Gamification Ethics (by Gabe Zichermann) (Photo credit: Adam Crowe)

non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems. I have been thinking about this in terms of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations and what really keeps people interested in what they do.

I fully believe that the singularly best way to have someone’s full attention in a project or process is to hook into that person’s passion for the project, process, idea or effort. This, as everyone knows, is not only not easy, but difficult to sustain. It can be easy to start well and then, once the excitement becomes the routine, passion can back off.

This is normal. Think about a romance. In many romantic relationships (Hollywood’s presentations exempted for lack of grounding in reality…) the initial meetings, conversations, experiences shared, etc. fire the imagination and leave you in a haze of emotion. As the relationship matures, the fire doesn’t necessarily go out (hopefully) but the fires become more steady and sustainable. With care and tending, the relationship grows, matures and moves into new stages that become even more fruitful and life-satisfying. Even with this construct, it’s hard work, and the nature of the intrinsic drive shifts during the lifetime of the relationship.

Take this framework and transpose it onto the workplace (shifting back to the earlier example occasionally). There are some interesting uses of gamification for learning. Microsoft used a game called Ribbon Hero as an add-on to their Office suite to help their users learn how to use it more effectively. Untold numbers of fitness apps for mobile devices use gamification to help people diet, maintain workout routines, stop smoking and a number of other self-improvement projects. Going back further, I remember clearly getting gold stars for completing book lists in reading in elementary school. The ideas of reputation and recognition are implicit in these badges, stars, etc.

So, why does this bother me? There are many discussions across the enterprise about how to increase employee engagement. Many are in earnest and realize that the problem is both complex and highly personal. It’s complex because, well, it involves human beings and we are a fundamentally complex lot. It is highly personal for much the same reason. Each of us is an absolute individual, complex in our motivations and passions, and to finely tune a solution to engaging each of us in our work requires a deeper understanding of each individual.

The problem here is that this does not scale in an enterprise sense. The days of having a large enough staff to effectively work through these problems are long gone. The bulk of the people left after the numerous downsizing, right-sizing, and re-organizing exercises of the past decades are stretched beyond where they feel they can enjoy what they do. In the words of Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”  Sorry…..no energy left for that. And THAT is the energy that passion provides, so this is a problem.

The passions that a person brings to work are integral to that person’s drive to discover and realize meaning in what they do.  Since those of us in the Western world so tightly identify ourselves with what we do, we need to align the meaning of what we do closely to the deeper personal meaning of who we are.  This brings up another term that’s coming into vogue in business - mindfulness (which is the topic of an entirely different post).

There is a lot left to speak of. The point of this post, however, is that gamification is worth examining very closely, and any move to use these tools and techniques to manipulate is suspect.

Related articles

• Soviet gamification (kmjn.org)
• From Gamification to Shamification (bigthink.com)
• Gamification – Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Rewards (slideshare.net)

2012_09_17 Community Management IMG_0841 (Photo credit: joelogon)

OK, so I’m stepping away from the fire hose for a moment. I’m today wrapping up, if that even makes sense when you’re on the road, week #5 in my new gig as Senior Community Manager at SDL. Collecting and prioritizing my thoughts and experiences will likely take some time, if only because so many of them do not categorize very simply.

I’m very impressed by how the company treats its people so far. My team is a new one, with a companywide-and-beyond focus (it could be argued that that’s way too big to actually be called a “focus”, but I digress…..) and the work we’ve been given is a dizzying mix of strategic, consultative, tactical and, at a personal workflow level, nit-picky. It’s a good mix and stretches all parts of the gray matter. Others across the company have welcomed us and we’ve dived into projects, processes and events with an inclusiveness that kind of assumes more background knowledge of those projects, processes and events than we might have, but my experience is that we have access to whatever we need to get up to speed, which is nice. No secrets, no land mines to uncover later, etc.

