Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard of Twitter. When I first heard about Twitter, I didn’t know what the heck it was. Someone invited me to join, I logged in, created a free account and thought, “so what?” It really seemed like a nothing site to me, so I forgot about it. Then, six months later I began hearing about celebrities tweeting and politicians reading and sending tweets during State of the Union addresses. I cataloged it in my brain as another social networking site along with Facebook and LinkedIn, and I thought it seemed really intrusive and a bit narcissistic.

I still hadn’t tried it.

Mad Men Mania

What got me hooked on Twitter was the TV show Mad Men. Or rather, the ardent fans of the show, which have created a sort of 24-hour ongoing Twitter cocktail party. I am a huge fan of the show, so I decided to check it out. There was the suave Don Draper, his icy wife Betty, the uber-competent Joan Holloway—it seemed that every character was tweeting, using clever inside references to the show and to 1960’s pop culture. I wanted to join the party, so I created a new Twitter account using a character name (I won’t tell which one—that would ruin the fun.)

Unlike Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking sites that have cropped up, Twitter has a different flavor. When you have a Facebook account, people know your business (if you share, which is the expected norm). But Twitter is deliciously anonymous. You can be—or pretend to be—whomever you want. You don’t even have to be a person. Someone tweets as the Xerox machine in the office at Sterling Cooper.  Another is an ant from the ant farm that Don busted with a Jai Alai stick.

Twitter for Business

I know what you are thinking—this is all in good fun, but what does it have to do with my business? Plenty. The founders of Twitter see it as less of a social networking tool than an information tool, and this is certainly how it is being used today. Beyond the fun, party atmosphere is a deceptively simple, yet powerful way to communicate.

Here’s why Twitter is something you should be paying attention to:

• It’s easy. There is something daunting about most social networking sites—with all the features, applications, and setup required. Twitter has none of this. The interface is simple, and signing up for an account takes about one minute. Use the search feature to find people you know, or people you are interested in. “Follow” them with one click. “Unfollow” them with one click. Block people you don’t want on your account with one click.
• It’s free. All you need is a valid email account. That’s it.
• It’s mobile. This is one of the greatest features of Twitter. People can (and largely do) use it from their iPhones or BlackBerrys. It’s portable, immediate, and with you all the time.
• It’s public or private, depending on your needs. Most folks have public accounts, but if you want to “protect” your tweets, this is an easy matter as well. In order to follow protected accounts, you must have the user’s permission.
• People are paying attention. Even if you’ve not tried Twitter yet, some people in your organization have. Yes, it may very well be a fad, and something else new and interesting will come along in a year, but why not ride the wave of interest?

Training With Twitter

Here are some examples of how you could use Twitter as a training or change management tool:

1. Brand your training. Create a Twitter account with the name of your new training curriculum or change management initiative, and invite your staff to follow you. Then provide interesting updates and useful links to raise their awareness.
2. Prework. Once you have a nice following of your new training initiative, send out thought-provoking questions or mini research assignments to folks who will be taking an upcoming class.
3. Use it during class. This one is a little more unorthodox. Log into Twitter during your class and project your computer screen so that everyone can see it. Then invite people to post questions. This could be especially useful during presentations with large groups (where they will all be using their smart phones anyway!)  You can also have someone tweet main points of your presentation in order to bring their attention back to the front.
4. Follow up. Keep interest and momentum going post-training by providing useful insights and tips on an ongoing basis.

In today’s post-media world, everyone has news and everyone is a reporter. Don’t be left out—join the conversation. Happy tweeting!

Guess what The Brain and Behavior Blogger is having for dinner tonight.  CROW!!!!

As he is wont to do, The B&B Blogger pulled somebody’s chain – and that somebody (this time, eminent neuroscience researcher, Gyorgy Buzsaki) pulled The Blogger’s chain back.  Here’s how it went down…

The B&B Blogger hyped a research project conducted by GB.  But, thinking that he caught a slight overstatement, joked that GB “got a bit full of himself” by claiming that the study was the first example of a well-defined pattern of activity in the brain that had been reliably and selectively eliminated.  Oh contrarimondo, the B&BB pontificated.  Todd Sacktor was the first to do that!

