Mistaken Goal: Where Student Affairs & Technology Meet

The final technology-related program I attended on Monday was entitled “Facebook, Blogs, and Other Electronic Communication: How Students Construct Learning Environments through Social Networking Sites” and it was an extremely well-attended session; every seat was filled with some people standing in the back and I would guess there were over a hundred attendees. The presentation focused on survey results from the University of Michigan that asked Michigan students about their use of tools such as Facebook and blogs. The PowerPoint file for the presentation can be found on their Web site.

The general tone of the presentation - this is what our students are doing and we must be aware of its many effects instead of being fearful or controlling - is the right message. That we are still having to work to get that message out is disappointing but at least it seems to be getting easier to get that message out.

The presenters began by discussing CIRP data specific to Michigan students but they quickly moved on to data specific to their original research. I refer readers to the PowerPoint linked in the first paragraph for all of the specific data points.

The major findings of their research into students’ use of online communities generally echo the findings of other researchers who have focused on college students’ use of Facebook. In particular, they discovered that the top two activities of respondents to their surveys were messaging people they know and viewing profiles of people they know. The researchers further asserted that the two areas most impacted by online communities is community and identity development. They arrived at these conclusions by navigating and using multiple frameworks, including Tinto’s persistence theories and a community psychology perspective. Other specific results of the UM surveys also support or are very similar to others’ findings that one of the primary uses of online communities is for keeping in touch with high school friends.

Despite the prominent use of online communities by respondents to form and maintain social connections, the respondents largely disagreed with statements that implied or outright stated that it would be more difficult to meet new people or stay connected without online communities. These questions were discussed in the context of negating the perception that use of or participating in online communities detracts from or takes the place of face-to-face communication.

Not all of the questions UM asked on their surveys focused on online communities. They also asked about blogging and media-sharing communities, including video- and photo-sharing communities. These results, although interesting and informative, generated no discussion.

The researchers then discussed their assertion that use of online communities ties in with identity development, specifically Chickering’s “developing autonomy” and “establishing identity” vectors. This is similar to qualitative research performed by five IU Master’s students done a couple of years ago analyzing the interplay of Facebook use with Chickering’s “developing mature interpersonal relationships” vector. Similar to the IU results, the Michigan results did not appear to support the tie between online community use and participation and Chickering’s vectors.

These results seem counterintuitive to me, particularly in the case of the UM results related to identity. In particular, it seems that if the presentation accurately reflects the UM survey then there are some pretty serious methodological issues. Self-identity is much more complex than simply asking someone if you “believe who you are is reflected in your [Facebook] profile” or if “by using online communities I can better express myself.” I’m not even convinced that exploratory research in this area on these topics can be adequately done using surveys. They seem to be topics that require personal interaction - interviews, focus groups, etc. - to capture and explore the intricacies and ambiguities of human interaction and identity development.

Throughout the presentation, the presenters addressed issues of how and whether administrators should use Facebook. They recommended that administrators use peer educators in many cases rather than creating Facebook profiles and using those profiles to seek out and connect with students. Similar to others who have made recommendations regarding administrator use of Facebook, the UM presenters recommended that administrators only form online relationships with students when the students initiate them. Further, they insisted that administrators view Facebook tools such as groups, events, and fan pages as complementary tools to use alongside other tools such as Web pages. Much of the discussion after the formal presentation during the question-and-answer session focused on those Facebook tools.

Another question from the audience asked about the advertising in Facebook and how the UM administration viewed the advertising in relation to official and unofficial UM use of Facebook and Facebook tools. They are not happy with the advertisements but it’s out of their control. The question, however, was very insightful and indicative of the kinds of questions and concerns we should all be exploring as we move forward with commercial tools and environments.

Others described their experiences on their campus and with their students. One described how students on his campus viewed as “cool” compared to other administrators because of his use of Facebook. Another described how students on his campus attacked, defended, and then discussed policy changes made by campus administrators.

When one audience member asked about the danger of students creating unofficial groups or fan pages misrepresenting the university, other audience members replied by advising against creating new policies aimed specifically at Facebook. One audience member reminded the original questioner that existing policies almost certainly covered such a situation. Other audience members suggested that a high level of control over students’ use of Facebook is impossible.

Other audience members discussed using Facebook groups for and during new student orientation. One use is to create Facebook groups for each orientation group well before the actual on-campus orientation session. Discussion questions were created for each group were posted along with events.

