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TeamPark

Patrick Savalle, Wim Ho Wim Savalle, Patrick and and Arnd Brugman Arnd and and inspiration and innovation

platform and method and platform TeamPark

Sogeti innovation and inspiration

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TeamPark Platform and Method

2nd (revised) edition

Patrick Savalle Wim Hofland Arnd Brugman

2010 Sogeti Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 The Netherlands http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/

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2010 Sogeti

Sogeti Nederland B.V. DSE / Innovatie en Inspiratie Hoofdweg 204 3067 GJ Rotterdam production LINE UP boek en media bv, Groningen ISBN/EAN 978-90-75414-28-8 NUR 982 “The ant is a collectively intelligent and individually stupid animal; man is the opposite.” Karl von Frisch

Foreword

The birth of the TeamPark method occurred over a year ago. Since then, we have chalked up many workshops, conferences, presentations, discussions, projects and many, many comments from domestic and international organizations. All this accumulated experience has been as far as possible incorporated in this revised English edition. The method has been tried and tested, but it’s still surprisingly fresh, as demonstrated by reactions from the field that it continues to attract.

We are grateful for the assistance of all those who read the previous book and provided us with commentary. In particular, our thanks go out to Albert Hoitingh for his inspiration and notes on personas and scenarios.

A great deal of inspiration from reading about and, in particular, applying Team- Park.

Wim Hofland, Rotterdam, 1 March 2010

Foreword for version 1.0 The setting was a weekly meeting ofInnovatie & Inspiratie, the innovation consultants from Sogeti. The immediate cause: a request from a customer to organize an inspiration session about Web 2.0 and its impact on existing organizations. Only the first of five topics on this day. At I&I, we are innovative and live innovation. We do it and we are it. Our adrenaline level is far above average. Dis- cussions appear chaotic and tend to be contentious. This is nothing new for us, but takes bystanders some getting used to. “Is everything all right there?”

Within five minutes, TeamPark 0.1 was born TeamPark is a method for arriving at a successful social software solution for an enterprise. It turned out that all ingredients were available on the net in one form or another. All existing examples and techniques were incredibly popular, and all the secrets were plain for all to see. But no one “saw” it.

Foreword 7 Only the right question in the right context gave us the answer. So obvious, so ordinary that we quickly passed over it. Only a “hey wait a minute” alerted us at that moment to the fact that we had something wonderful close at hand.

This moment of insight was followed by innumerable brainstorming sessions, mind maps and inspirations. The idea became a method. Periods of services doubt, high-flown future expectations, but, most of all, reflection interchanged with each other. Ultimately, TeamPark 1.0 was the result. An inspiration!

Wim Hofland, Rotterdam, 15 May 2009

8 TeamPark Content Foreword 7 Foreword for version 1.0 7

1 The intelligent organization 13 More than just social 14 Promises, Promises 16 The tool kit 17

Part 1 Platform 19

2 Social platform 21 s.o.c.i.a.l. 23 Social design 25 The 1% rule 26 The ideal crowd 27 The not so ideal crowd 28

3 Stimulus rich 31 Activity 32 Presence 33 Identity 33 Relations 33 Groups 34 Reputation 34 Sharing / content 36 Conversation 36 Challenges 36 Social character 36 Weighting based on visibility 38 Analysis: the existing situation 39 Synthesis: the target situation 40

Content 9 4 Organic 43 Group formation 43 Social tagging and folksonomy 45 Absence of synchronous communications 48

5 Collaborative 51 General tools 52 Special tools 53

6 Intelligent 57 Be aware of the Matthew effect 58 Collaborative filtering 60 Reputation or karma 63

7 Adaptive 67 Evolution vs. Intelligent Design 67 Which processes? 69 Which employees? 70 Which resources? 70

8 Linked 73 rss and web services 74 Widgets 74 Social bookmarking 75

Part 2 Method 77

9 TeamPark 79 Awareness 80 Strategy 82 Implementation 84 Life 85

10 Awareness 89 Workshops, seminars and presentations 90 Presentations 90 Workshops 91 The “Do-it-together” workshop 91 The pr campaign 93 Roadmap 94 Recommendations for the ensuing process 95

10 TeamPark 11 Strategy 97 Formulating vision and core values 98 The Vision Game 98 Drawing up an initial social graph 99 Cultivating the social seeds 101 Human factors and identifying personas 102 Identifying candidate processes 107 Identifying candidate scenarios 108 Who has the latest version? 108 Package Selection, poc and Planning 110

12 Implementation 113 Selecting catalysts 115 Socializing (Stigmergizing) processes 117 Stigmergizing processes 117 Designing training programs 120 Train the trainers 120

13 Life 123 Best Practices 124 Training and instruction 125 Install parties 127 Workshops 128 Life hacking 129 Floor walking 130 Catalysis 131 Organize! 132 Bookmarking and Activity streaming 133 Satisfaction 134 Community Management 134 Moderation and content monitoring 135 Measurements 137

Final Word 143

Content 11

1The intelligent organization

Enterprise 2.0, dubbed “The Intelligent Organization” by us, is an organization with a living organic dimension that supplements the bureaucratic (formal) structure. The Intelligent Organization has the technical and conceptual possibilities that enable it to make large-scale and continuous use of special talent and disorganized contributions. We are here talking about such means of communications as wikis, social bookmarking, tag clouds, activity streams, forums and blogs, but especially also about a combination of all these media and their integration in a platform.

In contrast to employees that only participate in carefully top-down controlled processes according to job profiles and fixed workflows, Enterprise 2.0 employees must also be permitted to arrive at usable results in a more organic, bottom- up manner. They must be able to function in a stigmergic environment that allows them to work together independently of each other without direct communication, an environment in which direct control is unnecessary. All in all, this type of work setting evidently involves a new paradigm. “2.0” is in many respects the opposite pole of the “1.0” way in which companies are currently working.

In every company, it is possible to identify processes that do not thrive well in a bureaucratic structure.

The localization of people, content, and expertise, the utilization of special talents and the maintenance of usable innovation: many things run more smoothly when use is made of an organization’s social dimension. Many tasks can be performed better by organizing employees not just in teams but

The intelligent organization 13 also in communities. An organization that also makes use of wikis, forums, social networks, crowdsourcing, question and answer facilities and other “2.0” media has an advantage over its competitors.

This type of organization is what we are calling the “Intelligent Organiza- tion.”

!LWAYS

#OLLABORATE 3OCIAL +NOW 3AFE LEDGE

!CCESS 7ORKER &UNCTIONAL #OMMUNICATE

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The Intelligent Organization

More than just social The basis of the Intelligent Organization is the so-called heterarchy. What we propose is to view the company as a coin in which heads stands for the current functional side and tails for the new social side. Two sides of the same company.

An Intelligent Organization is more than just an organization with social life. It is a magnet for all types of new concepts and technologies, such as:

14 TeamPark • Social communications and collaboration (what we are talking about in this book) • Knowledge management • “The new way of working” or “Unified Collaboration and Communication,” a location dependent communication and collaboration solution specifically for the functional side of the organization. • New infrastructural solutions like Enterprise Service Bus (esb), Enterprise Service Hubs (esh) and a new more agile and scalable manner of application development. • New user interfaces such as portals and widget platforms • Mash-up technology that enables employees to combine existing and new functionality.

The combination is logical. Formal teams have limitations that impede their manner of working but that can be overcome by social communities. Access to as much knowledge as possible is important in undertaking this development. Normally speaking, knowledge is largely organized along the lines of the organizations vertical structure, as revealed by the organizational chart. Over the long term, this regimentation has restrictive effects on an organization as a whole, as information increasingly flows through what is now being diagrammed as a social graph. In addition, if we want to allow the crowd and communities to be organized in an organic way, they must not be obstructed by pre-defined patterns of information and knowledge. At the same time much unsanctioned knowledge quickly becomes mere noise. There must consequently be a mechanism to distinguish relevant knowledge from noise. Use can be made of “the wisdom of the crowd” for such purpose, as well as 2.0 tools as aggregation and collaborative filtering. Knowledge management in the traditional organization is therefore clearly different from the 2.0 organization, which is much “flatter.” The platform must therefore take this into account, by means of a site-wide wiki, for example, and “enterprise search.” But also by implementing a form of social tagging and rating; providing people and content with self-generated keywords and having the crowd select content on the basis of quality.

To obtain productive results, there must of course be collaboration. Character- istic of the social side is the ad hoc character of most work and the appropriate communicative and collaborative possibilities associated with it. There is a wide range of types and means of communication required in order to integrate every

The intelligent organization 15 thing in the community platform. The new way of working plays an important role in this. The traditional form of collaboration is however based on fixed work flows, direct / synchronous communications and central control that is unsuited to social or mass collaboration. On the social side, communication occurs through the environment. By leaving instructions, knowledge, signposts and other stimuli in the environment, other people can collaborate without mutual coordination and without the necessity for central control.

Promises, Promises What might be expected from the Intelligent Organization in contrast to the normal organization?

Flexibility: The self-organizing and self-controlling capacity would have certainly been useful to many organizations during the economic recession that started in 2008. The inertness of large organizations was and is visible everywhere. And that is paradoxical as it is precisely in large companies with a large crowd and extensive social networks that the benefits of the social dimension are entirely predictable and reliable. Social collaboration works better with large numbers.

Improved efficiency: We have been busy transforming our companies into well- oiled machines in which everything is perfectly coordinated. Increased optimization is hardly structurally possible. Still there remain numerous processes that do not perform well. Some processes were never intended to be executed in bureaucratic structures, and they can benefit from the socialization process. The new paradigm for collaboration also offers new possibilities for business process improvement, a systematic approach to the optimization of organizational processes.

Satisfaction: Employees want to have more power to determine how they organize their own lives. Fixed working hours and work locations make such self- determination difficult. Employees also want to perform a greater variety of work. Although this is difficult in an optimized bureaucracy, a social organization, renders it all so simple. Employees can immediately make use of their individual talents in their work, a form of self-involvement that leads to all types of improvements, as well as satisfaction and pride.

In sum, the advantages of the Intelligent Organization are as follows;

16 TeamPark A more effective and efficient organization due to greater flexibility, more effective communication and collaboration.

Better integration and use of people, resources, knowledge and expertise by self-organizing processes.

Satisfied employees that are able to work intheir own manner, in their time and at their location.

A collective consciousness with a sharper perception of society, trends, customers and fellow employees.

The tool kit For our own acquisition and project execution, we make use of an extensive set of materials. Many of our customers use this material in the same basic form, with slight “rebranding” of their own.

This set of tools is simply available to everyone under the same creative-commons license as this book. See the conditions at the beginning of this book.