Here’s the reverse-chain-pull by GB:  “The statement is absolutely true. Nobody has ever selectively eliminated a well-defined brain pattern before. A brain pattern means that a constellation of neurons fire together and give rise a mesoscopic activity that can be recorded as a ‘mean field”. Todd Sacktor’s findings with PKCzeta are fantastic but he did [not] eliminate a brain pattern. The enzyme may be activated by sharp wave-ripples or other patterns and the drug his group used to interfere with plasticity is downstream from population neuronal patterns. Thus, it is not not known that the blocker would affect ripples but even if it does, I would be surprised if the effect would be selective to this particular brain pattern. Hope you can see the difference between electrical patterns and molecular events.”

Well, Dr. Buzsaki, thanks for your comment.  I’m sure that you are correct and I apologize for the mistake at this end.  More nobly still, I concede the point fully – even though I’m kind’ve weak on the electrical patterns vs. molecular events distinction as it applies here.  I used to “see” things like this.  But, that was before I stopped smoking those funny cigarettes.

Keep up the great research!

Eat, drink Think fast and be Merry?

Okay.  It’s 2:15 on the second full day of training.  The trainees are antsy.  Your jokes are flat-lining.   People are getting Carpel Tunnel from checking their watches.  You are desperate to change the mood.  NO PROBLEMO!!!!  Just make everybody think fast about something!

Scientific American Mind reports on six studies conducted at Harvard and Princeton that all agree:  When people are required to think quickly about something, their activation level goes up and their mood becomes more positive.  See how fast you can Find Waldo.  Better still, see how fast you can find him with a timer ticking irritatingly in the background.  Get this:  Watching clips of I Love Lucy in fast forward also did the trick.  Same thing with, “First one to name six dog breeds that start with the letter N wins a dollar.”  Whatever.  You can change the classroom dynamic in just a matter of minutes.

However, there is one big caveat.  Fast and varied thinking causes elation.  Fast and repetitive thinking triggers anxiety and depression and saps energy.  Thinking the same thoughts over and over and over – that’s neurotic – not a good way to improve mood.  And people with bi-polar disorder can become pedal-to-the-medal-manic if required to think fast.  Their minds “race” (thus the pedal metaphor) and may not stop when the exercise is over.

So, to be on the safe side, get people to think fast but vary the kind of thinking involved and don’t let the exercise last more than 8-10 minutes and they’ll be fine.  And, so will you.

Original references for any studies, books or articles cited by the Brain and Behavior Blogger can be obtained by contact with his very dear friend, Dr. Rob Snyder (r.snyder@tier1performance.com), an organizational psychologist with a severe neuroscience-research reading habit.

We recently had a client come to us looking for some ideas on a new distance education program. Their two main objectives were to reduce the costs associated with bringing groups in for live instructor-led training events, and to have a fun learning program that would be engaging to the younger demographic that they were trying to recruit. Their first thought was that Second Life would provide an optimal environment for rolling out this program. After some discussion though, we decided to take a step back and think about some other solutions that might meet their needs.

Second Life is an Internet-based 3D virtual world created and operated by Linden Labs. Each user has their own 3D avatar that they use to interact in the shared virtual space. Organizations can purchase and customize their own virtual environment, restricting it for private access or opening it up to the public community. Second Life has been increasingly used by the educational community – both academic and corporate. In some cases, a “virtual campus” is created to mimic a standard meeting or classroom environment. In others, a realistic model of a real-life location is created for the purposes of simulation and practice. In one example, the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago created a detailed Second Life model of their entire hospital, and then used it for immersive group simulations of emergency response planning.

A Second Life virtual meeting area created by Cisco Systems

This example shows the real sweet-spot of Second Life – immersive and synchronous distance learning events. As mentioned in the previous article, “Our training focus in Second Life is on situations where spatial context, and real time group communication matters.” But not all distance learning falls into these categories. And to get back to our client’s needs, a learning event doesn’t necessarily have to be immersive or synchronous to be engaging, fun and educational.

This chart shows some excellent examples of technologies that have been applied to meet a variety of learning needs. As I mentioned, Second Life is an excellent tool for cases where the fidelity of a simulated environment and group interaction is key – immersive and synchronous.

XL-CITR (Accelerated Learning for Cyber Insider Threat Reduction) was a research project that Tier1 proposed for the United States Air Force. In this program learners would engage in pre-scripted simulations in an immersive Air Operations Center environment to practice detecting behaviors associated with insider threats. Each learner would experience their simulations independently, allowing them to retake scenarios for additional practice or skip over scenarios they have already mastered. This is a case where it’s important for the event to be immersive and asynchronous.

