“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

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Mohandas Gandhi’s quote above is powerful, isn’t it?

Being the change requires that we embody change itself. To do this, each of us must surround ourselves with a community of others that can provide us with encouragement and supportive feedback.

Seven Steps To Becoming The Change:

• Know WHY you want change and be able to articulate it.
• Understand WHAT it means for that change to happen.
• Time WHEN the change can best occur.
• Find WHO you want to ally with.
• Consider WHERE the change can best serve.
• Practice HOW the change needs to emerge.
• And always always always be aware of the influence of your change on others – Our greatest risk is that we become blinded by your own righteousness about our own need for change. This is why a community is necessary to keep each of us highly motivated and always in check.

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Become a ‘Fuel-Molecule’ within the Solution of Change

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Because ‘WE’ being change is far more powerful than just ‘ME’ being change.

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TO SEE CHANGE, ONE MUST BECOME CHANGE !

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I’ve been behind the mark in getting some good material out relating to online collaboration tools because I’m actually formulating new potions back in my personal ‘Colab’oratory. I am continuing my search for KISS (keep it stupid simple) online environments that will allow us all to connect online in amazing ways – no matter where we are in the world. And some cool tools are certainly rising to the top. I’ll admit as well that I’m finding the whole online tools explosion to be very daunting! Whoa, we’ve truly got a tiger by the tail, and no one knows what its head looks like! Anyway, I’ll be writing more in this area. A tools offering will be coming online on my DiscoveryFuel.com online tools page soon as well.

For now, I want to plug George Siemens from eLearnSpace.com (see details below), who is writing some great material on the whole online learning thing (otherwise known as eLearning). He found this article in The Atlantic and it’s worth you giving it a scan. For me, it emphasizes our need to learn learn learn about online tools and begin to use them alot. Why? Becaue it will give us the freedom to self-select what we want to learn in an accelerated, expanded, and deepened way without the limits of travel and location that have restricted our education in the past. It talks about how education (learning) and the bad economy are related, describing how education is ramping up, just as it has in the past during periods of bad economy.

Read up from eLearnSpace blog …

Adhering to the motto “a provocative title will surely increase readership”, Atlantic has an interesting article on How the Crash Will Reshape America :  Economic crises tend to reinforce and accelerate the underlying, long-term trends within an economy. Our economy is in the midst of a fundamental long-term transformation—similar to that of the late 19th century, when people streamed off farms and into new and rising industrial cities. In this case, the economy is shifting away from manufacturing and toward idea-driven creative industries—and that, too, favors America’s talent-rich, fast-metabolizing places.

I find Richard Florida’s “world is spiky” view to be more accurate than Thomas Friedman’s “world is flat”. But, in this article a tension that I’ve felt with Florida’s work is more clearly revealed than previously. Florida has argued – generally quite effectively – that location matters. Cities and regions of creativity and innovation spur growth. To succeed in your career, it’s a good idea to be in areas that are hotspots for your field. But…I am not sure how to reconcile this view with the growth of technology. Now, more than ever, technology has reduced the challenges of distance. Online education and distributed teams reflect this. Video conferencing and online conferences reduce the need for travel. Is location less, not more, important than in the past?

Questions or Comments? Contact Me <mailto:gsiemens@elearnspace.org> Read ERN online at:http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/. Visit www.elearnspace.org <http://www.elearnspace.org/>  for extensive information and resources on elearning Visit my connectivism <http://www.connectivism.ca>  site for resources on the changing nature of learning. His book, Knowing Knowledge is available.

I watched this interesting video on company and personal branding, which are often one in the same these days. Check it out because it tells an underlying tale of how technology is influencing our behavior. Additionally David Armano tells a story here of how positive interactions with his iPod has changed his ‘dropping’ behavior. This triggered an insight for me that is relevant to collaboration and design. Online collaboration tools are rapidly filling a new industry space, and it is my belief this phenomena will continue to grow and evolve to the point where human interaction will dramatically increase within the virtual space of the web. Now, did you feel a hit in your gut with what I just said? Some of you, I’m sure, felt excited. And many of you, I’ll bet, heard an inner voice of concern for how you think technology is separating our humanity by disconnecting us from our physical interactions. You know, after a lot of thought about this, I think this later hit needs serious review. Certainly it is going to change our behaviors. That is, the ways in which we interact and are comfortable with, are going to change. Personally, I have gone from a place of concern, to being keenly watchful of what’s happening, to going fully on board with these changes. To the point where I have committed myself to a study and emerging business offering of online collaboration environments. Because I see it as the future of how we can rapidly change (shall we say) our ‘meta’ behaviors on this planet for the betterment of a world that we want to live in.

I encourage you to open your mind and heart to the possibilities that might unfold for you and others by daring to step into the uncomfortable places being created for collaboration within the online virtual world. For me, thinking about what I can design and who I can design with rrrrreally exicites me because possibilities have opened up to a point where my long standing vision and bag full of ideas could actually be manifested. So cool! All with what I believe will include a deeper sense of compassion and reverence for our world and the people in it. Also note that, so far, it has been WAY easier for me to find others that think like me and want to create things that I am interested in ….  And I find that even more exciting!

Sooooo, behavior change? Yup. It’s happening, and that’s a good thing in my book. As long as we stay conscious watchers of the changes that are occurring and constantly question them deeply and collaboratively.

Let’s talk more about this soon.

Let’s set the stage for what will be discussed here:

First of all what are we defining as collaboration tools? Any model or piece of software, especially web based, that helps to guide interactive design between two or more people. As web technology takes the lime light over the next couple of years, we will be looking for insights on tool products, companies, concepts that help to facilitate – not just getting projects done – but improving the human engagement. I look forward to seeing lots of interaction and input from not only those who are making tools, but those of you who want to use them.

What is needed functionally in the tools and why? Where does each tool best apply to brainstorming, vision-creating, decision-making, strategizing, proposing, and so on? How does human behavior relate to tool design and use?

See where I’m going here?

So jump into this conversation and let’s build this blog into an awesome set of sources for learning how to collaborate together – in a world that so much needs healthier ways for communicating and innovating with each other. Ways that make our planet a place where our children and our children’s children will want to be.