Some Cool, Useful, and FREE Tools

There is such a wealth of open source software and applications out there. Finding it can be difficult though. I try and stay abreast of the collaborative tools, but it's nearly impossible. I focus my searches to the simplest of the many options. I like toys where I can just pick up and play; no instruction reading required.

A simple collaborative software that's free to users and gaining more users all the time Google Docs. How it can be used to collaborate is limited, but it's a great place to start. It's a basic word processor, and multiple people can access documents if given permission.

Now there may be a superior set of tools out there under one umbrella, called Zoho. Zoho has a word processor to match Google's, but it also has a presentation (read: PowerPoint) utility, spreadsheets, wikis, planners, chatting tools, etc, all free. There's also some business applications, like webconferencing and databases. If not for free, then at least some free trials.

Check these out and give me some feedback.

Positive Deviance

I had the opportunity to meet with Keith McCandless this week. Keith is a master facilitator and practices a wide variety of approaches and methodologies, most of which he would call "liberating structures". One such structure is positive deviance.


Positive deviance is when a person or group of people learns from another person or group of people in the same conditions how to measurably improve their results towards a given challenge. There are some great examples of positive deviance leading to huge improvements in healthcare safety initiatives with lives lost as a measure, or improved nourishment within test villages in malnourished nations with child weight as a measure.

I had to ask Keith what the difference between positive deviance and best practices is. The difference, as I gather, is that best practices don't work. Best practices are commonly shared across organizations, across roles, and across other differences. Ignoring these differences is ignoring reality. Positive deviance focuses on people, communities or organizations with the same circumstances, and the exceptional model does not have resources or circumstances unavailable to the other parties.

I hope to elaborate as we continue to work with Keith in the coming months. In the meantime, are there any great positive deviance stories out there?

Arrow's Theorem and Group Decisions

Way back in 1951, Kenneth Arrow wrote a book called Social Choice and Individual values, in which he introduced Arrow's Paradox (aka Arrow's Possibility theorem, aka Arrow's Impossibility theorem). Slightly less back in 1972, Arrow won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work.

To oversimplify and ignorantly sum up, democratic voting doesn't work when weighing subjects against various criteria. (Blogger's note: No pretenses; I'm not capable of understanding, let alone explaining this equation with any sensibility. Check out the link for that. I'm just running with my blanket statement, and what to do with that conclusion).

If alternative analysis can't be trusted, then how can the input of multiple people help get to a decision? One thought would be to use the results of a vote to surface opinions, and use these as a springboard for more focused discussion. This isn't a silver bullet. But, will there ever be? Will algorithms ever take insights and transform them into optimal decisions? Services like Expert Choice are apparently making strides. There may be solutions on the horizon, but engaging people in discussion surrounding voting inputs also produces new insights and further benefits.

To be fair, there's always a risk in opening up results to discussion, of course.

Rise of the Numerati

Interesting book with some potentially useful and some terrifying implications. The Numerati by Stephen Baker shows how human behaviour is becoming more and more quantifiable. With so much of our activity recorded as transactions, searches, navigation, etc on this interweb that everyone's talking about, it's easy to be monitored in great depth.

BusinessWeek has a an interview with the author, and their coverage of the book focuses on what could be a dangerously unethical side of this phenomenon. The article begins by saying that a very significant corporation will use mathematical models to "automate management". Automate management!? What kind of intrusiveness will the employees be subject to? And how can a complex organism be managed on the basis of complicated algorithms?

I have my reservations and even objections, but it will be interesting to see what we can learn and what we can predict based on tangible data. Done with moral consciousness, great things will surely come.

Also in this thread is Super Crunchers. It describes how people can and should leverage math. I prefer that to a description of how big brother can leverage math to commodotize tacit human knowledge.

Six... No! THREE Degrees of Separation

Milgram told us in the '60's that everybody was connected to everybody through 6 degrees of separation. We could count the world among those associate to us by no more than 6 associations. Of course, my generation didn't learn about the principle through Milgram, but through the more fun and infinitely more relevant Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon*.

Now French communications provider O2 tells us differently. With the proliferation of social networking and related technologies, the 6 degrees of separation is now 3. The study shows that we are each a part of 3 major networks:

1. Family


2. Friends


3. Work

We also fit into 5 interest network subsets that connect us, broadly defined as:

1. Personal interests (hobbies, sports, music)


2. Where we live


3. Religion


4. Sexuality (I hope there's no overlap with the family network here!)


5. Politics

An interesting find from the study is that although many people have more connections, 97% of respondents said they have stronger connections now than 10-20 years ago. Could it be that the tools that broaden our networks also deepen our connections? That would be a very compelling reason to incorporate more social networking technologies and platforms into work and into meetings.

Somewhat unrelated, but check out this job hunting approach to leveraging the 3 degrees principle. What other ways are there to apply this finding and work the networks?

*Follow this link if you do nothing else productive today!

Working the Tags

I appreciate all of the comments I get, but have to remark on an interesting trend I've noticed in some over the last month. Click on any of the below to see the relevant posting, for which the comments will be listed below.

1. Glance - In a posting about webconferencing options, a representative from an organization called Glance offered the comment that their solution is one more alternative, and offered me an extended free trial to one year. I am taking advantage of the trial now. Clearly there's an expectation that I react to the product in this arena. I'll report if I use it for anything groundbreaking. For now, I will neutrally say that it is definitely easy to use. For pure screen sharing, it does the job very well and with no hassle to participants at all.


2. Dan Pink - Talking about fundamental decisions, I commented on Johnny Bunko. Author of the book, Dan Pink, actually offered a comment. Kind of trivial in that it thanked and acknowledged, but didn't offer much insight to speak of besides a correction of the terminology (I'd used "fundamental maneuvres", he uses "fundamental reasons". Worth noting the difference here)


3. Wired - After the Crowdsourcing post about the Jeff Howe podcast, WIRED staffer Jim commented that I should check out a link to an interview he had done with how. I will of course check it out, and I will of course blog about it.

It's clear that these people are searching and reacting to relevant tags (see below this posting for an example of those). This can help people identify relevance and seek communication and even marketing opportunities amongst the infinite number of blogs out there. In this we see the real web characteristic of blogging.

How can you or your organization seek an audience or develop influence using tags as a tool?

Crowdsourcing

Check out this video/podcast from Wired Magazine's Jeff Howe, who also happened to author the book "Crowdsourcing".

http://www.wired.com/wiredsmallbizprogram/video.html?section=1&vid_index=1&autoplay=1

Not surprisingly, the theme is crowdsourcing. Not only is the notion of outsourcing work that was formerly done by a salaried employee to the masses relevant to any business, but it's also relevant to the meeting designer.

How can aspects of meeting design be crowdsourced? And when is it appropriate to dedicate a problem to a meeting, and when instead should the problem become a crowdsourcing opportunity (i.e. using your own crowd, or the faceless virtual "crowd")?

Also note the interesting presentation components that make this more than a talking head. Pics and video in sync with words, dealing with literal examples and metaphor. Good stuff.