Transparency Is Working Hide at Your Peril
Writing by admin on Tuesday, 10 of April , 2007 at 1:21 pm
I made a post on my personal blog last month about the importance of transparency in a relationship, this was inspired from one of my friends Christopher Penn.
I’ve always been a fan of openness particularly in educational circles, yet still I find many educators are more closed than people working outside of the sector. This is worrying and should be addressed at many levels.
We are now operating in a new-media world, the old school mentality of “knowledge is power” in so much as “it’s mine, I have it and you don’t” has gone. Academics who hold on to this will fall beside the wayside and simply get left behind. The reason being that nobody will trust you, nobody will believe you, you will not develop a medium of reaching your audience in the new-world.
Old fashioned media was based on the concept of large print houses, the commercial value being the physical size of the print house and the physical size of the distribution network it could maintain, based on the physical size. If they wanted to reach more people, they needed more print house space for more copies, more staff, more delivery people.
This is changing and changing fast.
We no longer need the big print houses to distribute, you can distribute yourself right now, you can tell the world, you can voice your opinion more easily that ever before.
BUT, you must build your network well, you must build your own network(s) of believers, people who trust you, and follow you, if you are not transparent it will not work.
This then is a call to being as transparent as possible in all your endeavours, if you give give give, you will get get get. Why are you spending so much time writing an academic paper for a closed audience, when you could be publishing on a blog and multiplying your audience, AND, having them comment on your work easily. You never know you may even make a new friend, and learn something.
Are you lecturing a subject, why not blog it too? Practise it, share share share.
I recently attended a podcamp un-conference, and this is the best get together I have ever been on, this blows academic conferences right out of the water. And why? Because people were open, transparent, I trusted them, they shared knowledge openely and willingly.
Check out that conference report here (it is SecondLife related)
Comments encouraged
Category: Chris Hambly
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