The principles of the Chinese philosophy of Taoism have many parallels with the ways how COINs operate.
The way is the goal - Tao means “way”, and “way” is the cornerstone of Taoism. This is very different from Western philosophies, where the “being” and “truth” are in the center. In Taoism, on the other hand, “the way is the goal”, this means it’s not the solution, which is important, but the way to get to the solution. COINs achieve their big vision in many small incremental steps along the way. It is the way, the joy of completing small incremental steps together, which are the main motivators for COIN members. Working extremely hard in the company of likeminded people and reaching a goal together is immensely rewarding. This way of working under positive stress is similar to the concept of “flow” defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. According to Csikszentmihalyi, people are most happy when they are in the state of flow – a state of complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. Csíkszentmihályi describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one.”
Let go – one of the core principles of Taoism is “wu-wei” or “non-action”. The main point is that one has to know when NOT to act. The underlying concept is that things basically will take care of themselves, if they only get the chance. For the individual, applying this principle is quite hard, as it means letting things go, and let them take their own way. We need to achieve a high level of self-assuredness and self-awareness to apply this principle. If we have reached this level, we will feel a sense of inner tranquility and self-emptiness that will allow us to let go. On the highest level, we will get rid of our own ego - becoming one with our activity - and do things for the sake of things, and not to further our own ego, reaching the state of flow. Among Linux opensource developers, Linus Torvalds, is famous for non-action and just “letting things taking care of themselves”. For individual COIN members it means that they are ready to let go of their individual idea and let the team take it over and bring it to completion. Because COIN members participate out of their own will – and not external pressure - they get the liberty to do whatever they think is right, and not what the boss or the company tells them to do.
Ethics – the three jewels of the Tao are compassion, moderation, and humility. The first one, compassion, also means kindness, and undemanding love like the love of a parent for her/his child. The second one, moderation and frugality, frees us from being driven by desires. If we are happy with what we have, and do not always want more, this will liberate us. The third one, humility, will help us recognize and be grateful for the contribution of others. In a well-functioning COIN, all three concepts come together. COIN members treat each other with respect, and respect the contribution of each member. They take care of each other, and through their focus on reaching their goal first and obtaining external recognition second, they are quite frugal in their demands. The last principle, humility, is the hardest to follow. This was already recognized by Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography, when he confessed how hard it was to acquire it “I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it.” He then goes on to describe how much easier it became to convince others when he presented his ideas in a humble way. The same should be true for COIN members, who respect the opinion of others and are grateful for the contribution of each member.
The principles of Taoism give us a great framework of how to work together in a COIN for the highest benefit of both the COIN and the individual members.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Reflections on COINs2009 - Towards a Science of Collaboration
I am writing this blog post on my way back from the first Conference on Collaborative Innovation Networks COINs2009. It was a cool event, taking place Oct. 8-11 2009 at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design. SCAD was a fitting place and perfect host for this conference, with its mascot the bee, paragon of collaborative swarms. The themes of the COINs conference cover a wide range of interdisciplinary fields such as social network analysis, group dynamics, design and visualization, information systems and the psychology and sociality of collaboration. Thinking about these topics in the plane on the trip back to Boston, it dawned on me that the time has come to put these topics into a solid scientific framework.
While it has been scientifically recognized that swarms of bees are better thought of as one big superorganism, it is only now that similar insights are coming up for the human superorganism. Slowly this human superorganism is starting to become self aware with the indivuum seeing its identity defined not in isolation, but through its connections. We therefore need a new science of collaboration, recognizing that each human is not just an individual, but a product of his and her connections to other humans.
Why is the Science of Collaboration relevant now? For thousands of years people have collaborated, from the first tribal bands hunting for large game to the feudal states in the middle ages to the large multinational companies of today. But only now with the emergence of the Internet and the Web do we have the means to solve tasks collaboratively at a large scale, with anybody, about anything, at anytime, and anywhere. Anybody planning a totally crazy project has the chance now to find the few other people on the world who care about the same topic with the same passion, and form the COIN, the Collaborative Innovation Network, to tackle the issue and collaboratively develop a solution.
