Bio:
Sidneyeve Matrix is Queen’s National Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Film at Queen’s University. She teaches courses in mass communications, marketing, digital and social media for undergrads, and in the Queen’s School of Business Executive Development Centre and for Rutgers University Center for Management Development. She is an Educator in Residence at The Centre for Teaching and Learning at Queen’s, and the recipient of the OUSA Award for Excellence in Teaching at Queen’s University, by the Alma Mater Society and the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance.
Sidneyeve has a Masters degree from The University of Western Ontario, a graduate certificate from Syracuse University, and a PhD from The University of Minnesota. She is an Associate Editor (social media) of The Journal of Professional Communications and on the editorial board of International Journal of Interactive Multimedia.
Sidneyeve also works as a social media developer helping brands increase their digital IQ, at MatrixMediaFX. She sits on Marketing magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board. She is a regular digital trends analyst for national media outlets, including CBC News and CBC Radio, CTVGlobeMedia, The Canadian Press, Sun Media, CanWest Global, and many regional newspapers and radio broadcasts. Her educational technology initiatives and research have been featured in University Affairs Magazine, Macleans Magazine, Yahoo!, MSN.ca, Canada.com, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and elsewhere.
Some recent news clips:
Newspaper. New website allows people to set up on-line memorials to themselves and send messages to loved ones after they die, in the Toronto Star and Hamilton Spectator. October 2011.
Newspaper. Air Canada employees using Facebook to express concerns over labour negotiations, in the Globe and Mail. September 2011.
Newspapers and online. The rising popularity of on-line dating, in the Toronto Sun, Winnipeg Sun, Ottawa Sun, Calgary Sun, 24 Hours Vancouver, Cornwall Standard Freeholder, Kingston Whig-Standard and Fort McMurray Today, and 14 other Sun Media newspapers, and on Canoe.ca.
News clip on mobile learning:
HR 2.0: Socializing Human Resources
Here are some slides from a keynote presentation I did at Impact99, a social media and human resources conference in Toronto.
An App to Teach With
This summer I designed a mobile learning organizer app called ClassCaddy to use in my courses. The app is designed specifically to solve an issue I learned about in 2010 on student exit surveys in my mass communication course: mass comm class information overload!
Collecting together the lecture videos, links, tweets, documents, podcasts, slides and various other digital learning objects in one place is the key to useability, students said.
Easily navigable, clearly organized curation of class tools makes it easier for students to discover and adopt them. Yet when that “one place” they are organized is a website, it’s so easy to get distracted by the rest of the web (well….mostly Facebook!).
Having class resources contained in a dedicated smartphone caddy app should make it easier to focus on the task at, or “in” hand.
Having said that, because a key component of any successful app is the ability to connect with friends, ClassCaddy is thoroughly socialized (Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare), and even mildly gameified (leaderboard) to encourage content sharing.
Using a CMS approach to app design lets me update the content weekly, in real-time, without having to resubmit the app for approval by Apple.
So far the Android and iOS downloads are tied. For BlackBerry users, I designed a BB-optimized mobile website here.
Adding this app to my iTunesU podcasts, SMS reminder system, and smartphone flashcards, completes my mLearning suite development projects for 2011.
I’ll wait for student feedback to see how well ClassCaddy meets their needs.
Thank you to PARTEQ Innovations for financial support, to Hayley and Annalisa for testing and UX feedback, and to MobileRoadie for great customer service.
MacLove
AppleInsider blog reports today that according to Taiwan industry publication DigiTimes, Apple’s Asian manufacturing partners have seen orders for popular Macbook models double in the first quarter of 2011. Apple laptops, especially the MacBook Air, are selling like hotcakes.
Why do users love Macs so much? A quick trip to the Lovemarks nomination page shows comments including:
“I can be creative without limits.” and “Everyone can be great.”