As an additional condition, we asked everyone to contribute their own material to our slideshare group: http://www.slideshare.net/group/TeamPark

The basic material consists of:

• A general PowerPoint presentation entitled “TeamPark” • A presentation entitled “Social Platform Design” • The A3 poster “The Intelligent Organization” (the framework) • The A3 poster “The TeamPark Process” (services) • The A4 poster “Elevator Pitch” • Both sections of this book

More material about the Intelligent Organization and TeamPark is also available at http://TeamPark.org

The intelligent organization 17 Notes

18 TeamPark Part 1 platform

2 Social platform

An important instrument of an Intelligent Organization is the social platform: the environment in which employees leave signals like ants leave pheromones to coordinate their collective work. The hope and assumption is that others will follow in their footsteps and, as a result, meaningful collaboration will occur. What the environment of the nest is for ants, the social platform is for the Intel- ligent Organization. When considering social software, most people immediately think of Facebook and MySpace, while asking themselves what an organization would be able to do with this type of software. To begin with, such websites are not representative of the corporate social sites we envision. Additionally, these websites often lack what we have identified as an “aggregation mechanism,” so that collaboration exists without easily identifiable “results.” In this part, we will investigate the necessary ingredients for a successful corporate social platform.

To start with, there is of course the all-important definition: What is a social platform?

A social platform is a platform that stimulates and facilitates group interaction and that uses the wisdom of the crowd for purposeful means.

A platform is not in itself social but requires certain characteristics in order to attain this quality. In this part, we will go over these requirements in detail. Obvi- ously, a social environment, any social environment, must have a certain vitality.

Social platform 21 How many empty clubs, restaurants or bars have you entered because you thought you would experience a pleasant evening in them? The place to be, that is what the environment must certainly become in order to attain success. It must be attractive, pleasurable, inspiring, free and never threatening,

To take the analogy a step further, what do you look for in a social hot spot? “Signs of life” without a doubt! There is a reason that restaurants sit their customers at tables that are highly visible from outside. You want to see that other people are enjoying themselves inside.

Once opening the door, you of course want to know if the place is for you. What are these people doing here? What are they on about? Is this the place for me? What makes it “the talk of the town”?

It is no different in the case of the Intelligent Organization’s social platform. The first impression must be that there is a lot going on. Chance visitors must be able to see at a glance if the place is something for them. But there is still more required. Just as in the case of ants, it is not enough to be merely running around in circles but pathways have to be marked, mechanisms must exist to direct and facilitate emerging group performance, etc.

How should your social platform actually be constructed and which elements should it contain? Whatever we think and ultimately build, the underlying assumption must be that people will want to use the platform without being required to use it by their job description and without having to be sent notices all day long reminding them that something interesting has been added or updated. It must be a corporate hang out that allows people to feel that they belong together and are part of the gang. It is not difficult to conceive of what such a social hub might require, as the building blocks that give a website a social character are often obvious. A website such as the online yellow pages is not very social, nor is it meant to be. There is no way of discovering what is happening, who else is online, what other things are going on or where there might be opportunities for collaboration. A social environment has to contain all these types of signals. Once you can detect the presence of others, observe what they are doing, and follow the various activities, everything immediately becomes more social. Right away, the perception is entirely different, as the signals create an interactive climate. The actions or interactions that actually occur and the

22 TeamPark results generated by the various activities will then largely depend on where the designer of the environment has placed the emphasis. In this respect, the website design is crucial, both in terms of its layout and interaction, but even more so in terms of it social design: the way it stimulates interaction between the visitors.

All the signals that a social environment issues will encourage people to enter into conversations and to produce content to share with each other.

A conversation is quickly initiated by permitting users to comment on news items. Various types of conversations can be supported by various web elements, ranging from instant messaging to chat boxes, activity streams and forums.

If a very great deal of content is being added, it is important to weigh and filter it so that only the most popular, interesting, highly rated or current content is displayed. Such a practice avoids an incomprehensible flash flood of material and promotes quality.

Once a social website acquires a large number of participants, there is naturally a tendency to form sub-communities around specialized topics or interests. If groups are too large, an individual’s initiatives get lost in the void, resulting in a growing sense of anonymity. A good social website encourages the creation of ideally-sized groups.

Finally, there must be adequate mechanisms to enable proper utilization of the wisdom of the crowd. These are called aggregation mechanisms. Just allowing participation and collecting ugc (User Generated Content) is not enough because most of it will be of average quality from which valuable items need to be distinguished.

S.O.C.I.A.L. The important characteristics of a flourishing, living social platform can be appropriately specified using the acronym s.o.c.i.a.l. (what else could it be).

Social platform 23 This acronym can be used to test if a platform is suitable as a social platform. Each letter stands for a specific quality that such an environment must possess. They are:

• Stimulus rich – the platform must provide users with the appropriate stimuli and present them with signals in order to provoke interaction. • Organic – the platform must enable users to share and structure their data and activities according to their own conceptions. • Collaborative – the platform must possess the appropriate peer-2-peer facilities and other means of collaboration for the tasks to be performed; it must offer the right stigmergic mechanisms. • Intelligent – the platform must make it possible to distinguish quality from noise by means of aggregations, filters and weightings. • Adaptive – the platform must be adapted to its environment, its users and its processes (tasks) that have to support it; in other words, the environment must fit into the organizational structure. • Linked – the platform must be linked to relevant external environments and networks in the most seamless and unobtrusive manner possible.

These basic qualities will be further explained in the following chapters.

!CTIVITY 3 TIMULI #HALLENGE 0RESENCE 4HERIGHTMIXOFINTERACTIONSTIMULI ASOCIAL ³PERSONALITY´THATFITSYOURCOMPANIESREQUIREMENTS / RGANIC 4HEABILITYTOALLOWSELF ORGANIZATION.OFIXED STRUCTURES FREEGROUPING SOCIALTAGGINGETC #ONVERSATION OLLABORATIVE )DENTITY # 0EER TO PEER ASYNCHRONOUSANDSTIGMERGIC COLLABORATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONTOOLS NTELLIGENT ) 3MARTAGGREGATIONMECHANISMSANDCOLLABORATIVE FILTERSTOUSETHEWISDOMOFTHECROWD 3HARING 2ELATIONS DAPTED ! !DAPTEDTOTHECROWDYOUREMPLOYEESANDOR CUSTOMERS ANDTOTHEPROCESSESITNEEDSTOLEVERAGE , INKED 2EPUTATION 'ROUPS )NTEGRATEDWITHOUTSIDESOCIALPATFORMSANDOTHER CORPORATESYSTEMS.OSOCIALPLATFORMISANISLAND

s.o.c.i.a.l. as a key to evaluating social platforms

More specific information on this topic can be found in the slide-share presentation “Social Platform Design” (http://www.slideshare.net/group/TeamPark).

24 TeamPark Social design Crowds cannot be told what to do. Crowds cannot be controlled in a direct or centralized manner. Crowds gather on their own and individuals in such a crowd make their own localized decisions. Even though such gatherings may be channeled, this type of management works entirely differently from the employee control practiced by purely bureaucratic organizations from a centralized command center. A little prompting in the form of an inquiry into wishes by, for example, a moderator does not pose any problems, as it will certainly be acceptable to everyone. Its effectiveness is, however, minimal. Truly effective crowd management must be different; it must be more “organic.” Every crowd undergoes continuous evolution and can be subtly manipulated as a result. Just as evolution in nature, the evolution of crowds is not a process that is centrally controlled, but one that nevertheless follows a very clear pattern. The most important conditions for an internet community / crowd are imposed by the website design, the interaction as well as the social design. Social design is a new discipline that combines the already existing disciplines of graphic design and interaction.

• Graphic design is concerned with the layout of the website: its look. • Interaction design involves the interaction between the website and the user; its feel. • Social web design involves the interaction among users that the website (platform) initiates and maintains.

Social design1 is based on the psychology of crowds. It begins by setting up a platform with the appropriate features possessing the specified mix of characteristics and stimuli. Below, we will discuss how this works in detail. Once the platform exists, an equally important step follows: its forced evolution. Subtle adjustments in the navigation and functionality of a site or in the social concept behind it can drive and compel the evolution of the community. In principle, social design is a continuous process because the dynamics of the crowd changes in response.

The most obvious factors in this regard concern the choice of functionality and the placement of the various web elements on the pages. It goes without saying that the most striking elements will exercise the greatest influence. If a website generates too little discussion, the adjustment that first comes to mind concerns adding an appropriate web element (such as “last 10 reviews” or “most dis-

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_design

Social platform 25 cussed”) to increase the visibility of a discussion and reduce the thresholds inhibiting it. If a website generates too much uncontrolled discussion, consideration can be given to displaying comments in random order so that people can no longer respond to each other directly. For each undesired effect, there is often a way of devising a manner in which to redirect it. Conversely, desired effects and high-grade content, which we will call “quality”, must be stimulated. People who do their best must be visibly rewarded. It is in this way that a community can be managed and that, ultimately, the desired return is obtained.

Channeling a community’s direction of movement by stimulating the desired behavior and making undesired behavior unattractive is an ongoing process. Many social mechanisms are included on the social website and each mechanism is subject to influence. Many of the devices must match the degree to which the number of visitors and participants changes and hopefully grows. The effects dominant in a large group are different from those that dominate a relatively small group. The production and implementation of a social platform is therefore “only” the beginning. Do not be too eager about immediately aiming for quality; it is important that there is first sufficient quantity. A good inflow of content, sufficient activity and a large community is essential. But do not let things get too far out of hand. It is necessary to stay on top of events and to be a judicious moderator who can inform designers about the adjustments that need to be made. Such upgrading should furthermore be done in open dialogue with users. Clear reports should be provided in forums or weblogs about the types of changes that will be implemented and the reasons for them, without revealing too many technical details (any such revelation may later work to your disadvantage, as it may enable people to cheat, or “play the system”). Undoubtedly, people will complain, but do not be overly concerned about these complaints. Do not make it a democracy; you are providing information and not making queries.

In Web 2.0, it is normal that websites remain in a state of “perpetual beta.” There are no longer any great breakthroughs but continuous small developments.

The 1% rule Most members of an open, public community are more or less akin to parasites. They lurk in the background and consume what others produce. For every 100 million downloads from YouTube, there are roughly 65,000 uploads; a ratio of 1500:1. More than half of all Wikipedia articles are made by much less than

26 TeamPark one percent of users, and more than 70% of the articles by less than 2% of users. GeenStijl.nl once indicated that less than 2% of readers actually made comments. For larger communities, the rule of thumb is the 1% rule2: 1% of the users will actually contribute content to a social website, 10% will interact to contributions by, for example, making a comment and the remaining 89% will only consume what is offered in silence.

This is not bad or good; it is a statistic that must be taken into account when constructing the community and designing the website. In social news sites, articles can be voted on and the most popular ones placed on the first page. Consideration is given to the group that you are going to allow the greatest influence, a decision that can be crucial for the content on the front page and therefore also for the culture of the community. A company that has 5000 employees may be happy if there are an initial 50 that will regularly produce their own content. This figure will only rise if the community becomes part of the business culture. It can also be counted on that 1% will find a business environment more to their liking than a “free” internet environment, although a figure in the range of 5-10% may be achievable in this respect.