While at the COINs2009 conference we got some great examples of co-located teams working on the same task, most of these collaborative tasks happen long-distance. Whether it’s designing a new piece of furniture, collaboratively writing an article, or authoring a flash movie, COINs pop up all around the globe, creatively collaborating over the Internet to solve their task.
Collaboration Science has many facets, ranging from analyzing and measuring collaboration by dynamic social network analysis, through making teams more collaborative by applying principles of group dynamics, to developing new Internet-based software tools and methods for collaboration. The COINs2009 call for papers lists the following subjects as parts of collaboration science:
• Dynamic Social Network Analysis
• Semantic Social Network Analysis
• Social System Design and Architectures
• Social Behavior Modeling
• Social Intelligence and Social Cognition
• Emotional Intelligence, Cultural Dynamics, Opinion Representation, Influence Process
• Trust, Privacy, Risk, Transparency and Security in social contexts
• Virtual Communication and Collaboration
• Measuring the performance of COINs
• Patterns of swarm creativity
• Collaborative Leadership
• Design and visualization in interdisciplinary collaboration
• Group dynamics and global teaming in virtual collaboration
• Organizational optimization in COINs
• The psychology and sociality of collaboration
Collaboration Science therefore includes principles and methods from many fields such as Network Science, Coordination Science and Web Science. The strongest contrast for me however is between Collaboration and Competition, i.e. using the power of the swarm for the egoistic benefit on one single individual. While people collaborate for egoistic goals, for me collaboration includes an altruistic element. While free markets are based on utilitarian principles, i.e. everybody being in it for his or her individual benefit, members of collaborative innovation networks are in it not just for themselves, but for the benefits of their community, knowing that if they do good to the community, the community will pay it back, leaving everybody much better off in the end.
Dustin Larimer, a conference participant from SCAD, allowed me to share the following three tag clouds. The clouds reflect feedback from conference participants after the first conference day, where three different workshops on the subject were offered, very cool:
While it has been scientifically recognized that swarms of bees are better thought of as one big superorganism, it is only now that similar insights are coming up for the human superorganism. Slowly this human superorganism is starting to become self aware with the indivuum seeing its identity defined not in isolation, but through its connections. We therefore need a new science of collaboration, recognizing that each human is not just an individual, but a product of his and her connections to other humans.
Why is the Science of Collaboration relevant now? For thousands of years people have collaborated, from the first tribal bands hunting for large game to the feudal states in the middle ages to the large multinational companies of today. But only now with the emergence of the Internet and the Web do we have the means to solve tasks collaboratively at a large scale, with anybody, about anything, at anytime, and anywhere. Anybody planning a totally crazy project has the chance now to find the few other people on the world who care about the same topic with the same passion, and form the COIN, the Collaborative Innovation Network, to tackle the issue and collaboratively develop a solution.
While at the COINs2009 conference we got some great examples of co-located teams working on the same task, most of these collaborative tasks happen long-distance. Whether it’s designing a new piece of furniture, collaboratively writing an article, or authoring a flash movie, COINs pop up all around the globe, creatively collaborating over the Internet to solve their task.