An interactive conversation in the XL-CITR prototype

“Immersion” typically implies that an environment is realistically modeled, and a user feels that they become an active part of that environment. However, there are cases where this is not the most appropriate technique. For non-spatial activities that require more abstract, conceptual thought an immersive environment may be distracting. As an asynchronous example, consider the game Budget Hero. This game gives the learner the opportunity to try to balance the US federal budget, balancing income from taxes with various spending programs, while trying to achieve various user-chosen goals such as “energy independence” or “national security.” A “realistic” environment might have put you in the role of the President sitting at your desk in the Oval Office, reading various bills and deciding which to sign. But obviously, this adds nothing to the engagement or learning of the activity. The interface shown below, while not fitting the above definition of “immersive”, is still entertaining and highly interactive.

Budget Hero, produced by American Public Media

Finally, in some distance learning events, synchronous group interaction is still very valuable but being in an immersive 3D environment provides no real “bang for the buck.” In these cases, a more traditional virtual classroom environment can allow a group to communicate and interact with each other, while simultaneously viewing the same learning content. Adobe Connect is one such application that provides ways for groups to interact such as voice and chat discussions, interactive polls, breakout discussion groups, and even independent interactions such as application simulations.

The breadth of tools and techniques that are available in the e-learning industry today give us many options when it comes to synchronicity and immersion.

What other tools have you used that fit into these categories?

Other than immersion and synchronicity, what decision points do you choose when thinking about highly engaging and interactive learning events?

TiER1 won a Davey Award for our Change Management Primer. http://www.tier1performance.com/change/

The Davey Awards are international awards that are targeted towards small businesses whose annual billings are less than $10-25 million a year.

“The largest and most prestigious awards competition exclusively for the “Davids” of creativity.  David defeated the giant Goliath with a big idea and a little rock – the sort of thing small firms do each year. The annual International Davey Awards honors the achievements of the “Creative Davids” who derive their strength from big ideas, rather than stratospheric budgets.”

For more information – http://www.daveyawards.com/home/

I saw this article in the WSJ recently: Why We’re Failing Math and Science. It presents a candid view of several issues facing our nation’s education system, according to a panel of experts. Of particular interest to me was Joel Klein’s, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, comment on technology in the education field:

In any field but ours, if you fell asleep 50 years ago and woke up today, you wouldn’t recognize what’s going on. In education, if you fell asleep 50 years ago, you still have the same discussions. The use of technology to transform the work, to bring in distance learning, to enable kids to do things online, all of this is stuff we’re doing here in the city. But it’s in the early, early innings.

At TiER1 our focus is on learning and knowledge management in corporate, government, health care, and education . We’re already working with several clients to implement our Performance1 platform in the education field. In addition, we’re thinking about innovative new solutions, like an open-source education content marketplace where teachers could contribute and obtain lessons. Or technology that can identify learning needs and tailor content and lessons to meet those needs.

Needless to say, we have some exciting ideas of our own on this subject. If you have ideas or want to hear more about ours, please get in touch.

I read a pretty interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that I thought I’d pass along to you regarding Knowledge Management.   I thought the conversation around what they termed the “softer” qualities and how social networking tools can help gauge this level of expertise was interesting.

Here’s the online link  if you care to read it:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574302032097910314.html

On Thursday at TiER1 we hosted a roundtable discussion with some of our clients on the topic of personal knowledge management. Recognizing that everyone faces the growing challenge of being as informed as possible with a seemingly unlimited amount of information prompted us to host this event. We were interested in learning and sharing tips, tools, or methods that people use to manage their personal knowledge base. From email, work tasks, and news to social networking and sports, the group had many great insights to share. In the spirit of learning and sharing, we wanted to pass on those insights by posting them here.

One thing the group found particularly helpful were personal Internet portals. These personal home pages will automatically aggregate and update information you’re interested in all in one place. A portal may include a snapshot of your inbox, news feeds, recent entries from blogs you follow, weather outlook for one or several cities, a calendar, sports, and more. Instead of browsing multiple sites, you save time by seeing what’s important to you consolidated in your portal. Following are examples of these portals:

• iGoogle
• myYahoo!
• Pageflakes
• Netvibes

Along the lines of information, it can be tough to find new things worth your time in the vast sea of the Internet. Social bookmarking sites are tools that can help you discover what other people are looking at online. They also enable you to share, with either the world or just your friends, what’s caught your eye on the web lately. Discovering, sharing, and commenting on sites or articles through these tools can make your online experience more relevant and interactive. Try these sites out to discover new things and share what you find:

• Delicious
• digg
• StumbleUpon
• reddit

While not a social bookmarking site, Google Reader is similar in that it will allow you to share what you’re reading, see what other people are reading, and even leave comments. It’s also similar to a portal in that it aggregates websites, but it’s intended more for reading articles and blogs than displaying weather and other information. Check it out here: http://www.google.com/reader.