More participation can be expected on platforms that facilitate previously bureaucratic processes that were redesigned into stigmergic (social) equivalents, for which employees received training and new procedures. Later more on this.

The ideal crowd According to the book The Wisdom of Crowds,3 the best results can be obtained from a crowd (community) when:

• There are sufficiently varied opinions (and personalities) • There is sufficient independence when making choices (consider the Matthew effect, as discussed in one of the following chapters) • There is enough decentralization so that people can be specialized and can be prevailed upon by like-minded people to collaborate on their designs (recalling notions of organic group formation and the Dunbar number4,5)

2 http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html 3 http://books.google.nl/books?id=bA0c4aytd6gC 4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number 5 http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html

Social platform 27 • It is technically possible to arrive at collective decisions or to survey collective views (consider democratic ratings, reputation systems6 and a weighted first page7).

These are the features of social design that must be targeted using the right technology and organization of facilities, as they provide support for all the other results expected of the community.

The first feature can be realized by gathering the various departments in a company into a single social environment. This mass assembly will create the greatest possible variety of peoples with the widest possible divergence in educational levels, job levels, etc.

The second feature is largely a condition that must be fully guaranteed by the technology. The process of guaranteeing independence boils down to reducing, as much as possible, non-essential influence that impacts on decision-making, such as previously issued evaluations. For social designers it can be useful to look into “conformity research” such as that of Solomon Asch8 and Zimbardo.9

To a large extent, the third feature is also a condition to be fully guaranteed technically. It must be possible for the community to form its own sub-communities, and this is a question of having the appropriate software.

The final feature is especially important: this book is, for that matter, concerned with the special talents of the crowd. Talent is meaningless if there is no mechanism to display or report group choices and decisions. Aggregation pages and the appropriate weighting algorithms are two of the most important mechanisms.

The not so ideal crowd Conversely, there are also discernible problems that may arise when assembling the community. The Wisdom of Crowds includes the following in a list of possible problems10:

6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system 7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments 9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_prison_study 10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

28 TeamPark • Too homogeneous (inbreeding) • Too centralized • Too much herd behavior

These are also factors that can be manipulated by implementing the correct social design.

An excessively homogeneous group could be a difficult problem. One of the most obvious measures is to prevent the community from replicating the company’s organizational structure. By definition, departments have a certain amount of inbreeding. Allow production employees to collaborate with the innovation department. Differences in approach are advantageous.

“Centralized” means that knowledge is not easily accessible and groups remain too strongly self-contained in their own environment. This is also an easy problem to solve. The “weighted” general aggregation page that shows selected, mixed content from multiple or all groups provides an adequate solution.

A social platform is like an ecosystem. Not all communities are equally stable and optimal. Just as in all ecosystems, the risk of oscillations, plagues, bugs and disequilibrium is greatest when diversity and spread is small. The most stable communities are likely the largest and most diverse ones.The chance of a plague of locusts is greater in a desert than in a jungle. In unstable communities, small incidents can quickly get out of hand. Communities lacking diversity are also characterized by too little creativity and too much consensus.

Size and diversity are two factors that are never present right at the beginning of community formation, and must be continuously targeted. By ensuring diversity right at the start, the community can be given an advantageous launch. A much used trick for initiating discussion platforms is to allow a dissonant to clandestinely infiltrate the community and to express excessive dissent by being contrary to everything. This will work just fine until employees begin to see through it.

Social platform 29 Notes

30 TeamPark 3 Stimulus rich

Social software emits signals and supports such interaction as conversations, collaboration and knowledge-sharing. All possible signals and stimuli for interaction can be grouped into a handful of social factors, which then can be used to build and analyze the software. To begin with, these will be the factors that transform a website into a social website. Or they will convert a general environment into a social environment. In 2003, Matt Webb11,12 came out with a list of features that have served as a basis for our method. According to Matt, social software is characterized by the following factors: identity, presence, social relations, conversations, groups, reputation and sharing. Matt Webb was in turn inspired by Flickr-founder Stewart Butterfield.13 Flickr is one of the largest social websites in the world, and its founder’s opinions and ideas therefore carry some weight.

In social software, we distinguish the following nine social factors as interaction stimuli conveyed to the user through the concept, style and interaction design:

• Activity – What is happening now? • Presence – Who is currently available? • Identity – Who is it and to whom does it belong?

11 http://interconnected.org/home/2004/04/28/on_social_software 12 http://nform.ca/publications/social-software-building-block 13 http://www.sylloge.com/personal/2003_03_01_s.html#91273866

Stimulus rich 31 • Relations – With whom am I connected? • Groups – Can groups be formed? • Reputation or Karma – How is your contribution and therefore your member- ship appreciated? • Sharing – Is content or “something else” being shared? • Conversation – Do participants communicate with each other? • Challenges – Are there challenges or non-content related activities?

Not every factor will be constantly present on a social site to an equally percep- tible degree. One site may be more content-driven, while another places greater emphasis on relationships. We can use a radar diagram to visualize the various profiles, and make the social character of the software more evident.

!CTIVITY #HALLENGE 0RESENCE

#ONVERSATION )DENTITY

3HARING 2ELATIONS

2EPUTATION 'ROUPS

The radar chart of a platform’s degree of stimulation

This diagram awards each element with a visibility level of 0 to 3. The levels of these elements indicate the subjective presence of the element by means of a score ranging from unnoticeable (0) through noticeable (1) and very noticeable (2) to dominant (3).

Activity Activity provides visitors with information about what is currently happening on the website or what has been updated. An example is the box on YouTube indicating “Video’s being watched right now.” But there are other activity

32 TeamPark streams that may be monitored. Clearly visible activities are important elements in creating “Life” (displaying that there is something going on). This is sometimes referred to as showing “signs of life.” Activity is generally seen as one of the most important factors for creating a successful and growing community.

Presence Presence is the possibility of visitors viewing who is available and online, as well as the manner in which they can be contacted. It creates the sense of togetherness, but it is also important for the successful conduct of certain types of conversations. One example of discernible presence is the contact person list in msn. Another example is the availability of a “Chat now” function on a dating site, complete with profiles of other love seekers.

Identity Identity makes it possible for people to distinguish their contributions from those of others and to sufficiently personalize their own little corners of the community. A login name, an avatar, a personal channel on which to assemble all your contributions and, for example, a personalized “skin” for that channel. If people can build up their identities and reputations in a clear manner, they will view their contributions to the website as an investment and will look after both the website and this investment, while refusing to abandon either of them very quickly. Identity ensures power of discernment.

Relations Relations indicate how people or groups are related to each other in the system. Clear examples of this type of bonding are the friendships or business contacts indicated on LinkedIn or Facebook for example. There are also forms of relationship management that can be put to good use in monitoring the activities of friends. A clear difference can be made between explicit and implicit relationships. Explicit relationships are initiated by users themselves, such as in the case of the msn buddy list. Implicit relationships are detected by Social Network Analysis on the basis of characteristics, interests, and other properties that one user shares with others in the system. Examples of these types of relationships are the matches that a dating site finds based on a client’s preferences and personal data.

Stimulus rich 33 Groups Groups indicate the possibility of forming sub-communities. Groups and group formation offer users the chance to form groups on their own based on such things as shared interest. Social news sites also use this feature to enable multiple users to form a collective news channel. Group formation is clearly not to be understood as unilateral classification of individuals such as many people do on msn when they distinguish a private from a business contact (these are “relations”). Depending on the type of software and community, it is often necessary to subdi- vide a larger community into smaller ones. It is not possible or desirable to be friends with everyone or collaborate on a project with the entire world. The type of exclu- siveness criteria used to whittle the numbers down must be something that can be set by users themselves, both individually and as a group.

Reputation Reputation stands for the capacity of indicating the status, reliability, productivity or any other quality of a certain identity. Everyone can see who the top users of social news sites are, and top users often have greater influence during the procedure of voting on articles. Pure democracy is often a bad idea on the internet because it then becomes a dictatorship of the majority (“three wolves and a sheep vote on what will be on the menu that evening”). The majority is never the most creative or intelligent part of a community, mostly only the most docile and least exacting. Reputation is a way of not allotting everyone the same rights or 14 influence, and of protecting quality and authenticity. Reputation often emerges on its own because users comment on and vote for the contributions from a certain member. It is important to establish reputation on the basis of desired contributions. On a commercial site financed by advertising, it is clearly just the ratings that count. On a news sites, the number of comments or the evaluation are perhaps more important. There are various types of reputation systems, depending on the chosen quality criteria and desired output.

Various types of reputation systems

14 http://bokardo.com/archives/5-ways-to-improve-reputation-systems 34 TeamPark Internet giant Yahoo has undertaken a great deal of work on the conception and design of reputation systems. For social software developers, it is interesting to take a look at this work.15,16 The following illustration shows the various ways in which reputation can be determined and the challenges associated with each of them.

Various templates for constructing reputation systems, from Yahoo

Reputation, often also called “karma” following the example in particular of “first person shooter games”17 can be used and determined in various ways but, in nearly every case, it is intended to improve the quality of the community and its “wisdom.”

15 http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/parent.php?pattern=reputation 16 http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/pattern.php?pattern=competitive 17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter

Stimulus rich 35 Sharing / content Sharing is the practice of making content available to the rest of the group or community. Such content may comprise personal experiences, stories, advice, opinions of knowledge and many take the form of texts, photos or videos. For example, video clips are shared on YouTube, photos on Flickr, knowledge on a wiki and contacts on LinkedIn. The mutual sharing of information, knowledge or content is essential for social software. Web 2.0 now has many means of communication that are outstandingly well suited to facilitate this interactivity. A number of the above discussed components suitable for sharing are weblogs, wikis, auctions, media libraries, news aggregators and news dumps.

Conversation Conversation refers to the opportunity of exchanging information (communication) by means of discussions, chat and reactions. These conversations occur in very many different shapes and sizes. Conversations on msn are mostly one-to-one and, normally speaking, synchronous (wait for the answer). Conversa- tions by email are often one-to-many and nearly always asynchronous (the sender does not wait for the answer). Social software can facilitate conversations among the members of a community in various manners. The reaction mechanism on weblogs is also a means of conversation. The same holds true for a thread on a forum instant messaging (chat) and for instance a shout box.

Challenges Challenges refer to tests of skill. There are, in fact, always activities that do not directly service a “functional” purpose, especially on gaming platforms. They nevertheless contribute in many ways. by adding a fun-factor, for example. They are user “inducements,” such as the games found on msn that users can play with each other. All these non-content-related and non-relationship-related activities are encompassed by the category Challenges, and consist of activities that you can take on yourself as well as those that you pose to each other.