Collaboration Science has many facets, ranging from analyzing and measuring collaboration by dynamic social network analysis, through making teams more collaborative by applying principles of group dynamics, to developing new Internet-based software tools and methods for collaboration. The COINs2009 call for papers lists the following subjects as parts of collaboration science:
• Dynamic Social Network Analysis
• Semantic Social Network Analysis
• Social System Design and Architectures
• Social Behavior Modeling
• Social Intelligence and Social Cognition
• Emotional Intelligence, Cultural Dynamics, Opinion Representation, Influence Process
• Trust, Privacy, Risk, Transparency and Security in social contexts
• Virtual Communication and Collaboration
• Measuring the performance of COINs
• Patterns of swarm creativity
• Collaborative Leadership
• Design and visualization in interdisciplinary collaboration
• Group dynamics and global teaming in virtual collaboration
• Organizational optimization in COINs
• The psychology and sociality of collaboration
Collaboration Science therefore includes principles and methods from many fields such as Network Science, Coordination Science and Web Science. The strongest contrast for me however is between Collaboration and Competition, i.e. using the power of the swarm for the egoistic benefit on one single individual. While people collaborate for egoistic goals, for me collaboration includes an altruistic element. While free markets are based on utilitarian principles, i.e. everybody being in it for his or her individual benefit, members of collaborative innovation networks are in it not just for themselves, but for the benefits of their community, knowing that if they do good to the community, the community will pay it back, leaving everybody much better off in the end.
Dustin Larimer, a conference participant from SCAD, allowed me to share the following three tag clouds. The clouds reflect feedback from conference participants after the first conference day, where three different workshops on the subject were offered, very cool:
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Bundestagswahlen in Germany - Who will be the next Federal Chancellor
Tomorrow September 27th, 2009, there are elections to the German parliament. It's the conservative (by German standards) CDU/CSU led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, against the social democrats (SPD) led by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, with the liberal democrats (FDP,Guido Westerwelle) and the Green party (Jürgen Trittin) as minor players. Predictions still seem to project a win of CDU, although it is not clear if CDU and FDP together will get a clear majority.
A quick coolhunting in blogs seems to speak a clear language:
Angela Merkel seems the clear leader, being in a sphere of her own, and her competitors huddled together in the other corner. SPD candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier has a large support network, although of lesser influence.
But wait! What we are looking at above is what the WORLD thinks and blogs - and there Angela Merkel, as the incumbent Chancellor, has a huge advantage. If we zoom in on German language blogs, using the German title "Bundeskanzler" as attribute, to make sure we get the German bloggers, the picture changes dramatically:
Now Frank-Walter Steinmeier is the leader. But there is still hope for Angela Merkel, together with Guide Westerwelle's FDP, she gets a majority, at least in the blogosphere. The situation worsens for Angela Merkel, if we factor in the other candidates from farther left, the Greens (Jürgen Trittin) and Gregor Gysi from the Left Party:
In this constellation, the left wins (size of the font of the politician's name is proportional to percentage of votes). As of yesterday, the long-term trend in the blogosphere still predicts victory for CDU, although the lead is shrinking:
But this was the general coolhunt, which as I explained at the beginning of this post, measures what the WORLD says. Let's wait until tomorrow evening, to see if German Bloggers and the German population agree.
A quick coolhunting in blogs seems to speak a clear language:
Angela Merkel seems the clear leader, being in a sphere of her own, and her competitors huddled together in the other corner. SPD candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier has a large support network, although of lesser influence.
But wait! What we are looking at above is what the WORLD thinks and blogs - and there Angela Merkel, as the incumbent Chancellor, has a huge advantage. If we zoom in on German language blogs, using the German title "Bundeskanzler" as attribute, to make sure we get the German bloggers, the picture changes dramatically:
Now Frank-Walter Steinmeier is the leader. But there is still hope for Angela Merkel, together with Guide Westerwelle's FDP, she gets a majority, at least in the blogosphere. The situation worsens for Angela Merkel, if we factor in the other candidates from farther left, the Greens (Jürgen Trittin) and Gregor Gysi from the Left Party:
In this constellation, the left wins (size of the font of the politician's name is proportional to percentage of votes). As of yesterday, the long-term trend in the blogosphere still predicts victory for CDU, although the lead is shrinking:
But this was the general coolhunt, which as I explained at the beginning of this post, measures what the WORLD says. Let's wait until tomorrow evening, to see if German Bloggers and the German population agree.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Coolhunting for the next Swiss Federal Councilor - yes it works
In the last three posts I have looked at what the crowd on the Web was saying about the chances of the 3 main candidates for Swiss Federal Councilor in the elections of Sept. 16 to succeed Bundesrat Pascal Couchepin. And note that we had to predict what the crowd was thinking what the 248 members of the Swiss National Assembly would be doing. The ranking was (see three previous posts):
1. Urs Schwaller
2. Christian Luescher
3. Didier Burkhalter
If you look at the voting in the Assembly yesterday, it is (from Wikipedia)
So the crowd PERFECTLY predicted the voting pattern in round 1!
