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Subject: Alternative proposal for methodology

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joe_flum
Posts:151

11/07/2006 3:35 AM	Alert
After reading through the various posts that have been made and trying to absorb everything that's been written so far in the Wiki, a few ideas have occurred to me with a possible way for approaching this particular project. The following proposal is meant to spark more ideas. Perhaps it doesn't fit with the project, but perhaps it could be of help. So I'll just lay it out here and see if we can find a use for it. In looking at how the site has been set up, I began to ponder what it meant to develop new content through the collective wisdom of a group. One of the tools that is of particular interest here is the prediction market that is set up for "predicting the book impact". I couldn't help but feel that the tool in itself is being seriously under utilized and may hold the key to developing a truly innovative method for the production of knowledge (read writing the book). Predictave Markets are wonderful tools for arriving at optimal decisions. Anyone who has read the book, "Wisdom of the Crowds" (those who haven't definately should) will be familiar with the group dynamics present in wagering systems (sports/gambling in general). The power of these systems is rooted in the currency being "traded". Through time, the interaction between the community members, slowly fine tunes the "prediction" and arrives at the optimal result. In the context of writing a book, the currency that we have at our disposal are the ideas themselves that will comprise the final publication. The optimal result is the collection of ideas which will best communicate the benefits and drawbacks that communities and social-networks offer to business. My proposal is that we leverage the use of the market to weed through the abundance of ideas that the community has to offer and through an interative process, continually polish and fine-tune the core ideas to be communicated. The process would work like this: 1) we create a defined period for the reception of ideas (offerings to the market). Each idea could be as simple as a short paragraph (or two) that defines the issue to be considered. It doesn't have to be a highly refined piece of literature. To the contrary. The main thing is that the idea is clear and easily understood. 2) The ideas would each be entered into the market as tradable items. Much in the same way that the stock market opens and closes each day, we would have a time based period for the members to invest in the ideas that they believe hold the best chance to make it into the book. 3) At the end of the trading period, the results are published. The ideas which performed badly in the market would be discarded (or simply not supported), in order to make room for the next round of new offerings. 4) A new period would be opened in which the ideas could either expand on an existing idea (think of it like stocks splitting), or to use the feedback provided by the previous round to inspire a new set of ideas. 5) Upon the entrance into the next round of trading, those ideas which are expansions on previous 'winners' would begin trading at the price established by their ancestor. This way, we insure that well developed ideas (that have passed various rounds of trading) would move towards a much more stable positioning. 6) The trading would end and the process would begin again. 7) At some point (perhaps predetermined), the ideas will be so strong that they will reach a plateau in terms of capacity for further development. At this point, the idea has won its place in the book and energies can be focused on further development of the weaker ideas. Hopefully this is making sense to some of you. In the end, this process should be parrallel to the current mechanisms that we have in place with the Wiki. As I see it, the individual chapters will for the most part be a piece meal of texts, due to the way in which thoughts occur to the community members. At some point it will be necessary for the 'narrators' to come in and give a cohesive edit to the material. By creating a more finite and rapid method for ideas to be proposed and evaluated, we can feed the discussions and actual texts (wiki) with a constant flow of proposals. The other main advantage of this proposal is that we will be able to maximise user input and reduce the time required to achieve our goal. So that's it for now. think about it. cheers, joe

iphazard
Posts:87

11/07/2006 10:48 AM	Alert
Joe, I like the idea in theory. This and your other posts show a good deal of thought given to the methodology of how to best achieve a truly community written book. Our current plan for the process was much simpler than what you are describing. Basically it broke down to 4 phases: 1) Define the initial structure of the book and seed with content and case studies (mostly done) 2) Allow the community to add content in a freeform manner including suggestions for new directions for the text (in progress) 3) Meet at our Community 2.0 conference in March to go over the state of the book, codify the structure, massage the text and move to community editing phase. 4) Allow the community to edit the content in a more structured fashion (i.e. keep to the suggested chapter structure. Suggest large changes only in comments or forums) 5) After the community editing phase has run its course (est. mid-summer 2007) the project will branch. The current wiki text would be taken off line and edited by Pearson Publishing for print release. The wiki would remain live with the potential for future books and/or alternate piublishing ventures. We are working on a real publishing deadline, so a multi phased process like you've suggested will likely take too much time for the initial book project. However, I think it's a great idea to utilize the prediction market tool in this way. I will take the suggestion to our board and see if we can implement it in some way for the initial book. Perhaps we can do a brief (2 week?) period of submissions, followed by a month or so of trading on the market, see what we get for results, and redefine the chapter structure at that point if it seems necessary. Thanks so much for your thoughts here. Isaac Hazard Community Manager

