Students' Will to Lead: Emerging Technologies Group Project

Rather than a traditional firm and technology analysis, my students have opted to do an applied group project that examines how to leverage value from new, social technologies.

This agreement was brokered after a) students noting no online buzz around Clemson's "Will to Lead" capital campaign and b) a discussion about authenticity and an online web presence.  Rather than artificially creating a buzz (e.g., hiring a consulting company to orchestrate a campaign), my kids suggested that an emergent, authentic, student-led campaign might generate more attention and excitement amongst young alumni.  Through telling their stories on multiple platforms about how the Clemson experience builds leaders, my students hope to catch the attention of their peers & engage them with the capital campaign.

So, keep an eye on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, and Amen for a buzz around Clemson students and Leadership ... it'll be interested to see if the kids can create a larger voice around our capital campaign than the experts :)

We plan on using Radian6 to compare the student-driven campaign with the advancement-driven campaign ...

Here is the project:

By now, everyone should have found a team for the group project. I need all y'all to have a team representaitve send me the following by 6 PM on Wednesday:

1. Team roster
2. Platform that you'll be using (facebook, pinterest, etc.)
3. Theme of your piece of the campaign. This can be a couple of sentences. If I require clarification, I'll ask for it.

I'll provide initial feedback on the themes & platforms over Spring Break.

We will come back together the first week of April to discuss progress, challenges and goals.

The final week of the semester, each group will submit inoformation on how to access their project e.g., location on the platform ... such as twitter handle, url etc., you will also present your campaign to the class, discuss its objectives, and explain why itdid/did not realize them. You will provide in the presentation a final assessment of whether the project yielded a deeper understanding of the business value (in terms of Students' Will to Lead) of using Social Media.

Grades will be based on a) peer evaluation (20% - did you do your part?) b) faculty evaluation by moi (40% - did your demonstrate effort, thought, and an understanding of the platform? Did your group innovate? Did your group have fun? and c) class evaluation of your project evaluation (40% they will use similar heuristics as noted in point b).

If you have questions, please ping me ... I'm happy to answer them.

This project is designed to be fun, get you thinking about how to extract business value from these different social media platforms, and to help us all learn a little bit more about Studnets' Will to Lead Clemson.

SMLC featured in workshop @ UGA

I recently visited the Terry College of Business @ University of Georgia and gave a talk about the SMLC to their Department of Management Information Systems.  I really enjoy the lively intellectual community @ UGA  - the Information Systems Faculty actually like each other, they like to talk about ideas, and they care about their students.

Over the course of a two hour presentations about the founding of the SMLC & what we do ... questions surfaced about the ethics of "Listening" surfaced - Are we spying?  How do you listen responsibly?  Who else is listening? How do you teach kids to listen? How do we build this into our curriculum?

While we didn't answer all of these questions (many were posed by me as part of the presentation :), my position is that if academics ignore listening, we're like ostriches with our heads stuck in the sand.  The Social Web has emerged as a rich source of data, ideas, and opportunity.  Academics need to a) know what folks in industry are doing, b) study the implications of listening (be it by Smuckers around Grape Jelly to the DARPA around terrorist activity, and c) engage in a discourse with practice about how online communities form, evolve, and dissolve on the Social Web... The lingering question is will academics rise to the challenge?

My day @ Georgia ranks right up there as highlight of my year!  Thanks to Elena Karahanna, Nick Berente & Dale Goodhue for being great hosts!

SMLC featured in the Echo!

The Echo featured the SMLC in its February 29th edition.  The Echo reaches tens of thousands Clemson Alumni around the world!


Our thanks to the folks @ the Echo for getting the word out about the good work that we're doing in partnership with Dell and powered by Radian6!

Jim Bottum & SMLC Featured in InformationWeek

Early, early on a Tuesday morning, I participated in a conference call with Jim Bottum, our CIO, and David F. Carr, of InformationWeek. Carr requested the call to discuss the opportunities created by the SMLC @ Clemson.  His article nicely summarized Bottum's vision, the activities of our Creative Inquiry students, and touched on a few of my research interests.  He gave a great shout to to the folks @ Dell and Radian6 for their work with the SMLC!  Thanks to the folks @ InformationWeek for sharing what we're doing with the world! Read the Article!

SMLC in Hong Kong

The folks at Hong Kong Polytechnic generously sponsored me to visit & work for a week as a visiting scholar.  I'm going to spend the week learning about their research, exchanging ideas, and specc'ing out next steps for how to collaborate on Social Media research.

While there, I'll be presenting our work @ the SMLC in partnership with Dell and powered by Radian6!  I'm looking forward to seeing how my peers in Information Systems, Marketing, and Management view opportunities afforded by examining the implications of listening for organizations in the United States and the greater world.

Thanks to JJ Hsieh and the folks @ HK Poly for letting me share Clemson, Dell, and Radian6's work on powering the social enterprise with a new audience!

