JoelFoner.com

2011-01-10 Added link “Can Pathological Politics Be Reversed?”

Handling Bad Behavior Online – Strategies and Implications

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This Tuesday, Jan 11 at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Handling Bad Behavior Online – Strategies and Implications

Bad behavior in online environments is a well known phenomenon, with its own character and implications. While some of the enablers for bad behavior are understood – relative anonymity, physical distance, the ability to sign off at a whim, the very low probability of ever encountering others in the discussion in person – best practices for handling such bad actors are varied. Suggestions for handling bad online behavior range from “don’t feed the trolls” (advice to totally ignore any sort of bad behavior) to “embrace and extinguish” (work towards turning an apparent opponent into an ally).

These behaviors cross the lines of online and in person, and repeatedly there have been cases where it at least appears that in person behavior has been influenced by inflammatory, “baiting” behavior online.

It is not always obvious which strategy is best for a situation. This week we’ll discuss the nature of bad behavior online, and discuss relative benefits, risks and likely outcomes of strategy choices in handling online behavioral issues.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon! Read more…

Is Today’s Pop-Psych Right… You Can’t Change Anyone Else?

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This Tuesday, Sept 14 at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Is Today’s Pop-Psych Right… You Can’t Change Anyone Else?

Once upon a time, the focus of management, marketing and sales was spin, change people’s interests, views, and desires towards your goals. For the last few years, it seems that the pop-psych current thinking has flipped to a completely opposite position, that not only can you not change anyone else, the only thing you can do is hope to attract them to you, and to attract them to change.

Is one or the other of these positions more accurate? Are there ways to change another person? If not, then why is advertising and marketing still effective, and why does management focus on improving performance (which could be looked at as a direct attempt to change behavior towards corporate goals)? If we can change other people, why do so many attempts to do so result in failure, even to the point of destructive side effects? Does refusing the concept of changing others result in a self-focused, narcissistic society? Does one or the other position, by design, improve society over time?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Read more…

Which Secrets will we Find in the Social Web?

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This Tuesday, Sept 7 at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Which Secrets will we Find in the Social Web?

Personal information is now scattered throughout the web, stored in and exposed by thousands of social networks, millions of blogs, email lists and other collections. Systems like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter provide a mindbending amount of information about people and their relationships, and these are only the “big three” out of an ever growing number of “social” systems.

Marketers are, of course, digging in to this treasure trove of information to improve results, however we are likely at the very leading edge of understanding the impact of public social information. What will the social web expose about us on the personal, societal and species level? Will we learn things we never knew? Will we learn things we wished we never knew? Will it change the way public and corporate policy is developed and analyzed? How will it change the way we interact and relate to each other?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Read more…

Bias and Discrimination – Where Are We Headed?

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This Tuesday, Aug 31 at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Bias and Discrimination – Where Are We Headed?

Bias and discrimination get lots of focus in both general discussion and political arenas, and have for many years. Have we made substantive progress to date, and regardless of that answer, where are we headed? What is the likely trajectory of both public discourse and the “reality on the ground” for bias and discrimination? Are we headed for a world that demonstrates less bias and discrimination, or will they be presented in different and perhaps more disguised fashions (or both or neither)?

This week we will talk about the nature of bias and discrimination, how they are found and presented today, and where we think the public and private path leads going forward.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Read more…

Does “Instant Access to Everything” Cause Polarization of Opinions?

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This Tuesday, July 27th at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Does “Instant Access to Everything” Cause Polarization of Opinions?

I’ve often heard the comment that the Internet exposes people of all types to more diverse opinions, with more facts and background, than ever before, that this is inherently good for discourse, and good for the generation of better ultimate decisions – whether in terms of political process or other decisions. Phrase in another way, this is “wisdom of the crowds” at global scale. On a gut level, this makes sense. More people and opinions ought to create a more balanced view, and although there will be some with extreme opinions, it is generally thought that the wisdom of the crowd will corrall them in workable fashion.

The Boston Globe ran an article this week titled “How Facts Backfire” (listed in the reading links below as well) that really got me thinking. The article pointed to work done at the University of Michigan (the published paper is also linked below for reference) that indicated a tendency for people to take more extreme positions in the face of corrective facts. This seems to fly in the face of the basis of an informed electorate providing the best case for a reasoned choice, and seems to call in to question the idea of wisdom of the crowds.

