Robert Kittinger

It’s been a while since my last post…Over the last 6 months I’ve have the opportunity to do several interesting things. I was able to speak at the Fall WIK 2007 conference on the application of Web 2.0 technology for authors and illustrators. I had a great time speaking there and was asked to/ able to do a sort of encore presentation later on. Many authors and illustrators rely heavily on their web presence, networking and branding, so we generated some pretty good discussions and overall enthusiasm. I packed up all of my belongings and moved to Pensacola, FL.

I’m now attending UWF’s graduate Industrial Organizational (I-O) Psychology program. Many people don’t know much about I-O Psych, and immediately think it must have something to do with counseling. It’s really got more to do with HR management, how to hire the right person (selection ), keep them (retention), creating an organizational culture, work-place fairness, work-life balance, flex-time, efficiency, and those sorts of things; just think “the Bobs” in the movie Office Space. So how does all of this fit in with my passion for Web 2.0…

Well, I just finished hearing a wonderful presentation by Deborah Rupp, PhD on Assessment Center Technology. She’s working with fairly advanced internet and server database technology to run remote assessment centers between the United States and Seol, Korea. Most assessment centers use highly trained, highly skilled personnel to rate different behaviors which the employee participates in. These can be in-basket tests, leaderless group tasks, etc… Deborah Rupp and her team are able to record video of the tasks being done and video-cast them in real time to an experienced rater/ assessor in another location; or they can record the video to the server to be assessed as a later time. Deborah mentioned, and it should come as no surprise to most of the readers of this blog, that the greatest limitation at this time is bandwidth.

The most amazing thing to me about their system was the cost, which even got Deborah in a meeting with a few Microsoft people. They were able to create this mobile assessment center, with DVR, Digital Camera, 6 Video Cameras, 7 Microphones and 7 sound-mixers for $9,116 USD. Deborah was absolutely great, she’s sharp, ambitious, and very personable. She exposed us to the future of assessment centers as well as the technological potabilities, while teaching us some of their methodology and research interests.

My interest is right here, where I-O Psychology meets the power of web technology and mass presence. It’s really easy to collect mass amounts of data for validation and reliability studies, when you’re on the web. I wonder what other arenas a statistical analysis of user behavior could pay off in over the web… ask Amazon.com.

PS.- www.Kluster.com has a great idea and wants yours. Check them out…I’m on there much too much.

PPS.- I also grew a beard over the last few months… a picture is included.