Dana Wachter Interviews Emerging Technologies Students

Dana Wachter, of Fox Carolina, visited my emerging technologies class to discuss how students viewed lurking ethical issues tied to copyright and revenue generated by Pinterest! 

Students shared their views on who Pinterest appealed to, joined in a rich discussion about whether Clemson Football should sponsor a Pinterest page, and relayed their tales of joy & woe about the "Is Pinterest just for girls?" assignment.  

All of the students enjoyed having Dana join our for the day!  She really enrichened that last day before Spring Break!

Thanks Dana for connecting Clemson students with the world!

Relevant Links

Pinterest Revenue Model

Pinterest and Copyright
Pinterest and Flickr

Thinking Creatively with Radian6: Individual Projects

@ Clemson, the Creative Inquiry (CI) the program teaches students critical thinking skills.  Each course is customized around different research questions, themes, skillsets, & whatnot.  


My CI is powered by the higher ed program @ Radian6.  The folks @ Radian6 provided access to their insights dashboard, training to individuals & groups on how to effectively conduct searches (Thanks Genevieve Coates!), and a tremendous opportunity for our students to learn about how to analyze & leverage the power of social media. 


So what do kids learn?  How to search a vast dataset pulled from the "Social Web" & extract interesting insight or stories. That there is a potential for their assignments to be seen by the public, raises the stakes of the game ... Thus far, the response has been tremendous!


Here is this semester's individual project assignment: 


Sent on March 3 @ 8:13 AM: 


I have received most of your individual project topics (hint hint). If I haven't, please share it with me (hint hint). Here is the deliverable for the project:

You will write a blog post around your topic for Radian6 that incorporates analysis from the Radian6 Insights dashboard (insights.Radian6.com). Here is the Radian6 blog: http://www.radian6.com/blog/ 

Here are exemplars of blogs from Radian6: 

http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/02/wanna-trade-nhl-tradecentre-blows-up-social-media/
http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/03/the-sweet-story-of-crowdsourcing-social-media-baby-names/
http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/02/putting-a-ring-on-social-media-engagement-a-meme-proposal/

Here is your challenge & potential reward 

The Challenge: the post must be INTERESTING & EXPLAIN what you learned about how to SEARCH & ANALYZE the social web ... it must be written in a way that someone who isn't in school would go - hey - that's pretty cool ... 


So, if you're looking @ Jeremy Lin ... one of the great parts of his story is the support from his family ... so you might want to narrow your search to jeremy lin & family, create a conversation cloud, and compare in a chart what people say about jeremy lin & family to jeremy lin & harvard ... I'm just brainstorming here :)

The Opportunity: once completed, all of the blog posts will be forwarded to Radian6's higher ed program. If they like it, your post (with some tweaks - they are the marketing experts after all) may be published on their website. 

So, here is an opportunity to demonstrate your chops @ social media listening, powered by Radian6, &, if its particularly good, shared with the entire world! 

The assignment is due on April 1. The J-team (Jason, Jim & Julie) will review them & provide feedback by April 10. We'll work on finalizing the projects & getting them to Radian 6 by May 1.

E-mail if you have questions: jason.b.thatcher@hotmail.com

P.S. if you are interested in a longer term project, like the NFL draft ... let's talk b/c it runs past the end of the semester :)

Forbes Website Picks up Story on Clemson's SMLC

Forbes Magazine, a pillar in the literary community, featured the press release about the SMLC on its Website this week. For my students, and me, this has been a story about a quirky little class that has received A LOT of attention.

What's really cool?  Absent the help from Dell, the CyberInstitute, or Radian6, we'd still have been ** talking about ** as opposed to actually ** LISTENING to ** conversations on the Social Web.

Complaints that academe has sold out to industry feel more than a little specious at times like these ... Absent industry support, it would be much harder to teach students the critical thinking and applied skills necessary to survive in our changing economy ... with government stepping off the bus ... and underfunding higher ed ... it's as natural as a duck swimming in water ... to turn to industry for resources necessary to teach those skills ... and realize Thomas Green Clemson's vision of equipping our students to become leaders for South Carolina's next 100 years.

Eureka! SMLC submits proposal to ENGAGE with Clemson Honors Students!

The Social Media Listening Center is recruiting entering freshmen from the Calhoun Honors College to participate in the Eureka! program.  We want to build a team to study the 2012 congressional elections.  We're particularly in learning about differences in the social media discourse between newly constructed districts (with no incumbents), recently constituted districts (with incumbents), and existing districts (with our without incumbents).

Our team is going to listen, analyze, and evaluate whether different patterns of discourse are manifest across districts - in simple terms, does having an incumbent or existing party machine change the nature of social media's impact on the election?

This AWESOME project holds the potential to connect offline action with online conversations ... If we can grab enough helping hands, we'll follow these districts through the election in November!

Part Two: Pinterest: Is it Really Just for Girls?

After watching a week of online and offline debates about Pinterest ... I issued the Pinterest challenge.  My emerging technologies students have been asked to create pinboards about Clemson Athletics to see who would "pin" or "comment" on their pics.

Students were given one day to:

1. Sign up for Pinterest,
2. Create a bio,
3. Create a Pinboard about any aspect of Clemson Athletics - from coaches to NCAA sports to players to tailgating.
4. Post at least five pieces of content to that Pinboard (with appropriate attributions) ... they thought would attract followers ...
5. Submit their pinboard to the instructor.

I then assembled a list of pinboards for the class to follow.

One week later, students will:

1. Report how many "pins" and "followers" they had acquired (and their gender) ... 
2. Select their top five and bottom five pinboards from the class.
3. Assess whether Pinterest was really just for girls?  (e.g., could Pinterest could be used to market, collect data from, or generate value among more than women).
4. Evaluate Pinterest's claim that they weren't sure about how they make money ... but they'd get to it ... 

To sweeten the pot, I threw in two boxes of Girl Scouts cookies AND a hall pass to play golf on a sunny spring day.

Come back in a week, and find out, what happens ... when a bunch of college students are offered a sunny spring day and a couple of boxes of thin mints ...

As part of my Pinterest Challenge ...

Greenville News Features the SMLC

Anna Simon of the The Greenville News featured the SMLC on Sunday, February 25th.  Her article emphasized that the CyberInstitute created the SMLC to be an interdisciplinary workspace for students and faculty to search and visualize over 200 million real-time social media powered conversations.

If the many visitors to the lab are predictors of future use, the vision of students using the lab to study and research the Social Web will be realized.  We've had folks from the College of Engineering and Science, the College of Architecture, Art, and the Humanities, the College of Business and Behavioral Science, Advancement, Campus Security, the Board of Trustees, and many other parts of campus attend demonstrations of the Center's capabilities.  To a person, they are blown away by the reach of Radian6's social dataset.  We amplify this reach with our ability to simultaneously project up to seven different real time visualizations of social conversations on six 42 inch monitors and two HD quality projectors.

Why is this important?  Because understanding how to leverage the Social Web requires developing a curriculum and research agenda that helps folks not only to talk, but also to visualize, listen,  and engage in meaningful "social" conversations.  When we build a better understanding of how data moves across platforms (e.g., twitter, facebook, linkedin etc.) and are able to convert that into meaningful information, then we will achieve a deeper understanding of how to the online meets the offline and shapes the economic future of South Carolina. 

Clemson students "get creative" with Radian6!

Recognizing the power of social media, our students have quickly embraced the importance of learning to use cutting edge software in order to better understand the world around them.  Student-driven team projects are examining:

• links between the social web and the stock market,
• myths and reality of Clemson athletics,
• patterns in "social conversations" around Fortune 100 companies, 
• and how to support law enforcement in South Carolina.  

Our student projects are powered by enterprise level access to Radian6, which lets them learn how to search, analyze, and interpret the Social Web.

Our student projects are part of Clemson's broader Creative Inquiry initiative, that helps them build research skills that they apply in the real world AND contribute to the FUTURE of South Carolina!

Stay tuned for more on individual projects in the coming weeks ...

The SMLC is a "SOCIAL EFFORT" by the Clemson Family for the people of South Carolina!!

While built in partnership with Dell and powered by Radian6, the Social Media Listening Center (SMLC) received University-wide support from students, faculty and staff.

From the moment that Jim Bottum introduced the idea to the opening of the SMLC, the Clemson Family rallied around the concept and contributed ideas, time, and resources.

• The CyberInstitute provided financial and staff support for all phases of the project.  
• The Department of Management in the College of Business and Behavioral Science offered the space necessary to host the Center. It sponsored three Creative Inquiry teams during the 2011-2012 academic year that examine how to better search and understand the implications of the social enterprise and social web for organizations. 
• The Department of Communication Studies in the College of Architecture, Art, and the Humanities helped create a vision for the Center.  It's faculty have integrated the Center into courses that examine how to better analyze the social web as well as leverage it for public relations.

The folks involved in the project goes far beyond Institutes and Centers.  Faculty, project managers, A/V specialists, facilities, creative services, purchasing, admin assistants, and many more members of the Clemson Family contributed to building the SMLC.  We all recognize that Social Media and the Social Enterprise are here to stay.  We are committed to helping Clemson students' learn to listen & secure their place as leaders of the economic future of South Carolina!

Salesforce.com Foundation & the Social Enterprise

Rodney Patterson of the salesforce.com foundation attended the opening of the SMLC.  We're looking forward to partnering with Rodney to learn about how we can partner with salesforce.com to teach our students about the social enterprise!  We're looking forward to building classes that integrate tools like Radian6 & Chatter into a broader social media curriculum!