Three years ago, I had a chance conversation with Terrell Russell, a researcher at the University of North Carolina. That conversation ended up having a profound impact on my thinking. Terrell is doing his dissertation work on something he calls Contextual Authority Tagging. It’s a fancy term for a simple idea: What others say about [...]
Two important principles of good collaborative tool design are: Augment patterns of collaborative behavior Observe how people use your tools, and evolve them accordingly. These principles sound straightforward, but they are rarely practiced, and I’m always thrilled when I meet people who do practice them. I had the pleasure of meeting one such person at [...]
I’ve enjoyed many of Doug Engelbart‘s stories over the years, but my all-time favorite is about bike tricks. When he was a child, he and his brother used to challenge the other kids in the neighborhood to see who could do the most advanced tricks. According to Doug, there was always one trick that was [...]
One of Blue Oxen’s most important ideas is something we call, “The Squirm Test.” To provide some context for what it is and why it’s useful, I’d like to share a great story written by Paul Culmsee. In 2006, he had been hired to help a mid-sized company install a major SharePoint installation. He explains: [...]
Wikis only work in practice, not in theory. –Gardner Campbell The keynote I gave at Wikisym 2006 in Odense, Denmark. I talk about the essence of Wikis and how we can augment them in the future. (Video by Morten Blaabjerg.) Fourteen years ago today, Ward Cunningham launched the first Wiki, the Portland Pattern Repository (which [...]
A few years ago, Deborah Meehan, the marvelous Executive Director of the Leadership Learning Community (on whose board I serve), taught me a great icebreaker, which I’ve used again and again over the years. It’s a group counting exercise, and the goal is simple: Count to the number of people in the group. In other [...]
My mentor, Doug Engelbart, is famous for asking, “How can tools make people smarter?” I’ve seen him ask audiences that question over and over again over the years, and it always results in a rumble of approval and often standing ovations. I’m always both amused and troubled by this response. Why should we get so [...]
Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal‘s conservative columnist, observed something interesting and important about Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech last Tuesday. “A mysterious thing happened in that speech Tuesday night,” she wrote. “By the end of it Barack Obama had become president.” Given the state of our economic crisis, Noonan noted that the [...]
Last month, I had the pleasure of meeting with folks from the Global Fund for Women, whom I met through Angus Parker. Over the past 20 years, the Global Fund for Women has awarded over $58 million to more than 3,450 women’s groups in 166 countries focused on social justice. I was blown away by [...]
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