joe_flum
Posts:151

11/08/2006 9:33 PM	Alert
If the development of this idea would detract too much time from the rest of the team, I would be willing develop a proof-of-concept and open it up for testing by the community....so that we can get a view of how it works and maybe have a larger version ready for when the book is launched.

1ofus
Posts:103

11/16/2006 1:39 PM	Alert
Joe and Isaac, I like to option to use prediction mrkets concept to develop ideas that community believes should be in the book. That would allow for a 'chaotic' start! I would keep thi process totally open but limited in time. You decide what you think would work here. Once the ideas have been collected and ranked, someone and/or a group of volunteers should get this constituted into a book structure, ie Chapters. From here starts then the process of writing along the lines that are already going. Does this make sense?

Oldedit
Posts:12

11/16/2006 1:56 PM	Alert
A prediction market is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to do? Guide the writers and editors to hot topics? Guide marketers so they sell a lot of books? Teach participants to trade the futures markets? I think you may be trying to get thinkers and writers to act like traders, and I'm wondering whether that could work very well. Unless you have a liquid market with a fair volume and open interest level, the predictions won't have much validity. For such markets to work, there have to be easily defined products/services/contests to trade. Think corn, horse races, football games, stock market indexes and politics. Can intellectual goals be made tradeable?

joe_flum
Posts:151

11/16/2006 2:13 PM	Alert
My thesis is that yes, intellectual properties can be transformed into tradable goods. This plays into a discussion on the movement that we see the world taking towards knowledge-based societies. Don't get me wrong, in many ways this is not a clear idea, and I'm working on responding to the sorts of questions that you are posing. But consider this scenario: Company A has a total of 800 employees. Each working in different areas of the company. Every day, each of them is presented with obstacles and challenges. If Company A could create a "sort" of prediction market in which the overall goal is to come up with viable ideas for the growth of the company (new products and better processes). The market could create a scheme in which they reward ideas that reach a certain level of "maturity". Let's say that Employee C has contributed an idea into the market. Over time, other people have invested in the idea (through the market's virtual currency), as a vote of confidence towards the chance that the idea has to being implemented. As more people vote in favour of the idea, the idea gains in value within the market. At a particular point in trading, Company A decides to implement one of the ideas. At that point, it must buy-out the idea's investors. This could be literally converting virtual money into real money, or perhaps additional benefits from the company. The "buy-out" would be distributed to the "share holders" of the idea. These are just some intial ideas. I'm still working on the prototype. But I hope to have a working version running within the next couple of weeks. At least a proof of concept. I'd love to hear more of your questions and doubts in the idea, so that the prototype can take them into consideration. cheers, joe

1ofus
Posts:103

11/16/2006 2:34 PM	Alert
Joe, you reminded me of the short interview on BBC2 Working Linch a couple of days ago with Ricardo Semler of Semco. They have the ultimate in this. Namely, every 6 months they ask people to write down Who they need in the company to accomplish their work. When all of thi info is gathered, if someone is not needed they go! Simple. As for pay, that goes like this. A person says what they think they are worth. Then the others vote whethr (s)he should be paid that much. Basically, the pay seems to go only down from the initial bid. BTW, all salries are open.

1ofus
Posts:103

11/16/2006 2:43 PM	Alert
Sorry, meant Lunch not Linch - though what follows may justify the erroneous word!

joe_flum
Posts:151

11/16/2006 3:11 PM	Alert
wow...that sound's scary...good thing I own my company....I think it would be quite nerve racking to live in that sort of environment. Efficient, but scary.