The session was packed to the gills and there was a ton of excellent discussion after the formal presentation. Other topics of discussion not fully documented here included one anecdote about a conduct case involving harassment on Second Life, (positive and negative) use of Facebook to select roommates, and education of students about their profiles and how others view them.

The lack of methodological details makes it very hard to evaluate the quality of the original research.  In particular, the discussion was couched in the language of inference where the responses and characteristics of the respondents were assumed to reflect those of the entire population. Without knowing the particulars of the methodology, it’s impossible to evaluate if this can be done with the results of these surveys.

On the one hand, it was somewhat disappointing that some of the questions during the session were extremely basic; I had hoped that we had gotten past that point already. However, many of the questions and observations were very interesting and insightful. More importantly, the answers to the questions from both the presenters and audience members were often right on mark and consistent with current research. Despite the problems with their research, these researchers are on the right track.

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I’m traveling to Boston right now to attend the NASPA conference and bad weather in the midwest and northeast is making travel…interesting. I found myself with a few extra hours in Atlanta’s airport when I checked my e-mail and found the new copy of Leadership Exchange in my Inbox.

In the new (Spring 2008) issue of Leadership Exchange are two articles related to technology. One is in the regular Technology Tools column and it’s entitled “The Great Divide in Social Networking Sites.” I wrote the article and you’re welcome to download a copy of the article as it was when I originally submitted to the editors a month or two ago. The article discusses apparent differences between users of SNSes based on race and class. Such differences are always interesting to student affairs professionals as they are keen advocates of the less privileged (which you should not read as implying that there is necessarily an injustice involved here; many people simply like to congregate in and socialize with relatively homogeneous groups of people who resemble themselves).

The other article is the (regular?) “Web Sites to Watch” column. NASPA’s editors specifically solicited information about Social Networking Services from the Technology KC. Included in the list are Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Ning. I’m very pleased to see the Technology KC continue to grow and gain exposure!

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The second item on the agenda of this year’s State of the New conference of specific interest to me and appropriate for this blog was a panel discussion of social networking sites (SNS) and privacy. The panel was formally titled “Social Networking Privacy: An Oxymoron?” and it was moderated by Tim Lordan of the Internet Education Foundation. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Jon Leibowitz introduced the discussion. Unfortunately, this appears to be one of the sessions that was not recorded or at least the recording is not yet on the Net Caucus’ Web page.

The panelists in this discussion included:

• danah boyd, University of California: boyd is the leading expert on how and why young people in America use SNSes
• Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University: Goldman is Assistant Professor and Academic Director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law; he has written his own recap of the State of the Net conference
• Chris Kelly, Facebook: Kelly is Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer; he seemed to spend most of this time during this discussion correcting misperceptions or misunderstandings of how Facebook operates rather than engaging in substantive discussion of the broader issues
• Daniel Solove, George Washington University: Solove is an Associate Professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and the author of several important and relevant books including “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet.”

In his introduction, FTC Commissioner Leibowitz discussed some of the thoughts the FTC has in relation to SNSes:

• Two documents regarding SNSes and privacy the FTC has produced, one aimed at parents and the other at “tweens and teens,” have been viewed over 2 million times.
• The FTC has recently asked for individuals involved in nefarious activities on MySpace be held in contempt of court.
• If Facebook had not reacted as quickly as did when uses rebelled against the initial rollout of Beacon, a feature that allows business to connect with their visitors’ Facebook profile, Leibowitz would have instructed his staff to look into potential Facebook violations of federal law (I think he said “COPA” but I’m not sure I wrote that down right; hasn’t COPA been struck down as unconstitutional?).
• When it comes to collecting or sharing user data, it’s always better to have a “true opt-in.” For all of its faults, Beacon was at least transparent.
• It is not inconceivable that very popular SNSes may one day be forced to abide by the First Amendment as other owners of privacy property have been forced. In fact, this was not the only time this very issue was raised during the conference; it came up again in a later panel discussion involving press rights in Second Life.

