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rboothby
Posts:2
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| 10/14/2006 2:35 AM |
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Most instances of collective intelligence are based on systems that have some structures. The wiki has certain rules. Blogs have others. A free market economy has structures in the form of property laws, transaction laws, and even the medium of exchange, i.e. money.
It is my belief that some structure helps, just as the rules of the road help people to safely drive from any point A to any point B.
However, too much structure can crush the collective's ability to produce intelligent results.
A chapter entitled "The Role of Structure" could explore these issues. |
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rjohnsonh
Posts:2
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| 10/14/2006 5:41 PM |
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Yeah... I feel the same. Jeremy Wright's book, Blog Marketing, shows some examples of how to build basic politics in corporative blogging. This rules must to foster and address employees's participation, so rules enable structures where users can supported theirs thoughts.
Forums and wiki have structures. This doesn't avoid the participation, but lets order and to be useful all information.
PD: Sorry for my english. I'm not a native english.
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jspector
Posts:38
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| 10/14/2006 11:36 PM |
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What are your thoughts about how to provide the right amount (but, of course, not too much) structure for this book project? We probably have about four more weeks before we invite a very large number of folks to paticipate, so we have time to create some rules and approaches now.
- Jon Spector |
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publicmind
Posts:2
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| 10/15/2006 7:34 AM |
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Hi Jon
Writing a book together is not the same as writing a short article in wikipedia. The length of the writing makes the difference.
2 years back – as part of a Master thesis I did at the time on how Social Software could be used as catalyst for radical innovation – I tried to kickstart a “open-sourced-book-project”. It failed. I think it failed for mainly 2 reasons.
1. The “contract” with the contributors wasn’t well defined – not enough.
2. Writing huge amounts of text together is difficult unless you as a group are well aware of the overall direction.
I think the “contract” defined as part of this project is good – and enough.
An editorial board of some sort is needed. It’s about leadership – someone has to set the direction. It’s already done by the initial writings, I know, but it’s also necessary in the process.
It’s also about sense-making. Someone has to assure sense. I propose that you plan with several deadlines, several iterations and in the process plan with as much interference as possible from “the wise crowd” – from WE. Immediately after a deadline a editorial board try create sense by collecting and writing through the material and writings collected and the 2. iteration can begin right after.
Remember – the book has to be read-worthy Autumn 2007 as well – also to “outsiders”.
I hope it makes sense :-)
All the best
Hans
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jspector
Posts:38
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| 10/15/2006 5:42 PM |
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The structure you are recommending is precisely what we are planning on, at least thus far. We are forming an editorial (advisory) board; plan to take snapshots of the book from time to time to assess progress; and we have engaged an outstanding ghostwriter who has written a number of business bestsellers to help us package up the content and turn it into a smooth manuscript at the appropriate point in time.
We are also considering something like a "chapter monitor" who will focus on a single chapter and try to keep the process moving ahead smoothly.
And, interestingly enough, we are struggling right now with the "contract" with participants - we have several attorneys and faculty members discussing this to achieve the right balance between incentives to encourage participation, and legal protections so we don't create any lawsuits over use of the content.
It would be very interesting to hear your experiences on the open source book project; sounds like that could be a section of a schapter somewhere. And I also agree that Structure may be a topic we want to explore in detail. Let's see how things develop...
- Jon Spector |
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