The future of social networks is in (self-controlled) openness

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Watching the Facebook IPO hype
In these minutes I am monitoring the IPO of the Facebook Inc. – it is not only hyped, but actually it is a huge step in the history of online social networks. And it is made a “developing story” on mass media like e.g. CNN.

CNN tv covering the IPO of Facebook

Business genius Mark Zuckerberg digitized and industrialized our Social Capital
Translated into “the industrialisation of friendship” this headline sounds quite a bit offending. The problem with this truth is, that our social graph is something yery private by definition. And so is our interest graph: If we share the books, movies, politiicians we like, if we publish our favorite quote etc., then we become more and more transparent to the people we are sharing this with. But much more problematic is the transparency for a commercial structure like Facebook. The personal data have to be monetized – after the IPO the pressure is much higher now.

Remember what happend to the walled garden of AOL some years ago
Maybe the Facebook IPO is marking the peak of monetizing social network dynamics. Technology is progressing. The same could happen to Facebook, what happened to walled garden models like AOL. There are concepts around to have open and federated social networks. Think about having a mail client program – no one controlling with whom you connect – no one trying to make money out of your mail communication. “Liberated” social networks might look like this usage scenario – all is under your personal control.

Mark Zuckerberg, planet thinking and the Nobel Peace Prize
However controversial Mark Zuckerberg (and his team) is until today – concerning his stance to privacy, I like this guy and the attitude to hack business forward. He did not only see the epochal business opportunity, but he created something really great, a platform for around 1,000,000,000 users, connecting people beyond geographical borders, connecting and syncing people during the Arab Spring, catalyzing the generation of real social capital around the world, building trust, feeding the spirit of collaboration.
He is not alone of course with this tech-based gift of felt borderlessness, there is Skype and Google contributing their tools to this experience too. I would not be surprised to see Mark Zuckerberg and his likeminded business hackers and business model inventors as contenders of the Nobel Peace Prize (see last year’s news). I personally see them (whether they intend this or not) in the light of an emergent “planet thinking”, the spirit of global collaboration – after hyper-competition the next phase of globalisation, hopefully.

Update 2012-05-18: Adding the image to the text, adding a link, correcting various paragraphs.

Update 2012-05-18 18:35 CEST

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting tweet from 5:29 PM – 18 May 12

Creating tools for Social Capital generation (1): Some field of experience

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Situation: Virtuality is more and more an option in collaboration

Here are some contextual facts:

  • Physical face2face gatherings enable collaborative productivity, but are rather costly compared with virtual solutions.
  • With reliable broadband connections and video chat as a standard the experience has improved.
  • Conclusion: The possibility of instant virtual gatherings has become an increasing attractive option.

Communication. collaboration are connected with the generation of Social Capital – now think about the ongoing (megatrend) shift from physical to digital interaction spaces

Problem: No established behavioral patterns and tools for hybrid global-local events

The  field of experience during JellyWeek 2012

  • When I had to think a bit deeper about the architecture and organisation of the global-local event JellyWeek 2012 I worked with some typical use cases in mind to increase a parameter, that I intuitively realized as a key parameter for a succesful hybrid, global-local event.
  • This parameter is SID = social interaction density – Maybe the expression is used differently  in other domains, however I found it adequate for the challenge of a “viable social information architecture” for the JellyWeek with its specific hybrid characteristic, connecting local groups (jellies) and single attendees, scattered around the globe together in a space of encounter.
  • Some aspects of the design challenge have been described in the post about the JellyWeek Social wave and the working sphere – the  specific challenge at that time has been conceived as “Building a coordinative space for remote co-workers” – there is even a little screencast explaining the ecosystem.
  • But do not get distracted – the core issue here is how to find design principles for coordinative spaces, that facilitate the communicative spaces, i.e. finally maximizing the  social interaction density
Have some fun to watch the short video underlining the importance of a “coordinative space approach”.
Part 2 will demonstrate the solution and what can be learned and generalized from it.
Updatae 2012-05-16 Integrated the Social Capital graphics

Rethinking schools and learning in the 21st century (2)

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Traditional educatinoal institutions under pressure –Why?