From a different perspective, the explosion of people posting raw information, sometimes carefully edited or not fact-checked, on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and many other social media systems, has created the appearance of a deluge of (maybe) factual information that is so vast we have no hope of ever understanding it all. The politicized, highly public debate about Shirley Shirrod’s at-first edited words, and then the publication of the full video, provide one view in to how our society handles the new hyper-speed, influence-driven environment in which we now find ourselves living. I’ve included a link to one blog post about this incident, in particular because it has both versions of the now-infamous speech on one page. You can find plenty more with a few clicks if you’d like!

The indexing of the web has generated an apparent global fact overload, available in seconds from a simple search engine query. Does this fact overload trigger the polarization reflex revealed int he University of Michigan study? Does it lead to moderation? How can our propensity for instant gratification, and lessened chance of correcting factual mistakes, lead us to the land of better, more informed discourse, given both what we have seen to date and this new research?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon! Read more…

July 6, 2010 1:54pm Added “The Neurotic Organization: Diagnosing and Changing Counterproductive Styles of Management” to the reference links section. Thanks to John Jainschigg for pointing out this title.

Can an Organization have a Personality Disorder?

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This Tuesday, July 6 at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Can an Organization have a Personality Disorder?

Organizations talk about internal culture and market it as a selling point, both to customers and to potential staff. organizational culture reflects a concept of shared personality, often described in flashy, positive terms.

If organizations have an organization-level personality, can organizations (collection of many people) have collective personality disorders? Do organizational personality disorders map directly to individual personality disorders defined by mental health professionals?

How can organizational personality disorders be resolved? Are such resolutions possible?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon! Read more…

Personal Stress Management in a Chaotic World

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This Week’s Topic

Personal Stress Management in a Chaotic World

It goes without saying that today’s world events, financial and work situation, and lifestyle can create substantial stress. There are plenty of “you should just tell yourself to feel better” web sites and books, but this sort of advice is often of limited value in the real world. What stress sources are significant to you, and what are effective ways to deal with them? Are there techniques for creating positive results from stress?

What are your best practices for recognizing and handling stressful situations, relationships and events?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon! Read more…

Parallels in Real and Virtual Community Development

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This Tuesday, May 11, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

Parallels in Physical and Online Virtual Community Development

The development and character of communities in both physical and online environments are affected by a variety of design decisions. Some decisions affect whether the community “takes hold” as well as its growth rate, while others affect the character, level of engagement and social behavior of the community. How are community design and development decisions similar in physical and online environments, and how are they different? What can these design decisions accomplish, and what needs to be accomplished in other ways? What can physical and online/virtual community designers learn from each other?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

How Should We Deal with Cyber-Bullying?

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This Tuesday, May 4, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

How Should We Deal with Cyber-Bullying?

Bullying has become a consistent concern of school administrators, teachers and parents. What is the best preventive approach and response to cyber-bullying? This week, we’ll discuss how we should handle and respond to cyber-bullying.

On one end of the spectrum, a middle school principal recently sent a strongly worded email to parents directing them (not asking – directing) to remove their childrens’ social media accounts, to install monitoring tools, and to monitor their txt messages.

At the other extreme, some take the position that the genie is out of the bottle, and we should educate kids while not using direct control to manage their use of communications tools.

I wrote a post about a related topic in January “The Mobile Invisibility Cloak of Today’s Internet-Enabled Kids,” and when I heard about the principal’s email mentioned above I thought it might be  time for us to talk about this issue head-on.

Does technology create cyber-bullying? Will controlling technology stop it? What approach should we use to prevent cyber-bullying, and what should we do when it is discovered? Which strategies will instill the most useful skills and beliefs in our children for their future?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…

What Would it Take to Create a Non-Violent Human Society?

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This Tuesday, Apr 27, at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

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This Week’s Topic

What Would it Take to Create a Non-Violent Human Society?

Anger. Conflict. Bombings. War. Threats of violence.

Are these things endemic to the human condition? Is violence built in to humans, in an unavoidable way? There have been long debates in academic and non-academic circles about this topic, with strong positions on both sides.

Rather than debate whether violence is preventable, what if we thought about the issue from a different perspective? If we were to assume that it is possible to create a non-violent human society, what steps might be necessary to make a transition from where we are to the removal of violence as a constant in our world? What would this transformed world look like if we could “snap our fingers and have it be done”?

Are there downsides to the creation of a non-violent society? Are there parts of our culture, belief system, economy and psychological well-being that are reliant on the presence of violence in society (perhaps that is why the goal of non-violence is so hard to achieve)?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and Read more…