews have been rescheduled at least once and I’ve still got one remaining after the Christmas break. More importantly, the idea of having my interviews transcribed before Christmas so I could start doing some data analysis over the break has given way to transcripts in January and data analysis well into February. The saving grace is that I should be able to take some Professional Development time off to do the bulk of my writing.

This period has been the big disconnect of which I spoke earlier. Other than some back-and-forth with my thesis supervisor and the RRU program head, I’ve really been cut loose and on my own. No second residency, no assignments, no timeline for posting to a blog or forum, no group Skype sessions, no writing with others in a synchronous Google Docs session. Just me, my books, my laptop and lots of uncertainty. Lots and lots of uncertainty.

A budding social researcher?

Now that I’m actually conducting interviews, though, I’m finding it very enjoyable. Prior to beginning I was on edge a bit. Will my interviews go well? Will I get the data that gets at my questions? Will my research fall flat on its face? I’m happy to say that I think my fears are dissipating. What I’m discovering is that my enjoyment of conversation is holding me in good stead as an interviewer. I’m sure my technique could use a lot of improvement, but as I’ve listened a couple times to each of my first two pilot interviews, I’ve found that the data is covering my questions and even in just three interviews I’m getting the sense that patterns I hadn’t anticipated will emerge. Each interview I’ve done has built on my previous one and the guide I’m using changes a bit each time. The direction one interview takes actually helps you ask better questions in subsequent interviews.

I’ve always been the kind of guy who wants to know why things happen, how people feel about them, and I feel that the experiences we have can tell us a lot about how to do things better. It’s been a large part of my work to this point as I build and design web sites and applications and I’m beginning to think that moving my career in more social research directions will suit me. Truth is, web usability and user experience research tends to be ethnographic in nature and I could really see qualitative research becoming more and more important to me personally and professionally.

I won’t get to the in-depth analysis until after all seven interviews are complete. In addition to the transcripts that I have by mid-January, there’s a fair bit of BCIT documentation I’ll have to acquire for both background and triangulation purposes. I may even need to look at a little more data collection, but I’m not sure yet.

What I am fairly certain of now, though, which I wasn’t as recently as a month ago, is that I will successfully complete this thing and that I will get what I expected out of the process. I’ll have a piece of research of which I’ll be proud, I’ll be better at analysis, I’ll be better at research and I’ll be a better writer. I’m pretty sure that’s what graduate studies are all about.

Olympic indoctrination a matter of perspective

James — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:04:39 +0000

The dust-up about The Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) providing an Olympics protest workshop for a local of the British Columbia Teacher’s Federation (BCTF) began at the end of last week. I’m not big on political statements being made to children by teachers in classrooms, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily going on here. A look around the various web sites associated with this group certainly shows some political rhetoric, but also a lot of information focused on thinking critically about the effects of the Olympics, historically and in Vancouver 2010 specifically.

The ORN also suggests that they could come in and do workshops for students at the secondary level. I’d be hesitant to go there as I think there are some real risks about rhetorical opinion being presented as fact, and we’ve already had enough broken financial promises about the Olympics from government. I’d want to make sure that what the ORN was offering students directly was prepared with appropriate levels of research, and was presented in accordance with prescribed curriculum and in a way that allowed students to make informed decisions for themselves. What I’m focusing on here is the workshop for teachers.

Since it was reported that this workshop was to take place in Lord Strathcona Elementary on October 28th, the event has been moved to SFU Harbour Centre, due to media coverage and the reaction of Lord Strathcona PAC chair, Angelia Ellis. According to an article by reporter John Colebourn in the October 13 Vancouver Province, all parties are distancing themselves from each other and the event is now being held off school grounds. In my mind, the debate ends there, as teachers can attend anything they like on their own time and they’ve likely heard more political rhetoric at the average BCTF AGM, than they will at this workshop.

A little balance

… on this issue might be a good idea. News1130’s radio spot about it was far more circumspect:

A local with the B.C. Teachers Federation, the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers Association, is encouraging an event later this month called Teaching 2010 Resistance. It’s meant to help teachers raise critical questions about the Olympics by considering issues like homelessness and poverty.

