Still an overall outstanding opportunity – now everyone knows it

As we previously wrote on July 21 O3, Ontario’s new social networking platform from ORION, is a great tool for developing and sustaining research based relationships and collaborations. On October 6, ORION hosted a launch of O3 at the Royal Ontario Museum (see ORION’s press release here). The group included academic colleagues from OCAD, Centennial College, UOIT and CAMH but York’s close relationship with Ontario’s broadband network was highlighted by attendance from Bob Gagne (CIO), Janet Murphy (ABEL), Allan Anderson (CONCERT) and Kay Li (Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies) who is working with the Sagittarius Project which is digitizing literary resources for Canadian students.

Also featured was Mobilizing Minds, the York co-lead project that links academic research to young adults for mental health.

But it was ResearchImpact that took the stage with ORION. David Phipps was invited to speak about how York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit is using O3 to enhance the connection of York’s research with partners from community, government and industrial organizations. As these collaborations produce research and knowledge mobilization outputs the collaborations will disseminate these outputs using ResearchImpact’s O3 site allowing the site to become a publicly accessible repository of knowledge mobilization products and tools. As reported by President Shoukri in the recent Research edition of York U magazine, “Knowledge mobilization is the intersection between researchers and research stakeholders; it’s where research and evidence help inform decisions about public policy, social programming and professional practice.” Essentially knowledge mobilization is a research dating service. Since 1/8 couple married in the US last year met using social media (watch a video about the social media revolution here), social media such as O3 can also support research based partnerships.

York’s KM Unit has been using O3 since its soft launch in May 2009 – visit researchimpact.othree.ca for our O3 site. Mobilizing Minds is the first community engaged project to adopt O3. York also has created a research sub-community on O3 to support. If you are interested in exploring the features of O3 please contact Omar Mohammed, Manager of Research Computing (omoham@yorku.ca) or Krista Jensen (kejensen@yorku.ca) if you are associated with ResearchImpact and/or knowledge mobilization. If you are interested in starting your own O3 community please contact Gary Hilson (gary.hilson@orion.on.ca).

After the reception we got a tour of the Schad Gallery of Biodiversity and saw some of the interactive broadband communication tools used in this multi-media installation. We used this technology to speak to a paleontologist about digging up dinosaur bones and the extinction of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs evolved and died out over 165 million years. Social media has evolved in the span of only a few years but it is here to stay. For an idea of the speed of evolution of social media take 4 minutes and 22 seconds to watch the YouTube video above. THAT’s why you should care about social media.

Gary Hilson demonstrating O3

Cage Match: Tapscott vs. Weinberg (I’ll take them both, and the margarita…)

I just finished two books that have received a lot of press of late – Dan Tapscott’s “Grown Up Digital” and “The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web” by Tamar Weinberg.  “Grown Up Digital” is an exploration of the Net Generation (31 years old and younger) who grew up in the digital age while “The New Community Rules” explores the social media tools those NetGeners use and how they can be applied to marketing your business.

Let me say off the top that I enjoyed both books but for different reasons.  “New Community” gives detailed descriptions of social media tools including blogging, microblogging, social networking sites, social bookmarking, social news, new media (videos and photography) and informational social media such as wikis – and check the end of each chapter for the chapter summaries and a snapshot of key messages.  Each chapter explores a different aspect of social media with leading product offerings and case studies of how businesses have used each tool for marketing purposes.  “Grown Up” explores how NetGeners different from previous generations in education, work, consumerism, family, democracy and civic engagement.  Of note are the eight NetGen norms: freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed and innovation.

If you want to learn how to maximize your use of (and maybe return on investment in) social media you should read “New Community” but if you want to learn how to work or live with someone under 31 (and a lot of people over 31 as well) then you should read “Grown Up”.  Face it, you should read them both.

ResearchImpact has been blogging for over 1 year and on twitter since May 2009.  We have launched some knowledge mobilization videos and have more in production but I found the advice from Tamar Weinberg particularly useful, especially the chapter on blogging which has some great tips for new and experienced bloggers.  But working with ResearchImpact and the rest of the Office of Research Services at York University (www.research.yorku.ca) I work with a lovely and diverse group of staff from 20 to 62 years old.  The description of the Net Generation in “Grown Up” helps me manage the different work and life experiences that all staff bring to their jobs.

However, the comparisons need not stop at these books.  Both Tamar Weinberg (@tamar) and Don Tapscott (@dtapscott) are on Twitter and have 8672 and 8167 followers respectively (as of August 16, 2009) although Tamar has posted 3100 tweets to Don’s 858.  Both also have social media sites connected to their work.  Tamar can be found at www.techipedia.com and Don Tapscott’s site for his book is www.grownupdigital.com.  Both of these sites dig into their subject matter in different ways allowing the consumer to contribute and in Tapscott’s words become the prosumer.