After Leibowitz’s introduction, the panel got off to a lively start. Lordan opened the discussion by asking the panelists if SNSes are so different from other operations that collect data such as e-commerce merchants and search engines as to merit special consideration. Goldman and Kelly seemed to reply in the negative with the view that SNSes are an evolution of communication media. boyd expressed disagreement and asserted that SNSes differ from other operations in that SNSes collect not only data about you but also data about your social network. So by giving away “your” data you are also giving away, by some measure, “your friends’” data at the same time since.

boyd continued by giving examples that related to the concept of “outting.” This is a term traditionally used in to refer to the process of homosexual persons revealing their homosexuality; it’s a very personal and often private experience often fraught with emotion and personal risk. It can be used in other situations, however, to refer to having information about oneself revealed by another without your permission. The specific example used by boyd was that although she is careful not post photos of herself drinking online there is nothing stopping her friends from posting such photos and then labeling (”tagging”) boyd in the photos this outting boyd as one who drinks alcohol.  So we can not think of data residing on and in SNSes as data merely about one person but we must think “in terms of network models.”  Remember, two of the defining features of SNSes are that they (a) contain a list of other users with whom other users share a connection and (b) allow one to view and traverse the list of connections from one user to another.

The next set of exchanges focused on privacy policies and the “illusion of privacy” they provide. There seemed to be general agreement that the current paradigm of posting privacy policies laden with legal jargon incomprehensible to the general public is ineffective. Goldman opined that asking consumers simple questions to determine their preferences might be a good way to go about things. Interestingly, there was no discussion of machine-readable privacy policies (P3P); has this idea died off completely, perhaps becoming outdated before it ever rolled off the assembly line?

The discussion then shifted to advertising as Kelly and boyd sparred about how well or poorly Facebook users understand privacy controls on Facebook. Kelly asserted that the controls work. Coming at it from a different angle, boyd insisted that the controls don’t matter because youths believe that Facebook is a closed network (as contrasted with MySpace). She pointed the finger at mass media for establishing the idea that Facebook is closed but MySpace is open. The same scene - Kelly describing how a feature in Facebook works and boyd insisting that users don’t understand it - occurred later when discussing (again) Beacon. Goldman and boyd both seemed to strongly agree, as would I, that much of the consternation caused by the use of SNS data stems from the commercial nature of those intended uses.

Solove wisely reminded us that these privacy challenges are much broader than Facebook. He asserted, and presumably also asserts in his book (which is on my bookshelf and near the top of my “To Read” list), that our definitions of privacy are not static but are changing. He also asserted that because people don’t care about sharing information that does not mean that they don’t care about how that information is used. He illustrated this with an example in which he would someone might be okay in publicly stating their preference for a brand of bottled water but not okay with that statement being used to promote that brand (drink Aquafina water -it’s approved by Daniel Solove!). Solove then presented some of the changes he thinks may have to occur in the legal landscape to deal with privacy and reputation as our definitions and abilities have changed but I’ll let you buy and read his book to get those ideas.

I feel as if the entire conversation was strained on the part of Facebook’s official representative and I can’t blame him given the audience (there was nothing else scheduled concurrently with this discussion so nearly everyone was there). He seemed to spend most of his time defending his company which didn’t seem to advance the discussion in useful ways. Of course, that there were apparently many misconceptions about Facebook that he had to correct is itself telling.

The comments by Leibowitz (FTC would have investigated Facebook regarding Beacon, fictional Facebook and MySpace merger would be a vcry bad idea, companies must be held to task for what they say they are going to do or not do, etc.) were most interesting.

The focus of the conversation seemed to be on the fact that SNSes have large amounts of data and will continue to gather them. Users don’t know what’s being done with the data and the current mechanisms for telling consumers are inadequate. I was most disappointed in the lack of empirical data cited during the discussion, particularly in light of the relatively-recent Pew Internet & American Life Project data regarding users’ expectations of privacy.

Finally, I am again struck by the challenges posed by SNSes and other tools that force people to “flatten” their presentation and identity. We regularly and without thinking adapt our public presentation to the audiences we perceive and expect, moving from one presentation of self to others seamlessly. Environments that draw together disparate audiences (high school classmates, college classmates, professors, coworkers, family, etc.) and force people to adapt one presentation are very different from the environments in which we live our day-to-day lives. Those different presentations we exhibit are natural and important and it’s very confusing in many ways to be forced to put on the same presentation to every audience. That confusion and this flattening of our public identity is one of the key issues at the center of this discussion of privacy and SNSes.

