Tags
In the last post, we talked about a visualization tool that would allow us to tag ourselves and each other, and how that could be helpful for locating talent and sparking innovation. There have been great comments and ideas, and I want to continue that conversation in the next post. In the meantime, the concept of ‘expert‘ has been on my mind.
As I thought about the potential pitfalls of self-tagging, I couldn’t help but remember that article on mashable from December – There are 15,740 Social Media Experts on Twitter and wondered how we’ll get around this problem in the future.
Calling yourself an expert doesn’t make you one.
I looked at how the collective has defined expert on Wikipedia, and it starts with:
An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain.
This kind of interested (frightened?) me, in that the status of expert can be deemed so by ‘the public.’
It does go on to qualify that an expert has “extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study” and that the knowledge comes “by virtue of credential, training, education, profession, publication or experience.”
Unfortunately, many of the self-proclaimed experts out there do not have knowledge based on any of those criteria, but ‘the public’ can be easily (mis)led. There’s a difference between being popular and being an expert. What happens when the public begins throwing around the label ‘expert’ without a proper vetting process? Are we going to create yet another layer of noise that needs to be filtered through in order to find actual value?
{Leaving the definition of expert to the “Wisdom of Crowds” is not a decent answer. I’ve been doing a bit of research on the wisdom of crowds theory, and there are actually more criteria involved for it to be accurate than just saying ‘many people’s opinions are smarter than one person’s.’ That logic may actually lead to the creation of a mob mentality, not a collective intelligence.}
So what do you think? How we define merit when anyone can have an opinion? Does open access to information and people change our criteria for gaining expertise? At what point do we decide we’re all experts……which is the same as saying that no one is…
#
From the Twitterverse: Yesterday I asked you, “In 140 characters or less, what is an expert?” (responses are below)
@nedkumar Expert-Someone who understands the context of your existence, constraints of your problem, and the limitations of a solution
@T_C_P maybe an individual who has acquired substantive knowledge in a specific domain and is therefore able 2 reach peak insights?
@RitaJKing An “expert” is someone who knows they can study and work all their lives on a subject and still have so much more to learn.
@michelemclellan Expert: Someone who knows a topic and knows the limits of that knowledge
@faustshausuk Someone who has more to teach than they have to learn, but still plenty to learn. 🙂
@plevy an expert is someone who knows personally what she speaks about
@jsnovel expert: someone who can express exactly what they know.
@valdiskrebs Expert understands your problem, the context, and is willing to help you work thru it. No magic all-purpose answers provided.
@Hugimo impeccable ability to critically discern and demonstrate solutions in a narrow sphere challenge set
@aurelielb Someone who knows better!
@vanbael expert = someone with in-depth knowlegde & the skills to use this knowledge to face new challenges / solve new problems.
@clemwork Expert owns a subject. Has deep knowledge acquired through education, experience, reflection and (hopefully) communication .
@tdebaillon Expert has deep ‘knowledge’ of his field, and is able to analyze content and context each in regard with each other. [‘knowledge’ being taken in the French ‘connaissance’ sense, not ‘savoir’.]
@BFchirpy Accountable, situated, history of failure and success, eclecticism tests boundaries of domain, self-critical OR confident.
@jeremyriel an expert = someone who recognizes there’s always more to learn, even after it’s all been learned
@pancheee Expert: vast experience and vast training on something
@andrewmsmyth Expert: one who has mastered their passions
@adeliyannis An expert is a person who knows what questions to ask.
@toppundit An expert is somebody who deeply understands, respects, and can work with something complicated.
@SemiraSK s.o. you trust to know what there is to know and what not
_______________________
Further Reading:
Collecting Expert Opinion about High-Ipact Nonprofits: Review of Philanthropedia’s Methodology [PDF]
emergent by design 
I would say that an expert is the guy which nobody wants to see very close, with the fear of being humiliated…
I think Niel Bohr quotes defines well an expert: This is someone who makes all error possible in a particular field.
What’s your mind about it?
a person who listens to you and creates a unique solution that matters to you.
an expert is essentially an aggregator of ideas and concepts which they connect for you.
hopefully overtime one comes to trust their ability to do so.
recognition that a person is an expert may develop over a period of time.
Some more stuff on expertise.
Anyway, the experts’ expert is K. Anders Ericsson and I highly recommend reading his stuff. Sadly, it’s mostly in the form of trees and pricey with it.
There’s a massive amount of stuff on expertise over at the Freakonomics blog (much of it influenced by Ericsson).
Here’s a link to an interesting piece on expertise from the CIA.
And, last of all, here’s a link to a PDF on expertise from Legg Mason Capital Management. Don’t be put off by the cheesy photo, it’s actually pretty good on skepticism about expertise.
This is the summary from the PDF, which I think kind of covers the bases. It’s about investors but I think it transfers to other domains:
What it takes to become an expert appears remarkably consistent across domains. In field after field, researchers find expertise requires many years of deliberate practice. Most people don’t become experts because they don’t put in the time.
Experts train their experiential system. Repeated practice allows experts to internalize many
facets of their domain, freeing cognitive capacity.
Intuition is only reliable in stable environments. In domains that are nonlinear or nonstationary, intuition is much less useful.
Expert investors exist. Unfortunately, it is not clear that their skill sets are transferable. Expert investors are likely a product of both mental hard wiring and hard work.
The point about expertise and the ‘stable domain’ is particularly interesting.
i like the way the CIA piece starts: “Expertise is commitment coupled with creativity”
actually, the whole thing is a really good read. interesting too about the paradoxes/tradeoffs in becoming an expert, which to me signifies the necessity of the network – having the ability to allow your info to flow into areas of non-expertise may actually allows others without your biases to ‘see’ something that you could not.
Interesting Venessa that we can crowdsource the meme but not the point of view about who represents it, don’t you think?
I’m inclined to agree with you that many people postulate themselves as experts without the fundamental and remarkable level of dedication and craft that should be evident from what people are saying here.
In that sense I’m a fan of digital footprints; they work as a kind of reputationa long tail because the level of of mentions and materials in thecosystem that exist about someone can speak for itself now, and it can speak volumes.
