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:

• How to reach out and find expertise
• How to use Social Media to Find Answers to Questions
• How to Learn through Conversation

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):

• Karyn Romeis - November's Big Question: getting feedback
• Manish Mohan - Email as best input source - here.
• Colin - Opportunity Knocks - Input Needed
• Jeffery Goldman - http://minutebio.com/blog/?p=70
• Gina Minks - Adventures in Corporate Education: Learning Circuit Blog’s Big Question for November: Network Feedback
• Kapp Notes: The Right Place to Find Help: ASTDs Big Question
• Example Inquiry - Find Speaker for Local ASTD Chapter
• Get Help - Spam?