However, Colebourn’s article veered dangerously close to editorial rather than journalism when he used words like “radical” twice, and “zealots” to describe the ORN. Zealots they may be, but wouldn’t a journalist (as opposed to an editorialist) leave labels like those to the reader to apply? Oddly enough, he gives many more column lines to PAC chair Ellis, Solicitor General Kash Heed and even Premier Gordon Campbell to support his bias, than he does to ORN member Marla Renn in providing the other side of the story. If supporting quotes were going to be solicited, then how about finding some from 2010 Olympic Games Watch or the Impact on Communities Coalition (IOCC) for a bit more balance?

The cheerleading that the major media are doing on the Olympics is nothing new, and an article like this might as well have been written by Vanoc, themselves. However, what I don’t understand is the article’s underlying idea that naysayers are necessarily zealots, or that since the Olympics are here in four months, no critical analysis or debate about the social and economic effects of the games should make its way into classrooms. Don’t we want children to grow up questioning the world around them and trying to understand at more than a surface level? Do we want them blindly accepting government promotion as fact, without something a little deeper? The ORN is probably guilty of no worse zealotry than anyone on the government or Vanoc side of the equation.

PAC chair Ellis was mostly concerned about the lack of communication and that the workshop was to happen in the school without official permission, and I can understand that concern. However, what about the traveling photo ops going to elementary schools all over the place in the guise of educational programs, with Olympic mascot costumed actors, ensuring that all school kids will have a glowing mental image of something that’s not so cut and dried? Apparently, according to Ellis government funded propaganda is just fine, but opposing viewpoints have no place in the minds of impressionable children:

With the 2010 Olympics so close, nothing anti-Olympic should be happening at the school …. Critical thinking is one thing, but not if it’s going to be a political platform.

The difference, of course, is that the photo ops are all part of Vanoc’s education programs; no fewer than 27 separate educational promotion opportunities, funded by your tax dollars and mine. There is no shortage of edutainment supplies and lesson plans, with none of it seeming to ask critical questions. I won’t even go into the notion that, while some of the material rightly promotes the healthy living effects of sport, this runs in stark contrast to the BC provincial government’s continual cutting of physical education programs, including mandating 80 hours of exercise as a graduation requirement but not funding it in school.

Where’s the real concern?

While Colebourn’s article also suggests that the local of the BCTF is now distancing themselves from the ORN, the quotes he used simply clarify that media reports that the two groups were associated were inaccurate. In other words there was never something for the BCTF local to be distanced from. The ORN’s Marla Renn also confirms that the two groups have never been associated.

BC Premier Gordon Campbell feels that children shouldn’t be pawns in the debate … that is, unless it’s at the hands of government classroom edutainment:

I don’t think it was right taking all the enthusiasm for the Games away from the children.

Let’s not forget that the enthusiasm Campbell refers to is, in part, whipped up by the government in the first place in using the classroom for their own biased information.

What’s not clear is what actually had everyone up in arms. There’s a lot of stuff on the Teach2010 web site and some of it undoubtedly draws a very long bow, like connecting the racial issues associated with the 1936 Berlin Olympics with what the ORN perceive as present-day aboriginal racial issues. Most of it is suggestive of lessons and materials that teachers can target at secondary children. Of the couple dozens links from the main page, only one is focused on primary school aged children. Maybe, with the negative media coverage, some previously available material was taken down, but if not, then the comments of Solicitor General Heed seem to draw an equally long bow:

You know, encouraging teachers to recruit kids to break the law, to commit acts of vandalism, or to occupy private property, you know even to the extent of sabotaging children’s food, is absolutely and completely unacceptable.

Heed may have seen some material I haven’t, but vandalism and food sabotage doesn’t seem to be part of the Teach2010 agenda. Frankly, even if that kind of material is part of the workshop for teachers, let’s have a little trust in them to not only speak out against it, but to certainly not present it to school kids.