Slideshare’s a terrific tool in this respect, as is Linkedin and Twitter and Google. Seth Godin puts it this way, that ‘it’s all about shipping’, and those platforms and others are what we should be shipping to.
Speaking personally, these days I wouldn’t want to form an impression and connect with someone any other way, even someone within the cloisters of academia. I think we all need to be accountable by being seen to be shipping content because that’s what bestows an expert with blatant integrity.
That being the case, I think it’s perfectly fair to be democratic in creating consensus around who is an expert. There will always be populist choices, and I can think of a few, and that’s ok. And there will be specialists for the thornier, riskier, more complicated situations. Those will be seen as the specialists and narrowcasted experts.
People require expert support in different ways, via their heads and their hearts, and organizations are the same. True experts understand all these differences and are good apothecaries.
I’ve a curious faith that a natural process of self selection will out. The tweets around the word in your post say enough about what expertise is to create a natural attrition. Thanks for the post.
That’s an excellent answer. And one I’ll use later – ship or die!
I believe there is a global trend towards diminishing respect of real experts through accepting shallow experienced people as experts. I fear very young people with limited life experience offering themselves as life coaches because they have completed a two day training course. I observe someone coming into a role as the expert because they have done A similar project for 6 months somewhere else. These scenarios are critically dangerous. Learning something at the expert level means understanding the theories at the deepest level, understanding the practical implications of these across many contexts and having the ability to accurately predict/analyse/explore possible unknown outcomes in new situations.
Dorothy Leonard’s work “Deep Smarts” found it takes seven years of full imersion in a field before one gets to true expert level and that this status requires continued exposure to retain status level. People wonder why around 70% of projects fail, despite investing in a team of experts? To me the issue is very clear. 1. Not TRUE experts. 2. They thik they are THE expert and therefore don’t listen to other options assuming they know better. I have seen this combination of poor expertise and poor behaviour kill so many good potential ideas. People who self proclaim expert status need to be validated by demonstrating a long track record of success and the odd failure( the ultimate learning experience).
Hope this advice helps
Arthur (tweeting as Metaphorage)
Agreed Arthur,
The “resilience” space is another where there are a great many experts hawking their wares. I’ve always thought that unless you have significant and diverse life experience and by definition have experienced difficulties that required actual resilience – you are not able to be an expert on resilience. I know I would not generally take anyone under the age of 40 in this space seriously.
On the other side of the coin we have a tendency to venerate people who have a deep knowledge in a particular area, but who cannot really see beyond that area of expertise. Often the greater the degree of expertise the more entrenched their views become. Unfortunately expertise is often closely associated with intelligence and they therefore experts have a strong ability to criticise and play down views that are divergent from their own. de Bono summed up this way of thinking nicely with “You can’t dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper.”
So we quite genuinely need to be wary of experts too. Unless I have a very specific need, give me a jack of all trades any day!
While I agree with you that an expert is somebody who has spent quite a bit of time in their field of expertise and that an expert with too narrow a view is not a helpful expert, how do we foster specific yet well-rounded experts?
I think the question of expert is that it can’t be specifically defined broadly, but rather, it is definied by the field of expertise. Meaning, if you define an expert in say, mechanics, you can’t take the same definition and use it to define an expert in golf.
Also, the other problem to consider is that there are varying levels of expertise. Just because two people are an expert in a field, it doesn’t mean their knowledge is equal.
An expert is someone who is no longer pert.
My understanding of Expert (obviously based on literature about the subject) is that of a person who has great knowledge about a specific field of study.
In this regard, the tagging is indexed to a “quantity” of said knowledge. This quantity is not measurable as common quantities are, for the obvious reasons. To some extent Master and Doctorate Degrees are a form of society approved measurements about the rightfulness of a person to present themselves as experts in a given subject.
In a more informal setting I recognize a layered distribution of expertise tagging due to shifts in the referential system. This is to say, a shoemaker is, for the common citizen, an expert in shoemaking, however between the shoemaking class some will be “more experts” than others.
This layered distribution of expertise is then affected not only by the tagging in itself but also by the tagger or referrer. So an individual (or collective for that matter) that not only is tagged an Expert by the public but also by their peers is awarded a higher level of expertise than those who receive it from the public alone.
In a community environment such as the internet where the tagging relevancy is a result of clicks awarding a different rate value to public and peers would better emulate the physical world paradigm (of for instance the word-of-mouth system).
Adding to my Expert definition by explaining what I meant by “great knowledge”, and borrowing from Anne and Arthur who posted while I was already writing my opinion:
it must certainly have to have been acquired by theory reading and contact with the studied material, published content and applied knowledge on practical circumstances with a “normal” progression of trial, error and success.
i totally agree with the comment on theory reading.
just to go back to the hilarity of ‘social media expert’…. well, most of these people mean it in a sense of being a great online marketer (which i’d argue they’re not good at either), but to be able to even have an informed conversation about the impacts of social media requires an incredible amount of reading and understanding, not just the early computer thinking from the 40s-60s from people like Alan Turing and Norbert Wiener and Vannevar Bush and Douglas Engelbart, but then thoughts on impacts on society via Marshall McLuhan, to thoughts on simulacra and virtual reality via Jean Baudrillard, to the concept of the rhizome by Gilles Deleuze, to the WWW stuff by Tim Berners-Lee, to all the folks from just the past 10 years. and that’s all just recent history. then you look at other philosophy, social science, anthropology, and the important issue about the impacts of the transition from orality and literacy and how that has shaped the human thought process since the time of the sumerians. and issues of the role of identity and the self. oh, and then you can also add in the research that now is coming out weekly in the field of neuroscience and factor in new insights into how humans operate and think and learn. then apply all that to a field that’s essentially new and currently in evolution.
and you dare call yourself an expert in that?
bwa ha ha.
Vanessa,
Your perspective on a the term ‘social media expert’ is great. I think as a society we are often so limited in our views and often forget to look back to more than the recent past. I feel as if when someone was raised or lives in a specific culture they believe that they are an expert. By culture I mean any category where one can place themselves including digital native, New Yorker, artist, sports fan. Having an affinity towards something does not mean you are automatically an expert. Doing research, testing out theories, dedicating oneself to a subject for a period of time (not just months or years but maybe decades?) seems to be what makes one an expert.
