Social Web | Aesthetically

Esperanza

ESPERANZA – Vieques, Puerto Rico
18.1269° N, 65.4239° W

This is the place if you need to: unplug | commune with wild horses | swim with sea turtles

Last January, I spent more than a week off the grid. I traveled with friends to Vieques, an island in Puerto Rico. This was a time to enjoy the rugged beauty of the Spanish Virgin Islands. Commune with the wild horses. Swim with the sea turtles. Taste the local passionfruit and mofongo.

I took no laptop, no iPad, no smart phone. On purpose. For a digital media studies professor – for anyone really – I believe that digital naps are imperative. Taking a break helped me understand how hooked I really was …

The powerful (ahem – addictive) urge to tweet/Instagram dissipated in about 48 hours. The tweet-like thoughts eventually disappeared. You know, that short pithy commentary that springs fully formed –as if the Twitter muse had fashioned it just for you from somewhere beyond. While there were many tweet-worthy moments, my mind ceased crafting them into consumable content – thankfully. I just was. I just let moments be, with no need or desire to repurpose them into some vague personal branding enterprise. I was also freed from the tireless stream of status updates. I felt truly relaxed for the first time in years.

While there were many images of beautiful bays and delicious coconuts to share immediately while on vacation, I had to ask: what would be the purpose of this status post right now? To share my life aquatic with my friends and family? To inspire travel to Puerto Rico? To incite jealousy? To receive confirmation? Instant gratification? To see how many friends would like it? At that point, I didn’t care who liked or didn’t like what. I liked it. And I needed a break.

I found peace on Vieques, sipping punch, lazing with the iguanas in the bougainvillea. Watching the sunset, smelling the jasmine. During these moments, I reflected on the act of seeing through mediums. These days, when we have an experience – something beautiful or exciting we are often viewing it through a medium. A beautiful sunset – quick grab the camera. An impromptu concert in the streets – must be recorded and shared.

The trend is toward more mediated (indirect) and consumable experience. We create value through the recording and sharing of an experience. But what are we really sharing? And what is the value of a direct, unmediated, unshared experience? Does an undocumented experience still hold meaning and value?

If you want to plan a trip to Vieques – please allow me suggest going easy on the planning. And to leave your chargers at home.

We took a quick flight – a tiny Cessna – from San Juan to the island. The pilot took us low, hugging the postcard perfect aquamarine coastline. The five of us rented a villa with a wrap around terrace overlooking the ocean. It was glamorous (in a very shabby chic way) without breaking the bank.

There is a swanky W Retreat & Spa on the island, too. It’s currently winning awards for being a hot spot. It is hot, with all the expected W charms. But for something truly stunning, try the Inn at the Blue Horizon.

Here’s how we spent our days:

Breakfast was always a simple affair that involved lingering over a strong café con leche (or two) and a cuban pastelito (or two) and the morning paper at a local bakery, like Roy’s Coffee Lounge.

When the urge hit us, we foraged for provisions in town (ginger beer, banana chips) and hit one of the island’s beaches with our snorkel gear. We needed an SUV – beach hopping felt like a tropical, Indiana Jones jungle adventure. And hop we did – there are 41 beaches on Vieques. Blue Beach, Green Beach, Pirate’s Point, Playa Navio, Playa Negrita (a stunning black volcanic ash beah), Playa Prieta (secret beach). Each one unique. All glorious. The beaches were often secluded. Sometimes we each had our own palm-shaded lagoon.

Midweek, we acquired a machete at Black Beard Sports, so we could hack our way through some jungle. And open all those tempting coconuts. A beach guide can be found here. Black Beard can also arrange PADI dives and nighttime kayak trips to the bioluminescent bay.

On our way back from the beach, sandyfooted and sunsoaked, we sampled the parcha (passionfruit) punch at a low key place like Lazy Jack’s or Bananas. It was all too easy to spend hours in the lawn chairs, sipping out of plastic cups and telling tales of the day’s discoveries – sea turtles, tidal pools, starfish.

After cleaning up and another round of parcha punches back at the villa, we headed out for dinner. If you are a foodie, you will be delighted to hear that the restaurants on Vieques were marvelous – try Tradewinds, Bili’s, El Quenepo, and Chez Shack . No reservations necessary. The focus was on the freshest seafood (ceviche, shrimp, scallops, conch, Caribbean lobster) and local produce (passionfruit, guava, mango, plantains). And then there were the specialty rum flights.

Right now, Vieques is the best of both worlds. Just the right amount of development. Where you still have a sense of discovery. It feels a little like Tulum did in the mid-90′s, before the resorts and yogis came. The perfect, low-key place to unplug.