If I were to be stranded on a desert island which book would I want?  If I had access to the internet I would want the “how to” information provided in “New Community Rules” but if I were trapped on a desert island with internet access and people under 31 I would want “Grown Up Digital”….of course if I were trapped on a desert island with internet access I’d just swim up to the pool bar of the resort and order another margarita because why else would I be on a desert island in the first place?

ResearchImpact says O3 is an Overall Outstanding Opportunity

O3: ORION’s new social networking platform for Ontario researchers and their collaborators provides the most comprehensive suite of social networking and collaborating tools for research and knowledge mobilization.

Launched for early adopters at Discovery 2009, O3 serves the needs of: researchers “O3 enables researchers across groups, institutions and geographies collaborate on specific projects or build a community share ideas”; students “O3 is perfect for graduate students who need a place to collaborate on research wherever they are or create and share content that supports their learning” and educators “educators can build repositories of curriculum and teaching strategies to share across schools, boards and subject areas or interact with students.”  O3 has elements of social networking (blog, profile, messaging, comment board, photo gallery, chat) combined with the collaboration tools of a wiki and discussion forum combined with a document management system.  No other platform that I know of combined all of these elements.

And it’s free to Ontario researchers, educators and their collaborators both inside and outside Ontario. Members of the Ontario R+E community can contribute to the O3 community at large or have their own sub-community for their organization that can be as public or as private as they want to be. Throughout the summer, ORION is looking for keen early adopters to try out the service and help it tweak it for its official October launch at the ROM.

ResearchImpact has been a featured project on O3 since its launch and we have been exploring the functionalities for a couple of months.  On July 14 ResearchImpact hosted a morning of O3 play where we got to play with the features and provide technical and user feedback to ORION.  York’s KM Unit welcomed participation from ABEL, the Steacie Library, Toronto Region Conservation Authority, Canadian Mental Health Association, Institute for Work and Health and Mobilizing Minds a large mental health knowledge mobilization project hosted by York and U. Manitoba (see our previous Mobilizing Minds blog posting here) as we explored O3.

According to Liz Lambert (IWH), “O3 has many of the features that will allow IWH to manage our systematic reviews and other knowledge exchange projects. We look forward to exploring these features in greater depth.”

Certain features need to be improved such as the wiki (but we understand that a new wiki is forthcoming) and the message feature which needs to embrace more than 1-to1 messaging.  Overall the greatest attraction is the degree of flexibility of the system.  We were able to imbed a blog and twitter feed widget into the ResearchImpact O3.  We are also able to adeptly manage a variety of permissions to allow differential access to different features.

In addition to ResearchImpact, York University Information Technology is piloting O3 as a collaboration platform for research at York.  O3 promises to be the most useful tool for network enabled knowledge mobilization.  ResearchImpact will begin using O3 as a social networking platform for its main operation platform and we will encourage ResearchImpact associated projects such as Mobilizing Minds to adopt O3.

For more information on O3 please contact Gary Hilson  at gary.hilson@orion.on.ca.

The Power of Social Networking: Knowledge Brokers Broker Knowledge about Knowledge Brokers

Peter West uses the name WestPeter on Twitter. According to his Twitter profile he lives in London, ON and is interested in “scholarly articles, books & proceedings of interest to knowledge workers.” On July 1 he posted the following:

WestPeter Matching knowledge brokering strategies to environmental policy problems & settings http://is.gd/1jy44 (Environ Sci & Pol) #KM $

http://is.gd/1jy44 is a shortened url that takes you to the following url:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VP6-4WN1YKP-1&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2009&_rdoc=2&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236198%239999%23999999999%2399999%23FLA%23display%23Articles)&_cdi=6198&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=28&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f6f3b208e4367a1200b1273437d0f658

… which is why we use shortened urls but that’s not the purpose of this blog… this url is an abstract of a paper from Sarah Michaels (U. Nebraska) titled “Matching knowledge brokering strategies to environmental policy problems and settings”. Only the abstract was available so I contacted Sarah who was kind enough to send me the pre-print (thank you Sarah). Two things are important here:

1. There is a whole body of literature on knowledge brokering for environmental policy that I never knew about. I have never heard of the scholars (except Lindquist) listed in her references yet it appears that knowledge brokering for environmental policy aligns well (see table below) with those of us who inform our practice using a health frame of reference. ResearchImpact draws its knowledge brokering practice mainly from Lavis et al [Journal of Health Services Research and Policy (2003) 8(3):165] using the producer push, user pull and knowledge exchange methods plus our description of co-production [Evidence & Policy (2009) 5(3):211]. But Sarah introduces us to a new term – capacity building: “intensive knowledge brokering is about creating and sustaining capacity for innovation”.

