The Information Super-Highway Isn't Used

In 1995 New Zealand was like several other small fringe nations, very active on the Internet.  This was driven, in my view, by the isolation we felt, by a need to connect to some imagined centre where better information and expertise might be found.  Connecting to the world was important, at least it was for me.  The Internet was commonly spoken about as the Information Super-Highway, but most of the imagined benefits of that have not been realized.

Both government and business leaders seem focused on the poor quality of NZ broadband. The NZ Digital Strategy has become very narrow compared with the original vision.  I agree that much faster and more reliable broadband would be desirable, but I recognize a different and deeper problem. 

Prof. Lloyd Geering on TVNZ last Saturday spoke about his acceptance of whatever his teachers told him, and of his acceptance of what people in authority said.  Do you remember those days?  I certainly do.  That was me too.  We suffered from an inferiority complex, looking to "Home" or England for people with expertise, we were unwilling to accept the knowledge and expertise of our own people, preferring to buy from overseas people who supposedly had experience that NZ couldn't provide.  Too often New Zealanders could not be recognized as successful at home until they had proven themselves overseas.  We did not understand who we were. 

The social climate in NZ was excessively focused on finding the one source of authority that could be relied upon.  Missing from my early training was the concept of mentors, and the idea of networking.  I had bosses, who could have been mentors, who might have tried to be mentors, but the concept wasn't in my mind.  I developed a journal that I've kept for 35 years, which was my way to find mentors, hundreds of them, most of whom have no knowledge that they helped me.  In New Zealand, probably because of our small population, where everyone knows everyone, there was no great emphasis on networking, nothing like what we can see overseas.  I've recognized these failings in my own life in the last 15 years, with my connection to the Internet, particularly on Ryze, providing the mirror that has allowed me to see myself in a new way.  People on Ryze saw in me, knowledge and expertise that I couldn't clearly see in myself.  That was a gift, that can never be fully repaid. 

When I was first introduced to Ryze by Bala Pillai, it made no sense to me at all.  I didn't join.  Six months later I recognized what a big mistake I had made.  I've been an enthusiastic paying member ever since.  But efforts to encourage other New Zealanders to join Ryze have fallen on deaf ears.  There are perhaps three New Zealanders with successful histories on Ryze. 

My experience on LinkedIn follows that pattern.  When Introduced to LinkedIn I joined immediately, (I try not to repeat my mistakes) but for a long time it was just a directory service.  Ryze was so much better for talking to people.  In comparison the people on LinkedIn seemed shallow and inexperienced.  But networks change, the services any network offers are likely to improve, membership grows and the experience of the members develops.  In the five years I'm talking about Ryze went from 200,000 to 350,000 members, and LinkedIn from nothing to 19 million.

There are 730 NZ members of Ryze.  In contrast there are about 8000 NZ members of LinkedIn, but of those only a tiny number are active.  People understand enough to join, but having joined, they didn't know intuitively how to use it.  That was exactly the situation I found myself in.  It was my connection to Bill Vick on Ryze that forced me to look seriously at LinkedIn. Bill Vick is the author of "LinkedIn For Recruiting" and lives in Dallas.  Des Walsh of Tweed Heads, NSW, Australia also on Ryze invited me to join a LinkedIn discussion list on Yahoo.  Slowly I was educated about some of the ways people were finding LinkedIn a practical and useful business tool.  Today I'm an enthusiastic advocate. 

Of the 8000 NZ Members of LinkedIn only 18 people have more than 500 connections.  550 have in excess of 100 connections.  But the mean number of connections over all NZ members is a number less than FIVE.  For people with only 5 connections, LinkedIn is not going to be an effective tool.  Even with as many as 30 connections LinkedIn is only beginning to be useful.  Restrictions on what LinkedIn will let me see (Limit 500 entries) prevent me from producing better NZ data. 

I can however produce more detail about Christchurch, my home town.  Christchurch members of LinkedIn are now about 500.  The median number of connections is closer the THREE than four.  12 people have more than 100 connections.  If we take 30 connections as the beginning of LinkedIn being useful as a tool, another 39 are able to experience that.  For the 250+ people who have fewer than 4 connections, "the benefits of LinkedIn membership" remains a meaningless statement. 

The problem behind to poor success rate on social networks is not in Ryze, Xing, Facebook or LinkedIn, it's in our own heads and in the community.  There is a lack of social permission in the community to be strongly involved in these networks.  People don't appreciate why anyone would need to do that.  To make any social network an effective tool in your life you need to learn some skills that are not widely distributed in New Zealand.  For instance of the 18 people on LinkedIn with 500+ connections, 8 were born and educated overseas, 3 have considerable work experience overseas, two completed their academic education overseas.  I'm one of the other 5.  My reason for being in this company is the first web site I built, New Zealand Dances, dating from 1995.  To build that site, I relied on networking with dancers all over the world, over 700 of whom contributed to the site.  Long before good search engines and before social networking became popular I was enjoying a cooperative and helpful Internet experience.  The business failure of NZDances was a great loss to the dance industry here.  Few people understand what they lost.  There were over 700 pages in the site at it's best.  There are more than 62 pages on the Way-Back Machine.  (search for www.nzdances.co.nz)

John Stephen Veitch
Open Future Limited - You may comment privately to John S Veitch using this form.

