The Future of Collaboration Begins with Visualizing Human Capital

Posted by Venessa Miemis on Tue Sep 29 07:56:22 PDT 2009
Theme: Enabling Technologies

How can the power and scope of social networks, combined with human capital metrics, be used to facilitate shared creation and innovation? It's becoming more accepted that collaboration, not competition, is a more effective avenue towards producing emergent, innovative results. Now that millions of people participate in online social networks, it seems high time to develop a system of matching people's skill sets with common values and goals in order to bring about positive change. Social networks have the advantage of being able to connect globally distributed individuals, who can then operate with flexibility within a bottom-up, non-hierarchical framework. But, just having access to each other is not always enough to make things serendipitously happen. Theorists, consultants, and managers have for years been trying to understand and explain the combination of elements needed to facilitate innovation in groups. Many believe that by introducing the optimal levels of diversity and complexity to the group, it will create an environment on the 'edge of chaos', one that causes just enough anxiety to foster creativity. With all of the metrics currently being tracked about our user preferences, behaviors, and activities, could there not also be measurements of human capital? Admittedly, it would be tricky to set up, and might cause some initial ruckus. (who's the expert to judge human value?) But I envision a set of skills that would be unique to each individual, that could then be matched up with complimentary skills of others in order to assemble innovation powerhouses. For instance, imagine if on Facebook (or linkedin, or some new collaboration-focused social network) there was an application for an online assessment, something like Tom Rath's StrengthsFinder 2.0. Your results would be integrated into your profile page. In addition to that, there might be statistics on diversity levels (family background, transformational experiences, temperament, personality type, business skills), social capital (richness of connectivity within your social networks, spheres of influence), technical skills, core values, and other relational, contextual knowledge and skills. All of these could form your Human Capital Metrics, which would be available to be viewed graphically with some type of visualization tool. The system could then generate a list of people who have the complimentary skills to carry out an adaptive collaboration project. What could this mean for the future of ideas........design........innovation.........business........social change?

The web can help us all to be investigative journalists

Posted by Stef Lewandowski on Mon Aug 24 23:07:45 PDT 2009
Theme: Enabling Technologies

At a time when local newspapers are going through challenging economic times, the ability for their editors to justify paying for journalists to ask difficult questions and investigate them fully is diminishing. What happens when local media stops being able to afford to investigate things in the public interest as much? Could the ability of local media to hold power to account also be diminished? With this in mind, I've been collaborating with Paul Bradshaw (OnlineJournalismBlog.com) and Nick Booth (Podnosh.com) on a website that could potentially help solve that problem - it's called HelpMeInvestigate.com The idea is simple: if you have a question about your local area that you want to get answered, but don't know how, you can set that question as an 'investigation' on the site. It could be as simple as 'why was that tree outside my house cut down with no warning?' or more complex - 'how much money does my local hospital make from parking charges?' or 'what happened to the half a million that was supposed to be spent on regenerating my high street?' You can then invite other people on the site, and people in your local community who you think might know a little bit about the issue to collaborate with you by 'joining' the investigation. By setting them challenges - 'Phone up your local councillor and write it up', 'Request statutory information', 'Get hold of a copy of the contract', 'Find out who's responsible for it' - each person can pitch in just a small part to flesh out an answer. Over time, these contributions build up a set of links and information about the issue, and hopefully some kind of answer. We're calling it 'collaborative journalism' - it's what happens when we make the stories together. And the great thing - it benefits local media companies by helping them find out interesting stories in their local area, and it helps the people with the questions by getting answers and potentially publicity for the issues that they are interested in.

Identity in 2020

Posted by Rahul Sen on Mon Mar 09 02:46:29 PDT 2009
Theme: Experience

This idea is currently my MA degree project at the Umea Institute of Design, Sweden. My idea: In the year 2020, being Human would be a constantly blurring existence between digital and physical Worlds. Our multiple identities would co-exist in many places and once, playing different roles at the same time. What would the experience of 'Identity' be like in such a World? Would we disappear entirely into our gadgets and devices? Could there be a way to design experiences in a way that would sustain simple human interaction. Some of the ideas I am working with are mentioned in my blog. Thanks for listening!

