Our April theme of Digital Learning has illustrated something quite clearly for me:
Whatever Digital Learning we choose will also determine the conversations we have with our globally scattered friends and neighbors, and how we have them.
Conversely, you may choose a virtual community (like this one, our Ho‘ohana Community on JJL) or a social media network first (such as Twitter or LinkedIn). However in making that choice, you will have to learn whatever it takes to communicate with everyone there if you are to fully engage with them (and they with you) in the best possible way.
Pure and simple: We choose how and if we engage
What is that “best possible way?” Well, “best” is pretty relative to each of us individually, and there’s the rub: Best for you may not be perceived as best for the rest of the community.
And there is another truism which frequently emerges: What happens more times than not, is that whatever is easiest for you isn’t necessarily deemed best for everyone else too: Getting to what is optimal for both of you takes some work. Sometimes, it even means building new habits. At some point, people make decisions about what is good enough and they give up on the pursuit of optimal.
That’s life. We all have to arrive at our own reasonable balance.
Marketing guru Seth Godin became an example of this recently when he received some criticism for his decision to write about Twitter. Just one problem: He doesn’t use it. What he wrote was positive, but as someone who is not engaged with the Twitter community he lost some of his credibility with those who are, and feel they are more devoted and fully engaged.
As a Twitter newbie myself, about a week short of a full month’s engagement, I have learned much about the cultural norms there, and feel like I am learning how to speak a completely brand new language, just 140 characters at a time. When do I choose updates that are publicly broadcast, @directed, @included or direct-messaged? Which is the best way to reply to each? Why can’t I get just one stretched picture on my profile page versus the tiled one like others can? When does link-sharing deteriorate to anything less than sincerely appreciated or loved by your followers? When are you perceived as gregarious and generous versus strictly self-promoting and spammy?
And most of all: Why bother learning?
Twitter has taught me an awful lot this month, and I have come to realize that it does take time to learn enough to make a reasonably intelligent stab at answering that “Why bother?” question. It takes time, transparency, and vulnerability: While you are learning you have to engage; there really isn’t any other way.
Further, the community sets the rules of engagement, not you.
When you choose some kind of digital learning you are often choosing a community too, and you are rarely learning alone.
Even when you use something like Del.icio.us, normally entered into strictly for individual book-marking, it turns out to have some kind of social component to it. After I had been using my Del.icio.us toolbar bookmarklet for all my link tagging over quite an extended amount of time, I remember being so surprised the day I went back into my account again to learn how to bundle my tags, and discovered that I actually had a network and fans there –how had that happened? Who were they? Where did they come from? Was I expected to communicate back with them or reciprocate in some way? I went into this mini panic worrying about how unintentionally rude I may have appeared until I learned more about the way that networking happened there.
With Twitter, I am conversing regularly (that is, “tweeting”) with people across the globe who seem to have no interest in anything else I write over and above those 140-character updates. In the beginning, it floored me that those tweets were enough value for my new twitter-friends, jumping into conversations with me just as easily as my older friends established elsewhere did. They click my blog link at my bio to quickly check me out, but even if they choose to follow me (adding me to their chosen Twitter village) they may never read one of my blog posts again (much less my book and about my mission), and have no interest whatsoever in an RSS or email subscription. Twitter is an instant community of sharing humanity in real time, not in experience-driven stories or bloggy thesis presentation. Your Twitter connection can become more as links are followed (and as you choose who you will follow), but not necessarily.
Social has become a pretty literal word.
There has been some rapid and totally unexpected spill-over for me as I surrender my “Why bother?” learning time. I have noticed that my blog posts are getting shorter and less frequent (finally!) for now that I “get” Tumblr and Twitter I more fully understand how short attention span has become no matter how much people may love or admire you. It ain’t personal: When they choose new learning of their own, some time may be stolen from old-style conversations. Our capacity for life has this wondrous yet annoying way of stretching much larger than the time we manage to stay awake and function well! Twitter (and the books I purchased after A Love Affair With Books) has had a pretty dramatic effect on my own RSS feed-reading: Blogs that were “on probation” now have a much shorter time in which to make the cut with me. Am I being more efficient, or less patient?
And the duplicity of reciprocation and paying it forward is not lost on me: I am completely aware of how I may be in the same boat with someone else judging my citizen publishing – and me as publisher.
Let’s bring this back to Joyful Jubilant Learning
What more can we learn from the aha! moments we experience within our Digital Learning here and elsewhere? Most, if not all of us participate in several virtual communities: What experiences can we bring back to this one here at JJL, evolving in our best possible way? How is our own Ho‘ohana Community to get better within the conversations had here, and more supportive of the learning initiatives of all who wish to engage with us?
Please share your ideas, for I am quite positive that every single author here would love to hear them.
~ Rosa Say
Earlier this month: Talking Story and a JJL Twitter Soiree
Post author Rosa Say is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii's Universal Values to the Art of Business, and she currently writes for Managing with Aloha Coaching, Value your Month, Value your Life.
Rosa also serves as the managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning; her letter for 2008 can be found on our About Page.
For all of Rosa's writing aggregated in just one place, visit her Tumblr, Ho‘ohana Aloha.
One of my family's favorite restaurants is the Golden Corral; a restaurant chain famous for bringing new meaning to the traditional "All-You Can-Eat" concept. From salads to sushi, there is nothing one would want for. We enter with hunger, excitement, and anticipation to sample all the new tastes and flavors. Unfortunately, we leave the experience miserable, overstuffed, and frustrated that we did not make wiser choices. So...what does my family's eating habits have to do with digital citizenship?
Connections
About the author: Dwayne Melançon is the author of 
John Richardson is the author of 
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