Engage kids on what really matters

As a fan of international athletic competition, I hope to see some great events on TV. As a taxpayer who accepts that the Olympics are coming in four months, I hope they succeed financially so that any debt associated with them does not get passed on to my kids. As a concerned citizen, I have many questions. Particularly when we continually watch the Campbell government do the following in the name of the games:

continue to downplay homelessness and drug problems in downtown Vancouver and other communities while throwing tons of cash at the games;
run a provincial deficit that could hit close to $3 billion and a ‘published’ games deficit of $60 million;
cut grants and programs in light of the provincial deficit;
let Vanoc run out of money while paying up to $30 million in staff bonuses;
leave Vancouver taxpayers at the whim of market forces to deal with athlete’s village cost overruns.

Financial questions alone should be cause for grave concern and the next generation of citizens shouldn’t be sheltered from as many perspectives as possible in considering their government and what something like the Olympics may actually cost us, financially and socially.

When delivery method and subject matter are the same

Epic fail of the day, Microsoft style

James — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:57:47 +0000

I love opening files sent around work in our Windows-centric environment. In particular, when I think of the Microsoft promise to embrace standards and then see these kinds of dialogue boxes, I get shivers up and down my spine. Hey Microsoft, if you’re gonna port your crappy software over to other operating systems, the level of suck should be the same, not a little extra for good measure.

No related posts.

250,000 gainers can’t be wrong

James — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:09:28 +0000

Ewan McGregor - cheeky devil?

Imagine my amazement. In Sunday’s Vancouver Province I saw a double-page spread that said I could get a free sample of the “Rolls Royce of male enlargement.” Say no more and sign me up.

What really caught my eye was the ad, pictured at left, showing a curious looking Ewan McGregor with the headline beside it, “What Celebrities Had To Say!” If this thing is endorsed by Ewan, how can I go wrong? It’s also “already tested with success by GQ Magazine” so it must be for real.

The JesExtender is apparently the latest in a slew of penis stretching devices. Upon reading the tiny details, Ewan was actually among three guests on the same UK show in which this device was also featured. What, you mean this isn’t a real endorsement? A major motion picture star at the height of his career isn’t coming out in support of a set of penis stretching weights? The celebs were apparently quoted as saying they’d try it if they needed it. So what if one of them was also Michelle Pfeiffer. Maybe it stretches other stuff too.

According to the ad, “the numbers are impressive” …

Backed by more than 1200 doctors, scientific studies, the FDA, Health Canada, and already tested with success by more than 250,000 people in 78 country … [sic]

Hell, even with only an implied or ‘flaccid’ endorsement from Ewan or Michelle, with other endorsements like these, I really can’t go wrong.

The jaws of life?

And then I saw it, at the very end of the article, and I decided I’d better forego this purchase for now. The box, pictured at right, has a number of different sized weights, two pieces of rubber tubing and a couple of pieces of plastic that look kind of like a pair of jaws. While the low introductory price of $79.95 is still damned enticing, and the offer of a free set of comfort pads and unlimited VIP access to a forum for the exchange of ‘tips’ with other men around the world suffering a similar affliction only sweetens the deal, I’m just not ready to strap weighted plastic jaws onto my tiny willie just yet.

Maybe if Michelle Pfeiffer also came with the package, I’d have to reconsider.

No related posts.

Getting social media for CRM right

James — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:30:35 +0000

How do you use social media for CRM?

This issue has been percolating just under my skin for a while now. I often hear it said where I work that we still haven’t figured out how to use social media and I’d guess that’s probably true of many places. I think, though, that most folks who are charged with figuring out how to use social media to their advantage are simply looking at it the wrong way.

Often, it’s about setting up Facebook groups or fan pages, or making sure their organization is tweeting announcements from corporate accounts. Some build networks to try and drive traffic to their web sites. I’m not saying any of these efforts is necessarily wrong. Ineffective for the most part? Yes. If, to you, social media is about getting followers, becoming a guru or simply driving traffic to another site, it’s likely not going to be effective for long-term benefit.

