I’m still reading Wikinomics on the way to and from work, I’ve had plenty of meetings this week so I have got through about 10 hours of the 12 hour audio book, being a bit of a free thinker a book like this always puts my mind into overdrive and I have been pandering about plenty of ideas based on the concept of wikinomics
The Internet is full of communities, walled garden communities that have grown up since it’s inception, yet there are still very few web sites that take down those walls and bring a truly global level of collaboration, nor are the communities in question that collaborative to begin with. I am a member of a number of such communities and many have the potential for something better
Imagine forum communities backing off core knowledge to wikis, editable by all members, continually growing and evolving, rather than landing on a forum and trying to find information that may of been posted years ago is now all in a single page, amended and improved by the types of power users that on forums spend day after day saying the same thing to people unwilling to search?
Or a professional group of peers who constantly whine about the state of play in their industry, the lack of skills and capabilities, forming a collaborative organisation using the tools freely available on the Internet, each member taking responsibility for what they excel at, and adding to the greater good through collaboration. Many current startups founded themselves on exactly those principles, with staff dispersed across the globe
The possibilities are quite endless, but I’m certain we have only just begun to scratch the surface of human potential in a collaborative, connected world.