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I’ve slacked off updating this blog for the last month or so as I tackled finals and increasing demands at work. So I’m going to slide back into things here with an easy one…

While many elementary and high schools have banned cell phones, at least one university has made them mandatory in the name of safety. Montclair State University requires “Full-Time Freshmen and Transfers” to have a cellphone from the institution’s chosen provider, Rave Wireless Services. The WCBS article and video linked to above quote a price of $420 a year which includes “just 50 peak voice minutes a month, but unlimited text messaging to any carrier, unlimited campus-based data usage, and student activated emergency GPS tracking.” The newer reports focus on the GPS device tracking capability as a safety feature.

So some students who matriculate to Montclair will be coming from schools where they’ve been told that their phones are dangerous distractions to a new institution that proclaims cell phones to be so important to students’ safety that they are mandatory. I know that the situation is much more complicated: colleges and universities are much larger, have many more students, and have more mature students. But the apparent contradiction seems pretty confusing. I suspect that the simple, uncomplicated (and thus wrong) messages each side has attempted to portray (”They’re evil distractions!” “No, they’re necessary safety devices!”) is the root cause of this apparent contradiction.

It’s very easy for those of us who work in higher education to ignore or merely be ignorant of what our counterparts in elementary and high schools are doing. Those of us who study college students (a pseudo-discipline we have labeled “student development”) very easily and quite often fall into the trap that everything important that happens to people happens between the time they step foot on campus and leave campus after graduation. But our students come to us shaped by their experiences throughout primary school, secondary school, and other life experiences. How damaging is it to all of education and all educators when we contradict one another (”Social Networking Services are bad!” “No, they’re good!”) without attempting to resolve or explain those apparent contradictions? And how confused and disillusioned do we make our students?

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Several new resources and articles focusing on social network services (SNSs) (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.) have been recently published or released:

• A special issue of the Journal for Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) focused on SNS edited by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison has finally been published. All of the articles are available online for free. Of particular interest to me are “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison and “Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites” by Eszter Hargittai. Hats off to danah and Nicole for pulling this together and seeing the project through to completion!
• The Online Computer Library Center, better known as OCLC, released the 280-page document “Sharing, Privacy, and Trust in Our Networked World.” Although the report focuses in part on libraries and library directors, it also includes significant sections on (a) User practices and preferences on their favorite social spaces, (b) User attitudes about sharing and receiving information on social spaces, commercial sites, and library sites, and (c) Information privacy: what matters and what doesn’t. The research appears to be largely based on surveys of several thousand individuals from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) released the 36-page document “Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks” (1.8 MB pdf). Contributors to this document include many familiar names for those who have browsed my bibliography: Alessandro Acquisti, Fred Stutzman, Nicole Ellison, and Ralph Gross, among others. While the focus of this document (threats and recommendations) may be slightly different than that of interest to many of you, the perspective is very valuable and many of the issues identified will be familiar. Among the issues addressed are: difficulty of complete account deletion, SNS spam, profile-squatting and reputation slander through ID theft, stalking, and bullying.
• Karine Joly discusses a new Facebook feature, Facebook Pages, in the context of institutions of higher education seeking to market their institutions and connect with their constituents. Although intended primarily for commercial marketing purposes, Joly sees utility in this tool for higher education. Personally, I am becoming wary and weary of marketing efforts, particularly as they continue to infiltrate our personal lives and spaces. I recognize that much of that infiltration is occurring simply due to the blurring of boundaries between our personal and private lives but that does not make my any more comfortable with some of these developments.  Nor am I comfortable with the commercialization of higher education despite my understanding of the economic and social forces driving it.

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Three very recent publications in student affairs literature discuss technology:

1. I have a brief article in the current issue of Leadership Exchange, NASPA’s quarterly magazine for senior student affairs officers. The article is entitled “The Offline Challenges of Online Video” (which is a much better title than the one I had for it) and it’s in the Technology Center section. NASPA members can access entire volumes of Leadership Exchange via the NASPA website after logging in. For those who are not NASPA members, here is the article as it was submitted to the editor; it was substantially shortened and the references removed as befitting the type of publication and audience. We were hoping the article would serve as a small promotional or awareness piece for the NASPA Technology Knowledge Community but I think that link got lost in the editorial process.  It’s also worth noting that the article was written before the University of Florida “Don’t taze me bro!” incident that was captured and spread via YouTube.
2. M. Leslie Sadle discusses Facebook in a NASPA NetResults article entitled “Freedom and Responsibility: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills to Facebook Users.” The article is available to NASPA member. If enough people express interest to the author, perhaps he or she will release it in a publicly-available location (when I last published a NetResults article, I was not asked to sign over copyright to NASPA).
3. David M. Eberhardt also discusses Facebook in “Facing up to Facebook” in the current issue of AboutCampus. It’s an ACPA publication that is mailed to all ACPA members and I don’t know if it’s available online.