Finally, our roundtable group had some personal productivity tips:

• Organize and tackle your day based on the things you need to get done. Sounds simple enough, right? But how many times have you found yourself working on the latest thing in your inbox or distracted by a phone call? Begin your day by prioritizing the tasks at hand and then stay focused; don’t let the daily distractions derail you.
• Be cognizant of when you tend to be most productive during the day (in the morning, after you workout, etc.). Once you’ve found your zone, try to block it off and make that your dedicated work time for priority tasks.
• Now that you know what to work on and when, minimize disruptions. Some of our roundtable participants mentioned logging out of IM, turning off email notifications, and silencing their phones.

If you’ve got some tips or tools of your own to share, we’d love to hear them.

More than a decade ago, several groups of scientists working independently demonstrated conclusively that exercise stimulates the development of new brain cells.  A whole lot of research since then has been largely unsuccessful at specifying how much exercise is required to get your brain blooming.  Now, we at least know what kind of exercise does the trick.  But, first…

Gretchen Reynolds, the “Science of Fitness” expert for the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/physed) recently reported the method and results of a Brain & Behavior study (actually, a Behavior & Brain study) led by researchers at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.  First, the researchers taught two groups of mice to swim a water maze.  One group wore little yellow Speedos.  The other group wore blue.  (Joke.)  Then each group learned how to escape from an unpleasant stimulus.  Next the mice in each group were put on an exercise regimen for four weeks.  But, each group had a different regimen.  One group was allowed to run at their own pace on “rodent wheels.”  [The B&B Blogger was bemused to learn that the prevailing term, "gerbil wheels," has been politically corrected.]  The other group was required to run faster and longer at speeds and durations determined by the scientists.  So, sequentially, it went like this:

After the exercise component, both groups of mice were tested in the water maze.  And, both groups did better than they had done during training.  Then it was time for testing in the more cognitively challenging escape task.  The Yellow Group did about the same as they had during training.  However, the Blue Group did MUCH better than they had in the training session.  Ah, hah!

In a critical final part of the study, especially for the mice, the brain of each mouse was examined micro-microscopically.  The little noggins of the Yellow Group (the self-trained subjects) showed evidence of molecular changes in part of their brains.  But, not to be outdone, the Blue Group showed such evidence in several parts of their brains.  The researchers concluded that “Our results support the notion that different forms of exercise induce neuroplasticity changes in different brain regions.”  In an apparent show of solidarity (and humility on the part of the Blues), neither group of mice commented on the findings during the subject debriefing phase of the study.

Reynolds reported on a second study, one that was published in the Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.  In this research, all student-subjects participated in a once-a-day routine in three, rotating conditions:  One third of the students would sit comfortably for 30 minutes, another third would run for 30 minutes, and the final group would lift weights for 30 minutes.  Each day when the students returned, they would be randomly assigned to one of the three groups.  At the end of each day’s session, all students participated in a test in which the task was to pick out certain letters as they flashed by quickly on a screen.  The B&B Blogger sadly regrets to report that sitting around comfortably had no effect on cognitive ability as measured by the “letters test.”  On the plus side, there were also no changes for weight-lifting.  However, students who had run for 30 minutes performed consistently higher.  So, it’s not just exercise that makes you smarter, it’s a particular type of exercise.

While the evidence isn’t conclusive, it appears that it’s aerobic exercise that acts like smart pills.  Why?  So far, the guess is that healthy bodies have little bits of, well, brain fertilizer throughout the blood stream.  The key is to get as many of the fertilizer bits as possible to the brain – which aerobic exercise does.  Weight-lifting, on the other hand, causes the fertilizer to stay in the muscles that are being worked, helping them, not your brain, to grow.

Other studies have shown a dramatic positive effect of aerobic exercise on stress reduction, relief from depression, satisfaction with marriage and general life expectancy.  So, it’s pretty much of a no-brainer (so to speak).  Aerobic exercise is very good for you.  In fact, it’s often claimed that regular aerobic exercise can add as much as 10 years to your life – though scientists seldom point out that you spend those 10 years running!

Original references for any studies, books or articles cited by the Brain and Behavior Blogger can be obtained by contact with his very dear friend, Dr. Rob Snyder (r.snyder@tier1performance.com), an organizational psychologist with a severe neuroscience-research reading habit.