SMLC opening video: #ClemsonListens

Eddie Bennett and Dave Dryden of Creative Services @ Clemson produced this short video for the SMLC opening.  The video celebrates Clemson's partnership with Dell and Radian6.  

Eddie did a great job composing the video, snagging screenshots, and responding to questions/queries.  Another example of how student's creativity powers #ClemsonListens!

Part One: Pinterest: Is it really just for "girls"?

One Monday, as part of a class exercise on Web 2.0, my students offered up Pinterest as an example of business that creates value through users providing content.

Not being familiar with Pinterest (and I guess that I was the only one in the room that wasn't), I was surprised by the split in the responses of men and women.  

Women were really enthusiastic - saying it was interesting, worth looking at, a great way for sharing ideas, to identify new things.  

The men?  Crickets chirp!  

I've never seen a split, on gender lines, that was quit so stark around a website.  Not even when I was suckered into pulling up Chatroulette during class ... Here's where it gets interesting?  

I asked - who has a Pinterest account? 

Nearly every hand in the room went up.  Some slower.  Some faster. Some macho guys almost blushing.  Others pausing to make sure the guy next to them raises his hand.  

One of the back row cloud blurted out - "We have accounts so that we know what they [the women] are looking at!"  Among the men, this unleashed a flood of murmurs, nods, and affirmations ... with some of the more liberal men saying that wasn't the whole truth of it ... 

I made a note to self, looked it up on Wikipedia, requested a Pinterest invitation ... and found an engaging, yet puzzling, experience ... It reminded me an awful lot of my one of sisters' bulletin board ... and of another sister's scrapbooking ... 

So, as I mused about how to incorporate this new piece of the Social Web into my class... Pinterest is picked up by Mashable ... suddenly, the web is buzzing with questions ... folks are asking what is the business value of Pinterest?  The technorati from the offline to the online discussed Pinterest, either stereotyping it as for women or bristling that it is stereotyped as "for women'?

Hm.  In the coming week, I found myself describing & talking about Pinterest with my merry band of MBA students (many of whom are only marginally younger than me :-) ), discussing it with visitors to the SMLC, at lunch over a quesadilla, and being asked - why, why - should firms care if only appeals to women?

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So, we go full circle.  

I return to class on Monday and I suggest that Athletics (which yielded zero hits) needed to leverage the power of Pinterest to promote sports @ Clemson.  The crickets stop chirping, the back row cloud thunders - why?  what value is there in Pinterest?  Would it turn off football recruits? If coaches, players, and fans posted to Pinterest?  We never did reach a satisfactory resolution.  

So, this week, my students get a new emerging technologies assignment about the Social Web - they're going to post on Pinterest and see who can generate the most * MALE * traffic @ Clemson athletics ... 

Stay tuned for an update!

Social Media Pedagogy: How Do You Manage the Firehose?

So, how do you help students digest a FIREHOSE spewing new apps, concepts, and strategies that "flow in" and "flow out" of the social web to power the social enterprise?

After teaching emerging technologies for a decade, and three years of focused thinking about how to teach about the social web, I'm just beginning to articulate a method for how to make this "mass" of seemingly disparate concepts, technologies, and movements make sense to students ...

First, you make sure that students understand enabling technologies & concepts that make applying these principles possible.  Absent an understanding of TCP/IP, network architecture, the client-server model, and databases, students are at risk for viewing social media as separate from the broader ecosystem of technologies that enable the social enterprise. Lacking an understanding of technology ecosystems, it's hard for students to think strategically about the Social Web - or any other technology - for that matter.

Second, you help students to understand the history of the Web and social media.  You leverage work from the history of science, economics, computing, and sociology to help listeners understand how features of new technology, and the implications of those features, shape user uptake of the tool & its broader implications for firms success.  More importantly, this step helps students to think critically about new technologies and drivers of their success.