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The twittering machine

on April 5, 2012

Standing before Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine (1922) at the Museum of Modern Art, I recall Marshall McLuhan’s words and consider how we shape our tools and in turn how our tools shape us. In Klee’s day, the painting could have served as a social commentary on the forces of nature and industry colliding. Today, perhaps we should look again. The bird’s are shackled to the wire. The crank turns, we stand in our chains to sing songs of relentless cacophony.

The New Rules of Community Engagement

Forthcoming

Abstract
This article presents findings from the university-based research center, Beautiful Social, where students perform the public work of digital composition and literacy instruction to help nonprofits and social entrepreneurs with modest resources develop cutting-edge social media strategies. In its first two years, students have run more than 40 projects in new media and web 2.0 consultancy, training, and community management free of charge to Philadelphia-area organizations. Importantly, this hands-on learning experience dramatically changes the ways students think about the technology they (already) use (Jenkins, Shirky, Turkle) and facilitates webs of connection: connections that link what students learn in class to their lived experience; connections that transform what they know and are able to do; connections that link self to others; connections where students have a felt experience of being engaged community citizens.

Background
In December 2010, I founded Beautiful Social, a research center at Saint Joseph’s University. I view this enterprise as a simple and effective model for 21st-century digital media education. It enacts a powerful global ethic, where students learn how the Web enables us to embrace our interconnectedness and take ethical action. Through this enterprise we have a sustainable, economical, and effective model for teaching and learning where non-profits receive free assistance and students gain much needed work experience. This model helps both students and organizations grow, while having safer failures and bigger successes. Not only does this model build skills, it creates leaders with a social conscience. Many student’s attitudes about what they want to do after college change dramatically after working with Beautiful Social. They realize that they want to be part of something that makes positive change.

We receive requests for help both locally and globally. Students attend meetings at organizations or via Skype, create social media strategies, research best practices, consult for the organizations, crowd-source their work, and generate reports. They assign each other homework and actually do it. They also gain professional experience with social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and blogs. We also place interns inside organizations and have a lasting impact on how area organizations operate. Students are gaining real experience to add to their resumes and are landing jobs after college based on that experience. Most importantly, virtually every student is demonstrating leadership potential.

In short, this way of learning changes the ways students think about the technology they (already) use. As creators and designers, they see how what we create fosters specific cultural values. They see that what we make is a reflection of our own ethics. Importantly, this model of education facilitates webs of connection: connections that link what students learn in class to their lived experience; connections that transform what they know and are able to do; connections that link self to others; connections where students have a felt experience of being a global citizen. I’m excited to keep working with this innovative model of teaching and learning and to learn from others who express interest in educational models that empower students to foster civic action and social change.

Social objects: a string theory

on October 16, 2010

Drawing from contemporary social theorists Bruno Latour, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Karin Knorr Cetina, Jyri Engeström, and Ulla-Maaria Engeström, we can look at how people connect through shared objects. The argument here is that the object is the thing that links people together.

For example, people come to Delicious to share bookmarks, people come to YouTube or Vimeo to share videos, and people come to Twitter to share links and status updates. As a result, social networks consist of people who are connected by these shared objects (in these cases: the bookmarks, the videos, and the updates). According toEngeström, “The social networking services that really work are the ones that are built around objects.”*

Yesterday, we put this to the test in my social media course. My class is currently reading Clara Shih’s The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Market, Sell, and Innovate. I adapted her “Reciprocity Ring” description into an activity on social objects (pages 58-61). Shih’s “Reciprocity Ring” builds from Mark Granovetter’s 1973 theory of “The Strength of Weak Ties“ among users of social networks. (However he’s not mentioned in her book). Granovotter’s research questioned the idea that the amount of overlap in two people’s social networks corresponds directly to the strength of their relationship. Instead he focused on the power of weak ties. According to Granovetter: “emphasis on weak ties lends itself to discussion of relations between groups and to analysis of segments of social structure not easily defined in terms of primary groups.”

In our class exercise, we were interested in how a social object, in this case a status “request,” brings people together.

Each student wrote their name and a “status request” on a yellow Post-It Note. Some examples of student’s requests included an umbrella, a ride home, a babysitting job, a futon, an internship.
Students placed their requests in a circle.
Students surveyed the requests. When they could contribute to a request, they wrote their name and how they could help on a new Post-It Note. Students placed their contributions below the original requests.
Students then connected (with string) each object to the person who offered a contribution.

This exercise makes visible how the social object, here the status request, mediates ties between people. People were not interacting directly with other people in this exercise. People were interacting with the social object, the status request. This exercise demonstrates that social objects are persuasive in nature and prompt participants to perform activities. These activities are relational in nature. The more interactive the social object, the more opportunities for connection.

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