The members of my team have divergent and deep talents, with personalities to match, but the mix works well. Lots of creativity and ‘creative tension’ with resulting collaboration. Learning to work with each other has been accelerated by the light speed pace and pressure under which we’ve had to design, create and deliver our first big Phase One: training and content collateral for our colleagues across the company around social media (I know that sounds broad, but the training goes deep enough to get everyone on the same page, using the same definitions, etc.), along with targeted mentoring and deep dives for certain individuals and some who are already pretty savvy on some platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter, but want to get to specific activities that will help them target specific business and professional goals they have.

Like any large-ish, globally dispersed company, opening eyes to the existence of and personal/professional/business value of community, collaboration and the processes, activities and traits/habits of social media is a kind of awakening process. I call it self-realization…that is, “I AM already part of a community…I just may not have been aware of it due to my regular focus on ‘getting my stuff done’”.

It is my belief that a key component at the beginning of this self-realization is face-to-face, ‘skin-in-the-game’ community management. Hence my travels these first few weeks (Seattle, Britain, Boston, the Netherlands, Los Angeles, etc.). Not only do I get to assist in the delivery of the training and mentoring along with my colleagues, but I get to meet, listen and confer with members of this community. I get to discover their concerns, strengths, desires, goals, etc. as well as see pictures of their children, cats, vacations, and take part in, shall we say, ‘lively’ dinners at which I’ve had more fun than I’ve had in quite a while! Establishing the connections and the beginnings of relationships are central to building trust, and these travels and meetings afford me the opportunity.

Gathering these threads and beginning to weave them into a community with diverse challenges, goals, personalities and work styles is where I am now. It’s one of the most creative encounters I’ve ever had the chance to meet. I will share more the further I go along the journey.

Related articles

• Building a community management centre of excellence (slideshare.net)
• The 4 Pillars Of Community Management (forbes.com)

Trust (Photo credit: vagawi )

Trust is a treasure that is hard-won and very easy to lose.  This goes double for relationships online. One of the foundations of trust is doing what you say you will do.  A classic test of trust is the answer of “I’ll get back to you…” to almost any question.

The unusual and rather neat thing about this kind of response is that the answer you return with can actually be pretty bad news.  No one wants bad news, of course, but the fact that you returned with an answer is the point of trust, not what the actual answer was (of course, if the answer is a blatant lie, that’s another matter, but that’s also a another post…).  In my life online as a community manager, I found many times that I could return with an answer that was not what the community member wanted to hear, but she appreciated the fact that I was authentic and human, telling the truth.  The conversation then might go on to find work-arounds, stop-gap fixes, or launch off into a tangentially related area that ends up being much more valuable to us and the rest of the community following along on the thread.

If you wish to go even further in building trust, state a deadline for the answer.  You might not even HAVE an answer yet, but if you say that you will return with something by Thursday, and then show up Thursday with the answer “I still don’t have a good answer for you, but will check back with you next Tuesday again, or sooner if I get the answer before then.”

See what you’re doing?  You’re actually treating the other person as you would want to be treated in a similar scenario….with respect, with a sense of urgency, as if their problem was your problem.  You are creating a bond that can withstand a lot of things.

This is important in any relationship, as I mentioned, but in a community it is bedrock.  A vibrant community worth being part of is full of all kinds of people, but the people that really want to be there value their relationships with others in the community, and find intrinsic value in belonging, participating and contributing.

My communities (Photo credit: steven w)

I was asked a really great question recently: what is a successful community manager?

I have a pretty well-formed idea of the answer, but had never articulated it before.  My first reaction was to stay away from any kind of description of the community manager him/herself. I feel that a successful community manager is evidenced by the community they work with and for.

Is the community:

Growing - There are a lot of kinds of members of communities. Since these a people I’m talking about, you have to keep in mind the personality types and the introvert/extrovert parts of everyone.  But if the platform for participation, listening and conversation is open, honest and respectful (oh, and interesting….), the opportunity for each member to contribute or not according to their comfort, expertise and passions is not a limiting factor.  Growth (what I like to call organic growth) may be slow or not, but if the majority of the members return regularly and evolve into greater engagement, the community will meet that measure of success.

