This is the first in a series of ebooks we’re creating to explore and showcase the different kinds of social media and branded content marketing activities that businesses are carrying out. We’re now looking for more views and experiences for the next edition, so feel free to get in touch.

I mention this because the strength of weak ties and social density are some of the topics I discussed with Stowe around his recent research into Socialogy (The Theory And Practice Behind Social Business) and the Physics of People. His research is still very much work in progress, so we discussed some of the interesting and unexpected findings he has discovered through a series of interviews he’s been conducting. We also discussed how this helps shape his thinking on what’s round the corner. I’ll put a summary together of the interview shortly, and Stowe plans to create a transcript so I’ll link to that when it’s online. In the meantime, it would be great to get your feedback about the interview with Stowe, particularly in terms of whether you have similar case studies or research findings.

I’ve been conducting a series of podcast interviews over the years. The idea is to see whether there are patterns emerging that cut across different industries, or at least identify what implications there might be from the thinking and practice in one area on another. So I caught up with Peps again to discuss his idea about learning design, and get an educator’s perspective on innovation in digital education, and we discussed the following:

• Why there is so little to show from the investment in technology in education in terms of educational outcomes particularly given the promise.
• Ben Goldacre’s recent Building evidence into education report for Michael Gove at the Department for Education.
• The role Design Research has to play in terms of pedagogical innovation.
• Examples of where technology has helped bring about pedagogical innovation and how this differs from blended learning.
• The education cultural considerations for digital education start-ups.
• The need to exploit the social and open potential of the web in order to build learning systems around individuals and communities of people in order to satisfy the needs of the complexities of learning the demands of professionals in education.
• How there’s a need to move beyond the open access of the ‘what’ (content) to the sharing and collaboration of the ‘how’ (pedagogical approaches).
• The need for a product with an open, social and pedagogical architecture built in and the challenge of creating it.

Peps is part of the team that are trying to explore these ideas further and put them into practice, so if you are interested in finding out more or contributing to the discussion then check out the OpenPlan project.

Bruce provided a behavioural/group psychology perspective, and pointed out that what seemed to be missing from the client point of view is a methodology, system or tool (e.g. Kaplan Norton ‘Balanced Score Card’, Six Sigma, etc.) to help optimise collaboration, working relationships and productivity, particularly if a new project is starting or a new initiative is under way.

I’d recently been contacted by HR Magazine about how the ‘trend for putting the word social in front of everything – from learning to recruitment to performance management – shows no sign of abating’. Their article looked at social tools in HR, so it was interesting to see Bruce’s recent blog post on Socialogy and a Scientifically-Grounded Understanding of People. Basically, he tries to answers Stowe Boyd‘s question about ‘How do you think a scientifically-grounded understanding of people as social beings will change business in the future and how?’, but from an inter-personal rather than technology perspective. This prompted me to catch-up with Bruce in order to see how his thinking had progressed since we last spoke, and we discussed the following:

• Four Groups’ 4G methodology and human capital management software platform.
• The 5 factors required for business transformation, i.e. simple to explain, scalable and predictable, changes to people’s jobs, a return on investment (ROI), and external validation
• The use of these 5 factors of existing innovations versus Social Business
• Stowe Boyd’s ‘Physics of People’ and the holy grail of predicting behaviours

You can hear the interview above, and also check out Bruce’s follow-up article on Thinking about a ‘Physics of People’.

“If you really think about HR 2.0, then it’s about how the HR department helps facilitate crowdsourcing among its employees to provide internal innovation, …For crowdsourcing to be truly transformative, it needs to allow ideas to be developed from the bottom up, and filtered by the crowd.”

3D Printing Pilot in UK Schools Funded by Dept for Education

The Department for Education (DfE) is running a small trial to investigate the use of 3D printing technologies in teaching mathematics, physics, computer science and engineering and design. The pilot will enable schools to explore innovative ways of teaching using these technologies, and to find ways of making scientific and mathematical ideas easier to teach and understand.

21 schools have been selected from 40 top performing maths and science schools who submitted short proposals on how they would use the 3D printers across the relevant subject areas. The schools all received a Makerbot printer, consumables and access to training.

The project will run until September 2013, and is being managed by the Institute of Physics (IoP) and the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) with support from the Design & Technology Association.

Charles Tracy, head of education at the Institute of Physics, explained the exploratory nature of this exciting project:

“The Institute is very pleased to be working with the DfE and The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) on this pilot project. This is an exciting technology and we are hoping that, in the hands of subject experts, we will find some imaginative ways of using it to help teaching and learning in physics.”

The project kicked off with a seminar at the DfE in October 2012 where participating schools got to meet each other and hear more about the pilot project.  They also got to meet the folks at MakerBot, and hear from peers who are already using 3D printing in schools. The schools are expected to report regularly on their progress throughout the trial’s duration, and it is also hoped that the pilot will encourage collaboration and sharing of ideas in this area between schools, provide a better understanding of ways this technology can be used in teaching and help identify barriers that need to be overcome.

This is an important consideration, as highlighted in the recent Decoding Learning report on digital education by the UK innovation charity NESTA. The research, conducted by the Institute of Education, showed that “one the best ways people can learn is by making and sharing things”. However, the report also points out that although innovations in ‘technology-supported learning’ shows great potential, this can only be fulfilled if “those required to use that technology are also supported”.  So it will be interesting to see whether the findings from the DfE backed pilot helps address this potential barrier to the adoption of 3D printing for teaching in schools.

Unlike the plethora of books being released about Social Media Marketing, this one argues that the largest and most important part of social influence is that which happens when conversations happen in the real world, face to face. We discuss the books key themes, but also link this back to some of the key themes I’ve been exploring, such as Word Of Mouth Marketing, Influence and even Advocacy briefly. Keller and Fay are not advocating offline over online, they’re simply pointing out that 90% of word of mouth still happens offline, and these conversations are more emotive and so have a bigger impact for brands. You can read a free excerpt of their book and win a copy here.

As part of my horizon scan into the eBook revolution, I interviewed Julian. I was particularly interested that someone in their mid-60s ,who I hadn’t considered as being particularly tech savvy, was now publishing eBooks and conducting a social media marketing campaign that had been picked up by the media across the globe. We discussed a number of themes, including: his book; his late adoption of ‘modern world technologies; Kindle as a platform for ePamphleteering and the spreading of ideas that can change the world; and his campaign to show that conceptual art is a con. You can hear this interview below, but also see his cheerful anti-conceptual art polemic over on Vimeo: