Beyond YouTube

Specialized video sharing sites are emerging all the time. The most intriguing are the ones that, like YouTube, are populated and somewhat maintained by users. This form of crowdsourcing is a collaborative effort that relies on the collective intelligence of the forum to produce the richest product.

YouTube is an incredible phenomenon not only worthy of praise for how it has distributed content creation and sharing, but also because of how influential it has been in spinning off specialized incarnations. The more narrow focus ones are very useful for communities and networks to publish and share. This pervasive media platform has or will realize improved ways for communities to share information resulting from efforts to meet and leverage the medium.

One such community is the scientific community. For centuries scientific documentation has been invaluable... but kinda boring. Even scientists are being challenged to present beyond the lecture and the printed word via SciVee. There are so many fascinating things to learn here. Not just about the subject matter, but also about ways to present technical information in a sensible, digestible, and engaging way.

The power of presentation seen at work on SciVee is valuable for any knowledge sharing or future building group engagement.

Greatest News Story Heading Ever?

A mathematician I am not. I am however, the proud author of one vital formula that I know to hold true without exception:

Monkey = Funny

It's no secret that ads with dancing monkeys in the commercial make any product appealing. While conspicuously absent from the Oscar ballot annually, it's also common sense that movies with monkeys on snowboards and playing for basketball franchises are destined to be a hilarious and moving cinematic experience.

With that in mind, brace yourself for what may be the perfect news heading from today's NY Times... "Monkeys Control A Robot Arm With Their Thoughts". Pure gold. And not surprisingly, the subject matter and article are actually fascinating. There's even a video complete with monkey feeding itself through will and mechanical appendage! Long time readers of this blog (I think I'm the only one) will know of my fascination with robots also. A greater combination of entities there could not be.

The macaque monkeys have little transmitter grids placed on their motor cortex, and they learn pretty quickly how to feed themselves using the corresponding robot. This is an extraordinary breakthrough for the development of prosthetics.

On this blog though, we talk about collaboration, and most often in a meeting setting. So, if I were to let my mind wander, I could contrive of a few uses in meetings for a robotic arm that's controlled by people's brains:

1. In an Open Space Technology format, people are using flipcharts to record ideas. If this could be done anonymously by transmitting your signal to an unidentified robot arm to record, then what would be written could be more candid.
2. Creating gestures - possibly even elaborate gestures outside of the scope of what is possible for any human's range of motion - could be made by presenters to better visually describe concepts.
3. Building three dimensional tactile models and prototypes can be very useful in forming a discernible shared vision of a concept or mental construct. People could do this remotely or could do it on a much larger scale with enhanced versions of this technology.
4. You could get a monkey to feed itself in front of the participants with a robotic arm... you know, for laughs.

TheStory on OurStory

I'm warming up to the idea of focused and purpose-specific collaborative sites. Especially the open source ones. One such space is OurStory. OurStory exists to allow a person or multitudes of people to shape timelines for organizations, people, families and whatever else people can think of... and they will; ad nauseum.

My beef with these very specific applications is that you have to learn a new interface for such a limited scope of objectives. For more bitching about the same, see here. OurStory is simple enough to more or less eliminate that concern, but the possibility could still ward off potential collaborators. The final or evolving product can be media rich, dynamic, and truly collaborative.

Where you could go to Ning and create a free social network that includes time lines, or one of the infinite free wiki hosts like Wikispaces, there's also a million other things you can do with them. It's easy to get lost. If these are already in use, then fine. But it may be overwhelming if the the outcome you need is as specific as a timeline.

I like the idea of getting a group that will be coming together on another project using something like this to create a shared understanding of the current state of affairs, and what events and behaviours led to this situation. The benefits could be many. Chewing up time for review when groups could be building the future ranges from boring to absolutely treacherous. OurStory or other solutions could eliminate the need, and give a group practice and frame of reference for interaction.