Closely related, last year when students were surveyed at Stanford University about their mobile phone use, researchers found that three-quarters of respondents said their iPhone made them happier, and over 50% agreed they “loved” the device. Soon we’ll see studies about students and iPad love, but not until the device becomes affordable.
Apple computers and mobile gadgets have that seductive mix of “cool elegance” and “intuitive functionality,” inspiring generations of declarations along the lines of: “after you have a Mac, you will by no means go back.”
Platforms constructed and dismantled
Every so often my Facebook friend count drops by a couple of connections, as I am sure yours does too.
I am especially sure of this if your friend network includes a significant number of Gen Y Facebookers, as mine does.
Why?
Not necessarily because your status updates are boring, offensive, or overshares (though of course those are possible factors too).
It could be because it is National Unfriend Day, which according to Jimmy Kimmel, is November 17th.
More likely it’s because a couple of millennials decided to clean house and dump all but their closest friends from their FB social graph. I hear this every other week, from someone who is Gen Y, yet almost never from anyone who is even just a little older.
While Gen X and Boomers understand the importance of platforms, networking, and connections, I watch as many digital natives struggle to truly grasp the significance and value of their social network. This is true even though for most of Gen Y, Facebook sets the stage for their lives—it is the key platform for entertainment, news, socializing, and soon, for education and shopping too. Still, while Gen X and Boomers work diligently to grow and stretch their reach on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, Gen Y periodically dumps dozens (hundreds?) of friends from Facebook, because they feel these folks fail to qualify as “real” enough to remain nodes on their social network.
Authenticity is key to social media communication, certainly. Facebook is a tool for the digital coterie, but it enables all kinds of distributed intimacies and networking opportunities. Adding casual acquaintances and associates, personal and professional, to ones FB friend list is business-as-usual. Yet that is viewed with suspicion if a strict metric of “realness” is applied. Discussions online and off about what constitutes a real friend, and whether Facebook connections are indicative of one’s popularity/charisma/influence or not, are ongoing and resilient.
These conversations happen among Gen X and Boomers too, as I’ve heard many times at professional conferences, as speakers and participants reject the importance of platform size, deny the possibility that large follower/friend counts could mean anything but fakeness and autofollowbacks, and dismiss anyone with more than x-number of connections as an impostor and social media douchebag.
I could not disagree more. In many cases, the size of one’s network does indicate relevance and reach. (My friend Mark W. Schaefer is a case in point—are you reading his blog? If not, you’re missing out). It’s naive to deny that network size matters when it comes to evaluating someone’s impact and influence. We may resent it, and we might question whether professional success is all about “who you know” or how many you know. Yet clearly both quantity and quality are key factors in building our networks. In the emerging trust economy, the quantity (size) and quality (value) of our network connections are related. And let’s face it, networking opens doors and leads to opportunities—something that was true long before anyone had heard of Facebook.
So rather than dump friends indiscriminately, we could think about how to partition and privatize Facebook profiles into professional and personal segments. Rather than cynically dismiss and doubt the authenticity of those whose digital Rolodex is well-developed, we could check their klout, and/or make the ask and inquire about how they choose their affiliations. Believe me, people have A LOT to say about their personal politics of platform construction on Twitter and elsewhere.
What’s needed are strategies for building platforms that are strong and useful foundations for professional development, making an impact for social good, and supporting the next generation of professionals. Having “a robust online presence” is step one in establishing yourself as a thought leader in your area of specialization, according to The Harvard Business Review. Developing platforms that you can mobilize and rely on, via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, as well as attracting communities of readers on blogs, and networks of connections on YouTube and Vimeo, takes effort, talent, and is time-consuming. There are many resources describing and prescribing how-to steps for building your networks, long before you need them.
Surely one-click unfriending is called for in various situations, and I’ve unfollowed and unfriended many online people (in fact, I do so every week, proactively shaping my platform using Manage Flitter to retain the most valuable connections, those who are active, share relevant information, and practice reciprocity). But indiscriminate deleting and dumping of digital connections may indicate a lack of understanding about the old fashioned importance of who-you-know, for professional and personal success.