I absolutely agree with you, Kelly, that Venessa’s perspective regarding what it means to be an “expert” is very interesting. However, I feel in order to come to a better understanding of what it means to be an expert, it is essential to first set parameters for the term’s criteria. Such to say that things are understood by their relation to other things. One can only understand and come to a decision about the whole by first understanding its parts. The setting of parameters for the elements that comprise an “expert”(amount of research, etc.) is integral if one should wish to concretely define an expert let alone anything else.
It’s a question best left to the experts.
Oh no…..
😉
Thought provoking post, Venessa… as usual.
Interestingly enough, most tweeted answers, including mine, are shifting the definition of expertise from a technical, factual, point of view to a philosophical one.
I recently wrote a post about knowledge, and the difficulty we encounter while trying to define it. Fact is, expertise is definitely more about learning that about knowing.
do you have a link to that post?
Rather than give weight to input/process measures to define expertise — especially in fast-changing fields — doesn’t it make more sense to look at outcomes?
I would define as expert those persons or bots with (independently-verifiable) record of excellence in predicting trends and events in a given field.
Best,
Mark
@openworld
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Thanks Venessa, an interesting post, once again. I was suprised how quickly I came up with my answer above, yesterday. I am relieved to see that it is not totally off the ‘experts’ opinion of what ‘expert’ means. But yes, as Thierry points out, also philosophical. And this mirrors my own understanding as an organizational consultant with cultural, rhetorical, and systems theory background.
I am sceptical with respect to knowing, particularly if it relates to complex and even more so, if it addresses social issues – as expressed in the wonderful ancient Chinese story of Sai Ong (http://soraya-kandan.com/2010/02/23/%e2%80%9ejeder-nachteil-ist-ein-vorteil-jeder-vorteil-ist-ein-nachteil-%e2%80%9c-%e2%80%93-%e2%80%9eevery-disadvantage-is-an-advantage-every-advantage-is-a-disadvantage%e2%80%9c/).
The phenomenon of being connected through the internet on a global scale with the new plattforms and the increasing speed and spread is so new that we can hardly speak of experts in this field. From a communications perspective one can probably say that new “language games” are set up to construct one’s own credibility. The parameters for credibility though may not have altered too much from ancient rhetorical theories.
you mention the phrase “language games”…. have you read The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge by Jean Francois Lyotard? It’s Philosophy/Literary Theory, but i really enjoyed it. you might too. here’s some excerpts from the book – http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/lyotard.htm
I’ll come at this a bit differently. I think Godin suggested a really interesting tension in his previous investigation of tribes and the quality of exclusivity. This has been my recent experience.
I work in the field of buildings and energy efficiency. The beauty of this work is that, at the end of the day, you can actually measure performance. This is a field filled with hand waving and “green” grandstanding. But like a sport or, most recently the Olympics, somebody sooner or later has to perform and post the fastest time of the highest score. For those equipped to keep score, the BS stands out. For those who can’t, it all appears substantive. So there is a baseline of understanding that are the table stakes for participating in the “expert” dialogue.
So while we have many “experts” we have a few who actually cross the finish line with remarkable speed or otherwise substantive results, and fewer still who are equipped to keep score. So while I like Anne McCrossan’s observation (via Godin) that what “ships” is what matters, the issue of expertise requires some measure that reveals whether the solution “fits”. I need to take the meaning here that what “ships” also reveals satisfying (and measuring that can be subjective) results. When the metaphorical Zappos shoes arrive, do they actually fit.
Now back to tribes. In my field there is a whole lot of noise. Social media experiences have led a group of us to meet “tribally” and “exclusively”. The quality (and quantity) of the conversation improved exponentially by limiting participation. Because we know and trust and respect each other the salience of the accrued conversations is substantively more valuable to all of us – so we keep giving, with greater frequency and together, synergistically, build significantly greater value for each other than if the dialogue were open “to the public”. In fact, if it were, none of us would bother to engage.
I find this tension fascinating.
Venessa,
I personally don’t think there can be a universal definition for an expert, the same reason why we cannot have an universal definition for common sense. A lot of it is relative and some of it is tied to repetition more than unique knowledge — I am an ‘expert’ at walking compared to a 1 year old baby :-). Some things might come naturally to folks in a certain culture, which may be viewed as ‘expertise’ in another.
Taking a different line of thinking – the role of an “expert” ties in with your previous post – the role of “reputation” as we move forward. Should expertise be self-proclaimed? Obviously, there is the issues of self-bias. Should expertise be ‘bestowed’ upon someone? If yes, who/how? Again, if it is your best friend that is showering you with that title then there will be that lingering issue of bias.
Continuing the line of thinking from my comments to your previous post, I think that however we choose to define ‘expertise’, it should be an organic measure. Whether it is intra-domain expertise or inter-domain expertise, the “expert metric tag” (for lack of a better term) should be modified everytime one has contributed to the value-add to a task or issue at hand. That way in due time, not only will you know the “level of expertise” of a person, but in addition you will also have visibility into which spheres that expertise falls in — and being organic, (I think) we mitigate the issue of someone gaming the system to get themselves labeled as an expert when they are not.
Regards,
Ned
@Ned You wrote: “I am an ‘expert’ at walking compared to a 1 year old baby” Absolutely, there’s nothing weird with this example. I mean, I don’t know why people have problems with being objective.
The basic assumption behind the concept of being an ‘expert’ — which, based from the above comments, it seems everyone agrees — is that there should be a *learning process* that makes such entity distinguished from the ones who haven’t acquired the same level of knowledge or skill.
Thus, one can conclude that an ‘expert’ is a system who have improved its performance based on its learning experience. Note that this is exactly the standard definition one would find by studying “Machine Learning”, a subarea of AI and statistical pattern recognition. However, how does one assess the ‘performance’ of a system? Although that’s not so simple, it’s not that difficult, as there are a variety of metrics one can use to precisely measure the ‘reliability’ of a diverse range of claims made by an ‘expert’.
