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08/05/2014

Comments

Xolotl

Mark:

The thinking here seems right-on, although I always struggle whether to use viral/infection metaphors due to the negative connotations, even when such metaphors are a perfect fit.

Reading your snippet, I was immediately thinking of how the "open virus" has spread to larger realms in the "collaborative economy"...maybe there's another point to make about that vector ;)

On a related note, I was doing some viral analysis of the #OER community and the math behind it tells us that if one wanted to "infect" the OER community with a really infectious idea, one would only need to get that idea shared by the following short list of 8 folks to get it in front of the most-connected 1,000 members of the OER community.

http://www.twitter.com/sheilmcn
http://www.twitter.com/psychemedia
http://www.twitter.com/GrahamAttwell
http://www.twitter.com/loumcgill
http://www.twitter.com/bonstewart
http://www.twitter.com/patlockley
http://www.twitter.com/HallyMk1
http://www.twitter.com/lindsayjordan

Sheilmcn

Hi Martin

Like this analogy a lot and think/hope I am bit of a virus in my institution - there still seems to be a lot of resistance but I am a stubborn little b*gger. Also very surprised to feature in the twitter list in Mark's comment. There are some names missing that I would have thought would have been in there, but maybe that's the point I'm not completely in the "inner circle". Looking foward to the book.

Sheila

mweller

@Xolotl - yes, you're absolutely right about the negative connotations, which is a shame because otherwise it fits very well. Interesting list - I think it would depend on the topic, and that's obviously a very UK centric list, but you're right, one or two significant retweets can change the dynamic of how something is shared.

@Sheila - you are on of my favourite viruses! I think persistence and also an undogmatic approach are important. In a virus analogy maybe it's easy to resist the big surge (ie the evangeliser), but more difficult the persistent strain.

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