QOTD: Tom Watson on the Power of Information Report

I found this via Jeff Jarvis, and it's good stuff: Power of Information: New taskforce and speech:

The 19th century co-operative movements had their roots in people pooling resources to make, buy or distribute physical goods. Modern online communities are the new co-operatives.

The report is about the role of the UK government (and by extension all governments) in the new information economy. The report, although long, is chock-full of insight-- you might even call it a road-map.

The full report: The Power of Information.

Blessed are the beginners

I found this by Lion Kimbro buried deep in a discussion on a Wikiversity talk page: Thoughts from some random guy. It asks, "Who should be authoring the text books?" and makes a compelling case that it should be the learner:

The idea is that people who are less knowledgeable about a subject very much should be a primary actor in the authoring of the text. Not the sole actor- you need experienced people to perform correction, offer up alternative explanations, to make sure that it's not wrong. But I think that beginners have unique advantages in teaching other beginners. Reasons: They understand their own misunderstandings. They have strong empathy with other learners, because they are at the same place, or just a single step beyond. The beginner is motivated by the need to make their understanding more concrete. (As different than the bored expert, (this is not a criticism, just noting a fact,) who has already covered the subject material a million times over.) It is conceivable that a vast lattice or network of beginners can, if properly made to understand what they are doing and why and how, and that there are people who will correct them if they mis-state a thing, that they could make far better artifacts for teaching, than the teachers themselves.

One example I like to point people to is the "Hippo Family Club" series of books, including the amazing "Who is Fourier?" (Read the reviews!) The book teaches Fourier, from the beginning, assuming only that the reader knows what a triangle is. It's a fantastic book, people swear by it, and it's written by students who were learning Fourier. Lots of diagrams, lots of plain language explanations, etc., etc.,.; By-beginners, for-beginners, supervised by experts. No doubt the kids made mistakes as they were learning & authoring, and they were corrected by experts, to keep the text in course.

Brilliant! This is all about respecting learners. Being open to the idea that everyone has something to contribute.

You know what is best about this model? It flat scales. There are no boundaries to what can be accomplished when you turn people loose.

Wikipedia Scanner - a cool research tool

I've been playing with Wikipedia Scanner. It's been all over the news: Changing Reality With A Mouse Click. It is a data-mining tool written by Cal Tech graduate student Virgil Griffith. It allows you to see who is behind Wikipedia anonymous edits. The whole idea is to expose organizations that are working in Wikipedia to edit articles to portray themselves in a more favorable manner.

I kicked the tires on Wiki Scanner for a goodly amount of time. It is interesting to look at the salicious edits. In several instances the edits are completely confined to articles about an organization's own self-interests. Other than edits about themselves they don't contribute to Wikipedia in any other way. It makes you wonder about the culture of organizations where the focus is entirely internal.

Where looking at salacious edits was interesting, what I found even more interesting was to look at the edits of organizations who were actively involved in Wikipedia across a number of subject areas. When looking through the lists of edits I was reminded of the value I derive from del.icio.us, and realized that Wiki Scanner could be used in much the same way. By looking at the Wikipedia edits you can see what's got someone's attention. The tool allows you to sort by date so you can see what's got their attention most recently. This is a very del.icio.us like characteristic. (I note that Virgil thanks Joshua Schachter the creator of del.icio.us for his contributions.)

I'm thinking Wiki Scanner could become a tool used for trend spotting, and maybe even ideation. It would be especially nice if it had more up-to-the minute Wikipedia data. In its current form the data being mined by Wiki Scanner only goes through August 4. Regardless, you have to love the transparency that this tool affords. I'm not a big fan of anonymous editing, and believe that if you have something to say you should be willing to put your name on it. Nuff said!

QOTD: Jevon MacDonald

From Jevon's reflections about the use of enterprise tools: A lost soul - What will I do without Enterprise 2.0?

You see, if you want to be successful with social computing in your organization — you have to bet on it and not look back.

Guts or no guts? What kind of organization do you want to be? I especially loved his question, "Ask people what they think your organization would be like without Management. Ask them what it would be like if everyone was Management." Good stuff!