SWIFT

The web 2.0 gurus at The Otter Group have been working on what promises to be an interesting application for integrating media, blogs, and social networking into conferencing experiences called SWIFT. There are countless platforms and methods people are using to take care of these functions now, and there's a lot of reinventing of the wheel. Nothing seems to do everything, and for every conference users and presenters are expected to learn a new wiki platform, social networking platform, etc, etc.

One appealing aspect of SWIFT is that it integrates with and piggy-back's on existing and established platforms. For example, you can simply link your facebook account to the conference page, and you can do your social networking using an existing account and a tool that everyone's already familiar with.

If you check out the site, SWIFT is publicized mostly as a podcasting management system. However, they're building more into it all the time, and it seems that podcasting features are only one part of the greater offering. Otter Group CEO Kathleen Gilroy has kindly been providing me with updates leading up to the release.

Even the best web 2.0 applications I've seen integrated in conferences are consistently underused because of the learning curve involved in mastering a new toy. Hopefully SWIFT has found their way around this challenge by marrying with familiar applications.

What are the other ways are there to deal with the problem of underused shared spaces at conferences? I'm always the sap that spends hours contributing to a wiki that only 5% of attendees ever look at.

Threat to My People Working With PEOPLE blog

There are cool things other than people working with (and on) people. Thanks to Kim for pointing this out to me - a few days ago the first ever heart surgery conducted by a robot took place in Italy. The surgery was initiated and monitored by a human surgeon, of course, but he was in Boston! Learn more here.

People working with and relying on robots won't remove the necessity for people to work effectively together. Rather, as the mediums we use to collaborate and the tools we leverage change at an unfathomable, exponential pace, how humans interact to adapt to these changes will have to improve drastically.

Shift Happens is a cool video that looks at how things are changing, and shows a clear need to change the way we teach, learn, and collaborate.

Conspiracy

It's tough subject matter, and a difficult watch at times, but anyone interested in a better understanding of impediments to collaboration (particularly in a boardroom environment) should watch the movie Conspiracy.

It tells the unspeakable story of the Wannassee conference of 1942, where the SS would establish the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". The secret meeting has participants that represent a number of boards, organizations, and branches within the Nazi Party. For the most part, these participants are under the impression that they will be forming a plan to deal with the large number of people to deal with (displace or other).

As it turns out, they learn that a definite solution has already been decided upon, and enacted in trials. The "solution" of course is genocide.

The movie explores some of the psychology in the room, and is an excellent study into the dangers of group-think. Despite having intelligent people in the room that must naturally question the unconscionable proposal; a meeting leader skilled at justify and leading decisions and a culture of intimidation find consensus and support for the plan to mass-murder.

It's an extreme case, but group-think is not uncommon in meetings. How can we manage it?

Cultural Diversity/Challenges

Diversity in group collaborations is essential to reaching an optimal outcome. Diversity of expertise, age, opinion, and background. Different cultural tendencies trigger different reactions to information, different insights and different perspectives. Often different cultures also approach the collaboration process much differently.

These different approaches, and even minor intricacies such as etiquette must be considered when designing a multicultural collaboration. Having people outside of their comfort zone is fine, and even beneficial, but of course you wouldn't want for anyone to be offended. A more design focus concern is to be mindful of positive cultural tendencies that could be capitalized on, and possible anti-collaborative tendencies that may emerge.

I will be working with an organization of Asian origins over the next few days, and their top brass are ex-pats of the parenting organization's home nation. The result is a culture that may seem imperial to westerners. I won't make a case for either culture, but will state that a leader that does not regularly open his ideas up to challenge or feedback is anti-collaborative. While it may bring many efficiencies, it also creates a condition where others are hesitant to offer insights on any matter that may be within that leader's scope of interest/responsibilities.

Having established that this culture exists within the organization, there will be a balancing act as moderator to never overstep my bounds and challenge this position, while still creating room for other voices to be heard.

Any stories of tip-toeing around cultural challenges among my dormant commentors?