Blog

As we are growing, we need more of those software engineer types who are skilled and fun to work with.

Dicole is seeking self-directed senior software engineers with a desire to build scalable customer-facing web applications with latest Web 2.0 design approaches. We desire someone who is comfortable writing efficient database schemas, clean and efficient back-end code, and has passionate opinions about user interface and interaction.

We have flexible working hours as long as the work gets done. You have the possibility to work with a great team consisting of diverse talent. We walk as we talk: you don’t have to live in Finland or in Helsinki to participate in what we are doing. We have blogs, wikis, virtual conferences, IRC channels and many more to make sure you are part of our team anyway.

Key Qualifications:

• 8+ years software development experience
• 5+ years MySQL programming experience
• 5+ years Perl, object-oriented mod_perl is a plus
• Linux/Unix expertise is essential
• Experience with version control systems such as Subversion or CVS
• Intermediate to advanced HTML/DOM experience
• JavaScript and JSON experience a bonus
• AJAX familiarity; intermediate to advanced experience a bonus
• Desire to work in a fast-paced environment
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Strong collaborative skills and flexibility in fulfilling multiple roles
• Avant-garde attitude

Send your applications to teemu at dicole dot com.

Viestinnän vallankumous – Löydä uusi työyhteisöviestintä (Elisa Juholin, 2008, WSOYpro, ISBN: 978-951-0-33859-9) features some quotes and ideas from Dicole Ltd. CEO, Teemu Arina. On pages 174-177 you will find a discussion on shared knowledge and learning. The book itself is in finnish and includes interviews with people across various industries. In addition, it’s organized in a workbook format and informs readers about recent research from various points of view on the ongoing communication revolution.

Bo Harald writes:

We seem to continue to move into more vertical solutions and deeper vertical solutions, when it is clear that better value for customers are delivered by horizontal solutions – those that work in the same way with all partners in all directions. There is of course space for further procurement-driven value chain building – but it should happen increasingly with generic tools.

Read the rest of his excellent post here.

Good points there. Horizontal integration is a way forward. In the eLearning sector many vendors have created eLearning solutions primarily for educational institutions. These technologies are supposedly designed for learning but that is not true. These technologies are institution-centric and vertical by nature. The concept of Learning Management System (LMS) was wrongly named. Better fit for a name would be Teaching Management System or Institution Control System.

No student would use the current so-called learning environments during their worktime or freetime. In 2006 I was at EC-TEL where Scott Wilson asked the audience full of educational technology specialists, “how many of you use a LMS for your personal learning?”. Surprise. No hands.

Social technologies are different. Blogs and wikis are already being implemented by learners themselves. Call them Personal Learning Environments (PLE) if you want but the key issue here is that they are based on user-centric design.

When we started developing our Dicole Knowledge Work Environment, we started from the learning and knowledge work point of view (Peter Scott would say that knowledge work and learning are practically the same thing) and forgot about the teachers. The web is full of teachers, you just need the tools to reach them. I call that parasitic learning.

We have run experiments in the university setting by utilizing wikis, blogs and RSS in addition to more connectivism-oriented pedagogical models. One course had 140 students and resulted in a dense network of about 1700 reflections. Some of the students who have participated in these classes have carried over the skills they learned there to their freetime and worktime. One particular group of students even created an environment for themselves based on blogs and wikis to share interesting lecture notes, podcasts and other topics of interest with each other. We need more of these trojan horses that will bypass institutional systems by helping students to help each other in their personal learning.

What we have done is to promote horizontal integration of knowledge working skills. We start from learning in the design of Dicole KWE and the same tools, learning patterns and models are beneficial in other areas of life where advanced knowledge working skills are required, including school, work and leisure. The pen and paper was a horizontal technology for learning. LMS is not. Blogs, peer-production environments and virtual collaboration rooms will take over.

This is very similar to Bo Harald’s vision of the Same Guy as user-centric design for Customer-Bank interaction. We just happen to see the Same Learners everywhere.

I (Tommi Ryyppö, VP of Business Development) just finished my Master’s thesis on social software. It is probably interesting reading for many people working in the field of social software so I decided to put it here. Enjoy!

Social Software - Leveraging Virtual Network Organization

I’m (Teemu Arina, CEO) pleased to open the Dicole blog. We have re-launched our website and this is just a quick post giving way to a hopefully weekly updated stream of what’s in our radar: social technologies, networked business and collaborative learning in organizations. We are currently working on two of our offerings: consultation on social technologies and our Dicole Knowledge Work Environment product, soon coming out of beta. We are all excited and working hard to bring you the best.

In the following months we will feature finnish yet unknown Web 2.0 companies and experts on the field of social media and web in organizations. The episodes will be released as online videos, screencasts and podcasts. For our english speaking readers we will feature english subtitles.

Stay tuned.