Probably Random

we-think (the talk)

March 27, 2008 7:25 am tonkas Random, Strategy

I went to the British Library last night to a tlak given by Charles Leadbeater called WeThink to go with his new book.

The book was written and published on the web for feedback, this feedback and collaborative editing was then used to rework the content and presumeably add a little more based on the experience. The talk was about the book and the process and how we can collaborate on a much greater scale in the future. The idea is that we will think collaboratively, not as a Borg mind but as individuals within a network, and that new ideas are not necessarily invented in our heads but the real tangile outcome is created at the point where conversations, ideas and discussion cross.

Collaboration can work for real, serious projects such as Linux, Wikipedia and Encyclopedia of Life. There are many experts willing to give their time and effort for ‘free’ to contribute, they in turn get their position as an expert reinforced. In all these cases structure has formed to create the necessary environment for the collabortion but it has remained flexible.

There are arguements both ways on responsability. By collaborting you are in direct contact with people, readers, user etc, so you can’t, like an old school journalist, send out you story from on high and ignore the responses. But at the same time, who is legally responsible, in this world of ligitation and recrimination who would be held accountable, would it be everyone involved? the originator? perhaps this is a good thing.

I’m also reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends.. at the moment and was interested to read that this book was written collaboratively too (at least that’s what I read into it). He said that he wrote a presentation, gave it, got feedback, improved it, wrote notes and hand outs, got feedback on it all and eventually all of this collaborative work went in to form a best seller. An interesting idea is that of ownership, who owns the ideas and concepts that have been generated collabortively, well no one and everyone (as in the paragraph above with responsability) but at some point someone will take the idea to fruition, whether this be Charles Leadbeater, Linus Torvalds, Dale Carnegie or indeed artists, it’s amazing how little some of them do, or did, they have the idea but are basically art directors who put their name to a work which has usually be created by some other skilled crafts people, whether it be a bronze smelter and caster or an artist who specialised in painting hands back in the Renaissance, who we may never have heard of but we’ve seen their brush strokes. With the new collaboration, there needs to be much more recognition of the individuals involved, this is what people thrive on, if they are recognised within their group/network/society then they will be happy to contribute.