It is nice yet surprising to see a whole body of literature that has arisen independently but consistently with our practice and yet to learn something new.  I wonder if Sarah is aware of the work we draw from: Lavis, Landry, Estabrooks, Grimshaw, Nutley, Levin…

2. The second important observation is I found this on Twitter.  Sarah published her paper, WestPeter found it, tweeted, and because ResearchImpact follows WestPeter I saw the tweet, got the link, e-mailed Sarah, read the paper and now you’re reading the blog and maybe you will read her paper.  That is the power of social networking.  Sarah’s paper found a wider audience, I read some new literature and I “met” a like minded colleague – all thanks to less than 140 characters.

Unlike how it markets itself, Twitter should be “what do you want to share” not “what are you doing”!

Go on… log on to Twitter and connect to lasting value in less than 140 characters.

O3 Open House

Last week York’s KM Unit co-hosted an Open House to demonstrate ORION’s (Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network) new online professional networking and collaboration platform O3. “Introduced as a new value-added service for member institutions, O3 helps deliver on ORION’s mandate of supporting Ontario’s research and education community. O3 seeks to encourage collaboration, the sharing of ideas and research results, and connecting with colleagues across academic disciplines. It is a unique professional networking and collaboration platform developed by and for the research and education community (ORION newsletter, May 2009). “

Gary Hilson, ORION’s Projects and Alliances Consultant, was on hand to give attendees an overview of the platform and its various features, which include a number of Web 2.0 tools such as member profiles, user created blogs, wikis, discussion forums, as well as document management. ResearchImpact is currently exploring how we can use the O3 platform to facilitate and foster collaboration between KM brokers and researchers. David Phipps of ResearchImpact said, “Social networking is an important, emerging tool for knowledge mobilization.  As our work naturally connects people over distance and time, a robust social networking platform with features that allow us to connect and collaborate with partners will enhance the KM services that York can offer it’s graduate students, research and their partners.” Omar Mohammed, Manager of Research Computing at York, stated, “We are pleased that ResearchImpact has taken the initiative to explore O3 as a collaboration platform for research and knowledge mobilization. The O3 initiative leverages the ORION research network and we will follow the emergence of O3 with interest.” The Open House was attended by over 20 people including York faculty and staff members, students working in a number of York’s Organized Research Units, as well as representatives from the York Region community.

If you are interested in more information about O3, please contact Gary Hilson at gary.hilson@orion.on.ca.

ResearchImpact.ca has a New Look!

After 2 years with our old Web site, we decided it needed a bit of a make-over. We’ve updated the look, added features such as videos, an events calendar, links to our twitter feed and other Web 2.0 tools, as well as a new online opportunity description form. This new form will allow our visitors to submit a potential research opportunity right from our Web site.

Check it out over at www.researchimpact.ca and let us know what you think of the changes by adding a comment to the posting.

The Blogosphere and Beyond

If you’re reading this on our blog you’re almost part of the blogosphere. If you’re reading this because you received Mobilize This! in your e mail inbox you’re not, but I bet you’re thinking about it. In Wikinomics, Don Tapscott describes the web 2.0 world as the blogoshpere which represents the ecosystem of wikis, blogs, Facebook, twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, Ning, wiggio, MySpace and any other number of social networking platforms that blur the line between on line content creation and consumption. Web 1.0 was a publishing platform where you read what I wrote. Web 2.0 allows the reader to interact with the writer creating an iterative dialogue where the lines between reader and writer become indistinct.

Go on, try it. Hit the comment link above and tell us what you think or at least tell us you are there. Do it and you’ve joined the blogosphere.

According to the Globe & Mail (“The medium is no longer the message”, March 10, 2009), “blogging and social-network sites such as Facebook and Twitter are now the fourth-most popular online activities, eclipsing e-mail and growing twice as fast as any other category in the top three…”

ResearchImpact has a blog, you’re reading it. We also use a wiki to collaborate on content, share documents and develop our thinking using discussion threads. Now you can follow us on twitter. Twitter will be updated a number of times daily both at York and UVic. You’ll not only be able to follow our knowledge brokers you’ll be able to hear about events as they happen, blogs as they are posted, know which exciting faculty member or community partner we’re about to meet with. This blog tells you our edited version of the story. Twitter will make you part of it.

To follow ResearchImpact on twitter you need to sign up for a twitter account at twitter.com and click on “Get Started – Join”. It’s fast and it’s free. Go to twitter.com/researchimpact and click on “follow” and you’ll get our updates as they happen. Follow us and interact with us. Use the “reply” feature by clicking on the back arrow in each tweet or the “message” feature on the right hand tool bar and tell us what is cool – or not – about what we’re doing. Give us feedback. Give us tips like someone you know who needs what we’re doing and we’ll be better positioned to meet the needs of our diverse stakeholders.

Follow us and by interacting, lead us to better knowledge brokering.

Twitter. Check us out.