Foundations of the Social Age MOOC 2017 Q1: Unit 01 - Welcome to the Social Age

This post contains publicly available content and my responses to exercises from this unit of the course created by Julian Stodd and Sea Salt Learning.

As I started the course,  I decided that I would go for 100% completion of all exercises given that there was a leaderboard for completion and learner engagement. On the back of that decision, I decided to do the exercises using “wild mind writing”.

 

Course Introduction

“In the Social Age, everything has changed. The Social Contract between organisation and individual is fractured, the nature of work is changing, we’ve seen the democratisation of communication and the devolution of creativity, with the old structures of power and control replaced by socially moderated and dynamic forms of Social Leadership.

This is a course for those who wish to build a broad understanding of the Social Age. Each week we will explore all aspects of the Social Age, share our stories and experiences and consider what these changes mean for us and for our organisations. Each week we will write a co-created story of our shared thoughts, true to the dynamic nature of knowledge in the Social Age. Every story should be different, but we can learn and build upon each one to develop and deepen our understanding.”

Unit Introduction

“Our world has changed: many of the fundamentals that served us so well for so long evolving into new, uncertain and impermanent structures.

Technology is one of the most visible manifestations of this change, but the change is much more widespread than that: the underlying sociology and, possibly, psychology has changed too.

The notion of ‘a career’ is just a fiction, now owned by individuals rather than the organisations they temporarily work for, social authority subverts formal control and authenticity counts for more than your marketing budget.

The ‘Broadcast' model of communication has been trumped by the co-creation of stories that are themselves co-owned. Brand is controlled by the community. And we see new forms of power evolving, facilitated by technology, founded upon reputation, and effective in socially moderated spaces. Welcome to the Social Age. And this is just the start.

The introductory level is to provide an overview: a snapshot of the landscape as we see it around us and to start to think about how we can adapt our personal and organisational strategies and working practices to enable us to thrive.

What got us here will not get us the rest of the journey: organisations that fail to adapt will lose relevance and momentum. This is the reality of the Social Age: agility and a capability for dynamic change is essential.”

Overview (Video)

This is an introduction to the MOOC and an overview of what we will be exploring in the next 6 weeks.

My comment:

Simon (Fogg), 54, all my formal education was pre-internet, Business Studies/Mgt Science (Stirling Uni, Scotland) 1980-84, MBA by distance learning (paper in binders and cassette tapes, Strathclyde Uni, Glasgow, Scotland) mid-90s. A 32 year and counting IT career. Currently a business consultant/project manager etc delivering highly secure corporate web systems across the UK.
First encountered MOOCs in Q1 2013 and have now started and completed 20 MOOCs on various platforms. I received an Inspiration on FutureLearn award at the end of 2015 for my community formation work on G+ in parallel with the FL courses.
Currently in week 8 of a 12-week 5-timezone virtual Working Out Loud circle with a guy from Boulder, Colorado, 2 ladies from Barcelona, Spain, 1 from Abu Dhabi and 1 from Sydney, Australia. We are using Zoom (vid conferencing) and Slack (collaboration platform). Both those tools were new to us when we started and we were a group of total strangers when we started 8 weeks ago.
By taking this course, I am hoping to codify my experience of living on the internet and living in real life!

 

Introduction to the Levels in this MOOC (Video)

A quick tour through the 12 levels (units) in this MOOC.

My comment:

Looking forward to navigating my way through the course. I am usually a stickler for going in a linear fashion 1-12 but will deliberately NOT do that as encouraged by the course. Instead I will be starting on topics that are most related to my Working Out Loud Circle goal of creating more new content/comments on my blog, FB and Twitter than previously.

My response to someone else’s comment:

What Communities Am I A Part Of? I love tribes/ communities. I am in loads! I have listed a task to list mine out and analyse them against the following headings:-

• Name
• Description
• My Role
• Type (online/IRL)
• Platform (e.g. FB/Twitter)
• Number
• Frequency of Interaction
• Approach
• etc

Also see "So much to offer!" exercise in the Working Out Loud circle guide Week 5: Broaden your range of contributions (). And also reminded me of work we do as a church around oikos mapping where a person maps out their connections to other people/groups (including online/IRL).

A Guide to the Social Age

A broad overview of the Social Age and the topics we'll be thinking about over the next six weeks.

Article

How has the Social Age impacted on your organisation? Describe three ways.

My comment:

I suspect that one of the issues in commenting on questions on this course will be to stick to the specifics of the question and nail only that and not go wider as it will probably get covered later as the topics overlap.

So ...

There is so much further for the company I work for to go. We have barely started!

(1) We are an internet services company so we have always been an electronic office with shared directories and minimal paper.

(2) The company has started using Twitter and LinkedIn for parts of our sales and marketing operational processes.

(3) With key clients we have IM capabilities with the same tools.

I have been waiting for a replacement for email for literally a decade +. ESNs in their current form are not fit for my purpose which is a need for a collaboration platform that goes upstream to our suppliers and downstream to our end customers. I need the functionality I defined in my blog post of c10 years ago (http://srjf.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/what-would-email-look-like-if-it-were.html). I am not holding my breath.

1.4. Contribution: Your Social Age Challenge

What do you see as your greatest personal challenge as you adapt to be fit for the social age?

My comment:

What do you see as your greatest personal challenge as you adapt to be fit for the Social Age? At the outset of the course, I feel tooled-up for the task ahead. A capable user of internet technologies. A blogger. A tweeter. Happy to work out loud when appropriate (confidentiality and security considerations). Equally at home on the internet and in real life. Happy to work virtually and physically on my own and with others. I see my greatest personal challenge as finding (or carving out) a job role (or vice versa) that enables me to take full advantage of my skills and experience.

1.5. Contribution: Who is adapting well?

When you think of the Social Age, which Organisation do you see adapting most effectively? It might help you if you watch the overview video or read the 'Guide to the Social Age' article first.

Describe the Social Age in your own words.

My response:

I do not know enough about the internal workings of organisations to answer this specific question. I am hoping that we will be given some answers in the content of this course. However, I am a child of my culture with a passionate interest in how technology is changing society and organisations. The first response that came to mind was the Three Little Pigs “The Guardian” ad This advert for the Guardian's open journalism, screened for the first time on 29 February 2012, imagines how we might cover the story of the Three Little Pigs in print and online. Follow the story from the paper's front page headline, through a social media discussion and finally to an unexpected conclusion.

 

The second response was Dave Eggers’ The Circle novel and forthcoming film adaptation (starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson.

Describe the Social Age in your own words:

The Social Age is the period of time starting with the arrival of Google, Facebook, YouTube and blogging platforms when organisations of all sizes and across all sectors had the opportunity (or were forced) to dramatically recast the vision of how they operated.