Sunday, February 13, 2011

The Tipping Point of Collaboration

It was summer 2009 when Google announced Google Wave as the "next big thing". Should it be useful for the (potential) users?

I remember vividly meeting with Alina Hsu in Harvard in 2009. We talked about Lean Thinking, System Dynamics. The major finding was, "An aggregator for all this interdisciplinary information is deeply needed. Is there one way or the other?" A few months later I got an invite to GoogleWave by Siggi Becker. The experiment could start.

We have used the tool for several sub-projects around LockSchuppen - quite successfully.

Then early 2010 the big earthquake in Haiti hit the news. Quickly the desaster made it clear that GoogleWave was helpful in order to work as an integrator of information flows. Nevertheless the service and active contribution by Google to its newest collaboration tool was lately cut down.

Egypt and its people raised the "Power of Pull" (thanks John Hagel & John Seely Brown) to reinitiate the platform to collectively create our future. (Note: one has to have a GoogleWave account to step in, searching for "Egypt" a seed will be found).

There are probably already hundreds of blog, website, aggregators of news/ info / support on the web. Let bring them together in a joint effort. This small seed could be helpful - just a beginning for a lovely flowbed of collective knowledge ;-)

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