For me, the mass unfriending phenomenon is a teachable moment, which is why I’ve designed a course at Queen’s University starting in January, for fourth year students who are just about to graduate, on building a strong digital platform and persona. I would love to connect with other teachers and trainers working in this area to trade strategies and resources.
Course abstract: Research seminar on mobile and social media communication strategies and politics concerning reputation management for brands, individuals, celebrities, companies, and organizations. Theoretical and practical investigation into how communications platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and You Tube are impacting communities, interpersonal relationships, real-time news flow, branding, human resources, consumer practices, public relations, and social media marketing.
In building this course I came across some excellent resources about constructing a platform, including:
5 Keys to Building Networks Over Time by Alexandra Levit
A More Sensible Approach to Facebook by Laurel Miltner
Building a Professional Network: Resources for Graduate Students from The University of Minnesota
Why I Decided to be an Open Networker on LinkedIn by Stacy Donovan Zapar
Hello iGeneration
News this week shows that 9 out of 10 pre-schoolers have a social media presence, courtesy of their parents. A survey from AVG, a web security company, asked 2,200 moms in Canada, the US, and Europe about their use of the web for sharing information about their kids. They tracked trends of uploading and sharing sonogram images, opening Facebook accounts for their newborns, and starting up email accounts for babies. Not surprisingly, the company concluded that this was very risky business. A spokesperson warned: “You are creating a digital history for a human being that will follow him or her for the rest of their life. What kind of footprint do you actually want to start for your child, and what will they think about the information you’ve uploaded in future?”
It’s unlikely this technopanic rhetoric will make much of an impact on those Millennial parents who themselves grew up on Facebook and are accustomed to lifecasting on this platform. As “The Trophy Kids,” the majority of this cohort is comfortable with constant video-and photo-capture and social imagesharing among friends, with privacy settings appropriately tweaked. And although there’s obviously no guarantee that photos posted online will remain private, for many in Gen Y the benefits outweigh the risks because these modes of daily microengagement close the distance between far-flung family and friends.
Still, the debate about whether or not to share images of kids online is very serious and raging across the blogosphere as passionate parents weigh in on both sides of the issue. As Facebook is “rapidly taking the place of the baby book,” observes journalist Douglas Quenqua at The New York Times, some parents remain vehemently opposed to posting images of kids on the web (largely because of fears concerning pedophiles), while others think it poses no significant risk.
For those moms and dads who do opt to use Facebook and Flickr for photosharing, beyond boosting privacy settings, posting photos that are “appropriate” is key. This from the pros at Reputation Defender, who remind us that kids do grow up, “and no matter how cute you think those pictures of them splashing around in the tub are, you should avoid posting images that could embarrass them down the road.” And even more serious than embarrassment—the Reputation Defender site suggests that overly intimate images posted by parents can be fodder for cyberbullies later on.
After weighing the serious risks (pedophiles and cyberbullies), many well-intentioned baby-bouncing and toddler-chasing 20- and 30-somethings are opting to set up e-profiles for their children. To suggest that these Moms and Dads are clueless and acting careless about their children’s digital footprint is unfair. In fact, it is more likely the opposite. The trend indicates that GenY feels participation in the social web and membership in online networks is an advantage they want their kids to have. There’s every indication that today’s cyberparents will teach their families about managing one’s digital footprint early. Looking further down the road, it’s strategic and proactive for parents to help their children to hone digital skills and mentor them in building an appropriately-shared and thoughtfully-composed online persona and uniquely creative resume when it comes time to apply for scholarships, internships, and even admittance to higher ed.
If we thought the millennials were “digital natives,” always on and constantly connected, the digital proclivities documented in the AVG survey indicate that we haven’t seen anything yet. Wait ’til GenY’s offspring, the tech toddler iGeneration finds its voice—a cohort of “highly wired” children who will have started Facebooking before they were out of diapers and who “don’t come with an off switch.”
