The Power of Crowd and Place: A Conversation with Jeff Kirchick from SCVNGR. Jeff Kirchick is the Universities and Schools Specialist for SCVNGR, a gaming platform about doing challenges at places. I first met Jeff at the CASE Social Media Conference in San Francisco where he was organizing a “trek” for the conference. It was the most fun I’d had participating in extra-curricular activities at a conference. I asked Jeff to talk a little about how SCVNGR uses the power of “the crowd and place.” What is SCVNGR? SCVNGR is a mobile game about going places, doing challenges, earning points, and unlocking rewards. SCVNGR exists in two major ways: as a casual game, and as a themed experience. You could also take part in a SCVNGR trek – some type of themed experience that guides you to a set of places where you have to complete specific challenges as part of the game.
What makes SCVNGR different from other geo-location applications like Foursquare or Facebook Places? That being said, SCVNGR’s core unit is the challenge, not the check-in. Well, I have seen quite a bit! The Social Workplace — Where collaboration and community mean productivity. How to Help Students Use Social Media Effectively. Today more than ever, people are capable of publishing their thoughts to a vast audience. Comments, tweets, and status updates are ubiquitous and constant. However, are we really focusing on the quality of the message we are putting out there? Are we really providing useful information or are we just adding to the noise? Simply giving students a blogger ID and a twitter username is not enough.
Unless they are working to develop the skills necessary to effectively convey their message to a receptive audience, then the value of the message is diluted. If that same student stood at a podium with a microphone, yet has not prepared a speech and has trouble using proper grammar, this student's message could be lost on his or her audience. However, in this world of instant communication our students have the opportunity to engage and share with a global audience. Keep Standards High Educators must model effective writing and editing as well. More Is Not Always Better. Dangers of social groupthink: A case study in Enterprise 2.0, Social CRM and Social Business. For sure, there’s a lot of Goodness in social media—in our personal lives and business. But also a lot of issues to be worked out. That’s why two years ago I established a Social Business category on CustomerThink, and last year launched SocialBusinessOne, a community dedicated to the topic.
One of the downsides of social media is that it can accelerate getting locked into a point of view. This is counter intuitive, because you might expect that social media would make it easier to get multiple points of view. It can, but it depends on the group dynamics and the willingness of each of us as individuals to consider alternate ideas. Image Credit: philipcarter These days it’s all too easy to find and join a group that supports a certain mindset. Groupthink means members of a group try to avoid conflict and reach consensus without critical analysis. This is fine if your group is cheering for a sports team or maybe a political party. Trends in social thinking Dr. Source: Social Radar. How to Write a Social Media Policy. Why is having a social media policy in place so critical?
Because virtually 100% of companies are now involved in social media—whether they acknowledge it or not. Even without any formal plan to use social media, every organization with more than a handful of employees (and many under that benchmark) is present in social media because people are talking about them. If no one else is discussing a company, its employees almost certainly are. Half of all Americans are now members of at least one social network, and that figure rises to 67% for 25- to 34-year olds. Those employees may be accessing social networks away from work and using them primarily for sharing pictures of their kids or planning their weekend activities, but workplace topics are all but certain to come up from time to time; how many people do you know who never talk about their company outside of the workplace? Essential Topics for an Organizational Social Media Policy Introduction and Definitions Social Media Objectives.
Why Schools Need to Get Social, Local and Mobile. Troy Williams is Vice President and General Manager of Macmillan New Ventures, the global media company’s division that discovers, develops and markets innovative technologies that make learning more engaging. It’s not revelatory that the academic and the tech worlds move at vastly different paces. Education often lags behind when it comes tech adoption and integration. But there has never been a better time for innovation in the classroom. Although public school systems face drastic budget cuts and harsh public scrutiny, we continue to see the private sector (as well as government initiatives) invest in vibrant and disruptive education tech.
SEE ALSO: Why Education Needs to Get Its Game On While movements to incorporate ebooks and develop better Learning Management Systems (or LMS) are finally taking hold in higher education, more interesting (and potentially disruptive) are the emergent tech trends of Social, Local and Mobile – or what I like to call SoLoMo. Social Imagine: Location Mobile. How to Adopt a Social Media Lifestyle. While most small business owners are starting to realize that social media is a necessary part of any marketing strategy, as a social media coach, the question I get most often is how to add social media to a day that is already way too full.
For those of us working as solopreneurs or small business owners, it may, at times, feel like we are working virtually around the clock so when are we really supposed to tweet, post or blog? I’ll admit creating a social media plan that will stick is like starting an exercise program. You just have to take that leap and do it. You need to look at it, not as a series of social media tasks that need to be done during the day, but more of a lifestyle change that you need to incorporate into your entire way of thinking. 5 tips to make the social media lifestyle change Coffee and Twitter: For most of us, a morning cup of coffee is sacred. Without one, our day cannot get off to a good start. Connect: Authored by: Ali Goldfield See complete profile.