In the past, a lot of my decision making was based on gut. I’d do, or not do, based on my feelings towards the idea. The problem was that my internal compass wasn’t well formed when I was younger. So my gut reaction was a hit or miss.

Then, as I dug more into entrepreneurship, I used data as my north star. I’d have five different dashboards to track everything and if the data spoke, I listened. The problem with this approach was data doesn’t provide any emotional insight during the decision making process. In fact, the point of using data is to remove the emotional element. This type of decision making didn’t feel right to me. It missed the human element.

As I get older, my gut, or internal compass, gets smarter. With each new life experience, my ability to make a better decision the next time grows. So I find myself trusting my gut more and more again, but I also know the importance data plays in decision making.

Last week, I listened to JOYUS Founder and Chairman Sukhinder Singh Cassidy give a lecture for the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series where she described her decision making process as starting with a gut feeling, then using data to confirm or deny her gut, then going back to her gut to pull the trigger. Gut, data, gut.

I didn’t have a label for my current decision making process, but gut, data, gut feels right with how I now like to make decisions based on a blend of data and a stronger, though still developing, internal compass.

Ok I made that word up, but before our etymologist readers split for the hills, hear me out as to what it means.

We help run the social media accounts of a couple eduction related companies. Every month we run an analytics report to measure what’s working, what’s not working, and the overall growth of the accounts.

One particular client has over 20,000 “Likes” on Facebook. A poll or link generates a ton of responses on their Page. If I post that same link on another client’s Page that is 1/10th the size, the response rate is extremely low.

Without “perspectivizing” the data, the smaller client would and should feel unhappy about the online engagement we’re generating for them in comparison. But if we calculate the average level of online engagement per Fan (ALE), we find a different story.

Our 20k Fan client generates a .096 ALE whereas our 2k Fan client generates a .153 ALE.

Applying an ALE score helps both big and small players really see what’s going on with their accounts.

Here’s how to calculate the ALE of your account…

1. Log into your Facebook Page Insights.
2. Change the date to the date you want to calculate.
3. On the “Overview” page scroll down to “Post Feedback” and record that number.
4. Click on the “Users” page and scroll down to “New Likes.”
5. Toggle “New Likes” to “Total” and hover over the end of the time period and record that number.
6. Divide the “Post Feedback” number by the “Total New Likes” number to determine your Page’s ALE number.

Once you’ve calculated your ALE, please share it in the comments below.

This morning our friend Lauren texted us to see if we were up for helping set up a new Irene evacuation shelter they were opening near Union Sq. It makes sense that there would be need for a massive number of volunteers across the city, but neither Annie or I had heard anything about it on the news. Had Lauren not texted us, we probably would’ve stayed home, worked, took a walk, and slowly prepared the rest of the apartment for Irene. Instead we spent 5 hours doing some serious sweat labor to make sure those in need, and their pets, had a safe place to stay during the hurricane. I appreciate having people in my life who think about others as it helps me to remember to think about others. Not only does helping others help them, it also has been scientifically proven to make the giver feel good.

A couple weeks ago, I attended the inaugural #140edu conference in NYC which brought together several hundred educators for two days to talk about the future of education. Modeled after TED, each person was given roughly 10 minutes to talk about his/her topic. My topic was on leveraging social media to increase student engagement outside the classroom. You can watch my keynote here.

After the first day of the conference it was clear that the focus of my talk was different than almost everyone else. While everyone was involved in education some how and had a desire to improve it, almost all the topics involved how to make “in-classroom” learning better, while my focus was on “out-of-classroom” learning. In higher ed this is often an area managed by a Student Affairs department.

I’ve attended dozens of education reform/revolution type conferences over the years, and I always end up feeling like the lone wolf talking about the “out-of-classroom” learning space. The informal learning moments that happen in-between classes.

Higher education analyst, Thomas G. Mortenson, revealed that a typical student will spend 15% of their day in class or working on classroom work and 35% of their day sleeping. That leaves 50% of the day for working or hanging around the campus community.

