• Technology Review: Market Watch: Convergence Is King – On in a series of articles Tech Review has on "The Future of Media". Convergence marches on. A great summary quote from the article: "The key technical characteristic of what works is the ability to facilitate consumers' desire to read, watch, or listen to any content they want, anywhere, anytime."
• Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python – An educational diversion for the budding computer programmers in your family!

• Workplace Learning Professionals Next Job – Management Consultant : eLearning Technology – Tony Karrer pulls together thoughts and responses to the question of what workplace learning will look like in 10 years. I agree that the work will move to "management consultant" (though I would have selected "performance consultant"). But I don't agree there will be continued need for "Enterprise 2.0" and "Knowledge Management". I think those ideas will become as much of an anachronisms as "desktop publishing"or "information technologies" as the tools become as much a part of the way we work as phones, electricity of language. Less and less formalized learning will be needed and the real role of learning professionals will be in process improvement consulting.
• Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky – The always enlightening Clay Shirky chimes in with a meandering piece that finally resolves into the very wise observation that we should not be trying to figure out how to save newspapers, we should be trying to figure out how to save journalism.

• Social Media Marketing – Who, What, When, Where, Why and How? – Mike Fruchter puts together a great list of things you should be asking yourself as you begin your trek into social media marketing.
• Will YourEnterprise 2.0 even make sense in 2009? – Venkatesh Rao has some spot-on predictions of how changing consumer behavior, 2.0 technologies, and the recession will create a "perfect storm" that forces the hand of traditional businesses in 2009.
• The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World – WSJ.com – WSJ article provides a sound basic understanding of social marketing strategies. Business is slowly learning to join the conversation that the Cluetrain Manifesto told them about eight years ago.

• The Partnership for 21st Century Skills – Home – For the K-12 set: A wonderful site advocating the improvement of our education system to include 21st-century skills. From the site: "The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has developed a unified, collective vision for 21st century learning that can be used to strengthen American education." They hit the nail on the head by stressing Creativity and Innovation Skills; Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills, and Communication and Collaboration Skills.
• Moving towards the 2.0 “movie-going” experience – Ian Da Silva poses a thoughtful question about the future of movie distribution. This parallels many of the "converged" purchase models that I have discussed with my media clients. It will be interesting to see how long it is before you purchase your ticket at a theater and are given the option to pay an extra fee to download the video when it is released online…

• TV remains top source of news even as online grows –
• Why We’re Failing in Math and Science – O’Reilly Radar – A great post from Tim O'Reilly reminding us how America is "dumbing down" just when we need to be building education and intelligence in order to compete in the global marketplace.
• Do Social Networks Bring the End of Privacy?: Scientific American – SciAm considers how new Web behaviors are changing our ideas of privacy and ponders if "Existing law should be extended to allow some privacy protection for things that people say and do in what would have previously been considered the public domain."

• Predict The Future On WashingtonPost.com – Jason Kincaid's brief post highlight how Predictify's adoption by newspaper's is a reminder that “old media” is willing to embrace the interactivity afforded by the web.
• How to Keep Up with the Semantic Space « Shepherd’s Pi – Lewis Shepherd's great post pulling together a host of current thoughts and resources about the Semantic Web. It includes some resources from Henry Story's "My Semantic Web Blogroll"
• Twelve best practices for online customer communities | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com – Dion weighs in on the "the advent of the Web-based customer community, where groups of like-minded individuals focus around a brand or a set of product and services come together and interact online"
• 50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice | chrisbrogan.com – Nice post from Chris Brogan summarizing steps to put a social media strategy into practice for your company.
• Literacy Debate – Online, R U Really Reading? – Series – NYTimes.com – Interesting article on how the Internet is changing reading styles and, therefore(?) learning styles.

• enterprise 2.0 … it’s this simple, see « pm blog – Mazy Hedayat posts a deliciously complex and confusing diagram that summarizes all the moving parts of Enterprise 2.0. A bit tough to read or use for learning, but it is a great summary…
• Why Companies Need Web 2.0 – Forbes.com – No new news here, but Mike Schaffner summarizes how "Web 2.0" (cringe) technologies must be adopted by companies to remain competitive.
• Tear down the broadcast towers – BuzzMachine » Blog Archive – Jeff Jarvis posits on how Web video and radio "could" make broadcast obsolete. Best part of the post is the comments. The way we consume media is changing dramatically and it will impact how we use media to teach.
• Grockit – About Us – Learning 2.0 – From the site: "Grockit is Learning 2.0. Grockit is about questioning together. To this end, we are developing an online learning game where people can teach each other." I look forward to seeing the game!

• Quiz: What Should You Really Fear? – A quiz based on the recent book by Dan Gardner reminds us that mass media is making the most of irrational fears while less newsworthy real risks are underestimated.
• Social Media: Get Productive with Social Media (and Stay Sane) – OK – I still have yet to find a productivity gain from them (other than building personal brand), but Steve Rubel shares his three steps for reaping productivity from the typhoon of social chatter tools.

These are my links for April 23rd through April 28th:

• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Here Comes Everybody – Transcript of Clay Shirky's great presentation at Web 2.0 Conference. As always, his insight into the social impact of technology is sharp as he walks us through all of us finding better things to do with our time (sorry TV).
• InSTEDD – Web 2.0 is not just about the money. The power of the Web and social networks is being harnessed to addressed some of the most importnt issues we face. InSTEDD is just one example. The Web is the global brain to help us learn and perform better.
• On Managing A Community | chrisbrogan.com – Chris Brogan weighs in on the emerging role of community manager. While his focus is on a media and events company, it is food for thought on what the tasks and measures should be for a learning community manager – a central role in Learning 2.0.
• Morgan Stanley’s March Internet Trends Report: Social Applications Dominating – Oh what a difference a year makes! A report chock full of data on the amazing and continuing growth of social networks. As this becomes a communications standard, it will have huge impact on how we work and learn.
• More Thoughts on Why Workplace Learning Is Largely Learning 1.0 –

These are my links for April 22nd through April 23rd:

• Blog Learning : eLearning Technology – Tony's take on the power of blogs as a learning tool. True for established bloggers with the time/incentive to blog and who build up a network of cohorts. But for the average Joe's blogs give reflection opportunities – valuable, but not unigue to blogs.
• Web 2.0 Expo Preview: Torture by Information Overload – This comes up more and more in the questions at the events I deliver. People are increasingly concerned about the productivity impacts of Web 2.0 platforms. If your employee Twitters all day, does her performance improve?
• Whitepapers – Building a collaborative workplace – Anecdote lays out a series of steps for developing your organization's collaboration capability and includes a simple test of your current collaboration capability.
• The Future of Technology: Total Convergence and the “Media Explosion” – Interesting bit of crystal ball gazing about how we will consume media in the future. Lots of interesting extrapolation possibilities about how we may consume knowledge and learning as well!