External social networks like Twitter and Facebook allow limited conversations but not ones which are contextually centered on your business or organization. In truth they are more about broadcast than social. Try having a real conversation with someone on Twitter sometime. It’s not impossible, but support and issue resolution will likely need to move to another forum to be completed. A good conversation happens because there’s a two-way dialogue and it’s at least somewhat intimate.

Where should you do it?

I’d argue that the best social media CRM implementations happen right on your own interactive properties. Where do your constituents interact with you? If I’ve got an issue with a product or service, I usually start by conducting a web search, then refining it down to a search in a knowledge base or FAQ at the site of the organization of interest to me. An external social network is not a comfortable or intimate enough environment for this. Plus, it may just be a personal preference, but I don’t follow corporate tweets and I don’t join corporate Facebook groups or pages. Frankly, I update Facebook through ping.fm or another service and rarely directly visit the site any more.

A colleague recently recounted an experience in which his son was purchasing something from a site halfway around the world. He had a question that couldn’t be answered without some help, and was very impressed when he could have a live chat with a customer service representative via an on-page box. He had to input his name and issue and wait in a short queue. The question was answered quickly and the purchase completed. By contrast, think about the same situation but one where the customer is forced to leave a voice message or send an email after hours and wait a few days or longer, or sometimes not receive a response at all. The opportunity is lost and the customer has likely gone to a competitor.

Think about the Amazon.com model. Not only can users review books and publish wish-lists for their purchases, but reviews can then be subject to ratings. The system continually provides more and more information of relevance to a potential customer within Amazon’s own context, not via external networks. While a post-secondary institution like the one where I work is hesitant to allow customer reviews of courses for myriad reasons, opening your organization up to external feedback and publishing relevant information to assist potential customers in their decision-making process will continue to become increasingly important in order to compete.

How should you do it?

ReadWriteWeb has some solid thoughts on how you need to think about a social media CRM strategy. While I still think the features need to be part of what you do on the web, IBM’s thinking is to extend an external network like Facebook to connect students and mentors in a more meaningful way:

“Facebook and MySpace are great places for social networking, but they don’t really have a goal. They don’t make the kind of connections you need to move forward,” Mr. Vogt said. “This platform is helping students say, Here are my ideas, and IBM is saying, Come work with us and we’ll help you.”

Even if you think I’m wrong and an external network is your solution, you’ve still got to choose the right one to reach your audience. A big chunk of BCIT’s student demographic is older and looking at applied skills to improve their job prospects or is upgrading, mid-career. Twitter might reach some of that target for push communications, but not so much for a traditional post-secondary trying to reach mostly students who are still in high school:

In June 2009, only 16 percent of Twitter.com website users were under the age of 25. Bear in mind persons under 25 make up nearly one quarter of the active US Internet universe, which means that Twitter.com effectively under-indexes on the youth market by 36 percent.

What about employee collaboration?

Intel published a white paper documenting their approach to developing a social computing intranet strategy. They did wide consultation across the enterprise and engaged with key stakeholders, developed usage policies upfront, performed user and proof-of-concept testing and outlined a solid architecture and phased approach to rollout. In short, they took a user-centred design philosophy and set measurable goals and objectives. This is something that any organization should do whether their implementation is internally or customer focused.

Based on my own experience at large organizations, the measurable objectives are often missing. The desire to use a cool tool often seems to trump a problem-solving approach, where the right tool is used to solve a business problem. Post-secondary institutions, in particular, are caught between the desire to leverage the web more effectively for employee productivity, while they grapple internally with labyrinthine policies and rules and red herring privacy concerns about how employees use web technologies.

Perhaps I’ll leave the last word on social media on intranets to Jakob Nielsen’s findings:

Underground efforts yield big results. Companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, and then sanctioning them within the enterprise.

Frontline workers are driving the vision. Often, senior managers aren’t open to the possibilities for enterprise 2.0 innovation because they’re not actively using these tools outside of work. Indeed, many senior managers still consider such tools as something their kids do. One of the dirty secrets of enterprise 2.0 is that you don’t have to teach or convince younger workers to use these tools; they expect them and integrate them as easily into their work lives as they do in their personal lives.

