While I’m on summertime travel please enjoy this re-post from the Rodeworks archive.  Magnatune continues to be a significant presence in online music distribution, and proof that open access, free delivery and pay-what-you-will can be a successful business model. Read the rest of this entry »

While travel and other summertime fun keeps me away from the computer please enjoy this re-posting of an article from the Rodeworks Archives — originally published December 2004 Read the rest of this entry »

I am looking forward to a great summer, with a couple of nice trips planned as well as some business travel.  But I realize that I won’t be able to keep up my normal volume of posts.  My current plan is to start to mix in some ‘encore’ highlights from past years — after all I’ve got 5 years of material and expect I can find at least a couple worth revisiting.  But it is also an opportunity to give you loyal readers a chance to write a guest post or two.

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We all (at least if you are reading this) are empowered by today’s networks on the web.  Whether we are deciding on what book to read by the user reviews on Amazon, or telling our friends about bad service received during a hotel visit, the interactions are person-to-person.  And the messages are not necessarily coming from the sources or in the manner that the sellers of these goods and services have traditionally relied upon.

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At a Nercomp presentation by Yale’s own Jane Alexander on building online communities in blended courses.  And in this presentation she discusses the time requires to build an effective community is longer than the standard 14 week class.  This collaboration diagram from the Mopsos blog nicely presents the idea that the level of trust in a community is related to the amount of interaction engaged in.  IM requires a lot of trust, newsletters require very little. 

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