The problem I have with all three of these articles, including mine, is that they are descriptive and theoretical. We’ve been spending way too much time making predictions and theorizing and far too little time conducting the necessary research to see if our predictions and theories hold water. That’s the primary reason I quit my full-time job to return to school full-time and earn a PhD: to stop guessing and waving my hands in the air and start conducting research so I can start saying something with some level of assuredness. I acknowledge and embrace the necessary role played by these and similar articles but I have a burning desire and need to move beyond them to formal experimentation and observation. Now I just need to make the time, money, and patience to follow through…

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I’ve finally made the time to encode the video from a 3-hour pre-conference session I ran at this summer’s ResNet Symposium. Although the session was entitled “The Impact of Social Networking on ResNet Users,” it was broader than the title indicates (the title changed several times as the it was being put together).

In many ways, the session was a follow-up to and a successor to NCSU’s Facebook Phenomenon. Leslie Dare, my co-chair in the NASPA Technology Knowledge Community and the person as NCSU who hosted their event, told me that some of the feedback from attendees at their event asked for more “advanced” material and discussion. I watched their event as it was streamed live and I agreed with that feedback. So my session focused not on “introductory” topics such as “What is Facebook?” but assumed that knowledge. I hope that those who attended and participated in this session walked away with a foundation of knowledge that applies not only to today’s Facebook but to the SNSes of tomorrow.

The session was organized in three parts:

1. Foundation and generalities (132 mb Windows Media Video file): Introduced the foundational concept of Web 2.0 (or at least the concept of user-generated content and greatly increased usability of web-based tools), a group activity to work towards a definition of “Social Networking Site,” an overview of some definitions used by scholars and researchers, boyd’s properties of SNSes and thesis regarding youth’s use of SNSes, and Suler’s Internet Disinhibition theory.
2. Facebook (133 mb Windows Media Video file): Review of research about Facebook and users, including basic stats, how many undergrads use it, how often, numbers of friends (and relationship with Dunbar’s number), group activity to list some common uses of Facebook, and what the research says about uses of and motivations for using Facebook.
3. Practical Implications and Practice (94 mb Windows Media Video file): Hodgepodge of issues and discussion including Digital Divide, Participation Gap, group activity about the use of SNSes in hiring decisions, how NYU addresses Facebook during orientation, institutional monitoring, and Facebook apps.

The PowerPoint file for the entire session is also available. In both the video and the PowerPoint, I removed the videos that were shown as part of the session. However, I’ve provided links to the videos (they’re all available online) so you can view them. I noted the removed videos and group activities in red text in the PowerPoint. I also added some notes to the presentation but obviously there is a whole lot more in the video. I also made an editorial decision to remove the group discussions as the participants were very candid and open and I am not comfortable sharing those conversations openly on the Internet; they knew that they were being filmed but I am not comfortable assuming they remembered that during some of our discussions.

I hope that someone will find these resources useful and interesting. In conjunction with the materials that NCSU provides on the Facebook Phenomenon website, these materials should provide one with a very solid foundation and understanding of how and why undergraduate students use SNSes, particularly Facebook, and how institutions can use these tools.

Thank you to Judi Rennie for inviting me to present this Professional Development Seminar. A special “thank you” goes to our hosts at UCSD, particularly Erik Strahm and Arianna Pilram, who helped find a room suitable for this session and a video camera to record it.

