Is there a way we can make the university executive leadership read this chapter? I'm actually less interested in the author's arguments about the merits of wikis than I am in the way they position a particular social software-based solution within a broader call for bottom-up innovation.The Best Buy case study is a fine example of how to meet people (students, employees, end-users) in the spaces in which they work and play. The key element to these meetings is communicating in a peer-to-peer fashion -- communicating to collaborate, to "drill holes through the hierarchy to produce great results" (251). The generational differences are too obvious to ignore or to apologize for. The NetGen is defining the dichotomy that Spinuzzi exposes in his introduction (see below): The changing nature of the networked work place and the intrusion of social network technologies on non-work time -- the demand for non-NetGen workers to be more adept in socially networked environments as tech (not technical) communicators and users of technologies. Within this dichotomy, you have someone like Best Buy's Stephens making money from the fact that non-NetGeners are typically unprepared to deal with even the most basic of technologies today -- the personal computer.
In reading about successful implementations of a wiki and the development of wiki cultures, I kept coming back to all of the failed wiki efforts I've been privy to over the years. The chapter suggests that a principle cause for failure is the point at which the initiative begins. In every failed wiki project I've been part of, the project began as a top-down mandate. There was nothing organic or natural about it. Tapscott and Williams claim that "wikis are supposed to conform naturally to the way people think" (256). I'm supposing that wikis fail when they don't provide that space for natural conformity.
I was only half-kidding above. I do think that an organization as large as Syracuse University could learn a lot from the underlying successes and benefits associated with social-software. Where better than a university to find people who believe they can contribute to innovation and progress? Reminder to self: Mention the SU IT Answers wiki project.
2 comments:
I am thinking specifically about how the authors mentioned the change in priorities that people bring to their jobs; instead of security, authority, and structure, people are interested in getting things done in a fast paced, fun, and sometimes irreverent manner.
I wonder, then, how the traditional aim of a university education might gel (or not) with the "new" workplace attitudes they're referencing.
I also wonder, in response to your reflection on how wikis you've been involved in have failed, how instructors might create a wiki in a non top-down manner? Is this possible, given the ostensible goals students bring to coursework (get the grade) and the inevitable position of the instructor as grader?
not sure why it's posting my above comment as anonymous - Melissa Kizina
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