Social character A fitting social character is one of the most important conditions at the start of a social platform. This social character will have to be constantly adjusted;

36 TeamPark in other words, changes of direction, tone and composition of the community will mean that the platform will have to emit other stimuli. It has to grow along with the development of the communities themselves. The homepage of YouTube is, to some extent, regularly rearranged. YouTube is clearly searching for the best possible layout, as is Facebook. The administrators of these sties do not even precisely know what the sites should become, and they monitor the behavior of the community in order to gradually evolve toward the best possible layout and interaction. They are repeatedly carefully modifying the social design and accordingly keep a close eye on the effects that the changes have.

As described above in the discussion of the nine factors, each factor has its own possibilities for technical realization, which vary according the type of social environment. The more or less dominant presence of social factors determine the character of a social website. These factors can, in fact, be used to analyze a site, creating a type of personality sketch: a characterization of the website. The diagram below displays such analyses for some well-known social websites.

!CTIVITY #HALLENGE 0RESENCE

#ONVERSATION )DENTITY 9OU4UBE &LICKR ,INKED)N (YVES 3ECOND,IFE 3HARING 2ELATIONS 4WEAKERS

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The social character of various websites: degrees of stimulation

Most good social websites are continuously in development (such as in the case of the above-mentioned YouTube), so that the indicated characteristics might already be different. Nevertheless, the diagram typifies the character of each website. There are three main dominances that can be distinguished:

Stimulus rich 37 • Content dominant (YouTube) • Relation dominant (LinkedIn) • Activity dominant (Twitter)

Weighting based on visibility The visibility and conspicuousness of web components used to build a social platform determine the weighting and influence of these components within the total character. It is possible to distinguish the following levels of visibility:

• Brief / unnoticeable • Moderate / noticeable • Clear / very noticeable • Unmissable / dominant

Visibility results from a combination of various (subjective) factors. A web component flashing in bright red on the hot spot of the opening page clearly contrib- utes more to the character of the platform that a web component in small print and modest layout placed in the bottom-right corner.

The best location on screen is the top left. This is the location on which users first focus and is, consequently, the most eye-catching.18 If a component is located in the bottom left, it will have greater presence than an element in the bottom right (possibly only visible after scrolling). The component can also be absent from the website but still have a place in the platform. The location of the component in the portal is therefore important to indicate presence. The effect is used as a weighting factor concerning the social characteristics of the social component.

The figure on the next page presents an analysis of visitor viewing behavior. The redder the color of the location, the more frequently and longer visitors tend to gaze there. For advertisers, red areas are the locations most in demand.

18 http://www.marketingfacts.nl/berichten/20080609_eyetracking_het_verschil_in_kijkgedrag_ tussen_een_of_twee_kolommen/

38 TeamPark Eye-tracking maps that indicate where users look the most.

Analysis: the existing situation Many organizations already have their own intranet or extranet. These networks already often contain a nook set up for knowledge sharing or even maintain somewhat more informal items such as an auction site or cookbook. Often, these items were not designed for the purposes for which they are being used, or else they have been reconfigured by a group of enthusiasts. The environments can be seen as the first cautious steps towards a full-fledged social platform, and the users of these functionalities are the initial enthusiasts of the new environment. We would therefore like to know what attracts them to the activity, captivates them and binds them there.

The degree to which the social stimuli such as activity, presence, conversation, etc. are present in these existing environments can be quantified in terms of feel. After all, users experience things by feeling them! For every factor, an evaluation can be made concerning the degree of its presence. This character sketch of the current solution can be regarded as an analysis of the actual situation, providing

Stimulus rich 39 us with a foundation for a construction phase through which we then reach a detailed target situation.

Besides this relatively simple quantification of the technical design, we especially want to learn what the users feel about the existing situation and what part of the current solution they find lacking.

Synthesis: the target situation The desired character of a social platform can be discovered by inter- viewing a future group of users. To prevent users from feeling like children in a candy store and wanting the platform with everything that appears cool, they must be interviewed in a more subtle and indirect manner in order to disclose their real needs and preferences. Instead of asking users questions to which we very likely will receive answers in the affirmative (e.g. “Do you want your own blog?” “Do you want to be able to upload videos and images?” “Would you like to have the latest news every day?”), questions might better be formulated in the form of alternatives (e.g. “Blogs or sharing photos?” “Wikipedia or eBay?” “Reading or writing?” “Dis- cussion or blogging?”). In this way, the potential user is forced to consider the functionalities and to make choices. This indirectly probes the desired features and enables the expected composition of the platform to be itemized. Because not all wishes come to the surface in such a set-up, it is prudent also to conduct a number of in-depth interviews with users. They are then able to relate, in their own words, what they currently find lacking and what they would like to see in the platform.

Besides the inventory of user wishes, the expectations of the employer can be enumerated in this phase. This occurs by entering into an open discussion in which the results of the analysis and the inventory taking are subject to review. After all, the platform begins to take shape by using an initial sketch of possibly appropriate components in order to give it a face. This rough sketch provides proper insight into the possibilities, ensures a solid commitment and creates a nice moment for probing expectations.

40 TeamPark Notes

Stimulus rich 41

4 Organic

There are so many communities, so many wishes, interests and talents, it quickly becomes impossible to make a prior assessment of the structures into which the community or platform should be organized. Such an endeavor should therefore not be attempted. The key terms involved here are “organic” and “self- organizing.” The environment must have the possibility to allow the community to determine its own direction and structures. Only a minimum of structure is predefined and pre-established.

The composition of groups, layout, compartmentalization and especially structure of the content must be able to be determined by the members themselves.

Group formation A good platform permits people to start their own groups and communities, which others may join or leave at their own discretion. Collaboration must be self-organizing and self-scaling. This serves various purposes. Instead of people being rigidly allocated to a team or task, people can find the tasks or communities to which they may make meaningful contributions on the platform for themselves. This is organization that occurs bottom-up instead of top-down, by allowing wishes and talents to match needs.

Organic 43 It also turns out that there is something in communities akin to an ideal group size.19 Intuitively, many people know that if a group is too large, it explodes and disintegrates into smaller ones. Anthropology demonstrates that the maximum size for more “intimate” social groups is about 150, which has been identified as Dunbar’s number. People appear only to be able to maintain social relationships with 150 friends. The social gaming world reveals that a maximum of 60 participants exists for intensive collaboration in collectives known as “guilds.” For each type of community, task and environment, there is probably a certain ideal group size. The sense of belonging in the following anecdotal example only begins to exist when a size of 5–8 individuals is reached, after which this feeling, in a sense, sags before recovering its optimum level at around 50 members. To ensure that each group can find its own balance and ideal size, the platform must be organic. People must be able to find groups for themselves and join in with them. Or to remove themselves from them again.

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Groups find, in fact, an ideal size depending on task or type

Besides the groups formed by participants themselves, it is also very conceivable that the system automatically recognizes and facilitates groups based on an analysis of the relationships among participants. Such matchmaking techniques involve the identification of various points in common. If participants are able to establish explicit relationships with others, there are often clusters of social connections to be recognized. If use is made of social tagging, which we will

19 http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html

44 TeamPark discuss below, participants can for example be groups based on matching interests. Social network analysis is a tool for use in this respect.20,21 Implicit group- ing can bring people together who would otherwise never have found each other. There are many metrics available for this purpose, such as “betweenness,” “close- ness,” “centrality,” “cohesion,” etc. The most evident application is the identification of Networks of Practice,22,23 the organic “teams” of a community.

Social tagging and folksonomy There is a big difference between a centrally managed and top-down enforced labeling of content and a self-ordering classification system administered bottom up. Fixed top-down structures mostly consist of sets of categories arranged in so-called taxonomies (an example is the animal kingdom). Fixed structures are never optimal, nor are they appropriate for all data. They must therefore be avoided as the most dominant structure on a social platform. The tendency to reiterate the organizational vertical structure on the platform must certainly be suppressed.

On a social weblog or a social news site, visitors can add their own articles (or content in general). A categorical structure is one of the greatest impediments to such activity, posing an enormous obstacle on almost every site. Evidently, someone had the absurd idea that a classification can be devised ahead of time, one in which everything can always be slotted. This is certainly ambitious but usually not very smart. Classification in general is a problem for which a good, unam- biguous solution can never be found. Biologists, mathematicians and philosophers have known this for centuries. The article that the user wishes to post will almost never fit into only one of the categories, and almost never precisely in categories that are preconceived. The fixed structure obstructs evolution of the crowd. In most cases, it is better to choose a system known as “social tagging,” which results in what may be identified as afolksonomy ,24 in contrast to a taxonomy.25 A good synonym for tag is “keyword.” Every user can attach keywords to every article,

20 http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html 21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network 22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice 23 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_of_practice 24 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy 25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy

Organic 45 and the system allows various possibilities of performing keyword searches of articles or to link them by means of recommendations, for example.

Sites that support this self-organizing system of classification are frequently rec- 26 ognizable by the somewhat untidy but very informative “tag clouds.” A tag cloud is a visual representation of the popularity of the tags or keywords, as frequently occurring keywords are given greater representation. The tag cloud reveals a great deal of information at a glance.

Advantages of the use of tags as an ordering mechanism are:

• Tags represent the wisdom of the crowd. • Tags need not be added by a special editorial staff. • Tags form an organic structure that directly reflects the actual semantic structure of the data.

Tags automatically create an order and, as is proper to complex self-organizing systems, the distribution of tags follows the Power Law, as opposed to randomly formed data-sets which follow the “Gaussian” distribution (see first part of the book). The order is self-generated due to the fact that a user has linked certain tags to the same “thing,” which implies a certain semantic connection between the tags.

A few tags occur very frequently, but most of them very seldom

26 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud

46 TeamPark Tags can be analyzed and visualized in various manners. Analysis can take place by means of mathematical graph theory and/or statistics. The environment, the platform, must give rise to the one that is the most usable for the purpose at hand. Two frequently used visualizations are the tag cloud and the tag graph.

The following tag cloud shows countries in relation to their number of inhabitants.

A tag could of countries weight by number of inhabitants

A comparable tag cloud can be constructed on the basis of gross national product, land area or any other statistic.

Organic 47 Below is a more mathematical representation of a folksonomy:

The visualization of tags in a graph (figure from: http://www.metablake.com/2006/01/ visualizing-folksonomies-using-machine.html)

Absence of synchronous communications Perhaps the most important factor involved in an organic structure is the dominance of indirect broadcast communications. The reasoning is of an inverted nature; the machine model is based on direct synchronous communications. In this format, the sender explicitly waits for an answer from a designated recipient. This

48 TeamPark sort of communications is, in principle, unwanted on a social platform because it enforces fixed structures and dependencies. The collaboration on a social platform must be based on the assumption that the initiator of an action does not know by whom, when or from where the initiated action will receive follow-up. This is the basis for free mass collaboration. It is an opportunistic way of working.

