Declan, thanks as well. Both Steve as well as Johnnie kept me in the loop, so I will be there. Rgds

For me he’s one of the key thinkers in this field. His paper on Connectivism is a critical part of my learning landscape: http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

We talk about Human Capital. We talk about the importance of our human resources, and of developing and enriching those resources.

Most of the time, it’s talk.

Social software allows us to walk the talk. If we want to.

It is easy to make the conversation all about plumbing and infrastructure, and attach big bills to that, as we seek to recreate Content Management Systems of the 18th century. But we’re lying to ourselves if we do that.

Nobody fills in timesheets detailing just how much time is spent futilely playing with mail and spreadsheets and personal databases and presentations and documents. Things that were ostensibly meant to improve our productivity. If we did fill in the timesheets, we would be aghast.

Now there are better answers, and there is the expected inertia and immune system pushback.

But it doesn’t change the issue. Unless you value human capital (and consequently the risks and benefits of either developing it or allowing it to decay) you will never get anywhere with social software.

I thought that the growth of intangibles on balance sheets will help us in this respect, but so far I have been disappointed.