While I have been familiar with John Seely Brown’s thinking on social learning and open education for some time, I came across the following video interview with him only yesterday. Perhaps more interesting than the video itself - which will ring familiar to anyone who has read Seely Brown’s recent work - is that I found it on Conversation Agent, a blog primarily focused on marketing, communications, and new media.

I’ve long felt that marketers in the Web 2.0 era - particularly those who purport to be social media marketers - could benefit from an understanding of social learning approaches and even, for that matter, open education. Why? If you truly engage in helping your potential customers learn - and not simply about your products, but about the problems and issues that are important to them - then you can provide substantial value that is the basis for a long-term, loyal relationship.The view of this relationship as expressed in the Conversation Agent blog is:

If we apply this conversation to business, you can easily see how social media may offer the right kind of tools - applied internally and externally - for the organization to learn about itself and the creation of new services and products in the marketplace. This without the use of focus groups or labs. In fact, the whole conversation becomes a lab where learning is implemented in rapid cycles.

True enough - though I worry that, stated in this way, the relationship sounds a bit too much about what social learning offers the organization rather than what it offers the customers.  It’s the same sort of Institution-centric vs. learner-centric dynamic that the academic world has wrestled with- and still wrestles with - as the social Web has grown and the possibilities for Learning 2.0 have become reality. If, as Seely Brown’s sometimes sidekick John Hagel sees it, there truly has been a user revolution, it seems wise to focus on the customer/learner.

In any case, it is good to see terms like social learning and open education getting some play in the marketing sphere.

By the way, the interview with Seely Brown was conducted by Ulrike Reinhard, who will soon launch the first issue of WE, an online magazine dedicated to the “the empowerment of many given to us by the Internet.”

JTC

P.S. - If this sort of post appeals to you, you may want to check out my other blog over at Hedgehog & Fox. You might also enjoy my free eBook, Learning 2.0 for Associations.

Related posts:

1. Points of Reference, Comfort, and the Digital Curator
2. Learning as a Key to Social Media Success
3. Learning 2.0 eBook - Free