1. Introductory presentation Social Networking: Simple? Fast? Scalable?

2. 1. Outline of Introductory Module Why use social networks in various fields? What are the uses for social networks by field for various components: Discussion, social presence, finding answers, gaining affinities How to make simple systems Several examples from DG and other sites; go over examples from Virtual Realities and Drupal Try Drupal Gardens and Second Life Report next time your findings

3. Three example areas: business, education and affinity groups Perhaps surprisingly, business, education and affinity group creation share many common attributes in social media scaling. For example: People learning from each other. In education, there is a strong movement toward this position; in business, customer’s supporting customers is a strong method for enhancing a product. In affinity groups, trading specialized knowledge is core. Scaling via web access is ubiquitous, but especially important in online education where the medium is the method. Other disciplinary areas can be easily explained See book on examples (in Drupal Gardens site)

4. Business Reaching people with an interest in your product Providing discussions about things that people need to know in the space of your project. Serving customers Providing help to customers JIRA-like trouble reports

5. Education and Quality (from wikipedia) Education in the largest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another Studies from the US suggest that the quality of teachers is the single most important factor affecting student performance, and that countries which score highly on international tests have multiple policies in place to ensure that the teachers they employ are as effective as possible. Quality in business, engineering and manufacturing has a pragmatic interpretation as the non-inferiority or superiority of something. Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people. Consumers may focus on the specification quality of a product/service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. Producers might measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly.

6. What can we do in online education? (and education general?) Create student groups located worldwide; enhance their communication and learning together Tap guest speakers anywhere; record and live Improve organization of materials Discuss relationship and contrast with wikis What is contrast with Google Wave (Wave tracks a sequence of events)– is that important? Why? Should we plug GW into our work? What is your opinion about mashups, anyway?

7. Affinity Maintaining and organizing large groups of members and/or simply people interested in a core topic Examples – see book in DG Sloan Consortium How to make interested people aware. Methods used for start-up Viral methods Linkages to multiple channels Channel reinforcement Online to onground connectivity

8. Scalability “……scalability is a desirable property of a system, a network, or a process, which indicates its ability to either handle growing amounts of work in a graceful manner or to be readily enlarged.[1] …..An analogous meaning is implied when the word is used in a commercial context, where scalability of a company implies that the underlying business model offers the potential for economic growth within the company.” -- from wikipedia. Commentary: the above definition can be refined to cover almost any discipline. Originally specified for software and telecom, the definition can fit almost any area.

9. Education and Business scalability Business Reaching more customers at a lower cost Providing interactivity among customers Using technology effectively Education Reaching more students at a lower cost Providing interactivity among students Using technology effectively How?: Scaling via Social Networking mechanisms

10. Barriers to scaling with traditional social networking sites Building a social networking site Traditionally expensive Lengthy process Often doesn’t work well Isn’t self-adjusting Populating a social networking site requires a lot of effort Getting buy-in How to scale up What’s the problem? Site building is hard for the average joe/jill Figuring out what to do on a site is hard, too. Together, is almost insurmountable to scale to large numbers

11. Are there good solutions? In a word: “maybe” – possible passable, but not very clear. The social media common outlets Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Delicious, youTube, Twitter, slideshare, flicker, a variety of wikis, learning spaces (LMS) and many others (add your favorite). The robust website built by professionals Hard, tedious, expensive The distributed solution Use common outlets, distributed community of interest sites, and an adjustable core controller site that brings people to (1) pay (for business) or (2) learn (for education).

12. ScalabilityConcept: Micro social networking sites driving membership in a main site VR sites SN discussion Webinar Sites Free communities Of practice Conferences Main Membership site: login required Paid: list value add

13. Some example membership page value adds Value adds for paying membership in an organization can be many. For example: Ability at access addition materials Discounts for activities (e.g. on-ground, conference, online conferences, webinars, etc.) or products Drawings for prizes Finding a working group of like minded people Ability to join the governance of the organization Ability to make money from being a member See advertisements for jobs Place advertisements Offer a workshop, get a percentage

14. Freemium methodology Free useful things for social networking Drive free members to paid members Provide excellent value proposition for paid Drive to paid via “just enough” Freemium is a business model that works by offering basic Web services, or a basic downloadable digital product, for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features.[1][2] The word "freemium" is created by combining the two aspects of the business model: "free" and "premium". The business model has gained popularity with Web 2.0 companies.[3]

15. Drupal is gaining prominence for site building:

16. Serving the big .edu’s

17. Sloan-C page built in 5 minutes

18. Freemium Social Networking for Business and Education Business Product loyalty Outreach done by customers Platform and tuning done by company Education Better student services Better peer learning Platform and learning tuning done by instructor/institution .. examples

19. Virtual Worlds: how well do Virtual Realitiespromote Social Networking? Realistic, student-centered combined asynchronous and synchronous learning experiences. Hypothesis – create high quality learning in a virtual world, improve social presence. Connections between a virtual world and real world – why?

20. Sloan-C Headquarters in Second Life

22. Questions (perhaps for your blog?) What is similarity between Ning and Drupal? Is Drupal Gardens a “Moodle-killer?” Why or why not? Both Drupal and Moodle are open source – what does that mean to you? Benefits, drawbacks? Discuss plausibility of social networking becoming a part of global education? Your views? How do the thoughts about education as an open resource mesh with open source things? Will the commercial suppliers persist? Views?

23. Exercises Explore your chosen field of expertise and do a google/bing search about what is being done with social networking in your field and post in your blog. Read other’s blogs and connect with people who have a common interest. Read the Drupal.org site slightly. Look at a youtube video and slideshare presentation – report in your blog Example drupalgardens.com – same as previous exercise.