7 posts tagged “andrew+keen”

There’s a growing shift in the conversation around E2.0 away from the technologies and on to the culture change that will unlock the value of social/networking systems.

You would think that persuading the Board about the merits of a more open, transparent culture isn’t too uphill a task, especially when you consider the alternative and the negative impact on the bottom line. Ross Dawson writes in Trends in the Living Network of networked organisations, in which being more effective at ad-hoc communiation and collaboration underpins organisatinoal performance.

Susan Scrupski's post Corporate Antisocial Behaviour: the Enemy is Us refers to five reasons why projects fail, and notes: "The technologies we had prior to web 2.0 would enable employees to 'speak up.' Email, telephones, even notes passed under the door could have prevented huge cost overruns and errors, but technology – old or new – won’t fix these problems."

Whether it is inside or outside the enterprise, one message does not fit all anymore. So should internal communicators use the new web to lead a cultural revolution, or to feed an effort to make the company more open that rides on the coat-tails of another project?

It depends. Assuming you accept the need to change your culture, then a corporate rebranding effort would provide a great opportunity to kick-start what Susan calls 'social process re-engineering'. But rebrandings do not happen often.

For a more likely opportunity, any significant project that requires upfront change management and/or communication input - and to the converted, that would be all of them - could be used by internal communicators as a trojan mouse.

Andrew Keen writes, "We all now know [Web2.0's] technological strengths and weaknesses, its cultural accomplishments and failures, its economic appearance and reality." Lead or feed doesn't matter as long as efforts are made to change people's day-to-day views on the value of effective communication, and corporate communicators should by now have an idea of the what the new we means for them, their role and, crucially, their company culture.

Jeremiah Oywang - Web Strategist - has been gotten to by Andrew Keen - the 'Social Media pessimist'.

Says Jeremiah: "After you develop your callous from his abrasiveness you can hear some very valid points, he often writes about the problems of social media, and authored the hell raising Cult of the Amateur."

Is the tide finally turning? I would love to discover one or two more can see beyond the well-documented gaps in Andrew's arguments and focus on the big picture.

He must be on to something, if only because one of the definitions of Web3.0 (I know, and it is the only time I will ever use it) says it "throttles the 'wisdom of the crowds' from turning into the 'madness of the mobs' we've seen all to often.'

Could Andrew Keen's argument that we are facing the laws of digital Darwinism in Cult of the Amateur be true? Not many think so, but as Tom Davenport posts, Keen might be at least partially right.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism study found that user-driven journalism focused on what Tom calls more 'quotidian' topics.

The report finds: "Many of the stories users selected did not appear anywhere among the top stories in the mainstream media coverage studied. And there was often little in the way of follow-up. Most stories on the user-news sites appeared only once, never to be repeated again".

As a consultant, I appreciate Tom's non-divisive conclusion: "I don’t think that much can be done about this situation, other than to write about it and hope to persuade individuals to return to traditional journalistic sources in addition to user-driven ones."

Chin up Andrew!

I am a fan of Andrew Keen's Cult of the Amateur because of it's relevance in a corporate environment. Not breaking news. And many who criticise his ideas are cut of the same cloth as those who call Microsoft 'evil', whom Hugh MacLeod loving calls "uncurious and intellectually lazy"

In recent months, however, many a curious and intellectually agile person has lined up to kick Andrew in the proverbials (no back-linking here!). To that distinguished list is added Euan Semple, who says in Feeding a Troll (ouch!): "I didn't think his arguments were convincing and certainly didn't reflect the views of many of the people he was attacking".

The Keen video is here. It might have been simpler just to point to Geek and Poke.

Andrew Keen is graceful enough to know when someone gives him a good kicking. Intellectually, of course. Even if it is an English lady!

So, as his was the book that started me on this fun ride, what do I do?

In this aspect of social media - that is, the wisdom of crowds is broken in a corporate environment - I think some of Nassim Taleb's thinking can provide some answers. Just look at the quant funds running for cover!

David Weinberger and Andrew Keen faced off for a debate about Web 2.0 and it's impact on culture. The Wall St Journal has the full transcript, while Coversation Hub has the video. Worth both a watch and a read.

While Euan Semple (props for the link) welcomes the sight of a philosophy major wiping 'the floor with a moron' - at times Keen does take a beating - Winberger throws a lifeline to Keen by admiting that 'we need to take seriously the issues that you raise.'

Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur, is my antidote to executives concerned about social media being taken over by employees to post pictures of their cats, videos of them celebrating a little to enthusiastically and so forth - aka "a bunch of 18-year olds 'self-expressing' in their underpants."

MyRagan (need to register) caught up with him recently, and Keen's interview is on their Home Page at the moment.

The reason he's my antidote is I tend to agree with most of his main points questioning the wisdom of crowds, and even more so in a corporate situation. Where social media is used to have an ongoing conversation between the company and employees, then companies can and should correct distortions, falsehoods and rumours. They can do this because the management team will know more than the collective (and much larger) employee base. Trust and disclosure come into play, but that's another topic.