In this sense, I fully agree with @Openworld comment above in that we should focus on the outcome of the process itself. That is, pick a definite preformance metric and we won’t need to rely on ‘common sense’ to know whether one really knows what he/her is ‘talking about’.
Everyone can do that at home.
Cheers,
Carlos (@crbazevedo).
Although more a defining characteristic than a definition, Malcolm Gladwell in ‘Outliers’ points out that one commonality shared between all experts is that they have all put in roughly 10,000 hours of work into their work. He notes that you may find a small percentage of people who have put in that time but are not yet experts, but you’ll never find an expert that has gotten there with less than 10,000 hours.
To define an expert by this trait is appealing to me, as it highlights the fact that there are no shortcuts available to expert status. Everyone has to take their licks—precisely what Bohr was talking about in Gsempe’s post.
experience makes an expert. and in my life i have found that i am an expert at things that have been unexpected – thrown at me by life if you will. sink or swim.
Coming from a classical music background and that discipline of practice, practice, practice – rigorous and endless – into old age and until the body denies the opportunity to produce a result (and even then) – and always, once some semblance of expertise is achieved – you teach.
Agreed, practice (and a lot of it) is key to becoming an expert. But its not always the case, especially in skilled knowledge. Plenty of people practice for years in certain skill sets of knowledge, but they are a far cry to ever being an expert in the field. Experienced, sure, but not an expert. Meanwhile, some people have a natural ability to learn the skill quickly, and could become far more of an expert in a significantly less amount of practice in the field.
While I agree that the learning process does play a role in becoming an expert, the point I was trying to make was that this in itself is not enough. How much of an expert you become and the stability of your expertise would depend on a variety of things including the task at hand. Taking the walking example, assuming there are no health issues we all become an ‘expert’ at walking in a few years and then that expertise remains with us for the rest of our life with no additional learning. Now take the case of someone in the medical profession – they have a steep and long learning slope before becoming an expert in their field; even then their expertise is fleeting if they stop learning to keep up with the new developments, new cases, new medicines, new technology etc. Somewhere in between would fall a marketing professional, where there is a learning process and also a need for continued learning but the pace and enormity of this learning is not as much as that for a doctor.
Let us take the game of chess as another example. You and I might read the same books, memorize the same games/moves, study under the same coach and for the sake of argument say that we have the exact same ‘knowledge level’. Even then, our expertise in chess (or how good a player we really are) would depend on factors like the ability to visualize, our ability to recognize patterns etc.
Or take the case of prodigies. Many of them are experts with far less learning years behind them than most of the folks and experts in their arena. Also, talking about prodigies brings out another point – certain types of expertise cannot be learned or replicated no matte how much effort and learning you put in it. As an example, Shakuntala Devi is a world renowned calculating prodigy from India. Is she an expert in her field (Math)? It would be hard to say no. Now can we replicate what she does – the answer is ‘no’. I have seen her correctly extract the 23rd or 24th root of a 200 digit number and at one time she multiplied two 13 digit numbers mentally and provided the correct answer in less than 30 seconds.
Cases like these are the reasons I said that we cannot have a standard definition for expertise. Now I agree that looking at outputs may have benefits over looking at the inputs, but here my concern would be how we define those outputs and how you build in the context. Sven Kramer did not win the men’s 10000 meters speedskating but is he any less of an expert because of that? Similarly, on the organizational side there are always factors like politics, bureaucratic bottlnecks, process constraints that produce sub-optimal outputs – should we penalize the expert for that? One might then argue that we should look at the frequency of good outcomes. Agreed, but then what about experts that do not get that many opportunities to show their expertise (e.g from developing countries). Like the case of rich becoming richer, would this not make more experts out of the existing set of experts?
Anyway, not trying to be cynical here and sorry for the long post – but I did want to point out the complexity of labeling someone an expert and/or trying to chart out an ‘assembly line’ process that will produce an expert 🙂
Regards,
Ned
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Vanessa,
I would say that “an expert is someone who possess great skills in a subject matter”, i.e., someone who knows more than ordinary people do.
What do you think about that?
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4577895&userType=inst
thanks for the link. i’ll have to see if i can get access to the full article through our university library. i find the idea of developing a “cognitive authority” system very interesting…..
Over at StudioWikitecture they have done some very deep thinking about how to distribute payment for crowdsourced design projects. They ask:
“In our pursuit of exploring the methods behind an open source approach to architectural practice, we have continually wondered – if a project is truly open and contributions can come from anywhere and anyone, can a system be devised that can pay contributors fairly for their contributions?”
The go on to propose a very deliberate and conscientious method to accomplish this – in a way attempting to deduce a reward system for contributed “expertise”.
Take a look at the slideshare presentation of the concept here:
http://studiowikitecture.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/the-community-assessment-system-a-rough-draft/
Vanessa,
Shortly after reading this I was browsing online and found this video for a hair curler. http://www.flatirons.com/25mm-round-curling-iron.html# What made me laugh was how the woman demonstrating the curling iron is wearing a shirt that literally says “expert”. As though this would make the audience feel as though they could trust the opinion on the speaker.
One would argue that by definition given in your article above “extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study” that she could be, in fact, an expert. But, being the untrusting (at least when it comes to products) person that I am, I would assume that the person doesn’t necessarily have to be what she claims, “a professional in the field” and that she is most probably a paid actor.
I thought it was amusing that I found this so shortly after reading your article and felt it was humorous to share. Hope you enjoy her ‘expert’ opinion on this curling iron!
funny. and i’d venture to say that for some, just SEEING the word expert on her shirt is validation enough to value her opinion. this is the point… just as those self-proclaimed ‘social media experts’ are validated through self-assertion. we just need to be critical about who we trust and why.
I’d say that to be an expert, one needs to commit to a subject and devote time to it.
Being an expert is not about a role, but a process that a person undertakes. And, for me the process involves: study of the subject’s main concerns, experiments with its variables and addressing them (understanding its errors, possible failures, and stronger aspects), develop a body of work based on such experiments (either theoretical or practical).
