I had the opportunity to attend the ASTD TechKnowledge Conference in San Jose a couple of weeks ago and one of the topics that came up in several discussions was user-developed content. I ran across this in a personal way and upon some reflection came to understand I'd been participating in it for a couple of years. How do you miss something like that?
First the experiencing part. As with most conferences, there was a trade floor with a variety of vendors of both products and services. Several of them were giving away IPads or other fairly expensive prizes in drawings for those who visited their booths. I was surprised a week or so after the conference to find a nice new IPad in a box on my desk. Pretty cool. After my initial happiness, it dawned on me that my company has some pretty strict gift rules as part of its ethics program and sure enough, the IPad would have to go back.
Having seen a number of the conference attendees using tablet computers I decided to investigate more after my near miss with the IPad. I did some research on some of my favorite tech sites to include CNET as well as some Google searches on the topic. To make this already long story shorter, I decided that a tablet was in my future. This is where the user-developed content come into play.
I found a tech developers online forum that had sections on many of the popular models. They were filled with posts from satisfied and dissatisfied users. Since it was a tech forum, the posts were also filled with the ins and outs of maximizing performance through software "hacks" and other techniques. There were also a number of "help me" threads addressing issues both common and unique. After hours of research I settled on a likely candidate and spent still more hours in detailed reading of the pros and cons of this particular model. One post linked to YouTube and low and behold there were dozens of user-developed videos ranging in length from a minute to nearly 20 minutes. These videos discussed and displayed such things a general overviews to in-depth instructions on how to flash the ROM to replace the provided software with "improved" versions done within the user community.
It dawned on me that I, too, had been a content developer though I had thought of it more as "sharing" at the time. In my hobby interest of flying model airplanes, I had contributed to similar threads on large user community sites including a what is called a build log where I had described the assembly of one of my new models complete with photos. I also have a handful of YouTube videos I've posted -- mostly of flying events I've attended. All of it is user-developed content.
This disintermediation allowing users to speak directly to other users is both extremely helpful and a little risky. One doesn't have the implied assurance that following the advice of a recognized expert as vetted by some recognized publisher. Caveat Emptor. On the other hand, you can get a wider variety of opinion and topic coverage than an "official" source would likely tolerate. The manufacturer of my new tablet doesn't include the directions on how to bypass it's software as described in the tech forum for example.
One of the significant issues that training professionals will have to address is control. Will we embrace the sometime chaotic environment of user developed content with an understanding that the community will become self-correcting ala Wikipedia or will our intolerance for ambiguity or the reality of government regulations in some industry sectors prevent us from taking advantage of the knowledge stored in the brains of those around us?
Meta tagging and vastly improved search algorithms can help with the cataloging of large collections of user-developed content. Rating schemes of both articles and authors can also help indicate a community's validation. Both of these can add to the quality of a collection. For those who express concern over the accuracy of the information during the community vetting process, I simply point to the lack of "inventory control" applied to "official" documents provided to the workforce. It needs to be asked, "What is worse, wrong info provided by an ill informed source or wrong information due to source documents being out of date?" It is likely that a robust user community will provide the self-editing that keeps user content current. Governance? Sure. Control? I'm not so sure.
