This past weekend I attended
Northern Voice, the annual Canadian social
networking forum in Vancouver. As with most conferences, the most
valuable conversations and learnings emerged in the corridors, or more
specifically in the Atrium of the UBC campus, a wonderful open space
(picture above) in the middle of the (still theatre style, alas)
presentation rooms. Or they emerged in the pubs, on the hiking paths,
in the airline terminals, in the virtual spaces, or on the stopovers
and places of reflection where you digest, consciously and
unconsciously, what you've heard and seen.
In no particular order, here are the 10 most important things I learned this weekend:
- Moving from collection to connection: Many young content providers
and content architects are still trying to fight an uphill battle
against security-obsessed IT departments and possessive content owners,
and trying to make content sharing more effective in organizations. The
real opportunity is to improve connectivity in these organizations:
providing simple, ubiquitous, real-time tools (like IM, virtual
presence/desktop video, and virtual learning tools) that help people
find the people (not the stuff) they need to learn from and work with, and connect and
collaborate with those people more effectively.
- The end of e-mail:
Generation Millennium is catching on to what our
grandparents understood: most asynchronous messaging systems (notably
voice-mail and e-mail) create more work and reduce productivity, and
allow and encourage people to message instead of doing real work. If
it's important,
the caller (if properly 'trained' not to expect replies to v/e-mail
messages) will keep trying until they can arrange a real-time
conversation. If we could develop an effective system for scheduling
such
conversations, one that callers could use to book recipients' time in
time periods alloted for that purpose by the recipients in advance, we
could (a) engender more such conversations, (b) convey knowledge more
effectively, and (c) possibly eliminate v-mail and e-mail messages (and
rid
ourselves of dreaded 'in-boxes') entirely.
- Don't try any of this alone: Too many people are still trying to develop too many social
networking solutions independently. The best ideas and solutions come
from collaborations of teams of diverse, passionate people with a
shared purpose, experimenting together to hone in on qualified,
innovative approaches to coping with real problems, and drawing on the Wisdom of Crowds.
- We need more laboratories, exploratoriums.
Places with the people, resources and collaboration tools to do
experiments and share what works and what doesn't. With no requirement
for a tightly-focused short-term ROI. Play spaces where people who care
about something can sketch, make stuff up, try it out.
- Know yourself:
We need to know our Gift, our Passion, our Purpose, and what we know
and don't know
and need, in order to be effective collaborators, innovators and
problem solvers. World Cafes & Open Space only work well if the
groups know what
they need, what they can offer, and bring some diversity of perspective
but focus of passion -- on a
few shared problems.
- Imagine that: We
need more imagination of what's possible. Too much of what passes for
innovation in social networking (and everywhere else) is incremental
change (usually adding more features and complexity) to existing tools
which are themselves copies of poor designs. Before you have great
design you need to have great inspiration, which stems from great
imagination, something no one ever thought about, in a way no one ever
thought about it before, applied to a real need.
- Gravitational communities:
My brother Alan coined this term as something less than an intentional
community but more than an accidental one. It's the perfect explanation
of how people find and make community in complex environments. You
can't plan it -- there are no reliable ways to systematically search
for and find just the right people to build community with. But it's
not accidental either -- finding the right people is not a random
activity. It's evolutionary. You send out signals, explicitly and
tacitly, and so do others, and you pick up on them, sometimes
consciously but often sub-consciously or unconsciously. You end up in
community, not with random strangers or the 'people you were meant to
be with', but something in between, a collective self-selection, in
constant flux.
- Support groups as intentional communities: Three
times this weekend I got into discussions about support groups --
people who are helping each other out, not with a shared passion or
shared purpose, exactly, but more a shared personal problem. Something
with a sense of urgency. The problem with most intentional communities
is it's too easy to walk away from them when something more urgent
comes up, or minor obstacles arise. When you're all suffering or dying
from something in common, you'll stick with a possible source of
resolution, even it's not easy or fun. Pollard's Law again.
- Hope for disaster: I'm not a neo-survivalist hoping for the end of the world, or the Rhapsody, but I am learning that personal
crisis seems to be very helpful in getting individuals to realize their
need to Let-Themselves-Change, to discover what they were meant to do
with their lives, and with whom, and to shake them out of their
complacency in useful ways that can change their worldview, their
understanding of the world and of themselves, and what they need to do.
If you're restless and unhappy but not sure what to do, maybe the
problem is that you're not unhappy enough. Thanks to my friend Wendy Farmer-O'Neill for this insight.
- Can somebody please translate this into language I can understand?:
Last Thursday I was on a panel at a Social Networking workshop in
Toronto for business executives. Once again I learned that most
executives do not understand what social networking is or how it could
be useful in business. On the weekend in Vancouver, I was surrounded by
a much younger crowd who knew exactly what social networking is, and is
becoming. But they had almost no experience or understanding of
business (that was true even of the consultants there, who claimed to know something about business), so they
had no idea how social networking could be useful in business either.
Until (or perhaps unless) someone (other than Nancy White and I) can
explain what's possible (and useful) to those who can write cheques for
it, social networking will remain a marginal discipline, a geek crusade.
Most interesting observations at the event? The full parity of women
among the young cohort of attendees -- this was the most gender-equal
event of any kind I have ever
attended. And I also noticed there were more cameras at the event than
laptops -- and some of the cameras were bigger than some of the laptops.
Thanks to the event organizers and all those who said such kind things about my 'reading' at the opening party.
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MADE IN CANADA
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