Communities are self-policing. When left to their own devices, communities police themselves, leaving very little need for tight organizational control. And such peer-to-peer policing is often more effective than a big brother approach. Companies that we studied said abuse was rare in their communities.

Business need is the big driver. Although our report discusses specific tools (blogs, wikis, and such), enterprise 2.0’s power is not about tools, it’s about the communication shift that those tools enable.

Organizations must cede power. Using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with customers has taught many companies that they can no longer control the message. This also rings true when using Web 2.0 tools for internal communication. Companies that once held to a command-and-control paradigm for corporate messaging are finding it hard to maintain that stance.

Clearing cobwebs and groinal eggplants

James — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:06:29 +0000

So, when I finally sit down to write my first journal entry in more than a month, what do I write about? Why, my recent sports hernia operation, of course – and getting out of holiday mode and back to job work and thesis work. Truth is, I’ve got two or three partially written posts floating around, but they need more time. I just couldn’t bring myself to write over the past few weeks due to a number of issues, so I’ll just do some reflective personal catching up, starting with my gut.

Puffy abs

This past Monday, I finally had surgery which has been a long time coming. I felt the first lower abdominal pop close to a year and a half ago now on a tempo run, and have been through a complete 2008 cessation of my racing and ultimate seasons and a reduced and less effective version for 2009. After countless examinations, x-rays, physio sessions and running with lower abdominal and groin discomfort for a long time, I had sports hernia surgery Monday. The illustration at left shows a typical sports hernia location, though what I ended up with a day after the surgery was not dissimilar to a small eggplant jutting out of my lower abdomen with a two inch incision on top. The swelling and bruising is finally reducing and I’ve been able to stop taking the Tylenol 3s (thankfully, as pain is not the only thing they stop). I would post a photo, but there’s no way to not make it pornographic.

The surgeon actually found two weaknesses/ruptures and dealt with them both by placing the obligatory mesh patches (but not these ones) across them. I’ll spend the next week or so still only walking and will move to light cycling the week after, with very light short jogging the week after that. I should be mostly back to normal within about another 5-6 weeks. Only then will I really know if the surgery was effective. There are no guarantees but it works about 85% of the time. And, truth be told, the surgery itself was a breeze. 30 minutes on the table with a sedative and local anesthetic. I was drinking coffee 3 hours after they began cutting me open.

Since they don’t really know what causes sports hernias (and they aren’t actual hernias either), I’m lucky enough to be taking part in a study examining the role the hip may play in their cause. I feel there is some connection because for some time before I felt the full rupture in the abs, I was having some hip problems. I had an MRI the day before the surgery and should get some idea if anything is going on in my hip, along with whatever they publish as a result of the study. By the way … I think the experience of the MRI was worse than the surgery. Never had one before and not in a big rush to have one again.

Other distractions

While I just finished three weeks vacation, you’d not really know it. I spent a good chunk of the time repainting all room and closet doors in my home … in our garage, in the middle of the worst heat wave Vancouver has ever had.

Between painting days were car shopping days and plunked down in the middle of it all was a four day stay at the Galiano Inn for a very quiet getaway. A beautiful room and stellar view was a little marred on the last evening by a sub-par meal, but it was a really beautiful space to unwind and my wife had a wonderful spa treatment.

Back to the grind

After three and a half weeks away from work, it can be a bit of a challenge to get your clock back into early weekday rising and following someone else’s schedule. While I’ve been doing edits here and there on my thesis proposal, this ‘mostly ready’ document still needs a few tweaks and the nod from both my supervisor and the program head, before I get into ethical review processes at both RRU and BCIT in September.

I feel kind of guilty because, while I’ll be on my own through the next 9-10 months in completing my thesis, this summer the cohort in my program (the rest of whom chose more coursework and a smaller project) have been going straight through their second residency and moving into the remaining four courses before undertaking their 6 credit research project. Later on I’m sure the guilt will be assuaged, when I’m so busy I can hardly see.

If doing the thesis weren’t enough for the next while, I’ll be moving into a slightly different role – and desk – at work, and I can already see four or five significant projects beginning to pile up to hold me over well past Christmas.

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