Sunday, November 2

Network Feedback

This month's question comes out of part of the dialog that occur during the recent Work Literacy course. While discussing social networking for personal learning, the question came up around being able to reach out and get help from people or find expertise in the form of a person / conversation.

Thus, for November we are exploring:


Network Feedback


In Getting Help, I discussed some aspects of the central question being raised. I've got a question about a work task and would like to get feedback from someone (a person, hopefully with some level of experience and expertise on the topic). Or paraphrasing Colin in Blogging to ask for Help:
If you need input from people, where's the best place to ask?
My larger claim is that this is one of the most important, fundamental shifts in New Work
and new work skills that include being able to:
However, the question overly simplifies the problem. Different situations will require different answers. There's no "best place". And the landscape is shifting all the time. And while I discussed a couple examples this recently in LinkedIn for Finding Expertise and Searching for Expertise - LinkedIn Answers, my belief is that it is really hard right now to know enough about enough places to make good choices about:
  • Where to go in what cases?
  • What works and doesn't work?
  • How do you effectively work within a given context?
  • What do you need to have done to effectively get help ahead of time?
  • Are there places you can go if you are relatively new and needing to ask questions?
In addition to your thoughts on the above, it would be really great if people who answer this could provide specific examples.
  • What was the question you were facing?
  • What did you consider using?
  • What were the steps you took? How did things evolve?
  • What was the outcome?
  • What could you have done differently? Better?
I'm also certain there are lots of resources out there that could help someone learn about this. I'd appreciate pointers to any of those.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below. This may be a good question to leave a comment.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

12 comments:

The upsycho said...

Karyn Romeis - November's Big Question: getting feedback

Anonymous said...

big question has a big answer... :)

Manish Mohan said...

Is email still the best way to get inputs? My thoughts here.

Collin Kromke said...

Here's the same question of mine that you paraphrased and linked to above, but posted in my blog if anyone is interested in seeing the types of replies that I got.

Opportunity Knocks - Input Needed

I also sent DMs to a few people on Twitter looking for replies, as well as a general tweet.

Between the comments on my blog that doesn't get many views normally and on the Work Literacy forum, I got some great feedback. Which reminds me, I need post a status update for all the kind people who shared their thoughts.

Jeff Goldman said...

Jeffery Goldman - http://minutebio.com/blog/?p=70

My comments at the link above.

Anonymous said...

Adventures in Corporate Education: Learning Circuit Blog’s Big Question for November: Network Feedback

Karl Kapp said...

I argue that finding the best place to post a question is not necessary with Web 2.0. Here is my post.

Kapp Notes: The Right Place to Find Help: ASTDs Big Question

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Blogger In Middle-earth said...

Kia ora Tony.

I'm not going to post on this topic. I left a comment on Manish Mohan's post:

I recently had occasion to network with two groups. I used email and direct F2F with one group. The other I emailed.

The first group members - the active group who knew they were involved as project team members - each gave me a cursory feedback initially. I had to chase them up to get useful input from them. In the finish 3/4 of that group made useful contribution. But I got all the points for having to solicit those.

The second group, who were asked for advice, but were not chased up by me gave no input at all.

Now I do know from experience that people are all different in this regard. My suspicion is that there is a 'what's in it for me' factor. I'm still researching that one.


Ka kite
from Middle-earth

Tony Karrer said...

Any thoughts on how you would address what I just posted:


Find Speaker for Local ASTD Chapter

Anonymous said...

yeah!!! all questions have answers...

Anonymous said...

Nice post.. First time here