all posts tagged “academia”
From time to time, I participate in conference calls and online discussions that are focused on subjects that I should care about: knowledge management, communities of practice, online learning, etc.
More often than not I find that these discussion become academic discourse and generally make me feel the same.
I honestly respect academic discussion and I believe academia lays the foundation for what we know and understand. But man, that kind of discussion is just not for me- and perhaps I'm revealing my ignorance here.
The theoretical, the ongoing discussion about the published papers of respected academics, the arguments about pros and cons of each theory and their applications in endless situations -- it all just drones on for me.
It reminds me of a quote from Edwin Armstrong, who invented the FM radio: "Men like to substitute words for reality and then argue about the words."
I don't want the words- I want the realities. It seems sometimes that reality beats me over the head so often that I wonder why the words matter in practice.
I also wonder why I feel this way. In my work, I want more than anything to live in the future. I don't want to put a theory into practice, I want to do things that
don't yet have words.
Perhaps I've convinced myself (right or wrong) that academic discourse is too focused on the past- especially regarding the Web, where things move so fast.
No matter what, I feel confident that I have learned this about myself and I'm going to stop feeling self-conscious about not being interested in academic discourse- it's just not for me.
The idea from this paper by Ronald Burt is that people who participate in a number of groups or networks are exposed to a wide variety of perspectives and ways of thinking.
By virtue of this exposure, these same people are able see holes across groups and find new ways (new ideas) to bridge the holes. This often results in innovation.
I've only read about 1/2 the 58 page .pdf, but I highly recommend it.
Clay at Many-to-Many has a little more on it:Many-to-Many: Social Origin of Good Ideas
Manifesto for the Reputation Society
Abstract:
Information overload, challenges of evaluating quality, and the opportunity to benefit from experiences of others have spurred the development of reputation systems. Most Internet sites which mediate between large numbers of people use some form of reputation mechanism: Slashdot, eBay, ePinions, Amazon, and Google all make use of collaborative filtering, recommender systems, or shared judgements of quality.
But we suggest the potential utility of reputation services is far greater, touching nearly every aspect of society. By leveraging our limited and local human judgement power with collective networked filtering, it is possible to promote an interconnected ecology of socially beneficial reputation systems �?? to restrain the baser side of human nature, while unleashing positive social changes and enabling the realization of ever higher goals.
Via: Clay at Many-to-Many
Harvard Business Online: Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?
I'm going to have to buy this report. This is what I've been working on the "Workspace" of this site- virtual workspaces for teams. If you want to check it out, let me know.
Article Description:
Some projects have such diverse requirements that they need a variety of specialists to work on them. But often the best-qualified specialists are scattered around the globe, perhaps at several companies. Remarkably, an extensive benchmarking study reveals, it isn't necessary to bring team members together to get their best work. In fact, they can be even more productive if they stay separated and do all their collaborating virtually. The scores of successful virtual teams the authors examined didn't have many of the psychological and practical obstacles that plagued their more traditional, face-to-face counterparts. Team members felt freer to contribute--especially outside their established areas of expertise. The fact that such groups could not assemble easily actually made their projects go faster, as people did not wait for meetings to make decisions, and individuals, in the comfort of their own offices, had full access to their files and the complementary knowledge of their local colleagues. Reaping those advantages, though, demanded shrewd management of a virtual team's work processes and social dynamics. Rather than depend on videoconferencing or e-mail, which could be unwieldy or exclusionary, successful virtual teams made extensive use of sophisticated online team rooms, where everyone could easily see the state of the work in progress, talk about the work in ongoing threaded discussions, and be reminded of decisions, rationales, and commitments. Differences were most effectively hashed out in teleconferences, which team leaders also used to foster group identity and solidarity.
Via RSS feed: Joi
ACM: Ubiquity - A Conversation with Andrew Hargadon
I really enjoyed this interview. Andrew is an associate professor at UC Davis Grad School of Management. In this interview he debunks many of the widely-held ideals about innovation. I like the way he thinks.
On the difference between innovation and invention:
Innovation is the practical exploitation of any novel idea. Novel ideas can be inventions in the strict definition of the term, which means they didn't exist before, but most often they're not. Instead, they're based on taking an idea that's been developed somewhere else -- or combining a number of existing ideas -- and introducing them to a market that hasn't seen those combinations before.
On the notion of his rule "divided we innovate"
It's better to allow people to focus on the things they do well and only bring them together sporadically, if at all. Another alternative is to keep people focused on what they're doing and give other people the charter of finding the commonality. Keeping people divided allows them to go in different directions, which creates the variance you need later to find new combinations.
Via: Fast Company
Clay Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
I'm a big fan of Clay's and he always enlightens me with each writing. This one is a transcript of a keynote he did on April 24th at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference.
It's long, but it provides some juicy insights into the behaviour of groups who gather online. Like me, he believes that a revolution is underway in the use of the Internet as a social tool.
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