The Groups of One

The upshot of not being able to share a buzz to my learning hives here at beBee has been the the creation of groups of one - or groups at LinkedIn that consist only of one member.  This is something that many social media outlets are not champions of, which is consistent throughout the years going back over 15 years, when I had created a Yahoo Group that was meant to have just one member.  What a struggle that became as I would get messages from Yahoo that were prompting rather than merely nudging me to accept members in my group.  That group back then was called CoSE or my Chamber of Self-Expression.  It culminated with me having two members.  The alter-ego me and actual me as the two members https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Self-expressed/info

This group mindset is the common response that is more than just tribalism at work, at its center it sits at the heart of just how much we are socially engineered by the media portals we connect - to the point of calling it "Social Media" as if no other kind of media type would be deemed necessary or even plausible to accept.  We added all this fear of being individual with societal group-think such as ME to WE - which as I look at it is a few "ME's bringing together millions of"WE's".  The price for asking why a Group of One is viewed so negatively speaks volumes as to the underlying practices that led the word "Social" to be attached to media.  I never accepted being put into a minority position, where there it is an acceptable prejudice to treat the "individual" who is interested in using the online space as personal learning space, as something of an oddity and something not to be encouraged - unless it enters the virtual body and viewed as an infection.

Right now at LinkedIn there exists these 15 groups which all contain one member who is focused on creating a group of learning media, designed solely for my own way of approaching the online space.  The LinkedIn focal point is actually excellent in that they promote what I want to live, which is "A Revolution in Learning. The Evolution of You"

It is in reading the small print on this LinkedIn advert that we see that this sentiment is directed at being taught by "industry experts" - which is where my approach online is fundamentally different.  For sure we can hire experts in professional disciplines for our education, but the best learning is recognizing other learners and from that the fantastic capability and expression found in one and another.  In any system, if we only counted on experts, whole organizations would come to a grinding halt - that way of thinking is still groupthink.   It is quite interesting that I should actually fit the LinkedIn tagline ever so well but certainly not the small-print clarification.   What Linkedin Groups has enabled me to do is to establish an alternative 15 groups that complement the Learning Hives that brought me to beBee in the first place.

The groups that I know have opened up at LinkedIn (because that is not something I can do at beBee currently, especially since buzzes are only available to "followers") are groups of my personal learning media, which fit the 15 hives that I continually adapt in my Renaissance learning media system. 

While the groups are not physically displayed on LinkedIn the manner shown above - this is what my own personal ideal is, to have a media space that is entirely my own space, curated in a way that aids my learning purpose and not group purpose.  Whatever we may say about the 21st Century, having a virtual place to think or curate should be welcomed, because we all need a space to think.  The reality is that most thinking needs to be done in visibility of others and in the company of others.  That is not something I object to because that relationship provides its own learning value - and is as welcome as my Groups of One should be.

In Groups of One, the comments are actually notes - as to where I originally found a piece of learning material that I deposit in my Learning Groups (which is no different to the Hive experience here at beBee that is open to all, rather than "Groups of One".   When our learning media is open, there is valuable input from others, but when our learning media is exclusive we have created personal space - real personal learning space.  The great thing is that when one option is closed down, my ability to adapt is constantly on the look out to find virtual space that aids my learning pathway curation. 

beBee is still my main port of call, and while Twitter came back into being last month (March 2018), that is only for the same reason I joined Facebook, which is that it fits learning goals with my offline learning space, which constitutes as the Toastmasters Clubs that I have joined.  It all fits the same process whether it is an online or an offline space. 

Thinking through my own process is a big part of that learning because I am constantly evaluating the colour of my own attention and learning - and where content should fit, or what to do when there is content that has no identifiable learning colour.  Eventually through reformulation of my Renaissance Grid, a new pattern emerges and I solve those curation conundrums.  Lately one of those was where Leadership should go - and now there is a new sub-header called 21st Leadership that fits my White Hive, whereas Leadership was originally a part of the Blue "MANAGERIAL" hive.  Then there are leadership virtues which would then actually fit the newer Gold "RELATIONAL" hive (which used to be SPIRITUAL). 

These constant modifications and tinkering s are not the kind of stuff that followers should follow, because it is not designed for following.  It is designed for emergence - where the emergent informs my own learning - perhaps the most important aspect of making that learning an a transformative canvas rather than an accumulation of knowledge.  Since this is so out of left field for the curated majority, where people are the primary product of a social media site - it remains a path least traveled. Yet I envisage that our children's children will see what i do as absolute common sense and not think of it as strange at all.  It is OK if society today holds a far different view of learning, one that is informed by the group-mind and an institutionalized education system.  Our society needs to mature much more in order to develop the kind of confidence that transforms us individually into a "lifetime learner". 

I like that idea of "lifetime learner" but whose life does that learning actually belong to - the way our society is educated and processed through a career path creates a far different definition of existence than the one I live.  There is no guarantee that the world will be any better a place if it began producing more people like me, but eventually because I wriggled through the societal and political orthodoxies of how we are educated, it means that I have merely experienced what will be the norm decades from now.  For now I sit here at the oddball in a system of learning/education that most people would agree is neither predicated on reflection or an evolution of wisdom.  We actually don't need a revolution in learning, we simply need an evolution of learning and there is no need for an evolution of me, because we are all evolving.