Broad and deep - Depending on what the focus of your community is, you will still have the “drive-by” member who just visits once to see what’s going on all the way to the members who are so passionate and involved that they seem to spend much of their time in the community areas, conversing, answering questions, adding content and knowledge, guidance and best practice.  There are a lot of folks in between but you get my drift.  The more prolific members may swap in and out over time, and new “drive-byes” start spending more time.

Possessive of an identity that becomes more internalized all the time – Like any gathering of people around a product or a hobby or a cause, they tend to start out as a number of people who are together to figure out what they really have in common.  Over time, as trust and relationships are built and become more solid, the group will begin to see itself as a community and the identity will become more tangible.

Helpful – A hallmark of a healthy community is the helpfulness of its members to each other and to any visitor who shows up needing assistance, information, or a place to tell a story that is apropos.

Focused – Communities tend to assemble around something: a product or service, a pastime, a sport, a cause, a belief and so on. There will likely be areas of the community online that are designed for off-topic conversations, but the body of the community orbits around its reason for being.

Providing real value to its members – Members come back because the appreciate what they can give and get within the community.  They refer others to the community if they feel that doing so will help the person in some way, and add more body, so to speak, to the community.

Providing real value to the community host – There are a LOT of different kinds of communities.  Those that are hosted by a company or a non-profit of some kind (government agencies fall in that category…) look for communities to provide different kinds of value, depending on the host.  Some companies have communities around customer support, staying current of new offerings and upcoming goodies, feedback into the product development process, and so on.  Non-profits have a enormous number of things that they find of value in their communities….rallying support, fund-raising, awareness-raising, conversation and discussion of topics and passions, and many other.  If some kind of organization hosts a community, they are looking to gain something from the effort and resources, even if it is “merely” validation.

I’m sure there are other nodes to add to this description of a successful community manager, but this what I came up with, once given the chance to formulate a little more cohesive answer.  If you have something to add, please do.  There are a lot facets to a successful community manager.

English: Alarm clock (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like every other breathing human being, my life is a churning dynamo of ups, downs, and decided neutrals (better know as the mundane).  As I slowly gain greater sense of awareness of the moment and the fleeting aspect of each of these moments, I am also becoming more aware of the “I” that can look at the “me” that is going through all of the changes taking places and, frankly, getting its chain yanked regularly and, usually, suddenly.  The challenge is to reside ever more in the observer “I” and not let the roller coaster of “me’s” experience drive me.

How does this manifest itself in everyday?  Consider this short episode:

You wake up when the alarm goes off….you HATE the alarm.  You hit the snooze button for a few more moments of rest….but now your mind has started to shake itself awake and you have begun allowing bits and pieces of the upcoming day to sift into your consciousness, like:

• You have ANOTHER sinus headache this morning (the third this week).
• You wonder if you can get away wearing the almost same outfit to work that you wore last Tuesday, or if anyone will notice.
• You remember what you planned to have to eat this morning, and are not thrilled….
• A short glance out the window shows that the weather is likely to be nice today….
• You have a milestone report due today for your manager and, while it is mostly done, you’re not looking forward to having to take a chunk to time this morning to finish it up…plus some of the information you have to pass on in that report is not entirely GOOD news…
• Then there’s….

BUZZ! There’s that rotten alarm again….well, you get the idea.  Your feelings and attention are all over the place.

I’m reading a book by Anthony De Mello entitled “Awareness“. In this book De Mello discusses the challenges of stepping into the “I” and not allowing the passion of the moment to drive who you are or what you do.  He talks about ways to observe this in yourself and how NOT to be aware, as well.  I highly recommend this work for anyone who wishes to become untethered from the reactionary aspect of life.

Slowly I am coming to accept the “this, too, shall pass” awareness of “I” and “me”.  I’m not divorced from my feelings.  Far from it.  I am moving away from letting those feelings drive me and drive how I am with others, and this is a very good thing.

