Cory Doctorow on why content isn't king

I've read Boing Boing for yonks and quite like how Cory Doctorow can sometimes cut right to the centre of an issue and phrase it in a way that really sticks in my brain. He's done it again in this Boing Boing post quoting a Disney executive's view on piracy as "a business model to be competed with". The exec also describes Disney's strategy as "being primarily about content because it drives everything else..."

I really like Cory's response to this statement:

Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Now think of that in an educational context... Woah.

Sometimes change management goes too well

I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but things have been getting in the way of my rambling. Here goes.

While I was at Griffith, I was around to experience the Great Blackboard Crash of 2003. This was a result of, among other things, change management working too well. In conjunction with a major upgrade, we promoted the system. We encouraged academics to use it with regular demonstrations of the beauty and wonder that was Blackboad v6. We told them to use it and use it they did, and the students accessed in numbers never anticipated. They brought the system to a complete standstill for the better part of week one of semester and it was still limping for a few more weeks.

Fast forward to 2006 and the full launch of Blackboard at Bond. Day one of semester I was in my office at 7am preparing for the onslaught. I asked my staff to be in early too. This would be our "all hands on deck" week and we were ready. I checked the live usage statistics and watched the numbers climb. Alright, here we go.

By 10am, I was asking my staff how things were going. I was walking through the library and the labs to see lots of monitors showing Blackboard subject sites. I was talking to helpdesk and library staff to find out how they were going. I was talking to faculty support staff to see how they were going.

By noon, I was starting to doubt the live usage stats. I checked with my sys admin. Yes, they were correct. I hesitated to leave my office to get lunch, thinking the support calls would flood in at any minute.

By 3pm, I was feeling a little neglected. A few calls and questions, sure, but where were the cries for help? The screams of anguish needing a diplomatic hand to quiet them? They were using it, oh they were using it. The system was getting a hammering but without breaking a sweat, and we weren't hearing about any problems.

This continued for the rest of the week, and by Friday when I congratulated my staff for a job well done, I couldn't help but feel that the whole week had been a little anti-climactic. The last months had been spent communicating, training, seminar-ing, newsletter-ing, meeting-ing, emailing, more communicating and more training. I guess it had all worked too well. The staff and students didn't need us anymore. They had become... proficient.