I am also wondering how Google Wave will effect Peer-to-Peer communication?  http://bit.ly/1Ws6H1

To go to one side for a moment – if you look at Proctor and Gamble’s strategy of enabling their consumers/customers to make significant contributions to the creative process for new products and services. This takes out the middle man (piles of market research and concept designers). By asking their customers what they want they can be sure they are on the right track.

That sort of process has been going on for quite a few years. The change we are seeing lately is the degree to which the consumer is becoming embedded in the production process. Beta testing websites to refine features or introduce totally new ones, is becoming a necessary way of launching new sites. Our expectations for customization of features and for ‘high tech – high touch’ are growing.

Collaborative intelligence grows each time a group of people are enabled to better tap into the shared wealth of the groups life experience, knowledge and desires. A very obvious example of the connection between produsage and collaborative intelligence is YouTube.  YouTube is providing a platform for everyone who has access to a video camera and a computer to share something they know with everyone else who has a computer. Once this capability has fully reached all hand-held- web-enabled devices there will be an explosion of information trasnfer through society.

Here is an interesting article at Trendwatching.com about how YouTube is transforming the way we interact with media and media production.

• World Cafe Process
• Circle Practice (Christina Baldwin)
• Open Space Technology
• Appreciative Inquiry

To find out more about the ‘Art of Hosting’ approach visit artofhosting TV

One of the biggest learnings for me personaly was the importance of ‘Harvesting’ – gathering the ideas, questions and insights that result from a hosted event. A short video about harvesting by one of the Berkana facilitators:

A quote from the book that particularly strikes a cord for me is:

‘Our electronic networks are enabling novel forms of collective action, enabling the creation of collaborative groups that are larger and more distributed than at any other time in history.  The scope of work that can be done by noninstitutional groups is a profound challenge to the status quo.’

So this is already something we know – and I still get a lump in my throat when I read it – maybe, just maybe our species can find a way to collectively address the crisis we are in and circumvent the politicians, ‘experts’ and ‘heros’ that all claim they are doing something. I am increasingly of the mind that if we are going to change our collective ways quick enough it takes individual action. This is my definition of ‘radical responsibility’ – the willingness to look around and take responsibility for what we see happening AND the willingness to do something about it ourselves. This junction between individual action and collective action is becoming one of the hottest issues related to our role in the world. Increasingly if we have to face the fact that if we are not willing to become part of the solution – we have become part of the problem. In terms of collective action Shirky says….

‘Collective action is the hardest kind of group effort, as it requires a group of people to commit themselves to undertaking a particular effort together, and to do so in a way that makes the decision of the group binding on the individual members.  Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user’s identity to the identity of the group.  In historical terms, a potluck dinner or a barn raising is collaborative production (the members work together to create something).’

If I haven’t hammered the need to get his book hard enough then check out this video – where Clay talks about the ‘internal combustion moment’ that he claims we have reached with technology. This moment is about peer-to-peer communication, our ability to act collectively with the help of technology, and so much more.

This meaning, implicit in the language, is part of the spirit of ubuntu, a frame of mind prevalent among native people in Africa below the Sahara. The work ubuntu stems from the folk saying Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu, which, from Zulu, literally translates as: “A person is a person because of other people.” If you grow up with this perspective, your identity is based upon the fact that you are seen – that the people around you respect and acknowledge you as a person.

[Taken from 'The Fifth Discipline' : Peter Senge, et. al.]

Social networking is growing from strength to strength. As it does our ability to ’see’ each other expands. Time pressures are forcing us to use more virtual means to sustain connection. This means large and far-reaching implications for how we establish, build and maintain communities- both on-line and off-line.

Second Life may be a bridge too far for some people (right now) but I am meeting more and more parents who’s greatest hope is that they are cool enough to be included on their kids Face-book. I know I am dating myself when I admit that when I was twelve years old I didn’t have a Face-book page – I had a vinyl record collection with three Charlie Pride LPs in it – how cool is that?

BlogRovR is a great way to collect all your favorite and important blogs in the one place – and so easy to use. With tools like BlogRovR we can really start ‘Getting Clever Together’.

‘There are several reasons why collaborative work and study is fundamental for the 21st Century:

• The world is so complicated, the solutions to problems so complex, that many problems, especially the biggest and most important ones can no longer be solved by one person.
• The world is so diverse, with so much speciality and subspecialty, that non one person can know or grasp enough knowledge across a broad enough spectrum, to solve a problem or complete a major project without collaborative input from others.
• That the process of finding out what others are doing, even as they are doing it, actually enhances and improves one’s own learning and work.’

Only in the last few days I have been providing feedback to colleagues that asked for me to look at what they are doing and comment. This sort of informal 360 is very effective at helping us to find the gaps in our project design and planning. The above points also have significant implications for the peer-to-peer movement. I can’t resist saying that what the authors are talking about is also the development of collaborative intelligence or CQ.

Tis site http://changeme.gettyimages.com/ brings a nice twist to what change is about. I hope you get as much enjoyment out of watching it as I did.

1. ending the destruction of the biosphere by abandoning the dangerous conceptions of pseudo-abundance in the natural world (i.e. based on the assumption that natural resources are infinite);
2. promoting free cultural exchange by abandoning the innovation-inhibiting conceptions of pseudo-scarcity in the cultural world (i.e. based on the assumption that the free flow of culture needs to be restricted through excessive copyrights etc…).

I touch on these topic in ‘Teaching an Anthill to Fetch’ and I wished I had known this site existed before completing the writing process. I would have certainly included many references to this valuable material.