Examples of synchronous communications and means of communications are:

• A telephone conversation • A direct dialogue • Collaboration within a fixed workflow

Sometimes, certain means of communication are still usable on social platforms for various types of communications, but it should be noted that the following communication media are, in principle, synchronous:

• sms • msn / im • Email

Admittedly, these three media can also be used in an asynchronous manner, which is to say that the sender can organize his or her work so that it can continue without awaiting an answer from recipients.

Typical asynchronous communications and means of communications are:

• The blog • The Wiki • The forum • The bulletin board • The revision control system

In principle, the lack of specifically addressed recipients is the most important indicator of “social communications.”

Organic 49 Notes

50 TeamPark 5 Collaborative

A social platform must be equipped with the proper stigmergic collaboration tools, and these must not just be given lip service. For years, it has been said that “Enterprise 2.0” was an organization that worked with blogs, forums and wikis, while practice was demonstrating that work was never actually performed using these tools. Every organization has other processes, which posed their own specific requirements on the type of collaboration tools that had to be employed. The aim of the platform and that of the social side is not to introduce new tasks but to constantly improve them by linking them to smarter processes, such as stigmergic (social) processes instead of bureaucratic (functional).

The current organization has certain processes that cannot be performed efficiently using functional forms of collaboration, regardless whether or not they are currently organized like this or not. They can be identified as the first processes that must be socialized (actually the correct term is “stigmertized”) in order to obtain optimum performance. The tools with which this must be done must match the nature of the processes. A wiki will not help to find people and expertise faster, just as a forum will not contribute much to the safeguarding and disclosure of knowledge. The entire array of “2.0” or stigmergic collaboration and communication tools comprises several shades and hues, and the correct combination of them is necessary for the success of the platform in terms of the task for which they are employed.

Collaborative 51 The collaborative capacity of a platform reflects the degree to which the choice of tools matches the specific tasks and collaboration requirements of an organization.

General tools The collaboration tools for the more general social platforms have already been discussed in “From Crowd to Community”. In most cases, a standard social platform consists of a social weblog, a forum, wikis and, if applicable, some items related to an activity stream.

Each one of these tools serves another communication/collaboration purpose. The tools are universal enough to be used for several tasks, but they can be roughly summarized as follows, and this is not rocket science:

• Weblog A weblog can be used to inform and express opinions. It is a “broadcast.” In general, it provides support for more goal-oriented tools. In effect, there is no collaboration on a weblog other than the commenting on opinions and news. No products result. • Forum A forum is a vehicle for conducting discussions, sounding out and shaping general opinion, answering questions, providing advice, etc. It is a public means of debate. In general, it provides support for more goal-oriented tools. There are also no products that result in this case. • Wiki A wiki is entirely well suited to the storage of collective knowledge. A wiki can be used by a large group of people to collectively update and maintain a large quantity of documents. More recent wikis are also suitable for use as collaborative documents and could, on their own, form the basis for the Intelligent Organization. At every location where people work together on a document, a wiki can be employed in order to save people from having to send each other the latest version. Not all brands of wikis are technically appropriate for this use. In contrast to the weblog and the forum, the wiki is “product-driven.” In this case, the product is the “living” document that may be collectively delivered.

52 TeamPark In most companies involved in knowledge work, documents constitute the greatest part of their production. • Social bookmarking Social bookmarking can be used to filter news and other messages on the internet. The mechanism of the wisdom of the crowd can ensure that the result is a continuously up-to-date overview of relevant news. This type of information can be used for many various purposes. The marketing department may find it interesting as a means of keeping in touch with the “consumer.” The sales department can similarly stay on top of trends among customers and create opportunities as a result. Technicians can keep up-to-date with the latest developments, etc. It is a pure means of sharing knowledge. • Activity stream An activity stream is entirely well-suited for initiating contact between small islands in companies and facilitating cross-fertilization. Because people are constantly up to date with each other’s activities, new collaborations arise on their own.

Most platforms will offer these tools as the basic elements of a “general tool kit.”

Special tools Besides the above-indicated general tools, there have also been tools invented for the specific tasks and processes that are necessary for any given organization. Many general processes can be designed around existing general tools, such as the wiki. The wiki is a document in which several can collaborate at the same time. Other processes require a specific tool with the appropriate built-in stigmergic characteristics. The manner in which such tools are required to work, the types of signals and content that users therefore deposit in the environment and the ways in which the accumulation of these signals leads to a fulfilled task are all subject to the redesign process that will be described later on.

For an example of a more specific tool, an examination can be made of an environment in which open-source software is being developed, such as the sublime Sourceforge platform. The basis of the platform is formed by a few standard components, such as a forum, a wiki, a blog, rating mechanism, comments, activity stream; the “whole works” constituting a completely social set-up. It is one

Collaborative 53 of the finest social platforms in existence. Entirely specific, customized facilities27 for the collective development of software have been incorporated. The platform has tools for version control, bug tracking, release management, download management, etc. It is a fully-equipped software workshop in which developers from around the world can produce software together.

It is entirely conceivable that a stigmergic collaboration platform may be built to fit every type and class of production in an organization: a tool for requesting, processing and delivery of local government “products,” such as fishing licenses, building permits and complaint handling; a platform for open-source research; a platform for innovation. Anything seems and is possible. In addition to the basic set of tools, each of these platforms will have other tools for specific processes involved in the purpose at hand. Stigmergic collaboration tools customized for the organization.

27 http://sourceforge.net/register-project/features.php

54 TeamPark Notes

Collaborative 55

6 Intelligent

A community potentially contains a great deal of talent that can be used to improve operational management, for example. Although never intended for commercial use or for unlocking collective intelligence, a well-known platform that clearly possesses all these qualities is MySpace. The community of MySpace is enormous, as is its vitality. But something essential is lacking: nothing important “results.” There is no purposeful goal. No meaningful result. The platform is consequently diffuse and clearly demonstrates that just having fertile ground is not enough.

Perhaps the most important ingredient of a “commercial” social platform is the aggregation mechanism. There must be a way to “tap” into the wisdom of the crowd. The community must have the ability to converge on a result, and this may be accomplished by implementing the appropriate aggregation mechanism. No such mechanism is available on MySpace, and it is perhaps for this reason that it is not much more than a place to hang out.

The fact that a great deal of ugc (user-generated content) is generated, for example, in the form of high-grade wikis, displays in itself the presence of talent. However, this talent has no immediate purpose. Generating knowledge does not necessarily result in a solution, improvement or innovation. Knowledge in itself will not improve operational management,; such improvement requires another mechanism.

Intelligent 57 On a social news site where users work together to collect news and vote on the best news items, this mechanism is the front page of the website, where only the best articles are displayed. The same holds true for a website such as Dell’s Idea storm. Users can make suggestions for improvement on which other users can vote. The best proposals then appear on the front page and are given serious consideration by Dell. There are innumerable ways to evaluate the quality of content, but they are also all dependent on the definition of “quality” being applied. These examples simply involve a democratic vote. Such simple determi- nations of an average rating may be easily enhanced by, for example, not weighting every vote the same. The weight of a vote may be made dependent on the “karma” of the voter. Valued users then have more influence on the vote than others do. Furthermore, quality may be assessed in different ways and based on several factors. In any case, these types of calculations must be guided by the desired quality of the community and the outcomes that are to be stimulated. Such “quality calculations,” which may occur at several locations in a large system, come under the heading of “collaborative filtering.”28 The aim of such filtering on a Web 2.0 platform is, in most cases, to assemble the most valuable/useful contributions from the mass of a community’s input.

Be aware of the Matthew effect Crowds and communities have a strange effect on their members. Not only is a crowd “more” than the sum of its individuals, the crowd, as a whole, also has a feedback loop to its parts. Sociology has noted the existence of something called “cumulative advantage.” This is commonly known as “the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer” and more officially as the Matthew effect29: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” People always have the tendency to attach themselves to the largest, best or most well-known 30 group, person or opinion: in this way, it resembles the bandwagon effect.

On such social news sites as digg, this potential has a great influence on the voting behavior of visitors. People tend to vote on articles that already have the most votes. digg is a social news site where the crowd can vote on the news

28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering 29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect 30 http://blog.futurelab.net/2007/04/cumulative_advantage_versus_th.html

58 TeamPark items that appear on the front page. The quality of the news leaves something to be desired and the monotony of the topics is sometimes intolerable. It is never too long before the umpteenth iPhone or iPad news report is once again at the top of the list. In part, this is the result of irrational factors (the power of stupid people in large groups), but a significant element is perhaps related to the design of the website.31

Since the popularity of articles is visible before voting, there is a strong tendency in the crowd as a whole to make already popular articles even more popular with likely negative consequences for the general quality and diversity of the content on the website. A similar effect is discernible on any site where “top rated” or “most popular” lists are displayed; the items mentioned on these lists are looked at or watched with disproportionately greater frequency. People undoubtedly feel more secure in the knowledge of belonging to the largest group. Weblogs such as the Dutch Geenstijl make grateful use of this behavior; they bind together an extremely large group by dissing collectively smaller and less able groups. Easy, effective but not resulting in anything of quality.

Actually, the “cumulative advantage” involves nothing more than putting Boids rules into effect. We already discussed this point in “From Crowd to Community”. Boids is a simulation of the flocking behavior of birds, insect en fish. A Boid is programmed to always follow the direction of its nearest neighbors and to always shift to the position of these neighbors. Or at least remain close by, not too far off. If we come to know that the members of a group always want to move in the same direction as other members, we can then take it into account by, for example, disguising the direction of movement. In the case of a social news site such as digg, you could redesign the mechanism so that you will be able to analyze the popularity of an article only after your vote has been cast. Such a measure will make the vote much more independent, and will improve quality (but likely also reduce quantity). It is probably no coincidence that del.icio.us, another great social bookmark site, has a much higher diversity of content and an independent voting mechanism as well. The site has, at the same time, fewer visitors. Unfortunately quality and quantity are often mutually exclusive.

31 http://mashable.com/2007/04/15/is-digg-the-result-of-cumulative-advantage/

Intelligent 59 Collaborative filtering If a social platform has to create a feeling of togetherness, it is then desirable to have a front page made by the group itself: a page through which all content and all activity passes irrespective of the manner in which it is made or the part of the community to which it is relevant.

When a great deal of content is produced (forum posts, videos, photos, slide shows, wiki entries, auction advertisements), it however provides an undesired torrent of information on the front page. New content then flashes by so quickly that no-one gets anything out of it. Furthermore, not everything is suitable for the front page. This page is particularly well-suited to be a continuous display for only the best, most attractive, most inspirational items posted at any given moment. The appearance of an article on the front page is then its own reward. However, editing on a social website is blasphemous. Therefore what should we do?

The solution is to allow the community itself to determine what is good and what is not. This can occur in various ways. Nearly, every social site makes it possible to rate articles, YouTube being a good example. This rating can be used to select the currently top rated articles for inclusion on the front page. If the rating involves the time frame of the article’s front-paging, the article will naturally lose its popularity and disappear from the front page at some point. This mechanism, known as collaborative filtering32 is exceptionally well-suited for selecting the best content without explicit editing. The mechanism is even extremely democratic.