Technorati Tags New Zealand Information Super-Highway NZ Digital Strategy Lloyd Geering LinkedIn Bala Pillai Bill Vick social permission Des Walsh NZDances www.nzdances.co.nz Way-Back Machine John Stephen Veitch

Learning by Using the Internet

How do we learn anything? We learn on the playing field, we learn by doing it, we learn from our friends and associates. So YOU learn about the Internet by using it and often by trying out new things your friends told you about.

How does your BUSINESS learn about the Internet? Too often it's by employing someone with a very technical disposition, someone with a precise sort of mind, to take care of the details. So she/he builds a website, an Intranet and a perhaps some databases for "company knowledge". This is a fair bit of work, but it usually achieves very little and sometimes nothing at all. While the company is "on the Internet" company knowledge of the Internet is close to nil. While the company has an Intranet, it's badly supported, disorganised and employees try to avoid it rather than use it. As for the "Knowledge Base", it's cost a lot of money and is drives nothing at all.

What's wrong here? Essentially the people who work for the company are not in the picture. Executive staff are left out, supervisory staff are left out, and the people at the coal face have no part to play. What is the company learning? Where are your companies ambassadors? Where are the connections to new ideas and knowledge that will drive future innovation? Where is the ongoing learning for each staff member? In a global economy, where are your companies connections to the world?

The MAJOR failure is that both companies and government have neglected the learning opportunity that the Information Super-Highway was supposed to bring us. I've been a severe critic of the NZ Government Digital Strategy. Nothing changes with the "Dec 2007 Refresh" A focus on broadband and on software development, won't do anything to help New Zealanders overcome their dismal failure to use the Internet effectively. What's missing is a social and educational programme that's well funded, that I was calling for 5 years ago. There have however been some successes. Maori have a presence on the Internet, and generally the quality and functionality of government web sites is excellent. (Would somebody tell site designers that ALL URL's should be very close to permanent. We forever go to government sites to see "This item has been moved". Why?)

It is my hope that this Blog and the Open Future web site and my connections with colleagues in New Zealand and across the world can help bring the value of the Internet into the business world.

John Stephen Veitch
Open Future Limited - You may comment privately to John S Veitch using this form.

Technorati Tags Ryze confidence learning conversation not knowing broadband Knowledge Base New Zealand Open Future new ideas innovation Learn ongoing learning global economy Information Super-Highway Digital Strategy, executive John Stephen Veitch

Learning on Ryze

Balla Pillai introduced me to Ryze in 2001, Ryze was new, I couldn't see the point. I didn't join. I did join in 2003. Ryze had been through a big growth spurt, and the networks were buzzing. Generally I found the business focused networks were a waste of time, but the help networks were helpful and the political networks were informative. 500 Citizens was a joy, and Sans Fronteirs was a delight. Then we had an unfortunate election in the USA. The mail on the political networks became accusatory, entrenched and repetitive. There was no discussion going on, only flag waving and banner parades. There was little value in that.

Like others, I've found my experience here has forced me to learn more about things I was relatively uninformed about, Cuba and Venezuela for instance, but also the American political and social system. That knowledge has increased my confidence.

Posting my ideas in a public forum and seeing the response from others, and feeling my own strength in defending my position, has taught me a lot about myself. It's helped me define who I am, and what's important to me. Slowly I've found the courage to say in public many things I've privately come to believe, but I'd never heard expressed. To my absolute surprise I often found other people agreeing with me on those points. It's really encouraging to know that your most wild ideas are not perhaps without foundation, and that in the future some of these dreams might become real.

Posting to Ryze and other networks has increased my ability to put together my own ideas, and to have confidence in expressing them in public. I now know that I can stand my ground when I'm right, and I can concede ground easily and freely when I'm wrong. In both cases I'm a winner. I've been re-educated and I've been able to change my mind about lots of things over time. To some extent that has changed what I think, what I deem to be important and to some degree I guess, who I am.

If you are capable of being non-dogmatic, if you can allow yourself not to know, and keep open the ability to doubt and to reconsider, if you can postpone the desire to choose your "truth" before the evidence is in, these discussions offer you a great deal. You can learn, you can change, you can become more powerful as a person.

John Stephen Veitch
Open Future Limited - You may comment privately to John S Veitch using this form.