 (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

There is a justifiable lament in the air. It concerns the lack of actual conversation taking place between people. In the online world a large portion of our conversation has devolved into one-click LIKEs or, in the case of LinkedIn, Endorsements.  No context.  No qualification.  No degree. No discussion.  Either you LIKE/Endorse or you don’t.  Life isn’t like that, by and large.

Unless the extra effort is made to treat online interactivity with others as if it were more like meeting face-to-face and less like registering a momentary or long-standing opinion or belief, we cannot really get at the WHY of our thoughts, feelings and beliefs.  I’m suffering from this disease as much as anyone.  So much revolves around convenience and time constraints, real or perceived.  It is SO MUCH EASIER to register a LIKE than add a full fledged thought by way of a comment.  It takes so much less time to just click a box full of Endorsements for someone than write a meaningful recommendation.  Plus, none of this completely binary…sometimes I do comment and write a recommendation.  What would our social discourse be like if I pushed myself to engage just a little bit more?  Comment on more great or thoughtful blog posts rather than add a “+1″ or “-1″?  Come back to online discussions and carry on the conversation even further, rather post once and walk away? Say, how about walk away from the keyboard and have lunch with some folks and talk?  Bring up deeper topics than the weather, my new phone, what the kids are doing or what I watched on the tube?

And, even more important, listen.  Actually pay attention to the other person, and not spend the time planning my clever retort?  Listen a make an attempt to understand.  We don’t live in a black and white world.  There is the widest and deepest spectrum of thought making up who we are and what we think and believe.  Exult in it!  Listen to it and take part….people are actually pretty cool.

Illustration by John Tenniel of the Red Queen lecturing Alice for Lewis Carroll’s “Through The Looking Glass” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have been in a number of conversations lately where my colleagues and friends are grappling with staying on top of their game, so to speak, both online and in the office.  Not only are we coping with the well-known information overload, but we have the desire to improve, deepen and expand our skills, knowledge and expertise.  Each of us is evolving a methodology to accomplish this, but it changes a lot and, with so much change, it can be difficult to feel like you’re really progressing.  It feels so much like the Red Queen‘s comment in Lewis Carroll‘s Through The Looking-Glass : “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

So how am I using social media, in a broad sense, to keep up?  My daily routine changes a bit every day, but generally I check in on my professional organizations’ Facebook pages and take part in the conversations.  I’m starting to get more engaged in some LinkedIn groups, but I have yet to pare down the groups that I feel I can make a meaningful contribution, so I am still mostly lurking.  Following Twitter is a bit like dipping your hand in a flooding river, but I check it about once a day to see if there is anything that I find particularly of interest.  I will also tweet any worthwhile articles and their links.

My work on this blog is not consistent enough for my tastes, but I’m working on that.  My biggest challenge here continues to be the feeling that I need to spend a great deal of time honing and crafting a post.  Awhile back I read Dan Pressfield’s inspiring book “Do The Work” and I may reread it.  It helps me to overcome what he calls The Resistance. In fact this post is part of this effort on my part.

I visit a number of technology news sites and blogs every day to stay current, learn something new and maybe make a comment or two.  As a communicator, community manager and social media professional, following the thought leaders and contributing to the conversation is important, and actually kind of fun.  I have to be careful here, as it would be very easy to get lost in the conversation and then the morning is shot, so I limit myself.

On the more formal professional development side, I have taken courses, completed an advanced degree, and am presently looking into stretching my competency even more into instructional systems.  I feel that the rigor that the instructional community has demonstrated, as well as the new work around ways of learning and measuring learning, apply widely to many other areas of working with and helping people.  I wish to discover how this body of knowledge and practice may evolve and perhaps contribute to that.  I have always held to the tenet that, although online, it is still all about people, so understanding people can only help in any kind of relationship or community work, both online and offline.

That’s the snapshot of where I am today.  Consider what you want to accomplish and how you might plan for it, realizing it will grow and change….still, better to make mid-course corrections than drift.

