MBA 734 – Blogging at DrKW Discussion Question & EconTalk

What are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing internal versus external employee blogs in a corporate setting?  Are there certain industries where one of these strategies makes more sense?

A side note.  Since we’re starting our module on the social web and will be talking about Wikipedia in a couple of weeks I highly recommend listening to a couple of interesting and relevant podcasts from EconTalk, a great and well-recognized podcast about important issues and ideas in economics hosted by GMU economics professor Russ Roberts.  You don’t need an iPod or iTunes to listen to these podcasts; you can stream them directly from the EconTalk website.

The first podcast is with Clay Shirky who is the author of Here Comes Everybody and an expert on the economics of social media.

The second podcast is with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, who discusses how Wikipedia started, how some of the social aspects of Wikipedia work, and where Wikipedia is heading.

Monetary Incentives for College Student Performance?

There has been a lot of discussion recently about providing cash incentives to students in elementary and secondary education for improved academic performance.  Locally, DC public schools are starting a new program called “Capital Gains” where middle school students can earn money for things like attendance, behavior, homework completion, and good grades (from DCist).  New York City public schools have also implemented a trial run of a similar program.

Now I don’t want to get in this debate for public schools, but what about monetary incentives for college students? As opposed to elementary and secondary school students, college students pay tuition (often in large amounts) to learn.  We all know how strapped for cash most college students are, and I would assume that a college student appreciates the value of a dollar more than the average middle or high school student.  Instead of cash payments for student performance, colleges and universities could offer tuition rebates, scholarships, or subsidies for books.

Odlyzko on GigaOm

I was happy to see one of my dissertation committee members on the front page of GigaOm this afternoon.  Professor Odlyzko is on the faculty of the Mathematics department at the University of Minnesota and is the former director of the U’s Digital Technology Center.  The GigaOm article discusses his recent research on net neutrality, in particular the impact of streaming video on the Internet and consumers willingness to pay for connectivity over content.  Andrew is an innovative thinker on Internet economics and you can find more of his recent work here.  He is the lead of the Minnesota Interent Traffic Studies project (MINTS) and also has an interesting book coming out soon relating the dot-com bubble to the British rail road bubble of the mid 1800s.