But, above all, an expert must be constantly improving his/her knowledge about the subject, and I believe that non-experts can greatly contribute to that process, offering an ‘outsider’ perspective on issues related to that subject.
i like your last point about “non-experts can greatly contribute to that process” – a reminder that reaching ‘expert’ status isn’t about YOU being the repository of answers… but rather continuing to be open to new viewpoints and perspectives, and integrate them into your big picture understanding
Absolutely, Venessa.
For me, being an expert is not about WHO you are but WHAT you do and HOW your body of work contributes to that particular field.
I would also add that an expert’s work must be a legacy for future generations to be able to build on that, too, either by agreeing or refuting its ideas/experiments.
This is what will permit the work to be always evolving and enriching the field.
I believe an expert to defined as a person who has a true passion for it first. With Social Media this is someone who ‘lives’ it. They are in the space and they experience the new social channels every chance they get because it goes beyond just curiosity. They want to tweet all day long and blog every week. They have these personal community of friends and followers like is demonstrated in this blog and the reference to your twitterverse. Experts are those that have learned through first-hand experience how to make it in that arena. I expect experts to be active users in every online social media tool out there. If not active, they know of it and gave it a solid effort.
Check out this fun poll I saw on a post awhile back: http://www.jaffejuice.com/2008/05/friday-fun—ho.html (takes a good look at social media experts)
I think it can be argued and has been, that almost nobody is an expert, and that everybody is. There are those who were born in the digitial era. My last company automatically considered them social media experts because they grew up in it. Then on the other hand don’t you have to be really good at it to be an expert?
To me, an expert is someone who has achieved success in their personal life or business by making use of tools that so called ‘social media experts’ tout daily. HOWEVER, I have yet to see one that actually claims to be an expert.
I think there are a lot of so called experts out there but that in a the realm of social media, I think it won’t last. Unless they are truly staying active in it and living in it.
I would definitely agree with Veronica’s comment above about how being an expert means undergoing a process of commitment, passion, experimentation, and achievement. As a lot of others have said, being an expert also means being willing to keep learning, even long after one believes they have achieved “expertise” in particular field. This is especially true when it comes to social media, as we’ve only touched on the tip of the iceberg in terms of examining its possibilities and effects. Just as people say that we can’t confirm whether the use of new medications is beneficial or safe until sufficient time has passed, so too must we recognize that social media hasn’t been around long enough for people to have gone through the process of becoming an expert on it.
Being an expert also means being able to look at one’s particular field of study from various, diverse perspectives. One can’t be an expert if they only pursue knowledge or experience from one angle of the subject, or from one particular point of view. An expert should have an openness to learn, as being informed from different standpoints then allows them to discuss, teach, share knowledge with anybody, not just those within their field or those who share the same opinions as them–which I feel is a key part of deserving that “expert” status.
With something that is changing as fast as social media is, and can be used in so many different ways by the millions of people using it, I wonder if there ever even will be a legitimate time where people can truly claim to be experts on it. At best, we can expect people to have the commitment and the passion for honing their skills and knowledge about social media, but I’m doubtful that they can experiment with it as extensively or acquire enough knowledge about it as is needed to really have “expert” as part of their title–and that doesn’t need to be a bad thing! The essence of social media itself is the ability of anyone and everyone to participate and contribute; we might as well embrace that and learn from each other rather than nitpick about who is an expert and who isn’t.
“Just as people say that we can’t confirm whether the use of new medications is beneficial or safe until sufficient time has passed, so too must we recognize that social media hasn’t been around long enough for people to have gone through the process of becoming an expert on it.”
This is a great analogy. I couldn’t agree with you more. The longstanding sociological effects of social media are only beginning to unravel and even the ‘experts’ on social media can not imagine what the future implications will be.
Completely agree. 100%. How can one be an expert in a field when we really can’t define what the field is? I think the question then becomes, how would we define someone who studies a new field, like social media, and considers themselves an expert? An enthusiast? Well-studied? It creates an interesting question. At what point then could we consider someone an expert? I could continue to come up with dozens of more questions. Again, I think this goes back to my earlier point that an expert isn’t defined by a straight definition, but the field defines the expert.
Starting with your initial observation (via @mashable), Venessa, that there are 15,740 Social Media Experts on Twitter: I think an important point here is that these “experts” self-identified. I’m an avid reader of Mashable, but having trained in journalism, I would take them to task for perpetuating a false reality with that headline. Are we okay with self-identification in social media, but not in medicine, law, aerospace engineering? Why the exception?
Much has been noted above about the need for “experts” to embrace trial and error, experiential learning, on their path to knowledge. I agree most with @jeremyriel’s assessment that “an expert = someone who recognizes there’s always more to learn, even after it’s all been learned.” And I would add that he or she does not just recognize – but acts- on that realization for the rest of his or her life. Someone once defined ambition for me as realizing you’ll never reach your full potential – but trying anyway. I consider expertise in the same vein. There is no finite position to attain, only the constant pull and push towards improvement and higher understanding. Brie noted that expertise requires a certain level of passion first, and without it I believe no one can endure this journey from amateur to what I would rather call “more knowledgeable source” than expert.
That said, what seems to be missing from most definitions of the experts among us is critical accountability. Be they in the field of social media or neuroscience, experts must consistently question their “expertise” through self-reflection as well as an embrace of public criticism. 15,740 people self-identified as “social media experts” on Twitter, but I wonder: how many would willingly stand in the public square to debate, defend, refute or accept criticism of their expertise by their peers? This process plays out consistently on college campuses across the country in PhD programs and the tenure model. Academics cannot self-identify as experts without years of scrutiny and debate from a select group of peers in their fields – and even then, expertise is still negotiable (and sometimes political). Just because “Facebook 101” isn’t as ingrained yet in syllabi nationwide as “American Politics 101,” why make exceptions for the rest of us in the field? Shirky concludes in “Everyone is a Media Outlet” (Here Comes Everbody, 66) that mass professionalization is an oxymoron- specialized function, minimum tests for competence, and a minority of members remain critical. I don’t think he nor I would argue social media expertise requires a PhD – but rather investing the equivalent in time, research, self-reflection and standing the test of scrutiny by others in the public arena at least elevates one closer to the ideal.