Instilling Dreams & Endless Possibilities: The Education Network

Posted by David Harvey on Tue Mar 03 16:14:36 PST 2009
Theme: Enabling Technologies

Imagine a social networking like service that better enables K-12 students, teachers and administrators to effectuate their respective roles and functions locally and globally. Imagine a 3rd grade student in Alabama sharing his humanities project with a student in England. Imagine a 3rd grade teach searching through her new class roster to see what students had learned already, incorporating new subjects, people and angles into her lesson plans. Complex search algorithms reveal that none of her students have yet to be introduced to Van Gogh and Starry Night. Imagine Administrators finally have a metric to assess teach proficiency. Imagine all of this and more taking place while these three groups were interconnected vertically with their peers and colleagues, but also horizontally. A realm would then exist instilling dreams and endless possibilities. Let's build it and make it happen.

Open format for transportation timetables

Posted by Timothy Day on Mon Feb 23 12:30:37 PST 2009
Theme: Enabling Technologies

I propose the development of an open database format for transportation timetables. A universal format would allow the development of location aware applications that could direct a user to and from anywhere via public and commercial modes of mass transit. An example, standing on a corner in New Youk City, I need to get to Philadelphia, Pa without the use of a car. A gps enabled device with access to open transportation timetables would show me a route using MTA busses and subways to the Amtrak train hub, to Philadelphia, and then onto SEPTA buses or subways within Philadelphia. Trip coordination on the fly in the USA is too difficult and requires a phone call or desktop pc to discover, plan and purchase tickets. In today's economy, where an ever growing number of American urban dwellers are ditching their cars, making transport as easy as possible seems an absolute necessity. Getting public and commercial mass transit bodies on board with a share database would be a huge step in making the use of their services much easier.

utagmee (You tag me)

Posted by thomdahl on Wed Feb 11 01:47:13 PST 2009
Theme: Enabling Technologies

Imagine never having to tell hotels, restaurants, hospitals, hair dressers or airlines what your preferences, special needs, allergies or favorites are. Because they already know. With an online, easy access service, everyone can cater to your needs hasslefree and without an expensive CRM system. This way you can get your decaf coffee, your allergy-tested duvet, your fax connection right everytime. It works like a profile page, where you can change and add all your different needs and desires in a web 2.0 way, easy, fun and precise. Combined with comments and inspiration from peers and other users.

Annotate-ipedia

Posted by Steve Song on Tue Feb 03 10:47:45 PST 2009
Theme: New Applications

Wouldn't it be remarkable if students could access an online environment in which they could annotate the classic works they were reading and then participate together in a "crit" with their instructor in which they discuss the annotations of their peers. The annotations might start off as a blank slate which evolves into a class collection of annotations. But why stop there? Why not have a Slashdot/Digg style rating system in which insightful annotations get voted up and mundane ones get buried. The whole text might become a global digital palimpsest of interpretation.

mobilephone smokedetector

Posted by Bernard Pavlovic on Mon Feb 08 12:39:05 PST 2010
Theme: New Applications

I am a physicist from Ljubljana (Slovenia, EU) My idea is a mobilephone smoke detector which works with LED technology.

The role of handheld devices on education

Posted by Anne France on Mon Feb 08 10:28:38 PST 2010
Theme: Enabling Technologies

I would love to see some great ideas regarding how we can embrace the upcoming technology to inspire young learners. I believe that students today do not have the practice of sitting and absorbing information in a passive way. The sage on the stage way of teaching is not effective. How can we prepare instructors to embrace technology to reach students. This is more of a question than an idea. But I would love to see what people have to say.

EPC and RFID technology for home and family.

Posted by Alexey Gordeyev on Mon Feb 01 20:16:13 PST 2010
Theme: Enabling Technologies

Hi. Sorry for my bad English. The essence of my idea is to use the EPC or RFID tags at home to find household items. Because the tags are small in size they can be fastened to the important things a home (for example, the keys for the car keys to the house, watches and other items of small size are very often lost in a house or other premises) as a search engine, you can use your mobile phone Nokia. Then cite internet references. http://www.discoverrfid.org/your-questions/faq-on-epc-and-rfid.html http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID #. D0.98.D1.81.D1.82.D0.BE.D1.80.D0.B8.D1.8F_RFID_.D0.BC.D0.B5 . D1.82.D0.BE.D0.BA