The group dynamics in the Assembly in the succeeding rounds, and in particular the behavior of individual people like the withdrawal of Christian Luescher after round 3, the crowd can NOT predict, that's up to Mr Luescher - there are still good uses for the crystal ball.
1. Urs Schwaller
2. Christian Luescher
3. Didier Burkhalter
If you look at the voting in the Assembly yesterday, it is (from Wikipedia)
So the crowd PERFECTLY predicted the voting pattern in round 1!
The group dynamics in the Assembly in the succeeding rounds, and in particular the behavior of individual people like the withdrawal of Christian Luescher after round 3, the crowd can NOT predict, that's up to Mr Luescher - there are still good uses for the crystal ball.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Who will be the next Swiss Federal Councillor - Final update
Tomorrow Sept 16 will be the elections for next Swiss Federal Councillor in succession of Pascal Couchepin. Here the latest coolhunting results on the blogs for the four main candidates:
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Who will be the next Swiss Federal Councillor - 2nd update
The elections for the successor of Swiss Federal Councilor (Bundesrat) Pascal Couchepin will be this Wednesday, Sept 16. Here is a new update on the trend prediction, as of this evening, Sunday Sept 13.
Again the disclaimer is that it is not the Swiss population who is electing the Bundesrat, but the 248 members of parliament, which of course makes it much harder to predict the outcome. Nevertheless, here first the general trend for the currently three official candidates, Christian Lüscher, Didier Burkhalter, and Urs Schwaller, and three other candidates based on the "electoral votes", i.e. Web Betweenness of the Swiss German bloggers for the last three days.
Christian Lüscher lost his lead, Urs Schwaller is the leader, Dominique de Buman is number two. This is based on the accumulated coolhunting in the German language blogosphere over the last week:
Weltwoche.ch, Bernerzeitung.ch, and Politreport.ch are the most influential Blogs - the kingmakers - to promote the candidates.
Doing a combined coolhunting for the German language Web and blogosphere and adding the French Swiss (by including tracking the prominence of Web sites talking about "conseil federal urs schwaller", etc.) gives a slightly different picture:
Now Dominque de Buman is the leader (betweenness 0.31), ahead of Urs Schwaller (betweenness 0.29). It does not look good for the two candidates from FDP, Lüscher and Burkhalter.
I also included the social Web networks for the queries "Nachfolge Bundesrat Couchepin Ständerat" und "Nachfolge Bundesrat Couchepin Nationalrat" to accomodate for the fact that Ständerat and Nationalrat (the Swiss National Assembly) will elect the "Nachfolger" (successor) of the Bundesrat. One side result is that the Ständerat (betweenness 0.04) has more influence on the election of the successor than the Nationalrat (betweenness 0.03) - at least on the Web.
Here is also the content map of the German language blogs about the four main candidates Schwaller, Buman, Lüscher, and Burkhalter. The size of each square denotes the betwenness of a term.
The term cloud is nicely split into an FDP and a CVP side. What stands out is that Christian Lüscher is haunted by his lawyer colleague Poncet who is representing Gadaffi in his dispute with Switzerland. On the other hand it seems that the FDP has a slightly larger claim (higher betweenness) on the vacant seat than the CVP. Blocher, another politician from the right-wing SVP also comes out prominently as an influencer, together with FDP president Pelli. There is speculation about Bundesrat Merz stepping down soon also.