The developmental logic is this:

  • (A) The communication infrastructure of the internet plus powerful end devices allows to have learning situations everywhere
  • (B) The motivational factor of learning can be realized with social web logic (co-learning) plus personal tutoring via a learning platform

Result: Instead of sitting rather passively in front of a teacher in a lecture format there are now learning formats available, that are much more engaging and effective. And this is not a hymn to technocentric e-learning systems, but blended, life-long, hybrid, social, deep learning processes. A first haiku diagram about the new synergies waiting to substitute some inefficient institutionalized old school learning settings.

The upwards spiral of co-learning, co-creation and co-working

The upwards spiral of co-learning, co-creation and co-working

Connecting this with the betasalon yesterday: First, of course I do not restrict “coworking” to coworking spaces in the institutional form. But second they are great hubs for local change, breaking boudaries between working, learning, having fun, they are fine candidates for the new learning spaces we need.

Rethinking schools and learning in the 21st century (1)

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Normally I am not a live blogger … now let us have a try. I am at BETAHAUS | SALON #3 UNIVERSITY 2.0 – the reinvention of higher education in the 21st century. Listening to very interesting new perspectives about teaching and learning.

We just heard Dale J. Stephens, founder of the UnCollege movement. He questions whether university is necessary to learning and personal development, and is challenging the high costs of college. Surprise for the skeptic: There is some statistical evidence that the absence of traditional school system is not the worst thing.

Hannes Kloepper, M.P.P. is cofounder of iversity, an academic collaboration platform and educational startup near Berlin.  Book upcoming in March 2012: Die Universität im 21. Jahrhundert

Dr. Stephan Breidenbach, founding Dean of Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance, recognises the pressing need for universities to stay relevant, and is actively working on reforming the way in which knowledge is  created and shared at the university.

Debate / learnings

Now the debate has started and my first learning is that we have to be more radical in rethinking. We have to approach the “operating system” of the whole society and economy. Some basic concepts: The need of assessment and certification in a mobile world.

Question of power arises. It is about legitimation discourses and changing them. And if an institution is a system to stabilize itself how then can we have change in the instittuions? Can we (paradoxically) institutionalize transformation?

Hey, stop, an idea: Look for this in the economy (much more evolution power, mutation rate there than in the rest of society, you know Schumpeter …).

Update …. Companies, when the reach a certain size, usually create functional units for transformation (innovation department, R&D …) – or they even do open innovation, externalizing the innovation beyond the borders of the company.

Ideas from the debate now: Why not have cinemas for TED? Inspired for action.

Some video closely related to the discussion.
University 2.0 – Sebastian Thrun (DLD 2012)
http://new.livestream.com/dld/Track2Day2/videos/112950

Updated the image

Social wave and the working sphere – e.g. Coworking

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Icon design: Anni Roolf, dezentrale.eu

How we work has radically changed during history. The social wave (with social technologies for networking, new concepts and mindsets to collaborate) has reached the working sphere for some years. E.g. there are 1.200 coworking spaces around the world now. And there is a new mindset in town with that mode of working.

Worldwide global-local event: #JELLYWEEK 2012

Today a global-local event starts to connect the growing community of coworkers. Up to now there are 206 jellies from 34 countries registered, some with even a program for the whole week. Never heard of “jellies”? Find more on the event website: #JELLYWEEK 2012 

Close observer and an active node

To come close to these new phenomena/movement as a researcher and to promote and foster transformation (I know well, that these are two different roles) I was very excited about the opportunity to be a part of organizing this open, self-governed and swarm-like event. Or less paradoxically: To create (hybrid/orbital?) spaces for communication and co-creation in the spirit of Open Space and Art of Hosting.

Challenge: Building a coordinative space for remote co-workers

It is a challenge to build a Social Information Architecture having no budget, no coder, no databse – and in the shortest time of some weeks. It resulted in decentral kind of swarm design (the swarm intelligence hype may be over – but  this concept is no fashion, but just a principle of construction). The structure is inspired by wiki thinking, but even more light, fragile, open and with a maximum of decentrality: A cloud of etherpads is having an essential role. Other “orbital” element: Google hangouts, e.g. permanent hangouts.