Besides explicit or active rating, there are also implicit or passive factors that might assist in the selection. In fact, all the factors that might make content desirable must be given consideration. Collaborative filtering generally exists in two versions: active and passive. Allowing users to vote can be classified as an active variant, in which case a great deal of usable information is overlooked. To prevent such neglect, consideration can also be given to viewer ratings, the number of reviews, perhaps even a type of automatically measurable quality of the content. This is called passive filtering. Regardless of the variant, the algorithm used has a large influence on the evolution of the community and the quality of its output.

32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering

60 TeamPark nujij.nl, the social news site of the Dutch nu/ Ilse media organization, determines the popularity of articles based on votes alone and gives each vote equal weighting. Viewer ratings for an article and the number of reviews that it receives are not included in the calculation. This means that a large part of the community does not have any influence on the content of the community. Ifnu jij.nl were to include such factors, the chance is great that a cultural transformation would be discernible. By culture, we are here referring to such factors as the tone in which the average discussion is conducted, the type of news that is posted, as well as the degree of involvement and interaction.

A potentially large problem in so-called democratic (or actively filtered) systems is misuse. Social news site digg is so large that front-page posting is financially attractive for the referred site (advertising income). At a certain moment, word began to go around that top posters had organized themselves and were being paid for voting articles to the front page. The transparency and predictability of the algorithm being used, a superficial understanding of basic social mechanisms and some assistance from other top posters, makes it possible to systematically 33 “game” the system (also known as “pay for play”). digg took action but apparently without much success. It is also very easy to have news items appear on the front page through the mere collaboration of a small group of members early in the lifecycle of an article. Members of Dutch Zapruder Inc. website were able to take nujij site hostage for weeks until the authors of the “truth” site told their fans to settle down. The solution that nujij programmed into their system afterwards, was entirely asocial; it became possible to register secret dissenting votes and, since then, strange things have been occurring in the system. Likely, an editorial board is pressing the buttons to suit themselves. A good reputation system and a clever algorithm can provide an effective solution for this problem.

At Zaplog.nl, our own “social experiment” that grew out to be one of the larger social news sites in the Dutch language and even won “The Dutch Bloggie,” popularity is therefore partly calculated by the system. The underlying basis for this is the so-called 1% rule for social media. The system uses different statistics such as number of votes, number or different people making comments, number of comments, number of inbound referrers, number of views to calculate popularity. The algorithm that calculates popularity gives these properties different

33 http://bokardo.com/archives/diggs-design-dilemma-redux/

Intelligent 61 weightings, the 1% properties receiving much greater weight. The weighting is continuously updated and standardized for the last 1000 articles. ZapLog.nl uses “the reciprocal of the ratios of factors” as weighting for the popularity of an article so that each type of user gets a fair shake. In this way, a page view has much less weight in the algorithm than a vote but the anonymous lurker still has some influence on the system The number of votes on the popularity of articles is not noticeably visible, in order to avoid the Matthew effect. Because Zaplog. nl wishes to post articles written by the contributors themselves, articles under copyright (an indication of original content) are given preference, as are articles with an image and a certain minimum length. All attributes regarded as desirable are encouraged. Originally, experiments were conducted on the quality of an article’s content. Several algorithms exist that, based on statistics involving word lengths and diversity, can say something about the quality of an article, translated, for example, into a number such as “year of education.” However, such calculations have proven undesirable because their algorithms understand nothing of poetic or creative use of language.

The most important consideration in conceptualizing weighting algorithms is the desired quality. What articles, what content, what output is desired? The most desirable output should, of course, have the greatest chance of a front page position, assuming that such positioning is a good stimulus for authors. At Zaplog. nl, it is possible to post both original articles and many simpler link dumps. Since an effort is made to display as much original content as possible, articles written by contributors are given preferential treatment in several ways. In posting, an author must indicate the copyright that the article has: none (for quotations and 34 link dumps), creative commons shared) or all-rights reserved. Exclusive content has an easier and faster route to the front page and may remain there longer. To provide extra stimulation, original articles are posted with a short introduction, while link dumps appear only as a title. Users have a greater tendency to click on intros than to click on “naked” links. Articles accompanied by pictures also receive somewhat greater preference, as do articles of substantial length. The entire layout design, social design and interaction design are intended to stimulate the posting of original news and opinion articles, and the proof that this policy works was confirmed by the award of a Dutch Bloggie for best Dutch weblog in the news and politics category.35 The largest portion of the content

34 http://creativecommons.org/ 35 http://zaplog.nl/zaplog/article/winnaars_dutch_bloggies

62 TeamPark now consists of original work, and the site has grown into the second largest social news site in the Netherlands. The algorithm and the social design of the website are constantly being revised. It has adopted a social design that serves as a sort of public demonstration, in part because ZalpLog.nl is used to testing and developing many of our theories.

Reputation or karma The importance of the right aggregation mechanism for a social website has already been mentioned above. Just causing large quantities of ugc (user- generated content) to be created is not enough; neither is just initiating a great deal of activity. Making many friends, watching a lot of videos, do not lead to any results, except in the case of websites that must have page views and user numbers to generate advertising revenue. A social platform that actually wants to use talent to devise better business operations has to involve more. There must consequently be a means to calculate/generate/demonstrate results. The above-described front page is one such technique. As a consequence, “results” not only appear, but the practice also ensures that everyone remains in touch with the entire community.

Another mechanism, often used in combination with others, is “reputation.” Every identity (in most cases, of course, just a normal user) can be associated with a number indicating the identity’s weight in the community. This number can be used to stimulate quality in many ways.36 The most simple such mechanism is a ranking, which may then produce a “User of the Week.”

Reputation systems must be used with restraint, however. Each user is, in principle, equally valuable to the community because he or she may also, at some time, throw his or her unique talent into the battle. Even troublemakers and trolls have their function.37 An unruly person always is very successful in stifling discussion and, in many start-up websites, editors often take this role on themselves. At the same time, some users are just more active and more successful than others, and a signal provides the appropriate reward. It constitutes an incentive. The reputation system must, however, never represent a barrier to new, beginning or, up to then, less valuable users.

36 http://www.moneysmith.com/2008/07/28/why-does-social-media-need-karma-ratings/ 37 http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(internet)

Intelligent 63 A reputation system can also be usable to the community in combating misuse. Especially in systems in which content and activities can be voted on, or in which ratings can be issued, it is undesirable that everyone who has just become a member should be able to immediately strongly make a strong impression on the site. In this case, this type of right must first be earned.

At the Dutch ZapLog, karma is calculated on the basis of an evaluation that the system makes of a user’s contributions, which is furthermore determined on the basis of such weighted factors as the number of interactions (views, comments, links and ratings), the number of different users who have interacted, and the average rating. A user is therefore more valuable if the community evaluates his or her contributions as valuable. As a result, both quality and quantity become important.

On your social platform, an examination must be made to determine the qualities of each group that should be stimulated and to discover if a different karma system must be established for each group. Do not be afraid to regularly change these calculations as the community grows, however. In a small community, an effort must first be made to obtain quantity; in somewhat larger groups, greater emphasis can be placed on quality. Certainly communicate the changes and do not make any exceptions for certain users. At the same time, such transparency must occur without revealing the specific details of the calculation in order to prevent cheating.

Reputation can also be helpful in establishing the specific expertise available in the different groups or in finding expertise regarding a particular matter. Used in combination with social tagging and social network analysis, it becomes easy to undertake a few keyword searches to establish the source of the most valuable content associated with these words, as well as the groups and individuals behind it. The form of analysis by means of which this occurs is called social network analysis and typically results in the previously mentioned “communities of practice” (groups of people who have implicit relations with each other on the basis of earned reputation and demonstrated interests).

64 TeamPark Notes

Intelligent 65

7 Adaptive

Where to begin? A complete organization provided with a living social side must go through an entire sequence of steps in order to emerge. With Team- Park, we envision a development in four phases: awareness, strategy, implementation and vitalization. An important ingredient in the strategy phase concerns the determination of the scale and degree in which the organization has to establish processes to “socialize” itself (equivalent to the term “democratize” used in literature). It goes without saying that every type of organization requires a different platform, depending primarily on the processes that must be facilitated. But how do we determine the types of communications and the manners of collaboration that may be successful, and the department that first must test the new way of working together?

There are various theories, but we are ultimately interested in a process that provides the best possible results at the lowest possible cost and within the least amount of lead time. In our view, there are two possibilities for doing this, and all other variants are derived from these two.

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design In general, there are two strategies for achieving an “adapted social platform”: evolution and intelligent design. Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages. The choice between them depends on the specific situation and, in particular, the size of the company. In very large companies, evolution is advantageous at many points. Ultimately, the chance is then the greatest in such large

Adaptive 67 organizations that the most extensively adapted platform can be created without running through an enormously expensive procedure.

Given that practice can best determine the processes requiring an improved social and given that training and intensively counseling employees are not only very expensive but always occur under the risky assumption that we know in advance what the final result has to be, it may prove much wiser to adopt the “social evolution theory.” In our view, this runs as follows: a big bang makes a very rich and “over-functional” social platform available organization-wide, and the elements of this platform are monitored to determine which ones are successful. The successful initiatives are nourished and expanded, while unused functionality is allowed to die out, or at least reduced to a less prominent stature. In this manner, relatively little guidance is required to create a successful platform that is, by definition, adapted to the organization.

The other strategy is social intelligent design. This process is very precisely geared to finding the most fertile ground in the organization and to sowing seeds there. Three factors play key roles in this respect:

• Processes • People (your employees) • Technology

Of course, not all processes are well-suited or function better as a result of socialization. By analyzing the organization to find the processes that might be given attention, the initial range of solutions can be significantly diminished. Strictly speaking, we are actually putting this wrong. It is, in fact, not the processes that are important but the results: the successful performance of tasks. Some tasks can better be performed by means of social collaboration (organic), others are better undertaken through functional collaboration (mechanical). We need to find the processes that currently rely on functional collaboration but don’t perform well. They are probable candidates for social redesign.

Not all your employees are suitable, have the intention or have the power to undertake all the new forms of collaboration and communication on their own. Examining the forms and tools of collaboration that are appropriate for your people substantially reduces the range of solutions.

68 TeamPark Finally, there are the ordinary technological requirements or limitations of your facilities. Consideration of these issues also creates an organizational map with which to identify the best possible breeding ground for social initiatives.

Which processes? Large bureaucratic companies do not have an explicitly organic quality, but they do have a great number of processes that, in fact, do have this dimension. Such misplaced processes can be identified and constitute the most obvious candidates to convert from bureaucracy to holocracy. Misplaced processes are recognizable in various manners. They have the characteristics of social stigmergic collaboration. For example, many involve broadcast communications or inherent asynchrony. They have an ad-hoc or incidental nature, as well as characteristics that are difficult to encode in procedures. Consider, in this regard, the difference between mechanism and organism.