Again the disclaimer is that it is not the Swiss population who is electing the Bundesrat, but the 248 members of parliament, which of course makes it much harder to predict the outcome. Nevertheless, here first the general trend for the currently three official candidates, Christian Lüscher, Didier Burkhalter, and Urs Schwaller, and three other candidates based on the "electoral votes", i.e. Web Betweenness of the Swiss German bloggers for the last three days.
Christian Lüscher lost his lead, Urs Schwaller is the leader, Dominique de Buman is number two. This is based on the accumulated coolhunting in the German language blogosphere over the last week:
Weltwoche.ch, Bernerzeitung.ch, and Politreport.ch are the most influential Blogs - the kingmakers - to promote the candidates.
Doing a combined coolhunting for the German language Web and blogosphere and adding the French Swiss (by including tracking the prominence of Web sites talking about "conseil federal urs schwaller", etc.) gives a slightly different picture:
Now Dominque de Buman is the leader (betweenness 0.31), ahead of Urs Schwaller (betweenness 0.29). It does not look good for the two candidates from FDP, Lüscher and Burkhalter.
I also included the social Web networks for the queries "Nachfolge Bundesrat Couchepin Ständerat" und "Nachfolge Bundesrat Couchepin Nationalrat" to accomodate for the fact that Ständerat and Nationalrat (the Swiss National Assembly) will elect the "Nachfolger" (successor) of the Bundesrat. One side result is that the Ständerat (betweenness 0.04) has more influence on the election of the successor than the Nationalrat (betweenness 0.03) - at least on the Web.
Here is also the content map of the German language blogs about the four main candidates Schwaller, Buman, Lüscher, and Burkhalter. The size of each square denotes the betwenness of a term.
The term cloud is nicely split into an FDP and a CVP side. What stands out is that Christian Lüscher is haunted by his lawyer colleague Poncet who is representing Gadaffi in his dispute with Switzerland. On the other hand it seems that the FDP has a slightly larger claim (higher betweenness) on the vacant seat than the CVP. Blocher, another politician from the right-wing SVP also comes out prominently as an influencer, together with FDP president Pelli. There is speculation about Bundesrat Merz stepping down soon also.
Friday, September 04, 2009
Who will be the next Swiss Federal Councillor - appended
After I did my first automatic coolhunting yesterday, I got feedback that I had forgotten to include one of the main candidates, Christian Lüscher (FDP, Geneva) into my coolhunting. So I repeated the process for both the German and French speaking parts of Switzerland. Here are the results:
Web in French speaking Switzerland:
Blogs in French speaking Switzerland:
Web in German speaking Switzerland:
Blogs in German speaking Switzerland
To resume: The French speaking Swiss favor non-candidate Fulvio Pelli, both in long term recognition (Web) and prospects for tomorrow (Blog). For the German speaking Swiss, Christian Lüscher is the clear favorite, particularly on the blogs.
Looking at the social network on the Swiss German Web confirms the central position of Christian Lüscher:
So what are the main lessons: automatic coolhunting needs to be complemented by human coolhunters - thank you for pointing out my omission of Christian Lüscher. The automatic coolhunting system is only as good as its input.
Web in French speaking Switzerland:
Blogs in French speaking Switzerland:
Web in German speaking Switzerland:
Blogs in German speaking Switzerland
To resume: The French speaking Swiss favor non-candidate Fulvio Pelli, both in long term recognition (Web) and prospects for tomorrow (Blog). For the German speaking Swiss, Christian Lüscher is the clear favorite, particularly on the blogs.
Looking at the social network on the Swiss German Web confirms the central position of Christian Lüscher:
So what are the main lessons: automatic coolhunting needs to be complemented by human coolhunters - thank you for pointing out my omission of Christian Lüscher. The automatic coolhunting system is only as good as its input.
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