Recent blog posts diversity from Ecademy business network

I like reading blogs to gain different perspectives, insights and individual views from various people coming from various geographies and cultural backgrounds. Today, my focus is on Ecademy network. I observed extra richness in Ecademy blogs within last few days. I am impressed by the content and diversity in general; for example the following categories and representatives took my attention:

1. Injection of business in social context by Jan Mulder, Bernadette Doyle, Martin Bamford, Ty Tyson, Cornelis de Maijer, Penny Power, Bob Nicoll, William Buist, Mark Lee, Marco van Velthuisen, David Winch, Anthony Mullinder, Annabel Kaye, George Emsden, Anna Stephens, Jason Collins and James McBrearty...

2. Challenging social observations and prompts by Wayne Bisset, Stuarte Harris, Sam Borrett, Simon Ellinas, Ann Andrews, Nighet Nasim Riaz and Andreas Wiedow...

3. Exotic cultural input from Fatimea Tedora, Zahir Shamsery, Dr Das Suman, Martin Dewhurst, Nick Dutch, Bernard Bonvivant, Michael Oon...

4. Interesting personal input from Norman Feiner, Mark Mandel, Elizabeth Malouvier, Demos Flouri, Carolyn Williams, Phil Shepherd, Jon Hansen, Keith Whitney, Dr Gaby Cora, Solveigh Calderin, Richard Derwent Cooke, Nic Oliver, Jet Rotmans, Maki Kosaka, Maurice Poole, Hans Terhurne Freddy Daems and Joy Webber ...

5. Highlights from various interesting media types by Richard Perry, Jeff Mowatt, Rajesh Ananda, Daniel-Flavius Lucica, and Tony Hine

6. Sudden breeze from famous Nikki Pilkington and a sad farewell from insightful Andrew Peel...

7. Social media flavour from Alan Stevens, Georgina Lester, Thomas Power, Steve Hall, Andrew Wilcox, Roger Vanstone, Zara Lockwood, Ivor Kellock, Steven Healey, Francois Hotte, Chris Ogle, Marcus Fielding, Nick Tadd and Vanessa Warwick...

8. Superior philosophical, realistic and thought provoking observations from Michael Heaney and Steve Holmes...

There were more interesting posts but it was the ones I enjoyed in my limited time and tagged some of them for future reading. What posts did you enjoy last few days and how did they impress you?

Regards,
Mehmet Yildiz

A preliminary and informal study on seven online tools for professional and business use

In this post, I'd like to share my findings for a preliminary study as a partial requirement of a paper to be published. It is related to the use of some popular online tools for business and professional purposes.

Study Approach: I selected 10 active online profiles from my networks. These are the co-networkers whom I established personal trust via a number of correspondence over 12 months. The sample is gender agnostic, representing only English speaking countries (USA, UK, Australia, and New Zealand) with business and professional background. I interviewed these 10 people via Google, MSN, Skype, Yahoo, and Facebook chat tools in an informal way approximately half an hour. I also confirmed some of conflicting and contradictory views via email follow-ups. My key questions were about their current beliefs on Ecademy, Facebook, Google, Linked, Twitter, Yasni and Youtube in terms of the contribution of these tools to their business or profession.

Findings: There were a number of interesting views that I will make available in a paper progressing on these tools. However I'd like to share the key common findings for each online tool related to their profession and business as of 7 April 2010 to validate my findings with a wider sample:
1. Google is the main source of information for their profession and business. They use it everyday.
2. Youtube is secondary source of information for their business. They use it everyday.
3. Twitter has done nothing for their business as yet. However they see it as third important source of information.
4. They all are in Facebook. They believe to have some potential for their profession and business even though they haven't used it for business purpose as yet.
5. Linkedin is seen as a business card or CV collection and they sometimes use it to check some contact references.
6. Ecademy is only known to them by the blogs they saw in Twitter and some email invitations. They have no idea so far how Ecademy can help their profession but they all are interested to explore the possibilities further.
7. Yasni was heard by 4 of them in various online sites but none of them knew its scope and contribution for their profession and business. They all indicated interest to explore the possibilities further.

I have some impressions, perceptions and personal views established based on my experience but what do these findings tell or mean to you? Can you comment on the points you are familiar with? If you prefer your views to be kept confidential; please send me a personal mail linked to my Google profile.

Regards,
Mehmet Yildiz

How would Einstein, Darwin, Freud, Marx and Hemingway use email?

I didn't fully make up the title of this post, it came from Northwestern University, a research report for media. Their title is "How Would Einstein Use E-mail?". They believe that we are not as different from Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin after all, at least when it comes to patterns of correspondence! I had to take this piece of research serious because it is published in the prestigious Science Journal. And also the National Science Foundation supported the research.

I found their method very interesting and unusual because they examined extensive letter correspondence records of 16 famous writers, performers, politicians and scientists, including Einstein, Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Ernest Hemingway, and found that the 16 individuals sent letters randomly but in cycles. They said "No matter what their profession, all the letter writers behaved the same way. They adhered to a circadian cycle; they tended to write a number of letters at one sitting, which is more efficient; and when they wrote had more to do with chance and circumstances than a rational approach of writing the most important letter first."