Many processes are of a hybrid nature. In these cases, they have functional as well as social features. Take, for example, the bidding process in a commercial knowledge company. This is a centrally coordinated process in which much of the information must be obtained from employees working in another part of the organization. For them, it is organic work. They cannot be expected to participate in synchronous reciprocal collaboration within the bid team. They cannot always drop everything to respond to an email. This conflict can result in large degrees of inefficiency. The way of working and communicating used by the bid team until that time (documenting, circulating emails, teleconferencing and making agreements) almost entirely bogs down, and the project is exposed to enormous stress as well as inevitable aggravation. These types of processes can make enormous gains in efficiency by providing them with the proper stigmergic facilities.

Unpredictable processes are also often suitable candidates for socialization or maybe something like crowdsourcing. Innovation is such a process. Good ideas do not appear on command, and the generation of them is difficult to systematize. Crowds very often have extremely good ideas, frequently coming in a more reliable stream, than that produced by a few, even incredibly inspired, individuals. The same applies to resolving problems or finding information.

Adaptive 69 Besides misplaced, unpredictable and hybrid processes, some poorly-performing processes are also candidates for socialization. Evidently, these processes are difficult to optimize in a conventionally functional manner. There is a reason for their poor performance, which might be improved by conducting the processes in a stigmergic manner. Areas where substandard performances occur or where doubt and discussion exist are, in general, good areas to examine for their social potential.

Analysis of the social graph can also deliver very many clues. Especially the hubs, the highly interlinked nodal points in the organization (people with many social relations), are worth taking a look at. Likely, there are many organic processes in play at these points.

Which employees? Since social processes are mostly performed by employees (though we can envision social platforms in which software agents, machines and other types of actors participate), it is important to know their habits, wishes, possibilities and impossibilities. What social media do they use in their private lives? How willing and able are they in this respect in general? A baseline measurement of the crowd mostly takes the form of an organization-wide survey.

If the survey reveals that the largest portion of employees feel uncomfortable on a social platform, perceptions must be altered or the strategy revised, or training and workshops provided.

Which resources? It is clear that the existing infrastructure and the factors characterizing the current application landscape are decisive factors affecting the choice of social media. Less obvious is the fact that the chosen communication and collaboration media must suit the results that are to be achieved. A wiki is an excellent means to compose collective documents without having to circulate them in a complicated manner. It cannot however be used to find people or expertise. An activity stream can certainly help to keep activities transparent and to encourage unrequested (but desired) assistance, but it is not suitable for work planning. The palette of social

70 TeamPark media increases almost daily, and a clever choice has to be made, while complying with the valid preconditions.

Adaptive 71 Notes

72 TeamPark 8 Linked

No social platform is an island, to loosely paraphrase a well-known saying. Just as no single participant in the community only acts within your platform or distinguishes him or herself only there. Content is furthermore never totally isolated. Social networks almost always encompass many websites and many social environments. Many people have their own social networks, which in many cases have certain amounts of overlap with professional networks. The platform must be able to deal with this interconnectivity; it would be folly only to support the “internal” part of the networks of all employees. On the contrary, the degree to which an environment is linked to the world outside the organization is even significantly crucial for its success.

Most employees, certainly the so-called Generation Y, participate in external social platforms, in addition to the social platforms at their work. They post clips on YouTube, bookmarks on Del.icio.us blog postings on Blogger and photos on Flickr. The store their documents on Divshare, display presentations on Slide- share, keep up to date with their friends on Facebook, and exchange chitchat with the entire world using Twitter. All these activities require clever, well-conceived strategies and technically capable platforms in order to deal with all this networking. There is nothing more annoying than having to do things twice. Why should we have to update blog postings, clips or photos on different sites, including the organization’s social platform? Wouldn’t it be smarter if the platform could simply share content and the employer have a relaxed attitude about

Linked 73 it? Coming up with a clever strategy for this purpose is not simple, as there is an enormous area of tension concerning the security of sensitive information.

Taken altogether, we use the term linked to express the extent to which we undertake external and internal sharing and establish connections.

r s s and web services Exchanging information with other platforms may occur in several ways, including by means of rss feeds38 (Really Simple Syndication). This is the mechanism that automatically broadcasts new articles or recent updates to other websites, or to news readers. A platform must both supply feeds and receive (aggregate) them. Important or relevant information flows or types of content must all have their own outgoing feed, so that recipients of information (which may be other websites, ordinary users with feed-readers, as well as the same website but different sections) can receive it in a form specifically configured for them.

Information can also be exchanged by means of other protocols and interfaces, such as Web services, soap, rest and the like. In the blogosphere and other blogging platforms, it is not unusual for websites to “ping” each other when there is new content. When rss feeds are based on “polling” or when content is checked at fixed interval (with resulting inefficiency), such a ping is an “interruption” mechanism. This is more direct and efficient.

For the sake of outgoing rss, it is necessary for the broadcast content to be also visible on public urls outside the firewall.

Widgets There is a range of technical concepts that a website can and must support. For instance, it must be possible for original content to be re-used on other 39 websites in the form of widgets. A widget is something such as a YouTube clip that can be embedded in the texts of a blog. Nearly, all content-oriented websites permit such content “to be embedded” in other websites. Notable examples include

38 http://rss-tutorial.com/ 39 http://theedublogger.com/2008/01/19/getting-more-out-of-widgets/

74 TeamPark the presentations of Slideshare, the sideshows of Flickr and even the podcasts or radio programs of Last.fm.

The social platform must be able to display external widgets for various types of content (such as blogs, forums, wikis) and perhaps also provide widgets that enable internal content to be re-used on external websites.

The widgets, such as described above, each come from one unique source and are “embedded.” It is also possible to combine several sources in, for example, a mash-up. A mash-up will often be used to obtain simple insight into raw data such as a list of data. A much used manner to make a simple mash-up is to incorporate data from Google Maps. For example, address data can be placed on a national map by means of which we can acquire a much better idea about the distances separating us. There are of course many other possibilities for combining and presenting data in a user-friendly manner and it would be nice if the platform could support all of them.

Social bookmarking Social bookmarking is another form of information exchange between sites. In the case of social bookmarking, links to favorite external sites are displayed for all users so that everyone can benefit from each other’s sources of knowledge. Usually, social bookmarking is combined with the attribution of tags and the ranking of sources, as a result of which findability and applicability are increased.

Enterprise bookmarking, which is derived from social bookmarking, takes place within the organization and behind the firewall. It is used to share links to favorite pages on the internet or intranet with fellow employees.

Linked 75 Notes

76 TeamPark Part 2 Method

9 TeamPark

Although an Intelligent Organization is dependent on a platform, just making a platform available is no guarantee of success. Earlier, we provided an analogy involving the ownership of telescopes. Not everyone with a telescope is an astronomer. Determining the platform that best suits your organization or goals and the manner in which it can best be set up and be introduced in your organization is a complex process. We will describe this process insofar as TeamPark is concerned by means of a phased approach. The phasing will enable you to develop a good understanding of what is going on, as the name of each phase indicates its purpose;, and the outcome of the phase reveals its focus. To provide an organization with a living social side, TeamPark passes through the following four phases:

• Creating Awareness • Determining Strategy • Implementation of the Platform • Bringing the platform to Life

TeamPark 79 !WARENESS 3TRATEGY )MPLEMENTATION !LIVE

The four phases of TeamPark

The phases and also the steps can be gone through in an incremental, partially overlapping and/or iterative manner, just like other modern development and change management processes. As a result, we comply with the various approaches involving process and project management. We will provide more explicit detail about this subject, but will regard it as self-evident from this point on.

Awareness

0HASECREATEAWARENESS

'ETTINGINSPIRED !SSESSING FORMINGAVISION TECHNOLOGICALAND )NTERNAL CULTURALPOLITICAL 02CAMPAIGN TRENDS 3EMINARS WORKSHOPS $IFFERENT 4HENEWWAY INFORMATIONALSESSIONS ANGLES OFWORK .ATURE POSSIBILITIES !NEWGENERATIONOF #REATEBROAD ASEXAMPLE PITFALLS EMPLOYEESWITH SUPPORTAND 3USTAINABILITY,IMITS DIFFERENTHABITS WILLINGNESS -INTZBERGS TONATURALRESOURCES ANDDEMANDS HETERARCHY ANDCHEAPENERGY #OMMITMENT

)NSPIRE INFORM SPREAD DISCUSS DEMONSTRATE

Existing organizations, especially large multinationals, are hesitant about changing the nature of their organization. They resist such change, not just for the most part due to emotion or lack of vision, or failure of nerve, but they have spent decades optimizing their processes, and organizing the internal function of their “machine” in a most rigorous manner. The (misplaced) fear about having to throw this all away is consequently evident. Even if the organization decides to initiate a TeamPark process, things can still become very intense. By functionally

80 TeamPark optimizing everything, these organizations have become so rigid and inflexible that change is nearly almost impossible. An incapacity to come to grips with the changing world was certainly apparent during the economic crisis that began in 2009. The intrinsic inertia of each large bureaucracy is therefore not only a frequently mentioned argument against the change process that we are proposing, but also a significant inhibiting factor during the change.

In addition, daring and vision play a large role. To enable the changes to succeed, an extensive “social awareness” must, at first, be cultivated. This can take the form of training, workshops and inspiration sessions. Ideally, they will all be coordinated by an organization-wide pr campaign. In this respect, introducing a new product on a consumer market is not much different from introducing a social platform in a company. The goal of such campaigns is to create demand and make everyone aware of the different way of working together and managing collaboration. We are, in effect, advocating a different type of work ethic. People will be prepared to live a double life in the company, although this may sound more dramatic than it is. In their private lives, people do nothing else than live and take part in communities in an “organic” manner. It is working in a bureaucratic organization that is, in fact, unnatural.

The “power structures” and “reputation systems” active in the organic sphere are different from those in a bureaucratic structure. Who says that a ceo also has the most to say in a community? Of course, such may indeed be the case, but his or her status will then be purely based on the value of the contributions made. The community leader may very well turn out to be someone else. Managers and executives are given another role and must grow accustomed to it and be able to handle it. In many organizations, their reticence is often experienced as the biggest impediment during the transformation to the Intelligent Organization. It is management in the style of manager 2.0 that is required. Management on the social side no longer occurs by means of direct instruction and the modification of job profiles, processes and kpis, but by adapting the framework of the platform.

