The NMC/ELI 2008 Horizon Report is available on the Horizon Project Wiki.

But wait, there’s much more on the Horizon wiki:

• a 5th year anniversary Metatrends Report
• opportunities to participate directly in the research by adding your perspective to particular research questions (the Sandbox)
• a collaborative area for press clippings around specific, current topics
• a suite of shared del.icio.us tags to aggregate your contributions(hz08 +)
  • Grassroots Video http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+video
  • Collaboration Webs http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+virtualcollab
  • Mobile Broadband http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+mobile
  • Data Mashups http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+mashups
  • Collective Intelligence http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+collectiveintelligence
  • Social Operating Systems http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+socialos

The Horizon report isn’t always surprising, but it is almost always useful– and the activities and resources being built around it are quite exciting. If this kind of stuff was happening last time I missed it completely…

Sounding the death knell for social software applications (and classes of application) is a sport for some prognosticators and bread and butter for the naysayers. Most of the time they are equally wrong. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? But this major upcoming change to the Wikipedia editing system has me tempted to join in.

Technorati reveals no links to the page on Flagged Revisions, but given that Wikipedia’s success (not to mention any number of purported failings) is generally attributed to its open editing system, implementing multiple layers of bureaucratic approvals sounds like a very big deal indeed.

After multiple readings I am beginning to think that the documentation of this change is being purposefully obfuscated. The very terminology of “surveyors” who have the right to “flag” a particular revision as “sighted” (meaning: administrators who have the right to promote a page as being correct) is a bit mystifying. But the bottom line appears to be this: there will be a new class of administrators with a rather broad power to vet pages. The mechanism of this power comes in the display: the sighted (approved) version of the page will be the one that users who have not logged in will see by default. The fact that later revisions are available is touted as a major reason why this isn’t a bad change, but being available and being obvious and utilized are very different things. A closed system is a closed system regardless of whether the system is actually locked or only apparently so.

Users who are logged in (an exceedingly small minority of users to whom this change is not really directed) will see the actual, current version of the page. This makes sense: such users are typically those who are editing Wikipedia, they will understand these changes which will be opaque to more than 99% of the Wikipedia users. Far worse and more restricting is the fact that all users will, when they edit the page, will see the current version! This will not just be disconcerting when there are newer, unapproved revisions… it will reduce and dissuade contributions from the general user population which is a significant part of the group of Wikipedia editors. Registered users contribute the greatest number of edits, but I suspect that the majority of original and significant content– as opposed to stylistic, structural and essentially clerical changes– come from the huge unregistered population. It is, after all, what wikis and Wikipedia are all about! And let’s not forget that future registered users come from this vast core of anonymous editors. You know those users, they are the ones who go on to be dedicated, enthusiastic Wikipedians.

Is corporatization an inevitable attribute of long-term, sustained success and growth? More importantly, are all the familiar power structures that have been partially subverted (and re-created in different forms) bound to come back with enough time and popularity? I understand the motivation behind this change, but it seems like a poor– and potentially tragic– implementation. Is this an example of the kind of mediocrity by consensus that some of the negative voices claim? And will this new, officially licensed group do what all special groups of this type tend to do and, consciously or not, assume the role of power-seeker and empire builder?

I sit at the coffee shop table writing in one of my myriad paper notebooks, at a table well away from the power outlets (I’ve learned that if I sit too near an outlet it isn’t too long before my space is being eyed hungrily by someone wielding a laptop, all of whom have learned– as I have on those rare occasions that I fire my own up– to always plug in when possible same way it is wise to always fill your water containers when trekking through the desert, into the Appalachias, or around and around the shopping mall).

At one of the window tables with power and a view (the owner has literally screwed the cord powering the open/closed sign to one of the outlets using the kind of one-way screws usually seen only in bathroom stalls and prison visiting areas) a girl has nested with her canary yellow notebook computer, a stack of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs at her side. A friend joins her and she talks about the mixes she is making for friends and family she has recently left to come to school here in the wild north. I have my crazy earbuds in with my ridiculously capacious digital music player’s sound turned off, the highest-tech way of enabling old-fashioned eavesdropping I am capable of.
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A good observation as we get spread thinner and thinner across our social networks… not only does our attention to others not scale, but our ability to manage the social applications to direct our own attention doesn’t either!

I was just thinking a few hours ago about all the ways I can bring a resource into my social mesh and what each says about the importance and/or utility and or future use of the item. Clearly, writing a blog post about a link is the most directed and implies importance. But putting that link into del.icio.us feeds into more linkstreams and networks and implies that the link will be important to come back to. And what about items that are shared from my feed reader? Or Twittered? It’s not likely I will take the time to duplicate in multiple applications (most of the time), but the action taken for each remains significant.

As I was thinking about the Art Walks about to start up now that the weather is warm enough, I got to thinking about Blog Walks. I’ve seen little use for “co-browsing” tools like Me.dium and others, but they could perhaps be interesting to facilitate Blog Walks… exploring– at the same time– a defined set of blogs/sites. Art and writing oriented blogs and exhibits would make for the obvious parallel, but it could potentially lead to some interesting discussions (or discussion starters) in other areas.