Third, you start with Web 2.0 principles & associated business models. You illustrate how O'Reilly's principles play out in the Social Web ... you explain how Web 2.0 principles are dynamic and must be re-assessed as the technologies evolve ... you connect those principles to Web 1.0 as a means to illustrate why business models are important ... You provide students opportunities to see the principles in action - through making them analyze the long tail embedded in matchmaking sites ... picking apart how data became the "intel inside" for a reinvigorated MySpace.com.  You let them get their hands dirty with in-class and outside of class exercises.

Fourth, you let the students engage with social media.  By this point, you hope, that the kids realize that the Social Web is more than simply marketing.  You hope that they view the "social web" is part of a uninterrupted string of innovations that have reframed how humans interact, economically, politically, and as communities.  You turn them loose to decompose "social" business models & get them thinking about how to use the Social Web to effect change in organizations and society ... and how to use it to create value for themselves and people around them.

Finally, you never forget that you, the old guy at the front of the classroom, will be hard pressed to keep up with the kids - that for the kids - the IT-enabled virtual social web is interwoven with their daily lives - that these kids have grown up with social and it is part of their DNA.  So, that as you move your students from point one to four, you have to leverage their knowledge, their experiences, and understanding to better inform your personal understanding of the social enterprise ... and if you don't, you run the risk of becoming irrelevant ...

Fox Carolina Visits Clemson's SMLC!

Dana Wachter, a reporter for Fox Carolina, visited Clemson's SMLC on February 23rd.  She spent an hour with the project leads, Barbara Weaver & me, discussing our Center's capabilities, what it means for students, and what it means for realizing Thomas Green Clemson's vision of Clemson as "a high seminary of learning in which the graduate of the common schools can commence, pursue and finish the course of studies terminating in thorough theoretic and practical instruction.”

Dana watched us use the Radian6 dashboard to check out the "social" conversation about her!

Dana put together a great story that captured the essence of our visit that aired on the 10 PM news!

Click here for story

Dell Partners with Clemson to build a Social Media Listening Center

Clemson's SMLC was conceived after Jim Bottum, Clemson CIO, visited Round Rock and saw Dell's new command center.  Dell generously shared its knowledge and introduced Clemson to Radian6.

This unique public-private project resulted in a campuswide social media listening initiative that incorporates new classes on social media listening, research, and outreach ... not to mention a state of the art teaching and research facility for listening to all things SOCIAL!

My thanks to the Maribel Sierra @ Dell & the many folks on her team that contributed to this project!

Clemson Social Media Listening Center

Radian6 gets social @ Clemson!

Radian6 powers the SMLC.  We use their Command Center and Listening/Engagement platforms to teach and conduct research on the social web.  Dell introduced our team to the folks @ Radian6.

Radian6's contributions go beyond simply offering software, they have also enhanced our student's Clemson experience.  During Sara, Dan, Billy, and Ed's four days on campus, they were generous enough to meet with our students, faculty, and staff to offer tips on how to manage our online presence, and to help us think through our business model in the SMLC.


During their visit, Radian6 put together a great piece about the Social Media Listening Center! They also managed to squeeze in visits to the Smoking Pig & Howard's Rock!

We're looking forward to our next visit from folks @ Radian6!

Clemson's Social Media Listening Center is Open for Business!

The Social Media Listening Center @ Clemson opened on February 23rd.

President Jim Barker opens the SMLC!

President Jim Barker welcomed students, faculty, and the Clemson family to the new Social Media Listening Center at Clemson University.  He was joined by Jim Bottum, Clemson's CIO, Ed Sullivan, VP of Strategic Alliances for Radian6, and Allison Dew, Executive Director of Dell in cutting the ribbon!

Built on a unique partnership between Dell, Radian6, and Clemson's CyberInstitute, the SMLC is a state-of-the-art research and teaching facility for Clemson students to learn about, and do research on, social media in real-time. It affords Clemson students the opportunity to use the same tools as Fortune 100 companies to engage with the social web!

Thanks to Dell and Radian6 for help make this unique learning opportunity possible for our students!

For more information, visit the SMLC's page @ the CyberInstitute!