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I’m as settled into my new place and job as I will get so I hope to resume substantive posts soon. In the meantime, here are a few updates on topics previously discussed here and a few quickies:

• Lawsuits against college and university students accused of downloading or sharing mp3s continue and institutions continue to ratchet up the stakes for students accused of copyright infringement. Are institutions really getting more strict about this issue or are those who are instituting harsh punishments simply the ones who attract the media reports? And are they doing it in part to attract those media reports (”Look, we’re trying to do something about this! Didn’t you read about it in the newspaper?”)? Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the issue from the MPAA, the EFF has released a report entitled “RIAA v. the People: Four Years Later” (pdf file).
• Universities and colleges have often (and rightly) complained that most of the congressional attention regarding copyright infringement has unfairly focused on them. No worries. Some in Congress are eager to attempt to do foolish things to regular Internet Service Providers, too.
• One of the threads in our recent discussion regarding Facebook advertisements has focused on a shared desire to more accurately target Facebook users. Either we’re starting to see progress on this front or there were developments of which we were previously unaware (likely both). Not only are there applications built to specifically address this issue, Facebook is working to build this into their own ad system.
• Among the lessons learned from Virginia Tech are many related to communications and technology. In addition to Virginia Tech’s official overview, the Roanoke Times has an overview of Virginia Tech’s internal reviews. Of specific interest is the Information and Communications Infrastructure Group report (147 page pdf). The two main recommendations in the report are to (a) install a “new fully integrated digital campus architecture for all telecommunications functions based on Internet Protocol (IP)” and (b) “make selected research and administrative IT capabilities available to local first responders to improve radio communications capabilities.”

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A few months ago, Valleywag posted a brief discussion of the supposedly dismal clickthrough rate of Facebook flyers: .04%. Clicktrough rate is a measure of the percentage of viewers/visitors that click on a particular ad or link and a .04% rate is indeed miserably low by most measures. For some reason, this discussion was noticed and discussed by a few more folks last month, including Fred Stutzman.

As is often the case with “research” discussed online, the methodology and other important details are not discussed in sufficient detail to evaluate the usefulness, applicability, and rigor of the research. In particular, I would like to know more about exactly what was being advertised. I would like to know this because I assert that services, items, and events advertised by colleges and universities differ significantly from those advertised by others. I would hope that not only would we know our students better than others but we also would be advertising things of particular interest to our students.

I recommend that institutions making use of Facebook flyers ensure that those using the flyers coordinate or, at a minimum, communicate amongst themselves. Not only are there the usual issues of consistency of message, appropriateness of tone, proper use of institutional marks (logos, graphics, etc.), and the other issues related to mass media advertising but a lack of communication may lower the effectiveness of the medium. In other words, if every department and student organization on campus is posting Facebook flyers with no quality control then students may simply phase them out much like they have e-mail spam and banner advertisements on webpages. I do not intend to make that (getting heterogenous groups to communicate or coordinate, particularly student organizations) sound easy and I suspect that on many campuses the “watering down” of Facebook flyers is already happening. However, I don’t know if many institutions would allow departments to advertise via mass media to every student and alumnus without any guidelines, approval, or minimal levels of communication and coordination.

Before I left Sewanee, we used Facebook flyers as part of our marketing campaign to advertise our Residential Computer Consultant (RCC) student employee openings. The campaign was a success despite the significant increases in the application requirements. We made many changes to our advertising process so it’s impossible to tell if the Facebook flyers played a huge role in the campaign but we did receive several positive comments from those students whom we interviewed, particularly those who were applying for the marketing/education position. Several of the students seemed to view our use of the flyers as indicative of our knowledge of and commitment to student culture and practices and at least one student liked that we had launched a coordinated campaign spanning multiple media. We did not measure the clickthrough rate but our impression was that the flyers were well worth their very low cost.

We also noticed one minor issue: my default Firefox settings with the AdBlock Plus plugin blocked the image we used on our flyer. If we had elected to host the image ourselves, this issue would have been avoided (and we could have also used the stats thus generated by our server hosting the image). We did not troubleshoot this extensively so I do not know if this problem is widespread.

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The room in which I will be presenting my Social Networking Services Professional Development Seminar (PDS) session tomorrow at the ResNet Symposium is less than perfect. To assist the attendees, I have made the presentation available here (minus the videos) so they can follow along on their own monitors.

I’ll post a proper follow-up to the PDS later tomorrow reflecting on lessons learned and interesting observations.

Update: I will not be posing a proper follow-up to my PDS session except to say that I very much enjoyed the experience and I think it was very well received. I greatly enjoyed and appreciated the interaction with and feedback from the participants. Other than that, I don’t know what else to say that would be appropriate to post in a public venue. I’ll provide an update once the class materials are uploaded and the video made available.

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