I’m sure something like this has been done (?) with shared blog tags and the like, and I could definitely see the possibility of using Twitter for something similar… but the element of synchronous activity using a tool like Me.dium might make it more compelling.

Amy Jo Kim of ShuffleBrain provided a lot of good information. Unfortunately, her voice is one of those that almost immediately makes me want to go to sleep.

The most interesting thing in this session was a framework for applying various game mechanics (each of which she explained) to one’s own application, including: collecting, points, feedback, exchanges, customization, leader boards, content-sharing, accessible tech, and syndication.

Most of the participants formed into small groups to work through an application exercise using the framework and– surprise– there was an education group (in fact, I’ve met three higher ed folks here, which is two more than ever before) which was fun to watch, particularly when one of the people repeated a bunch of things I had talked to her about at lunch about presence, avatars, and community building. Clearly the education cabal is on the same page… and this should be useful at CDE.

The slides, which will hopefully be made available online, illustrated all of the mechanical concepts with existing applications. I’ll link to them if I can.

Confabb is one of those applications that I see and want to slap my head V-8 style at not thinking of it myself. Simply, Confabb is a social networking site built around– to support and supplement– those other amazing social networking events: conferences. It’s not just a database of events, but a place to create and view session information, aggregate blog entries and photos, have discussion, create itineraries, see what sessions friends are attending– all the kinds of things you want to do when you’re at a conference trying to figure out what to do. Anyone can add a conference, but it will only be truly useful if conference organizers at least promote its use, if not directly integrating it.

Some of these features are already fairly common– group tagging and aggregation– but the tie to participants itineraries, reviews and specific conference sessions are what could set this apart from those efforts.

I’m back in the decidedly below zero climes after a nice week in Portland attending the WCET 2006 conference. WCET is the “Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications” and, founded 15 years ago, it has been showing its age. Conferences, like their mostly mainstream academic participants, are not always the quickest to change… or reflect change.

But I had a much better experience this year than last, largely because the things that are most important to me have– practically overnight– gone mainstream. Last year when I mentioned social software, for instance, it provoked blank responses (or vague terror). This year there was some real momentum around Web 2.0 and social software, replete with Jimmy Wales as the opening plenary speaker. It’s not necessarily that these concepts are being understood, or even embraced, but they are at least receiving real attention.

Highlights of the conference were meeting some other kindred spirits at dinner, such as Jared Stein and John Krutsch, both of Utah Valley State College who helped put into context the past and present monolithic LMS and the emerging virtual/personal learning environment (and their cool tool that helps bridge this gap directly). A number of people asked me if I was related to– or actually was– John Krutsch. Which seemed strange to me, though I guess we are both burly, handsome, surprisingly intellectual and witty…

After dinner came drinks at some nouvelle South American place (caipirinhas, with cachaca and “muddled” limes may be my new favorite drink… I’m not sure how much the enthusiastic shaking of the drink has to do with it and how much the sweet, alcohol-free taste) with Scott Leslie, Terry Anderson and some of the Alaskan crew. Scott, who I’d met most briefly before, had brought his Magic Eight Ball to bear and presented with John and Jared… I was excited to talk more with him about pretty much everything. Terry and I had been on a panel earlier in the day on Web 2.0 and Social Software which was very well received.

Despite all the ways people can communicate with this social software stuff, I often feel pretty isolated here in the North, and this was a happy opportunity to connect with some peers and reassure myself that I’m not alone in my endeavours, concerns, and outlook. I left feeling more refreshed than I have in a long time… and determined to find my way to the Northern Voice conference this year.

Some session notes by the Alaskan contingent on the conference blog… I’ll post a few more of ine later.

Serious props to Thomas Hawk, lead Zooomr Evangelist, for his well thought out post regarding Flickr’s new geotagging facilities. Especially since Zooomr is pretty clearly a competitor and that the geotagging was one (but just one) of their distinguishing features!

The updates from others at Yahoo and Flickr and the comment thread are interesting as well. Sometimes it’s easy to take this kind of open communication for granted when, in reality, it is a relatively rare and precious thing.

In a comment here, one of the good folks from Dandelife mentions that they are working on specifically educationally oriented features, such as creating biographies of historical figures. I will try those as soon as I see them.

But I wanted to note how useful Dandelife could be as it stands. One of the most fruitful exercises I ever used in a composition class was having students create pieces based on memory. That kind of exercise would be so much richer if done inside Dandelife, where the timeline interface and filtering would allow for easier navigation and the tags would provide for that wonderful element of serendipity and ironic juxtaposition.

Or, for more sophisticated users, how about realizing a true hypertext composition, a series of interconnected prose poems or vignettes tied together through the rich timeline. Get out the camera and integrate pictures and video and immediately compelling content is instantly possible.

FYI: if you are going to try Dandelife out, this blog entry about their features is required reading… there’s always something new around the corner!