Category: technology

The next big thing in social media

Reading that headline, you might think I’m about to tell you what the next big thing in social media is.

But I’m not. Because I can’t. Because I don’t know.

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The Next Big Thing T-shirt from Monona Merch. http://monona.littletype.com/group-detail.php?item_group_id=7398

And if I knew, do you think I’d be sharing it on a blog, of all things? Blogging is dead, man. Wired told us so, way back in October 2008 (Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004).

No, if I knew, I’d be tweeting it, or maybe flickring it, or facebooking it, or next-big-thinging it.

The funny thing about the next big thing, is that even the smartest people — the experts — have a pretty lousy track record when it comes to predicting what it will be. We’ve all seen those quotes from business leaders and inventors of the past who made bold predictions for their time that have since turned out to be so very wrong. Using our keen sense of hindsight, it’s easy to poke fun at those guys. But how good are we at trying to predict what technologies will stick? Two years ago, ReadWriteWeb‘s Emre Sokullu predicted that Joost would be all the rage by now. A little less than two years ago, RRW offered a top-10 list of future web trends for the decade of 2007-2017. And last month, Shel Holtz predicted in his podcast (podcast? really?) that AudioBoo could be the up-and-coming next big thing in social networking.

As a higher ed communicator who’s trying to find the right mix of media platforms to connect with diverse audiences and keep them informed about the goings on of one university, my head swirls when I think about the many avenues we’re using simply to accomplish two things:

  1. Connect with a broad range of audiences — from elementary school kids for summer camps to octogenarian and nonagenarian alumni; and
  2. Stay up to speed on the latest communications technologies in order to remain relevant to our constituents.

So when I think about the next big thing, I think about how we connect with our constituents. I think about how many of our alumni are using the mobile web, how many prospective students find our Facebook page useful, how many legislators actually see the news releases we email to them, whether anyone is paying attention to our university blogs anymore. I wonder about the time and money spent on traditional approaches — the quarterly alumni magazine, the printed admissions pieces, the save-the-date cards — and ponder whether moving more of these approaches toward a web-based platform would make sense, or whether simply adding a web-based or social media-based component to extend our reach, like tentacles of an octopus, is the right approach. And then I start thinking about the next big thing and wonder how much time and energy I should devote to investigating that.

Blog fatigue

What got my started on this post was blog fatigue. I don’t know if it has more to do with the time of year or a changing attitude toward blogging, but my interest in regular blogging seems to be on the wane lately. In my social media world, I tend to gravitate toward Twitter (where my network includes higher ed colleagues, online acquaintances in other fields of marketing and PR, some writers and musicians I follow, some students and alumni of Missouri S&T, and one sibling), then Facebook (where I connect with old high school friends and S&T students and alumni), and lastly, the higher ed and PR/marketing blogs that form the loose network that also, in the past two years, has spilled over into Twitter, and does so more and more these days.

If I had to rank my preference for social networks, I’d put Twitter first, with Facebook a distant second. Blogging (both the practice of creating posts and the act of reading others regularly) would come in dead last.

Maybe the guy at Wired is right. Maybe blogging is so 2004. Funny, then, that I didn’t create this one until 2005. Which further proves my point that I know absolutely nothing about the next big thing.

P.S. – I just created a Tumblr account. Maybe that’s the next big thing. For me, anyway.

Obama’s CTO pick: good for higher ed?

Aneesh Chopra, the United States' first CTO
Aneesh Chopra, the United States' first CTO
President Obama announced this morning that Aneesh Chopra, Virginia’s secretary of technology, will become our nation’s first chief technology officer.

Judging from the White House’s technology agenda, the CTO’s main job appears to be mainly making sure that governmental agencies “use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.” But we know from Obama’s remarks today, there’s more to the job than that.

Obama said the CTO “will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities — from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure.”

That sounds like a bigger job than just keeping the tubes from clogging. It also sounds like something that could have far-reaching effects. Chopra’s duties might be of interest to higher ed types, who are also involved in achieving our nation’s most urgent priorities as they pertain to education, research and technology transfer issues.

So, how does the new guy look, from a higher ed perspective?

It’s hard to say just yet. But from the little I’ve read about it this morning, I’d say, Not too shabby.

Tim O’Reilly thinks Chopra will make a fantastic CIO and cites a few achievements during Chopra’s tenure in Virginia that relate to education. Specifically:

Integrating iTunes U with Virginia’s education assessment framework. Virginia plans to use iTunes U to share digital content at the K-12 level, and that content will all support the Virginia Standards of Learning.

Initiating the Learning Apps Development Challenge, a competition for the best iPhone and iPod Touch applications for middle-school math teaching.

Entrepreneurial Silicon Valley types apparently disagree with Obama’s choice and O’Reilly’s endorsement, mainly because Chopra doesn’t have any start-up experience.

Well, he doesn’t have much technology experience, either. As TechCrunch points out, Chopra is not a lifelong coder.

But he is an experienced policymaker who knows the ropes of bureaucracy, and O’Reilly thinks that’s what the federal government needs for this job. Plus, he’s been with a think tank and has experience working in the health care industry.

Chopra has been focused for the past three years on the specific technology challenges of government. Industry experience does little to prepare you for the additional complexities of working within the bounds of government policy, competing constituencies, budgets that often contain legislative mandates, regulations that may no longer be relevant but are still in force, and many other unique constraints.

Furthermore, O’Reilly says, Chopra grasps the importance of open-source — not just in software, but as an approach to governance, innovation and forward movement. Much like his new boss, he sees government as “an enabler, not the ultimate solution provider.”

I’m hopeful that this sort of approach at the highest levels of government — an interest in facilitating the use of technology to enable learning, research and the accomplishment of other goals — will translate to other departments that set the higher ed and research agenda in this nation, such as Education and Energy, and research agencies (the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, etc.), to move the education agenda forward.

That’s a lot to ask of one governmental office — especially a new one with such an ambitious agenda and full to-do list of its own. At the same time, however, sometimes it takes a new start, a fresh approach, to get the things done that need to get done.