Another question raised by the Mashable post: To what degree can the pursuits of knowledge and capitalism align? Are they mutually exclusive? According to the Mashable post, many of the 15,740 “social media experts” on Twitter used the term “marketer” in their profiles. In any age where anyone can attempt to pull revenue from publishing a book, website or blog, how can we prioritize the expertise of social media-ites (as I’ll call them) like dana boyd (Microsoft/Harvard) vs. Pete Cashmore (Mashable) vs. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)?
I agree that in order to be categorized as an expert you must have a large extent of knowledge in the field. What first comes to mind are those with a PhD or has work published. Basically something that proves their credentials and years of hard work fine tuning their skills and knowledge. Someone before said it wasn’t about called an expert that makes it so, but what you have accomplished along the way that prove that your skills have been put to good use. This is not a start to finish process either. Anyone who is great at their particular area works their entire lives perfecting their passion. It is a lifelong task, not one that can be confined to a certain amount of years. I found an interesting article about “What is an expert, How to be an expert, How to identify an expert,” http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/how-to-be-an-expert-and-find-one-if-youre-not.html. They too had people post their views and I thought it was funny to see a step-by-step guide as to how one becomes an expert and how to spot a real expert from the fake one. Also, one can ask, what makes this author an expert on experts? Haha.
Yet, this is where the argument of the digital age comes in; where one does not necessarily need to be a scholar to perfect their craft. With online tutorials and thousands of articles on the web, self-taught experts pop-up everywhere. Just because we don’t learn about them in school or see stories about them on T.V. does that make them any less qualified? I agree with the notion that two heads are better than one. Meaning to be an expert you must also be open to criticism and help from various sources. With the Internet, one can post their work and receive a countless number of messages back about what they can add, what they missed and any information they did not yet know about. Now the risk with this, like any type of Internet based group work, are those who really have no idea what they are talking about and just post opinions.
In response to Arthur’s comment “found it takes seven years of full immersion in a field before one gets to true expert level and that this status requires continued exposure to retain status level,” similarly I have heard that it takes roughly of 10 years experience or 10,000 hours of practice and/or actively involved in your subject in order to be at a masterly level. I found a site that states in 10 years they can show you how to teach yourself to be an expert at computer programming. http://norvig.com/21-days.html. They suggest a laundry list of steps to take in order to be successful but mainly they explain that once you get interested, seek out other programmers and ask questions. Look up what others have done to get an idea of what you can accomplish. One quote they say and I agree with is: “the maximal level of performance for individuals in a given domain is not attained automatically as a function of extended experience, but the level of performance can be increased even by highly experienced individuals as a result of deliberate efforts to improve.” It is quoted from the book Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life.
Heather,
I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” (which I really enjoyed) and he discussed (though not sure he actually originated) that 10,000 hour criteria for someone to become truly proficient at some activity.
Of course, he also integrates the concept of “luck” to some degree in what factors can create who we say is an expert–you have to read the book to see what he means, but in general, he has found that seemingly random things like what month one is born; the year and era one is born, and other factors beyond the individual’s own personal control have a huge impact on how “succesful” that person becomes, which can relate to the matter of expertise of course….
I am also reading “Outliers.” My sister was hooked by it and passed it on. I’m only to the part about athletes and what makes someone a “great” athlete and it’s interesting how he breaks it down to age and when exactly you were born. Besides natural skill it takes so many minor details to make someone’s potential above the rest. I’m excited to read more!
Gladwell’s 10,000 hour criteria of an expert reiterates the level of commitment that is essential in someone truly being an expert. I just wonder if our ADD frenetic culture allows for such commitment anymore. The Millenials are also known as the slash/slash generation with each person being a multitude of ‘things’. For example, it’s very common for someone to be an artist/blogger/DJ/designer. Every Gen Yer is slash/something. This generation that has grown up to believe they can do it all, is it possible for them to truly master a craft if they are experimenting with so many? Will experts eventually become extinct or useless as the scribe became?
Although I agree that most times, a certain amount of study, research or analysis is needed to become an expert. I disagree with the idea that 10,000 hours makes you proficient in a certain activity. I can guarantee you that my father has spent far more than 10,000 hours on the golf course, but someone with a 16 handicap in the sport could hardly be considered an expert. Meanwhile, I know natural athletes can pick up a golf club, and in less than a summer, be shooting just a few strokes over par. If you want to try and put a numerical value on study to gain certain aspects of knowledge, I agree, but if you use it to be ‘proficient in an activity’ I disagree. When true skill comes into play, natural talent also does, and that affects the amount of practice time needed to become skillful.
I’ve just served on a workgroup charged with establishing the criteria for a Professional Leadership Award in the domain of our interest (Sustainable Energy/Building). I’m pleased with the result and think it informs this discussion.
The people I consider true experts embody an essential quality of humility about their knowledge and experience. As an experienced (and expert) “old world” mason I once worked with explained: “The more I know, the more I know I don’t know.”
In any case, here are the criteria we established for the proposed award – this is good stuff:
The recipient:
• is regarded as a leader in his/her professional field and has made significant contributions. Their concepts and ideas change how we think about and perform our work.
• embodies methods of practice, and models aspects of being, that we aspire to ourselves
• is a whole systems thinker incorporating a multi-disciplinary approach to practice
• demonstrates the highest integrity and honesty
• is immensely generous in sharing his/her knowledge, skill, and experience – a person of great heart
• is a clear thinker and communicator
• has profound curiosity which extends the boundaries of our shared knowledge
• is fully engaged with, and embodies the ideals of the community
jamie, i LOVE this criteria. thank you for sharing.
One interesting thing that I’ve noticed over the years as a researcher and writer–and this perhaps also speaks to problems that our language and choice of words can cause–is that the “best” people for sharing knowledge are not only well informed/experienced/ and have the traditional qualities associated with expertise, but also bring a high level of passion to the topic. You can almost feel that passion/enthusiasm and interest in the topic jump off the page with energy. While there are exceptions of course, I have found that passion is an important component of, if not the “expertise” label per se, let us say an “excellent resource” for learning….
Good definitions. An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly.
