Learning Conversations

Ewan McIntosh strikes again. His post on "The importance of creating a network" resonates totally with me. It's one I wished I'd written, and I'll certainly refer to it during my Naace session on social networking and teacher CPD.

As George Siemens writes at the end of his book, "Knowing Knowledge":

The future belongs to the network aware.

To me, to be network aware means understanding that I am a node in a network of learners, responsible for developing, maintaining and pruning my own connections to that network. It's through those connections that I am able to rapidly pick up on new developments in my particular field(s), to explore those new developments further and perhaps to change my thinking and my behaviour in the light of those developments.

My connections into this network take many forms. I'm now much less reliant on face-to-face conferences & events. Although, with Nancy White, I know that face-to-face, when used well, can be a highly effective medium. I have almost no need of the postal network (except when selling on ebay!) Most of my network activity now takes place online (the connections there are much easier to make, and to maintain). Some of it takes place through my Skype contacts list, some through email, most inbound connections are through my RSS subscriptions in Google Reader and most outbound connections through my blog.

A few months ago I listened to a podcast from Manager Tools about how to build your personal network. One of the things they highlighted in the show was the fact that maintaining a network requires activity... whether it's sending someone an occasional "keeping in touch" email, commenting on a blog, or linking to someone else in your own blog.

Most of us start by trying to maintain a network that is far beyond our capabilities to maintain. We end up with too much to read, and too much to write. There is always pruning to be done to find the nodes that add the most value to you.

So what does all this mean?

There are a number of perpectives to look at networks. The main one is the perspective of the individual node. Where do I fit into it? Who am I connected to? Are they the right people to be connected to? Who is connecting to me? How can I best help the people connected to me?

But we also need to look at the organisational perpective. Organisations must learn how networks work, and ensure that the conditions exist for the people within the organisation to make the best connections possible. That may mean providing software platforms, but more probably it means providing people resources to act as filters and editors. These people will also become nodes in the network, but, if they are doing a good job and are perceived to be useful nodes, they will rapidly become the hubs around which their people will see the rest of the network.

Of course, organisations might then choose to manipulate the hubs; to spin the messages hitting their people, but, in a networked world there are always other routes to information & ideas. Basic information literacy requires everyone to always go back to the source before acting on an idea, and always to look at alternative viewpoints.

This applies to every sort of organisation, whether it's a local authority with its employees, a newspaper with its readers, a company with its customers etc. But remembering, as Ewan so clearly describes, that these people may be members of multiple networks that cross companies, local authorities etc. (Which means that you may end up joining up organisations!)

So, my proposal, (and roughly the central idea of my Masters dissertation), is that organisations must feed and support the networks that their people belong to if they wish to retain their positions of power and influence.

How does that sound? How does your organisation help or hinder your personal learning network?