Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Clemson "presents social" @ SC11

SC11 poster crafted by Barbara Weaver, CCIT Lead for the SMLC
While standing up the Center, the SMLC team participated in SC11.  SC11 is the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. 


A team of faculty, staff, and graduate students had the opportunity to meet with the "IT Crowd" and discuss how to better visualize, research, and teach about the Social Web.  We had a chance to meet folks from Dell's command center and learn more about how they're using to connect with their customers.


Next Fall, we're looking forward to participating in SC12 in Salt Lake City, Utah - and showcasing how the Social Web synchs up with HPC to generate value for Clemson University and Higher Education!


Thursday, March 29, 2012

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.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

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!


Thursday, March 22, 2012

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!



Friday, March 16, 2012

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!


Thursday, March 15, 2012

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!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

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!

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