The Web is changing the world (with Open Source organization principles)

Stumbled upon some things lately, now (on a national holiday that is) is the time to post it all. Let me begin with a disclosure of the books I brought from my late Kentish rambles, all four of them.

• We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity by Charles Leadbeater
• The Future of Management by Gary Hamel
• The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

I will probably post on the Future of Management and The Ten Faces of Innovation elsewhere, as from an Enterprise Collaboration point of view Charles Leadbeater is more interesting. Basically he explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, and exchange ideas and information. Sharing is why the web is such a potent platform for creativity and innovation. And yes, thus the web can be good for democracy, giving people a voice and the ability to organise themselves. So I recommend this video summary which I found via Ulrike Reinhardt:

Add to this this video of the PICNIC 08 conference in Amsterdam last week where he keynoted a talk on mass creativity and mass collaboration (again via Ulrike):

Well, he starts with a statement about collaboration:

“it not just applies to high tech, new media, and culture, but also to social challenges – like the environment. Collaborative action is not just about new things, but about very broad challenges. We’ll have to bring different people together”.

I take this as another indicator that there’s more to thinking about open source than organizing software projects. So check out The Open Source Model Is About Organization, Not Who Signs Your Paycheck on Techdirt or this podcast at IT Conversations (mp3) with Mitch Kapor, President of the Open Source Applications Foundation and chair of the Mozilla Foundation (“Open Source: The End is Not in Sight!“):

Open Source has some great virtues that deserve to be spread through all of society, not just the computing industry (Mitch).

and

What makes the open source model unique isn’t who (if anyone) signs the contributors’ paychecks. Rather, what matters is the way open source projects are organized internally (from the Techdirt article).

Well, open source organization principles deserve much more attention …