Mark Oehlert is running the Social Learning Camp at DevLearn 2009 and I just attended his session on ‘The Big Three of Social Media / Social Learning: Fear, Control and Trust’.

Here’s a few takeaways from his talk which surrounded corporate culture and their objections to adopting social media, why they exist, and how to work around them:

• People don’t hate change, they hate how you’re changing them
• It’s not an I.T. problem (as in, security objections to social media are not the problem) it’s a human or culture problem
• Companies worry too much that once their people have access to social media they’ll say bad or inaccurate things. But social media doesn’t create idiots, in fact, it can expose them.
• One way to get around the fear, control and trust issues is through policy development
• IBM has the gold standard for social media guidelines 
• It’s not an I.T.issue, it’s not a money issue – many social media tools are too affordable – it’s just fear, control and trust
• Being an eLearning professional means being a psychologist, anthropologist and counselor, because you’re constantly having to overcome and work around the human and emotional issues people have

Oehlert spoke about his experience with the Department of Defense and other government agencies and how Facebook and Twitter are not allowed because of operational security. There is a  fear of exposing vulnerabilities within their community. He says this is a valid concern, but then went on to ask ‘does this mean that they then block access to these networks at the soldiers’ homes’? No. At the end of the day, it is corporate culture that’s the real problem.

@Schnicker