Monday, March 26, 2012

Gated Communities Are Not Necesarily Safer

You're living in your own Private Idaho
     -  The B-52s
I’ve had a lot of questions come to me this year that have all had the same theme.  That is, “I like this idea of YouTube for Learning but I can’t just have my people using YouTube.”

On one hand, I love that people are realizing how powerful video can be as a Learning tool.  Except for my good friend Steve, virtually every single person I talk to prefers to learn with some sort of easy to consume multimedia format.  Videos are clearly the way to go, as evidenced by the explosion of YouTube and people like Sal Khan.

On the other hand I’m frustrated.  We had these same discussions when email came into its own.  There were a lot of companies that simply refused email because it was “open to the outside” and “who knows how much time people will waste on email.”  I understand this – it’s change.  Most people find change disruptive, it rocks the boat, it is uncomfortable.  

Some companies have gravitated toward a private video serving mechanism – their own little YouTube.  An entire breed of software offerings have emerged to facilitate this.  But think about it – it’s like marrying within your immediate family.  It’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons.  First, you lose any sort of collaboration with professionals outside your immediate realm.  Sure we have good ideas, but some really great ones have come from outside.  Second, why do you want to spend valuable resources managing something that is already managed for you?

Proxy servers, firewall filters, there are so many ways to effectively control what and where your users surf.  There is some really valuable content out there that can help your company be more productive and thus more profitable.  In today's world we need to leverage every tools we can get our hands on. 

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  (That's one of those phrases I have always wanted to use!)
  

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