Technorati Tags Learning Ryze Balla Pillai help networks political networks my confidence public forum who I am ability to doubt my own ideas change my mind non-dogmatic choose your truth John Stephen Veitch

Networking Articles are "Uninformed and Unhelpful"

It's quite clear that most journalists don't understand the basics of networking practice. I don't blame them for that. Networking online is new, we do have access to many more people, but we don't have personal capacity to keep in memory and consciousness any more people than previously. Those of us who are deeply connected on Ryze, Linked In or Ecademy for instance, have not yet learned for ourselves how best to use this new ability to connect. It should not surprise us that people who are even less connected don't understand the process.

Journalists, particularly business journalists, assume you can determine in advance what you want to achieve by networking and can measure the cost performance of your involvement. They are wrong. Planning the precise outcome can't be done in any sensible way. Networking is a journey. You are going into unmapped territory. There are NO POSSIBLE MAPS of who you will meet and what will occur as a result.

Think about exploration in history. Tell me what explorers wanted to find in this unmapped territory that would make their exploration a success? They wanted a quick easy reward. The discovery of gold, oil, slaves, free land, virgin forests, new opportunity? In history when explorers have entered new territory, they often failed to find the "riches" they expected to find, and also completely failed to notice real wealth that existed in this unmapped territory that was beyond their original narrow vision. Settlers went to California to find gold and become wealthy. Most of them found poverty and many died. Those who became rich were not the gold miners. Nobody was thinking about grapes, wine, oranges or films. Nobody was thinking about the value of the climate and the beaches.

Joining a network is taking a journey into unmapped territory. A "friends" list is a rough sort of map that each of us makes of that territory. Joining networks is another way to make a rough map of what's there. But you can't beat living there for a couple of years to sort out which of the "friends" are people of substance, and which networks are sources of both good people and sound data. The discovery of one person who thinks well and who asks good questions is far more valuable as a long term resource than 1000 pages of public opinion. But to discover that person you will need to read a lot of "public opinion".

If you come to networking like Christopher Columbus, with "orders from the Queen of Spain", determined to establish yourself as the "Governor" and focused on becoming fabulously wealthy, you are likely to get a rather cold reception from the natives. Self engrandizement, elevator pitches, trying to make yourself out to be the "Governor" is the wrong response to the network environment.

In a network, in fact in all of life, nothing is more important that your ability to be accepted as a member. If you are a member, people listen to you. If you are a member you are given good data and help when you need it. If you are a member your rights as a member will be protected and respected by others. If you are a member you pay attention to what other "members" say and do and you respect and protect their rights as members.

So what do I mean by "membership"? There are at least two forms of membership. Let's think about Ryze membership. You join, when you subscribe to Ryze as a free member. . In one sense "you are a member of this network" but you are not a member to the "members", they don't know you yet. You become a member (in your own eyes) by subscribing to "networks" and reading the posts. But you are not a member to anyone else. You become a member to others when you occasionally respond to what someone else has written in a sensible way (so people feel that you have read the posts and in a way that "fits in".) and that shows knowledge of and respect for the "member" you responding to. When people read what you wrote, they choose, they choose either to accept you or to reject you. If they accept you, your posts will be read, and your opinion listened to. If they decide you didn't understand the group, or didn't show respect for a "member" you might get a lashing, but more likely you'll just get ignored. If they choose to ignore you, it's probably your own fault.

How do you succeed in a networking situation? Listen to what other people are saying. Respond to their needs and interests. Be supportive or other members, and you might become a "member" yourself.

In my experience the journalists who write about networking don't seem to understand the simple social rules that apply to all networks. When a network member introduces his "elevator pitch" to make sure he "stands out from the crowd" he poisons the place where he's trying to become accepted. The "members" will reject him. It's the same online as it is offline. Offline, people are less likely to make silly social mistakes. Online you see new people commit social errors all the time. In this sense, the vast numbers of people who sit silently on networks might be doing the right thing. At least if they are reading the posts, before posting themselves, that is a wise way to behave.

Sadly on Ryze 70%+ of all members join no networks at all. Even those who do spend little time reading the posts. They learn nothing, because they do nothing. On Ryze 50% of the members have fewer than 3 friends because they make no effort to find out who the other people are on the network. On Ryze lots of people create a page that ADVERTISES some product or one's skills and interests, that is connected to zero networks and one friend. That page won't be visited, and it it is, 97% of the people who go there can't leave a message. People don't understand what to do.

On LinkedIn another network I know well, a huge number of people have only one contact, or a small group of people link to each other in a small disconnected cluster. I have not done the numbers, but I expect the pattern we see on Ryze is repeated. People prepare a Homepage for others to view, but they never bother to read the homepages of other members. People usually have one connection, but very few make the effort to build their links to other people they know.

I trust this view introduces some ideas we can discuss. Like how to give newbies to social networks a better idea of what they need to do, and how we can help the silent majorities on all our networks to be more involved.

John Stephen Veitch
Open Future Limited - You may comment privately to John S Veitch using this form.

Technorati Tags Networking articles journalist networking practice ability to connect measure the cost unmapped territory new opportunity joining +networks good questions as a member Christopher Columbus social rules social mistakes John Stephen Veitch