Lees hier hoe je een MOOC kunt opzetten! Massive Open Online Courses deel 1 door Inge de Waard http://t.co/RbLAijLd @Ignatia (Photo credit: Trendmatcher)

I’ve noted a sea change in education and learning about which there has been quite a bit of virtual ink spilled.  The phenomenon known as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) has been added to the education lexicon, much to the joy of futurists, learners everywhere, and to the consternation of a number of university and college administrators.  Like most things, I can see the light and the dark, along with the difficult.

While the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and several others have been posted a body of free post-secondary courseware content on the Internet for some time, and the idea of having access to free learning/information on the Internet can be considered a basic tenet, building and implementing an instructional model that actually works has taken time.  While online learning has been taking place, there just hadn’t been a tipping point at which it took off for a number of reasons:

• The need for basic Digital literacy
• Broadest possible access to the technology needed to participate globally
• A large enough base of learners for whom digital learning is not foreign (or at least less of a stretch for their learning styles).
• …there are a lot more, but you get the idea.

A number of large and prestigious universities worldwide are adding select courses to the catalogs of the platforms for MOOCs (a couple of them are Coursera and Udacity).  Some are really excited about it, some are “trying it out” and others are publishing a course or two because they don’t wish to be left behind.

There is a lot of good to be gained by this effort and working to improve the success of learning transfer in these scenarios can only help learners.  There’s something about this that jumped out at me about MOOCs that is the real point of this post.

How do you measure the actual learning transfer in a way that is recognized in such a way that an employer can know that the success is real?

I used to work at Microsoft in the Microsoft Learning business unit and one of the top goals was to create both professional certifications that are valid and recognized by employers, and the learning materials (courseware, books, e-learning) that would help a learner be successful in attaining that certification.  So the goal here was to help someone either get a job or improve in the job she or he had in a way that was measurable.  Microsoft is not the only technology company to this, obviously.  Cisco, Oracle, Adobe and several others have certifications that validate expertise and knowledge.

So, how could this work for MOOCs?  The institutions involved are global, so this cannot be a U.S.-centric solution.  There are few, if any, real global educational attainment standards, although there are levels of value of degrees received from certain institutions.  I’m not going to digress into a cage match comparison of, say, an MBA from (1) Harvard University, (2) University of Michigan, (3) University of Sydney, and (4) Henley Business School.  But what if there were an international standard that could be used to create assessments and exams for MOOCs?  Anyone could then know that a learner had attained a certain mastery…..and the assessment could be optional for the learner.  That way, those who learn for the joy of learning can just lurk, learn and move on.  Having a validated assessment could help the rest of the learners with their goals.

Learning has several benefits for the learner. One is the gaining of knowledge and how that adds to the body of knowledge and wisdom each learner has, which can be used or enjoyed for what it is.  Another is utilizing that knowledge for the betterment of the learner’s life and the lives of those around her or him.  Lastly, there is demonstrating or showcasing the knowledge and expertise to an existing or potential employer to make a living, or maybe get a promotion.  Employers need a way to see the value that’s relatively easy.  In that way they can be easily assured that the learner really does know “it” (whatever “it” is, in this case…) and take appropriate action (hire, promote, reward, etc.).

English: Illustration of “A Mad Tea Party” in chapter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in which Alice meets the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse. Text on Hatter’s hat reads “In this style 10/6″. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just had a rather “Alice in Wonderland” experience.

I have pretty severe lower back problems and have a hard time finding exercises I can do that don’t further injure me.  I did some research and found that one thing I can do is work out on a recumbent stationary bike.  The only thing that hurts after a work out on that is my legs….

I did some online research and found a particularly well reviewed bike.  It was the same price on Amazon.com and at a local ‘big box’ sporting goods store, Dick’s Sporting Goods.  Since my workout room is on the second floor of my home (a long story…), I chose to shop at Dick’s, since they would not only deliver the bike but hoist it to my workout room and assemble it as well for no additional charge!  What a deal!