The standard definition of an expert is someone who is widely recognized as a reliable source. They are the authority when it comes to a technique, subject or skill and have extensive knowledge and experience on the subject matter. How long does it take for someone to become an expert? is it 10 years, 20 years, or just a couple of years. As new technology is developed, or a new form of social avenue comes into play then you can become an expert in a matter of months. Author said it can take up to 7 years before you are an expert, but really when something is so new, you can become an expert because you are the only one familiar with the subject matter.
an expert is someone who knows a whole lot about some one thing, but such people often possess very little wisdom. this begs the questions: what is knowledge? what is understanding? what is wisdom? and it also prompts another question: there’s experts who know based on “study,” and others who know based on practice. Example: architects fresh out of school versus those who practice in the construction trades. And another would be MBAs versus managers who learned in the “trenches” (often without the benefit of anything more than a high school diploma). when I bestow this designation on someone it’s because I have seen the results of their work, and preferably over time.
Susan, the issues you raise here about knowledge and wisdom are definitely intriguing ones, especially if we consider the information technology age we’re in which we live today.
I tend to agree with you that knowledge can come from studying or practicing something and i think that neither of them happen based on one’s role or rank, but on the type of engagement one has with that particular field.
One person here mentioned ‘someone who lives it,’ and you comment on the result of one’s work over time. For me that’s exactly how knowledge and wisdom become a fundamental element in one’s expertise: knowledge as knowing the field and the work involved in it and wisdom as the ability to judge this knowledge in practical terms.
Using the architect example you gave, recent graduates will definitely know less than a mason in a construction site, but he might be able to address certain structural problems better than someone who is not familiar with architectural planning.
Knowledge and wisdom here are not a product but a process of what can be accomplished over time and, in this sense, either a mason or a novice architect can become an expert in their own field.
One thing I find interesting in what makes an expert is the element of trust that is essential in the ‘expert’. We need to ‘trust’ that the person/company/publication providing information or filtering information is doing so in an unbiased, pure, way. However, trust no longer exists in our cultural institutions: corporations, government, the media, the church et al.
Every institution has been tainted by commerce and scandal and it is because of this distrust that people are looking to each other to provide and curate the information we consume. We look for a peer reviewer on Amazon rather than a NY Times product reviewer because the peer reviewer has nothing to gain from providing the information and therefore we ‘trust’ their opinion more. Whether this is true or not, the perception is there and the demand for advice is shifted from an expert to a regular person.
Adages like, “Don’t believe everything you read,” is a prime example of our distrust with journalism. We don’t want Fox News to filter or curate the information that we read because we want to consume the ‘whole’ story, not just what journalists choose to tell us. The internet easily allows us to be active consumers instead of passive ones. It’s about gathering information from different sources, educating each other, and then making our own conclusions. Without social media, this wouldn’t be possible. Major media wouldn’t be in as much of dire economic straits if they were able to maintain a level of trust with their consumers.
Now for people and organizations that gain from people relying on their expertise, how can they regain the trust that has been lost?
Just want to comment on the dimensions of time and trust.
Expertise is earned. It is measured over time by demonstrating that claims made can be substantiated. Substantiation requires measure, and measure requires an agreement that what is measured matters. So there is a negotiation that takes place between the performance of the expert and the field of their performance and the measures that matter.
To achieve this takes time and engagement with the community in which the performance matters. Over time trust is established; it is earned. At some point in this negotiation, expertise is established. From that point forward, the expert is tested. Should their performance endure those tests, their expertise is enhanced. Should they fail, their reputation is stripped – or put on probation and measured with greater scrutiny.
Expertise is earned in a community that is equipped to measure the quality of performance against emergent measures over time. It is dynamic and most probably politically charged. For those who earn it, their accomplishments become aspirational measures for the rest.
I’ll post my own thoughts first, so I’m not too influenced by what’s already been posted. Then, I’ll read contributions and speak in light of what’s been contributed so far.
So what is an expert? I’d say it is someone who has deep knowledge (which sometimes, though not certainly always, is indicated by an advanced degree, a book, or some other tangible entity) and/or actual experience compared to others. Now in the context of expertise and journalism—there are persons who are skilled in the key process of news gathering: research, interviewing, fact checking, writing, copy editing, clarity, seeing the big picture as to the larger intent and mission of journalism, etc.. These people may have an MA in Journalism, or more commonly are distinguished by having years of experience in a newsroom or publishing operation.
But while I do believe there are experts in the art/process/skill of “doing journalism” since there are specific skills involved, that does not imply to me that there is no important role for the citizen/networked/user journalist or whatever label we want to use to describe the non trained, ordinary person who uses the Internet to: share what he or she has observed that seems notable; comments on issues in the news or of public interest; aggregates and organizes others commentary; provides a platform for other users to comment on public, cultural, and social issues. These activities can inform traditional journalism, become part of traditional journalism, and are complementary to the knowledge creation and dissemination process. There are multiple potential values to the non-expert journalist: it could be a passionate enthusiast (eg someone who has bought and used 10 motor bikes over the years and can comment knowledgeably on the differences in new models, how to buy one etc.); someone who has taken it upon him/herself to do quality investigative type research and share results; someone who has comments to share on the news that adds to/creates a conversation etc.
Bottom line: if we feel that good information, dialogue, and analysis of issues and events is critical to a functioning democracy, that activity can be led and facilitated by traditionally trained (“expert”) reporters, as well as the rest of us to be part of this process, which will ultimately enhance us all as receivers of the information.
It’s good to remember that sometimes our focus on words as labels can throw us off too. While we might find the word “expert” useful to distinguish someone who has deep knowledge and experience from someone who is a novice; that should be the beginning of a good discussion, not a means to end it.
