Don Nielson on Societal Innovation

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

The HyperScope crew attended SRI’s 60th Anniversary celebration at the Computer History Museum last night. The main event was a panel discussion moderated by Paul Saffo. Participating were SRI luminaries Doug Engelbart, Phil Green, Don Nielson, and Paul Cook.    (LHD)

Saffo closed the discussion with the question, “If you had a large sum of money to change the world, what would you do with it?” Don Nielson had a wonderful response. He said that he firmly believed that it was impossible to do top-down social innovation. Societal change occurs when good people do lots of interesting things, and some of those things just happen to meet certain societal needs.    (LHE)

Jeff Shults and I made this same question the central exercise of our “Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration” workshop last April. Curiously enough, all four teams came up with proposals that were about catalyzing bottoms-up innovation. Several of our participants came from foundations.    (LHF)

It’s good to see this philosophy starting to spread, but it’s much easier said than done. By definition, creating an emergent space implies uncertain outcomes. People have a very hard time grappling with that uncertainty.    (LHG)

Tomorrow, I fly to Baltimore, then Raleigh for two projects that are very much about emergence. One of them is Imergence (formerly 1Society), which I still haven’t talked much about yet. Trust me, I’m not hiding anything, I’ve just been really busy, but I hope to write more about it soon. It’s been a very satisfying experience so far, not just because of the great people involved, but because of the opportunity to shape the proposal with ideas that I’ve been formulating and refining since founding Blue Oxen Associates almost four years ago.    (LHH)

Why the French Hate Wikis

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

At WikiSym last August, Ward Cunningham showed some regional trends comparing Google searches for “wiki” and “blog.” Overall, searches for “blog” (in red) steadily outpace searches for “wiki” (in blue), although the rate of growth is about the same for both.    (LH4)

   (LH5)

Ward pointed out that the phenomenon is reversed in Germany:    (LH6)

   (LH7)

The same is true in Japan, except the difference is even more pronounced:    (LH8)

   (LH9)

At WikiWednesday this past week, Peter Thoeny said that he had shown similar trends for a recent Wiki talk, and that he also showed the trends in France:    (LHA)

   (LHB)

Whoa, Nellie! Apparently, the French don’t care much for Wikis. It was a shock for me to see this, as I know several stellar French members of the Wiki community and even more French-speaking members. Any thoughts as to why this might be the case?    (LHC)

Kirsten Jones on Perlcast

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Socialtext‘s Kirsten Jones talks about Socialtext Open and its REST API on this week’s Perlcast. It’s a good interview, and the last question reminded me of a funny exchange at WikiWednesday this past week:    (LH0)

Kirsten: PHP is for girls.    (LH1)

Evan Prodromou: Hey, Michele would object to that!    (LH2)

Kirsten: That’s because she’s a woman. PHP is for girls, Perl is for women.    (LH3)

Wikipedia Virgin No More

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Yesterday, Erik Moeller asked me to look at the Wikipedia entry on Intellipedia. Curious as to the timing of the request, I checked my feeds, and sure enough, a few articles on Intellipedia had cropped up.    (LGQ)

I figured the best people to review the accuracy of the article were those involved, so I passed Erik’s request along to them. However, in reviewing the article myself, I noticed that somebody had linked to my picture of the Intellipedia shovel, along with a short description. The description was slightly off, so I decided to fix it. In doing so, I lost my Wikipedia virginity.    (LGR)

If you want to be technical about it, I wasn’t a real Wikipedia virgin. I’ve vandalized the site anonymously on more than one occasion. That’s right, vandalized. It was a cool trick I picked up from Ross Mayfield as a way to demonstrate in front of a live audience that yes, anyone really can edit Wikipedia, and more importantly, that Wikipedia is self-healing. I don’t do it anymore, because the bots have gotten smarter, thus eliminating one of the main points of the demonstration.    (LGS)

The first time I told this story to Wikipedians was when I was introducing myself at the Hacking Days Wiki developers summit at Wikimania 2005. I said, “I’ve never edited Wikipedia, but I have vandalized it on more than one occasions.” I thought it was pretty funny, but no one laughed. It could have been that people had a hard time picking up on the irony in English, but I think people just didn’t think it was funny. So for all of you Wikipedians hearing this story for the first time, blame Ross.    (LGT)

I nearly edited Wikipedia for real in 2004, when I was finishing up my research on Open Source adoption in Brazil. In my original draft, I told some great stories about the rise of grassroot communities in Brazil, and to my horror, the editors cut them out. I decided to insert them into Wikipedia, but I never got around to it. Maybe I’ll revisit this, especially now that Lula is back in the news.    (LGU)

I’ve spoken at both Wikimanias, and I’ve talked to many folks about Wikipedia, so I’ve always felt a little guilty about not having actually edited it. Then at this year’s Wikimania, I learned that Ward Cunningham hasn’t edited it yet either. (It’s captured on this recording.) That helped, but now the guilt is gone for good.    (LGV)

How does it feel to have finally edited it? To be honest, it’s no different than editing any other Wiki. Personally, I find that really cool. It’s further confirmation that as big as Wikipedia has become, at its core, it’s still just a Wiki. It reminds of the original exchange between Jimbo Wales and Ward Cunningham on Ward’s Wiki about Wikipedia:    (LGW)

My question, to this esteemed Wiki community, is this: Do you think that a Wiki could successfully generate a useful encyclopedia? — Jimbo Wales    (LGX)

Yes, but in the end it wouldn’t be an encyclopedia. It would be a wiki. — Ward Cunningham    (LGY)

Of course, my assessment isn’t quite fair, either. I haven’t experienced a Wikipedia edit war first-hand or a negotiation over Neutral Point Of View. More things to look forward to!    (LGZ)

WikiWednesday and Web Mondays

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Two “days” coming up worth attending, for those of you in the Bay Area. Tomorrow is WikiWednesday at Socialtext in Palo Alto. Three good reasons to go:    (LGI)

Next Monday is the third WebMonday Silicon Valley, this time at Cooley Godward Kronish in Palo Alto. Sadly, I won’t be able to make this one, but I spoke at the last one, and I had an one excellent time.    (LGM)