We are curious, whether this will work … yep, pioneering comes with risk of total failure …. “We”, that is Anni Roolf from Wuppertal and I as the core team. Anni is the initiator and founder of the worldwide #JELLYWEEK 2012. I am very grateful for the opportunity to create something new with her as a passionate and  smart person. And we only met once and did completely remote collaboration with using, google docs, facebook, skype etc., a tiny dose of project management  of basecamphq.com – and plain phone calls are still in use too. To get a bit of the spirit, here is a short message from a New Zealand space.

Update 2012-02-07-A:

The #JELLYWEEK 2012 was a great success

… and it was a huge experience and learning space to understand the phenomena, dynamics and the advantages of the diverse “connection and collaboration tools”. I will report on the learnings in a future blog post. For now I want to complete the post above with a link to the (quick and dirty) introduction video, an introduction into  the light-weight “social information architecture” for the decentral global-local event.

Screencast ”Introduction  to the ”social information architecture” #JELLYWEEK 2012  (screencast.com)  

Update 2012-02-07-B:

Adding the map picture.

Beyond 19th century ideologies – The free, socioeconomically hyperconnected individual

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"Seeing Red: Millennials Are Cooler With Socialism Than Capitalism" (good.is)

US millennials dreaming of socialist utopia (bad news)

“According to a new study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Obama’s biggest fans—Millennials age 18 to 29—view socialism in a favorable light, compared to 43 percent who view it unfavorably.” …

“It’s not hard to figure out why our generation isn’t so gung-ho about capitalism—it has disappointed and, in some cases, straight-up failed us.”
www.good.is/post/seeing-red-millennials-are-cooler-with-socialism-than-capitalism/

Beyond 19th century ideologies (good news)

The free, connection-empowered, empathic individual – with self-responsibility and social responsibility

The mythology for decades has been: “Capitalism is best – for all and for all the world”. This mythology is still crumbling rapidly as the multiple crisis are not really solved. The fatal global ecological crisis is even in the shadow of the global ecological crisis. Worse: If world economy is “back on track” this means more destruction of the planet, as long as we have future-blind growth politics instead of economics following the social and ecological rationality, a system with inbuilt “sustainability and wellbeing loops” instead of the now dominating “short profit loops”.

In reaction to this destruction of faith the old collectivist “(blood) red” mythologies raise their head again. Neosocialist collectivist systems would be an awfully bad alternative. But: The ubiquitous internet connectivity holds a disruptive potential to redesign the political economy in a quite different manner than the ideological camps of the 19th century – capitalism and socialism – could ever conceive of. And: Smart green technologies are maturing and pave the way to a viable post-fossil society.

A genuine new system, with the co-existence of individual freedom, mass-collaboration and new “headless” value streams (eventually with nearly no banks and bosses) might be a possibility to develop. We have reasons for optimism. If anyone is locked into false alternatives – liberate!

Join JellyWeek Jan 2012 to find inspiration, awareness and new collaborators

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JELLYWEEK 2012 logo

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2012: From protest to process

2011 has seen the Arab Spring and the global Occupy Movement. Maybe it is time to progress from protest to process and from process to production, new answers for the challenges ahead.  I want to invite you to an opportunity to find companion and exchange in the diversity of the “social wave”. In the last years coworking places around the world have emerged as new spaces to probe new forms to work and collaborate.

Coworking – and beyond coworking

Coworking is a style of work which involves a shared working environment, sometimes an office, yet independent activity. Unlike in a typical office environment, those coworking are usually not employed by the same organization. Wikipedia - Today we find a growing number of cowo places around the world (May 2011: 820). For more: Global Coworking Survey (deskmag).

Coworking means not just to have a new kind of work place, but it is part of a different work culture, it is connected with the “spirit of co“, communication, connectedness, collaboration.

JellyWeek January 16 to 22 2012

“Let’s discover the sense of global coworking in the upcoming WORLDWIDE #JELLYWEEK 2012. Which important needs can be fulfilled by coworking? For which local and global problems coworking can be a part of the solution? How can coworkers use the global coworking infrastructure to foster their businesses and projects?” jellyweek.tumblr.com

This is a great opportunity to show your project and to connect with likeminded people, exchange ideas, find advice.

Never visited a coworking space? Bring your project and ideas into that orbital community around the planet! Keep upated with JellyWeek on facebook.com. Are you a  coworking space and want to connect? Get on the map!