I would just like to comment on Dr. Berkman’s commentary on journalism. There is a lot of animosity within journalism about who should be called an expert and who should not and that animosity keeps the issue, I think, from being clearly analyzed. On the one hand, traditional journalists (those who are employed by an agency, newspaper, or other professional organizations) decry the lack of professional standards exhibited by non-traditional journalists (mostly, I believe, bloggers). On the other, non traditional journalists think of traditional journalism as part of the “establishment”, elite, and hostile to change. Although many individuals have written at length on the subject, it need not be that complicated. I think that, rather than taking an adversarial stance, each should embrace the good things about the other. It need not be the “you’re with me or against me type of scenario” that is present at the moment. Traditional journalists, rather than taking umbrage at the upstarts and viewing bloggers and the like as unqualified and a threat to their livelihood could take notice of the great work being produced by some bloggers and realize that there is a whole other demographic available through that venue. As well, professional journalists could take note that many bloggers are accomplished in other professions and are passionate about certain subject matter enough to create work that is very insightful and relevant. Alternatively, non-traditional journalists would be well served to instill in their work some of the professional standards that professional journalism is supposed to adhere to—mainly, fairness and objectivity in reporting. One of the most vehement critiques of blogging is that many of its practitioners engage in conjectural, dubious-sourced, flagrantly biased, and sometimes maliciously vindictive reporting. This could be eliminated by adhering to professional journalistic standards of ethics in reporting, mainly by agreeing to engage only in reporting that is fair, honest, and transparent in the gathering, interpreting, and reporting of information. In sum, both groups can learn and benefit from the other and rid journalism of the counterproductive battle of who should be considered a journalist and who should not.
You make a lot of great points; I enjoyed your entry. I agree that it isn’t an absolute answer and both can learn from each other. Pointing the finger is counterproductive and both forms of journalism enhance the news landscape.
Your comment raises a few questions for me. Who/what is responsible for monitoring the ethics of journalism and/or blogging? The honor system doesn’t seem to be working. Should there be a third party that enforces journalistic code of ethics are maintained? I agree that a major critique of blogging is the flagrantly biased and maliciously vindictive reporting. Yet, those news organizations criticizing citizen journalism are also guilty of this. When I happen to watch a clip of a Fox News report, I am in disbelief at the state of journalism and what is allowed to air and labeled journalism. I think of how many viewers consume this ‘news’ blindly unaware of the biases in the reporting. Professional journalists point the finger at citizen journalists for the low quality and ethics produced in news but they need to point the finger at themselves and their peers. Citizen journalism emerged not only because of technology but also because of the discredited state of traditional journalism.
Angel, exactly. Notice I said how professional journalists are “supposed” to adhere to these standards. The sad fact is that anyone with a lot of money can start or more expeditiously buy a newspaper (ie. Rupert Murdoch’s purchase and “turnaround” of the WSJ) and enforce his/her will on the organization. You mentioned Fox News and I would say that, in the end, it may be useful to take Fox News’ example as a good thing. At least, the rise of the blatantly biased reporting and news-as-entertainment model (and, hopefully, fall after Murdoch’s kids take over) serves as a catalyst to spotlight and spur interest in studying the role of bias in reporting and whether the current ethics regarding such are attainable or not—that is to say, whether or not it is possible to produce completely unbiased reporting.
Professional journalism needs to take a very good look at how Fox News and other organizations like it came to be the successes that they are now. What element of the population does this type of journalism appeal to and why. As well, the profession needs to figure out how to separate what is opinion and what is fact because, as we all know, the two have mixed (on all sides of the political spectrum). There is a real danger that soon the two will be viewed by the general public as interchangeable. Unfortunately, this may have already come to pass.
Funny, Venessa, I’ve been thinking about Experts too lately.
I believe that if you do these 4 things well, you will increase status as an expert:
1) Tell People What to Pay Attention To
2) Tell People What Things Mean
3) Tell People How Things Work
4) Show People The Future
My full posting on it (using social media as an example) is here:
http://www.purchase.com/blog/personal-development/how-to-become-an-expert
I think it is all about perception. The crux of the definition is that, expertise is all about what one is known as. The highest college degree does not help in making an expert; rather it is about recognition from others. An expert is somebody who is well versed in a particular discipline, i.e, familiarity with a domain. Hence, they are domain specific. An expert in dancing need not be an expert in singing. Practice makes an expert and it needs time. They see the world differently than an amateur. They can diagnose and solve problems better than others. I would like to highlight the roadmap to Dreyfuss’s model of skill acquisition .This is just a textbook definition and would be relevant in times when there was no social media. We have been hearing and reading about all this since childhood. I feel that the definition of “expert” has evolved over time. Today, an expert is not somebody who is confined to one niche. Let us take the example of blogging. This does not mean, that an expert in blogging is an expert in journalism. It also means, that he/she is an expert in media technology and social networking skills.
I think, today with the social media boom, the richness of the meaning of the word “expert” has faded. I completely agree with the author, Nicholas Lehmann (“Amateur Hour”) on the concept of citizen journalism. I have seen examples where my friend posted a digital photo of a bomb blast with his i-phone, on Youtube (with commentary) so that the world could get the latest news. He is in no way, connected to journalism. What is it that made a novice post journalistic content on the web? The answer is, media technology. He has also written blogs. Templates are available online, which help in drafting news blog entries very easily. It is yet to be seen whether this phenomenon will stay or wither away just as some fads have in the past. The web has empowered the common man to pen his thoughts and expressions using free-for-all blogs and other social media tools. Hence, this defines that everybody is really an expert. Now, a question may arise whether, this will disrupt mainstream journalism. I don’t think so. This kind of democratic journalism will run parallel, as viewers maintain their loyalty towards their favorite news channels.
Missed this party, but there is the chance to grow the long tail of comments…
I gravitate towards @openworld’s reply.
My take: An expert is someone who can predict and achieve results and has integrity enough to say when he is not sure.
Corollary: Self-proclaimed experts we usually give one chance to earn our trust. Vetted experts we give advance trust (through believing a trusted third party’s statements) that they can prove worthy of or burn through. Proven experts, who got results we personally witnessed, we can wholeheartedly recommend to others. Let us have integrity enough to say when we are not sure.
Consistency is a key ingredient for trust. Thanks to Ed Brenegar for pointing this out at http://edbrenegar.typepad.com/leading_questions/2010/03/this-word-keeps-popping-up.html
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My dad always says; ‘X’ is an unknown quantity, ‘Spirt’ is a drip under pressure.