Your local McDonald's ios probably being run by a manager 1.0 and will continue to do so until worker rights become much more entrenched. But professional workplaces, staffed by people with more marketable skills, are being managed by a new style of manager - or are losing both their staff and their relevance. Luis Suarez describes the new style of management in this post. He writes, "Long gone are the days of micro-management, of managing by fear, power, bullying or mediocrity, or, just simply, by believing that the mantra “I am the boss; do what I say … or else!” would still work in today’s current business environment." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Bullying]

Luis Suarez loves activity streams. "They are probably one of the most fundamental, critical and relevant 2.0 capabilities that any company can turn into," he writes, "Call it ambient intimacy, declarative living or, my all time favourite, "narrate your work", Activity Streams will help, over time, reduce the amount of transactions and frictions you will be exposed to, provoking that opportunity for knowledge workers to be on top of the knowledge flow thanks to that openness, clarity and transparency of what's happening around you." I agree with this assessment, with the idea that they will actually reduce the in-box clutter that people suffer from, and that they can be used to support work, learning, and everything in between. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Information, Assessment]

Is blogging dead? Here's Luis Suarez: "No! Blogging is not dead! It wasn't in 2007 and it won't be in 2011, nor in 2015! At least, for yours truly. I still see lots of value on corporate blogging, whether internal or external, and I am happy to see I am not the only one either. Blogging is here to stay, whether some people like it or not. Get used to it. Move on…" And the remainder of this longish blog post is a compendium of resources on blogging, a great starting point about the topic.

Here's my own trio of starter posts on blogging:
- How to be Heard, on starting a blog
- Educational Blogging, on blogs in schools
- Principles for Evaulating Websites, on how to read blogs
[Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Schools, Web Logs]

If you are reading this feed using Bloglines - and according to Blogline stats, 1,495 of you are following my two main feeds - then you probably already know that Bloglines will be shutting down October 1. This post from Luis Suarez is a good description of what Bloglines subscribers ought to be doing as the zero hour approaches. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Bloglines]

While we continue to read about Gen Xers and the rest, we are beginning to hear more people saying that it's not about the generation or being a digital immigrant but rather changing individual styles. Luis Suarez says, "It's the balanced mixture of working styles the ones that are going to shape up and define "The Future of the Workplace". Not the generations. They have got much more important things to tackle than just trying to divide themselves." And don't just shrug and say you're a "digital immigrant," says Peter Kent, who calls the attitude "learned helplessness." And Lisa Nielsen says, "As we enter into the next decade of the 21st century, it seems we have turned a bit of a corner. There is less tolerance for educators who do not believe it is their responsibility to move their teaching out of the past." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Interaction]

The hippies of the 60s didn't really follow through with their philosophy. Today they're retiring and cashing in their bonuses, leaving the rest of us to pay the bill. But the philosophy of sharing and community was a good one. Later, less self-centered and less selfish generations have lived by the values of sharing and community, and these values will eventually permeate the last bastions of previous generations, our institutions and businesses. Luis Suarez writes, "in order for social networking (and social media for that matter) to sink in within our corporate world, and be part of every business' DNA and provoke such sustainable growth where knowledge sharing, collaboration and, specially, innovation will be key, we need to forget about social strategy, and think more around social philosophy... Are you ready? Will you join the Hippie 2.0 movement? Not to worry, take your time. Whenever you are ready, we will be waiting for you … With open arms, wanting to continue making a difference. For everyone. Not just for your business." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Networks]

How much longer will companies keep trying to control and monitor their knowledge workers?" This question is asked by Luis Suarez in light of a NY Times article describing , a system that allows employers to track the social network behaviour of their employees. "The software, called Social Sentry, will automatically monitor Facebook and Twitter accounts for $2 to $8 for each employee," reports the Times. Suarez asks the obvious question, "Do you think that monitoring employees' social networking activities out there is surely going to guarantee you that next wave of talented, amazingly interconnected, rather innovative knowledge workers?" [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Twitter, Books, Networks]

Yes, blog comments are worth it - as Suarez says, a blog without comments is just another website. "There is no interaction. No dialogue. No conversation. No reaction. No nothing. You just basically consume the content… and move on. Just like you would do with a regular (1.0) Web site." I read every comment on my blog (they come to me by email; I have an email subscription set up but it needs a tweak before I can use it). I comment frequently on other people's blogs. Still, though, spam and SEO detritus are big problems for comments - the main reason I set up mIDm so many years ago (before OpenID, even) was to design a system where your comments lived on your blog, and linked to mine only if I could find you in my friend network. Still working on that. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: OpenID, Interaction, Web Logs, Subscription Services, Networks, Spam]

A poken: I want one. "Pokens are fun! And they surely fulfil a need that most of us with a heavy presence in the social software world out there were missing out big time: a way to keep in touch with our new connections online and in our mutually shared social software spaces!" [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: none]

A nice contrast with the article that follows: six principles from IBM staffers on the business value of social software (they also become, on translation, six principles on how to best use collaboration software): "1. Find: people, places, information... 2. Validate: people especially... 3. Direct dialogue: with customers (and suppliers), internal and external.... 4. Capture information... 5. Connections: spread internal innovation widely and rapidly... 6. Communities: increase staff morale and retention through a sense of belonging and recognition."

[Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: none]

Luis Suarez has been engaged in a 'no email' experiment for six months now (my communications with him when I visited the Canary Islands were all in Facebook). Why? "E-mail is, probably, not the best of tools out there to encourage open, public and transparent collaboration and knowledge sharing activities amongst knowledge workers and as such, six months ago I decided to stop using e-mail for such tasks." Sounds good to me. A note of caution, though. Dave Pollard, discussing abandoning email, circulates a fictitious 'memo to all staff' wherein the use of email is prohibited. Which misses the point. Decisions about communications must be personal and based on one's own convictions. The minute you start telling people how they must communicate with one another, you've destroyed the organization. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: none]