CPH127

Few weeks ago the online version of the economist included the following figure on membership growth of facebook. It appears that growth rates have somewhat peaked.

Do you agree, do you see the same movement? I my self got my FB-profile 5 months ago, and I must admit that I got one because of curiousness, and because a few clients asked me about the potential. Do you have a FB-profile? Why?

Maybe you already know the blog “Creating Passionate Users” which from time to time have some fantastic blogposts on how to create better learning, how to create great Architecture of Participation - AoP, and great user involvement in general.

Kathy Sierra tells in this interview with Tim Oreilly how to create “flow”-moments by using cognitive seduction. Interesting how you as a business leader can learn from these principles, how you as a facilitator of social

community networks can create vibrant conversations and everlasting relations.

How do you create the right Architecture of Participation? Please share your insights.

Do you know the economic term “Ceteris paribus“? It’s a term being used to get hold on complexity. As an educated economist I’ve been told over and over again, that a necessary way to look upon the world, understanding the world, is by trying to reduce the number of variables in the equation.

But how can we react as reductionists and believe that everything can and should be measured?

There has been a lot of discussion lately about “Social Media” aka “Social Software” aka “Web2.0″ aka “E2.0″ aka “Enterprise2.0″ and how to measure ROI. It seems that every thing needs to be measured, still, but do we look on the right metrics?

What are the metrics by the way when looking on the deployment of new companies, new technologies and new mindsets? The same that was defined in the industrial age?

As part of our work at Wemind on how to build Social Capital as a catalyst for business innovation, improved bottom line and business survival I’m very much interested in your perspectives and maybe ideas on what the future metrics should look like. Please take a look on our take on Social Capital so far - registration is needed.

I’m struggling…, struggling with the term “architecture of participation”. What lies beneath and how can I put it into play in the organizations that I work with as part of my daily work? I’m getting more and more certain about that Web2.0 is more about people than it’s about a technical implementation.

Few days ago I got familiar with Mike Gotta’s approach on participation, which I find very useful as part of an explanation and a part wise implementation model. Mike divide’s participation into actions and contributions that are “directed” versus those that are “volunteered”. For purposes of his overview, the illustration below categorizes “work” into four basic participation models and shows a conceptual relationship between the two types of participation:

• Process: A process is a structured collection of tasks that are often sequences in a particular way with workers interacting based on their respective roles and duties within that collection of tasks.
• Activities: An activity is a collection of semi-structured tasks that are not rigidly sequenced but are often co-dependent and completed within a certain time period.
• Communities: A community is a relationship-based group structure (as opposed to a task-based structure) that forms around a shared interest area (e.g., anyone who is interested in improving customer service) or a shared practice (e.g., all nurses who want to improve patient care).
• Networks: A network is a social structure comprised of people that have some inter-connecting bond based on a variety of factors (e.g., personal friendship, similar values, shared relationships, common educational or work experience). Social networks are rarely driven by tasks or activities per se. However, people reach out to their network contacts frequently in response to a process, activity or community event.

I also came across Michael Idinopulos, who also posted about AoP. Here he decribes the concept of “In-the-Flow and Above-the-Flow”. He explains the concept by the case of a wiki.

Wikis can be used for many different activities, which fall into two broad categories:

• In-the-Flow wikis enable people do their day-to-day work in the wiki itself. These wikis are typically replacing email, virtual team rooms, and project management systems.

• Above-the-Flow wikis invite users to step out of the daily flow of work and reflect, codify, and share something about what they do. These wikis are typically replacing knowledge management systems (or creating knowledge management systems for the first time).

So, how do you work with Architecture of Participation - how do you make sure that the organization in fact will be adaptive enough, not only to understand technology, but in fact adaptive enough to understand the radical shift in mindset and thereby changing workprocess and entire companies?

Are you aware of any other source on the subject, please let me know.