I am unable to find more on this behavioural study however added this paper to my to read list as soon as it becomes available. Related to this topic, I noticed Mark Rhodes posted an interesting blog on Friday titled "Emails can be dangerous, make sure it doesn't happen to you". In the meantime, based on the thoughts from this report and Mark's post, I would like to understand what other email writing styles are available amongst us? For example, how often do you send email messages? How often do you check and respond your emails? How do you deal with myriad of spam messages if you don't have a spam filter? Do you use specific tones in your email? Do you keep it short and to the point or is it like a journal? Do you see e-mail the major communication tool? What are your overall thoughts about email in business and social life? Does email style has anything to do with the claims in the video cited in the future of communication:-)?

Regards,
Mehmet

Dr. Mehmet YILDIZ || IBM || IT Philosophy || Future|| Leadership || My blog || Twitter || Linkedin || Yasni ||Google || Naymz|| Superfan

Future of Communication

Yes, we will shake it like Shakira in Moscow today; I mean shake our thoughts like that!

Communications technologies, processes, approaches, and tools are rapidly changing. Internet and associated technologies added a mask, a painful flavour to digest, and a huge confusion! It is unknown where we are going! Let's do some brain and heart stretching today and see what we come up with!

We need to ask a few predictive warming questions to start shaking in the attractive rhythm, drums must start beating hard, hands clapping with passion, and move brain hips muscles slowly :

1. How likely to use digital tongues to speak, to taste the quality of communication!
2. How likely to sniff communication with electronic nose!
3. How likely to hear the most juicy global gossips with our digital ears!
4. How likely to have a digital brain embedded to our body using paper batteries I mentioned here yesterday.
5. How likely we will give meanings to life with our digital hearts!
6. Do you reckon we can figure out how to touch, hug, kiss each other digitally.
7. What is the position of digital or electronic spirituality in this rapidly changing universe.

What other digital occurrences and things we can introduce to our end to end communication process and tools? You are free to stretch your prediction up to 2050 safely and for the remaining years and centuries, I will facilitate another blog soon.

You may check this video to get some insights and inspiration before commenting on this post today, it starts with "man is god, anyone and everywhere!":


Regards,
Mehmet

Dr. Mehmet YILDIZ || IBM || IT Philosophy || Future|| Leadership || My blog || Twitter || Linkedin || Yasni ||Google || Naymz|| Superfan

Adding NEW meanings: mixing FUN & business with popular media: My recent top 20 items ACCEPPTED in Superfan

New social media is stretching the scope and blending the borders of business and pleasure!

You can be fan of anything at superfan accepted by the assessment committee using an objective criteria. If your favourite items are not there, you can create your objects and first you become the superfan of that object then invite others to be fan of it. It is also possible in some cases others may steal your superfan and then the whole fun starts. The objects gain value and visibility. For example, Ecademy, Yasni, Hereke Silk Carpets, Megan Fox and IBM are a few famous ones that reached to very high scores in very short time. It is up to the fans to promote their items.

I introduced the following items to the Superfan recently which they were not available in there and they were accepted successfully:

1. Nasreddin - A historical humorous character


2. Manuka Honey - strong antibacterial honey from New Zealand


3. Oil Wrestling - Traditional Turkish Sport


4. Semiotics - the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.


5. Cloud Computing


6. The University of Melbourne


7. Orhan Pamuk - Turkish Nobel laureate in Literature


8. Kevin Rudd - current Prime Minister of Australia


9. Seymour Papert - one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language.


10. Hyacinth


11. Mindfulness


12. IBM AIX - Server Operating System


13. IBM System z10


14. Hookahs - Nargile (this is only for cultural awareness purpose, I am non-smoker but can connect to smokers:-))


15. Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me - Penny Power's recent book. (just introduced yesterday)


16. Karagoz and Hacivat


17. Mayapple - plant native to the eastern part of North America.


18. Meet the Robinsons - my son's favourite show


19. Sertab Erener - 2003 Eurovision winner represented Turkey


20. Blue Gene - Enabled IBM to be a winner of National Medals of Science, Technology and Innovation


You can see and become fan of my current 69 items from this link.

What are your recent favourite top 20 objects, concepts that you may want to share with your networkers?

Through this post, I'd also would like to obtain your views on use of this new medium for both business and pleasure. What could be the implications from your angle?


Regards,
Mehmet

Dr. Mehmet YILDIZ || IBM || IT Philosophy || Future|| Leadership || My blog || Twitter || Linkedin || Yasni ||Google || Naymz|| Superfan

A blog about Twitter in Superfan

Hi all,

This is a new blog series which I called it reflections from heart and mind. I would like to update my online activities here.

Day by day, I find the Superfan fascinating with new objects and concepts. I started blogging in there. Today, I teased about Twitter which is an object stolen by a member as a game. The title of the blog is "Follow game: Are you a twitter geek? Let's follow each other"

I have also posted a blog to Ecademy titled "Why 44789 people to die?"

It was great to see a number of Follow Friday for my Twitter Account. I felt honoured.

I posted only one article to Linkedin and read my messages in Naymz. Adding new items to Yasni tonight...

Great to start blogging in the Blogger too.

Cheers,
Mehmet Yildiz
Melbourne, Australia