According to a UCLA national study of college seniors 4 out of 5 seniors say their most significant learning moments happened outside the classroom.

Academic researchers Astin, Tinto, and several others, conclude that the more socially involved a student is within the campus community, the higher his/her retention and graduation rates are.

With such strong data to support the work I’m doing, why do I always feel like an outsider at the education reform conferences where the conversation is dominated by in-classroom learning?

With the massive amount of information Google knows about us, it’s interesting to see how the data is slowly peaking out from behind their databases. Here are two examples..

Based on who I’m sending an email to, gmail recommendends other people I might want to include on the email.

When I do a search, Google lets me know what links my friends also shared.

The graph below of total Red Rover page views shows an interesting pattern with online student engagement, in that, they don’t hang around online during the weekends. Well at least they don’t hang around their school’s Red Rover site on the weekends. It’s interesting to see how almost perfectly symmetrical it is.

Having something on your blog go viral should be awarded with some sort of Boy Scout merit badge. Or maybe teated like music album sales where a governing body awards you a gold, silver, or double platinum plaque.

What ever the award, last week I experienced my first viral post. Because I love numbers, I geekly watched, probably too obsessively, where the traffic came from day by day.

As stated in the beginning of the post, I only re-purposed the content from the original source. It took me longer to read the original post than it did for me to re-purpose it for Swift Kick. In terms of the content's online life, we were #2, not #1.

The funny thing about "going viral" is the amount of LUCK uncontrolled variables involved. Right timing, right readers, right angle of the sun in the afternoon… Some variables can be manipulated and calculated ahead of time. The LOL Cats meme generating empire has created a science out of "going viral." But so much of it seems to be out of one's hands. Based on the topic and strong point of view, I knew this post would do well, but not 160K hits well. It continues to spread around, like a virus, generating hits and 500+ polarizing comments on the state of education in America.

The funny thing is I've been on the opposite side of this coin. In May 2009, Kevin sent me this video that was sent to him from a student who asked how it could be described through the ideas in our Dance Floor Theory Leadership Training. I took a crack at it and posted it on Swift Kick. In terms of traffic it did ok, but certainly not viral.

Then eight months later, Derek Sivers, gives a TED talk on the same video and BAM, the internet explodes in excitement. Our learning outcomes from the video are pretty close, but he won the viral game even though I posted similar thoughts a year earlier.

I highly doubt Derek stumbled on my original post while formulating his TED talk, so how do you determine "original content" on the unruly internet? Can he claim originality because he won the viral game or got to speak at TED? Can I claim originality on the graduation speech because I was the one who won the viral game? Or am I too self absorbed to think anything I write is actually original?

Whatever the answer, I'm happy to report the graduation speech just generated 3K more hits! Where's my double platinum plaque?

College of Coastal Georgia recently transitioned to a four-year residential institution. Among the many changes, the campus will soon include residence halls and a director of residence life. Dave Leenhouts, director of CCGA’s student life, heads the committee to hire their director of residence life.

In a conversation with Dave over the weekend, he talked about how the big buzz word on the committee is affinity housing. In other words, pre-matching roommates ahead of time based on similar traits to ensure higher retention rates.

The impact of first year roommates on an individual is huge and can have lasting life time effects from grades, to weight, to drinking habits. The NY Times recently posted an article on the science of roommates.

First-year roommates matter. Though they may go their separate ways sophomore year, their reach can ripple throughout the college years and after.

The researchers aren’t entirely clear on why one student has such an impact over another in their first year, but it sounds like a hybrid of the proximity effect of the Framingham Heart Study and the emotional gap felt by first year students.

CCGA is currently using Red Rover as their campus directory to socially connect first year students to similar students and campus clubs. Dave wants to go further and use the directory to roommate students based on similar interests, activities, and background.

An affinity housing dashboard is already within the scope of Red Rover. And because so much of Red Rover is data driven it will be interesting to study the results of matching roommates who are 100% identical verses those who are intellectually, socially, spiritually, etc opposites as a way to promote diversity.