I went to Dick’s today to buy it and set up a delivery date and time.  The person waiting on me went back into the store room to check that they had one in stock.  She came back and told me that they didn’t but that she could just order me one and then they could deliver it, etc.  I approved…..The next person helping cam and told me that they didn’t have that item anywhere in their corporate region and, as a result, if I wanted it, they would have to do a special order which would include, in his words, “a hefty shipping and handling charge.”  Wanting to avoid that, I asked about buying the floor model.  It looked to be in great shape.  That’s when things got weird.

I was told that they couldn’t sell me the floor model.  They only sell floor models if they are on clearance and this item was a ‘regular’ item and not on clearance.  I vapor locked for a moment….and then asked, “This is a ‘regular’ item, but you don’t have any?”  “Yes” he replied.

Hence the Previously Unknown Definition of the word “Regular”.  I had been led to believe, in all my reading over the years that “regular” meant having a constant pattern or evenness, or being consistent.  Having an item on your sales floor that you don’t actually have for sale isn’t ‘regular’, although if you have redefined the word to include ‘unavailable’, I guess THAT would be consistent.

I’m going back to Amazon and will enlist the help of my terrific neighbor to get the thing onto the second floor after it arrives.  He’s a real ‘regular’ guy….

Mac App Store (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, this was a short series. My sixth month experiment as a PC-turned-Mac user is now complete….and I have a few things to report:

• I really liked the speed of booting up or restarting.
• The MacBook Air I used was extremely light, which was helpful given my lower back problems.  Years ago I had an ENORMOUS Lenovo ThinkPad which weighed a lot.  I liked the screen real estate, but had to take a deep breath to lift my computer bag in the morning….
• Firefox on the Mac is a speed demon, unlike on my Windows machines.  Chrome clocks in about even on either one for me.

• Operating system level software updates rate evenly, but I found the need to go to the Mac App Store to check for any updates to programs a little annoying.  Granted, on my Windows PC software developers have each instituted slightly different ways of keeping there apps updated, and there is great logic in having it located in one place (the App Store), but on my PC the programs are ‘responsible’ and go get their own updates….they don’t need me to check the App Store for them.
• Compared to the Full Meal Deal version of Microsoft Office, Office for Mac is, shall we say, lacking.
  • I never could get PowerPoint to work well.  I ended up doing most of my slide decks on my PC at home and then making sure they looked the same on the Mac before presenting.
  • Outlook was pathetic.  Mail management was nearly non-existent and simple things like creating a task or a meeting request from a mail were either missing or very well hidden.
  • Word and Excel worked OK.
  • No Visio or Project for Mac, both of which I needed very badly.
• The Mac is missing a few things that I take for granted:
  • Locking the screen – oh, come on!…”There’s an app for that?”  I had to purchase an app to get the simple ability to lock the screen when I stepped away from my desk.
  • Alt+Tab between different docs or instances of a browser is missing.  You can tab to or from Microsoft Word, but not between the six documents you have open.
  • I know that the way I manage files is old school/PC-centric.  But in the world of software and operating system choice, I should be able to do it the way I want.  I had to buy an app for that, too.
  • I never did find a blogging tool that works as well for me as Windows Live Writer.  The fact the Zemanta plug-in works in Live Writer clinches it for me.
  • Integrated security log-in.  I had to have a separate password for my Mac and another for company network access.  That’s just silly.  Integrated log-in has been around a VERY LONG TIME.
  • A couple (or even one…) more USB ports would be nice.  Considering the Mac Air has no CD/DVD drive and I required one of the USB ports for the Logitech unifying antenna for my keyboard and trackball, that left me hanging for external storage/back-up or other peripherals I might like to keep using without have to swap them
  • How about a decent docking station?

Those are all of the things I can really call out.  I’m glad to have had the chance to see what all the fuss is about.  The hardware is OK.  The OS….not my choice for productivity.  It is, however, very pretty.