There are, of course, also the non-”digital natives,” the people who did not grow up with Playstations and cell phones in their hands. Not everyone will feel comfortable with the new communication technology, which will likely be implemented even without TeamPark. Unified Communication and Collaboration

TeamPark 81 (ucc) will take some getting-used-to for many people. Although it sounds like an enormous change, it will result in an organization in which everyone can work in their own way. In fact, there will no longer be any “stragglers,” but just greater choice and more opportunity. These people, in particular, must not be forgotten in all your communications. Once they acquire the impression that the new organization does not have any place for them, a gulf is opened, and aversion created. The reality is, however, that the new organization will also be more agreeable for these people. Not everyone has to make use of the new platform and the new tools.

One of the things that must be clearly communicated is therefore the fact that the social platform will be a supplement.

The Intelligent Organization is an organization in which the existing functional side is supplemented by a living social side. There will be room for everyone in the Intelligent Organization; the organization will simply be better able to handle individual wishes and talents, while making much more clever use of the organization’s size.

Strategy

0HASEDETERMINESTRATEGY

)DENTIFYMISPLACED !NALYSE %STABLISH %STABLISH PROCESSES WORKFORCE BASELINEOF GOALSAND )DENTIFY CROWD +0)S $ETERMINE UNDERPERFORMING )NVENTARISECURRENT PLANNING PROCESSES COLLABORATIONAND AND COMMUNICATIONPRACTISES ROADMAP !NALYSE )DENTIFYHIDDEN POTENTIALAND $ETERMINEINTERNALAND $ETERMINE SOCIALPROCESSES %STIMATE IMPACT !NALYSE EXTERNALSOCIALNESSOF TARGET SIZE SCALEAND PROCESSES 0ERFORMINITIAL3.! EMPLOYEES PROCESSES INTEGRATION ANDINDENTIFY GROUPS !PPLICATION SOCIALHUBS ANDTECHNOLOGY 0LATFORMSELECTION SELECTION !NALYSE PLAN DETERMINE ESTIMATEANDCREATE

A social strategy becomes necessary at the moment when social awareness is created. A decision must be made about the direction in which the organization wants to grow. Objectives will have to be set. A plan will have to be made to

82 TeamPark achieve them. The vision must be adjusted. New facilities are required and will have to be built. Undeniably, adaptations of existing processes are required and must be designed. Depending on the type of company and the size of the social needs, the company may have to undergo a significant transformation, and this must of course occur in such a manner that continuity continues to be guaranteed, with the motor running. It will be a great leap, and one that must be negotiated according to a clear plan. It is this plan that is drawn up in the strategy phase.

Before the transformation can be plotted, there must be an assessment of where the company stands at the moment. Consideration must then be given to where the company ultimately wants to go, both in terms of the new organic quality to be built and the existing management and control structures, which must also be taken into account.

To move from the actual to the target situation requires an initial baseline measurement, which is also performed in the strategy phase. This self-assessment creates an awareness of the current situation and is then used to measure progress. A workforce analysis can also be conducted in order to ascertain the communication and collaboration practices of the employees and the extent to which they will feel at home among the various “new” concepts and media. Plotting the current social graph can reveal how the social connections of employees change over time, and may also contribute a great deal to proper decision-making, as it reveals where social processes are currently at play and who the social hubs are. A process map can be drawn up to display germinating social activity from a process-oriented point of view.

A logical next step is to outline the possibilities and identify the situations where such growth may occur. If possible, low hanging fruit should be identified.

Performances on the social side are measured differently than those observed on the functional side. New measurements must be found for the social sphere, and it may also be necessary to come up with new kpis, both activities to be accomplished during the strategy phase. There are also general indicators that might need to be updated. An example involves the updating of the average connectedness of people in their social graphs. It is likely beneficial when connectedness (the number of relations) goes up. Volume of email may be an appropriate means of measuring this quality, as the use of wikis should reduce email traffic. Another

TeamPark 83 indicator may be clocked commuter travel. If the platform successfully stimulates a new way of working, kilometers travelled to and from work should go down.

This phase involves planning, calculating, estimating and conceiving.

Implementation

0HASEIMPLEMENTPLATFORM

#ORPORATE (2 3INGLE SIGNON COMMUNICATIONS -ODERATORS 2E DESIGN %XPERTBLOGGERS PROCESSESAND 3OCIALNATIVES STRUCTURES 2E ALLOCATION "UILDINSTALL ANDTRAININGOF 3OCIALHUBS INTEGRATEAND -IGRATEAND PEOPLE TESTSOFTWARE PREPARE )NITIALCROWD AND CONTENT TECHNOLOGY 0ARTNERSHIPS )DENTITY

$ESIGN BUILD TEST INSTALL CONFIGURE TRAIN RESTRUCTURE

This is the phase in which software is installed, built, configured and tested. All infrastructural adjustments are performed, existing components are integrated and everything is made ready for the actual launch. In other words, this phase consists of the technical and functional implementation. In this way TeamPark resembles a typical it project.

84 TeamPark Life

0HASEBRINGTOLIFE

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$EMONSTRATE CULTIVATE STIMULATE MOTIVATE MODERATE MEASURE

The last and most important phase for success involves bringing the platform to life. The launch of a social website on the internet is often just a question of luck. Luckily, this is less the case in the corporate social domain than in the open social one, as the former involves greater constraints as well as highly focused communications and training. Employees can simply be retrained and re-educated to perform new social processes, in contrast to the internet, where everything boils down to voluntary action.

If the manner in which stigmergic collaboration works in nature is an example, an initial period of chaos on the platform is to be expected. Especially, if an large platform is involved, people will make an attempt, play around and experience confusion. Everyone will have to evaluate the platform on their own terms. Ulti- mately, increasingly more people will discover how they can help each other but, in particular, how they can give others the opportunity to be helped. They will learn how they can crowdsource their problems and how they can perform large tasks even without having the necessary leadership qualities or capacities to manage them on their own.

Life can be stimulated in many ways. Stimulation can take in classic forms involving training programs and workshops, but it may also occur in a somewhat more playful manner. An example is the organization of real-life events by means of the platform, these ranging from cooking classes to photography workshops and treasure hunts. Plans, preparations and debriefings can then occur on the plat-

TeamPark 85 form. What works the best depends on the platform’s objectives and layout. We have had good experiences with throwing so-called install parties and life hacking. In these sessions, participants are made web-wise. How do you then collaborate on a document? When is it better to set up an wiki instead of circulating email documents? Acquired experience indicates that curiosity about and skill in the social platform will emerge naturally.

People will learn to blog, use a wiki, social bookmark, tag properly and effectively, etc., and start up self-help groups on the platform for such purposes. Otherwise, you will be quickly overrun with question within a very short time. Then again, they can also be crowd-sourced!

A vital resource is catalysis. Organizations always contain people who are very adept and practiced in blogging, for example. Allowing these individuals to provide good examples can have an extremely encouraging effect, and actively involve other users in the online “experience.” It is possible to come up with many labels and roles in this context. We use the term “social catalysts.”

Moderation is always necessary. A moderator is concerned with the use of proper manners and the maintenance of good order on the platform. It may sometimes be necessary to refuse or remove content. Do this according to clear rules without holding any doubts and without entering into any discussions on the subject.

In the beginning, it will likely be most effective if people are initially stimulated to use the platform for their personal interests, such as hobbies and passions. Ultimately it is, of course, a business resource, and business tools must be used to earn money. The manner of teaching people how they can make commercial use of the platform involves elaborating use cases and scenarios. Teach people how they can use the platform for specific processes during the strategy phase (such as how to tag, find knowledge, find people, etc.). The beginning of each new project is another good time to do this.

Besides stimulating life, initial measurements of use can be made, and kpis updated. These are determined in the strategy phase.

86 TeamPark Notes

TeamPark 87

10 Awareness

The most important products and work of/in this phase are:

• The offering of workshops, seminars and presentations intended to familiarize management and the largest possible portion of the employees with the new ways of working together and the technology involved. • Project advice, a plan in broad outline containing the conclusions from the awareness phase and suggestions for subsequent development. • Setting up and, if appropriate, kicking off a p r campaign to incite curiosity and initial demand. If necessary, this element can be included in the strategy phase and only initiated then. • Drawing up the literal visual roadmap for the entire project. If necessary, this element can be included in the strategy phase and only initiated then.

By reading this book, you have already taken the first step in the awareness phase. For that matter, you will have moved through the zero phase, the state of denial. In this case, welcome back. This initial phase involves familiarization with trends and developments, the evaluation of applicability to your own organization. An initial introduction entails seeing if the ideas click or match with your organization, so to speak. A key element in his regard involves becoming familiar with a slightly more wide-ranging scale of trends and developments. As it has now become clear, the social trend is not isolated. There are associated developments such as The New Way of Working and Socially Responsible Business, from which

Awareness 89 you can adopt the necessary ideas, inspiration and now the initial results. The activities in this phase are dominated by the process of growing awareness, so that you achieve awareness at the end of the phase.

Workshops, seminars and presentations Of course, it is important for everyone in the organization to know what is going to happen and what we are on about. This first phase therefore focuses on emerging awareness. It is also the phase in which the first matchmaking occurs in the organization. Achieving these two goals involves a little input and output.

Input involves placing an item on the agenda. A presentation in which the new way of working together is explained and can be seen to co-exist with the organization’s functional structure. A presentation can also be a nice opening for a workshop, after which you together with people from the organization can identify the nodal points in your own organization.

Presentations Sogeti has a few standard presentations available at: http://www.slideshare.net/group/TeamPark and http://TeamPark.org.

Anyone may use these presentations under the terms of the issued license (which means that the name of Sogeti must be displayed somewhere and that any incorporated variations to the presentation are also to be shared with others under the same license).

It goes without saying that various presentations are necessary, depending on the audience and the purpose. A presentation at a seminar will have other emphases than one given in a boardroom or a workshop for employees from a specific business division. Decisiveness and innovative capacity may be the most relevant issue at C-level. For hr and the employees themselves, the main concern may be

90 TeamPark employee satisfaction. In effect, it is important for everyone in the organization to see that not everything is going to change. Other possibilities and new ways of working together will be created, but it must be clear that there is a place for every individual in the proposed new organization.

Workshops A Workshop is, in effect, an initial step toward successful integration or, if you will, implementation in the user’s organization. For many potential users, it is the first experience of the indicated trends and new collaborative possibilities. The workshops therefore have a primarily introductory function. They involve getting to know TeamPark, the social concepts and their application in the a given organization and specific areas of work. This again involves a bit of input and output. The presentation provides the input, and brainstorming the output.

The “Do-it-together” workshop The goal of the workshop is to enable participants to identify their wishes, points for improvement and problems experienced in their work, so they can work together to resolve them using social communication and collaboration media. The workshop is rigorously divided into four time blocks of a half hour each and therefore lasts precisely two hours and a few minutes.

1. Social tagging Tagging: Participants receive a maximum 10 minutes time to “tag” each other or themselves (by means of stickers) in a manner that concisely indicates what their top three wishes, requirements, problems, and bottlenecks are. These tags are physically attached to their bodies and are visible to everyone.

Clustering: They then receive 10 minutes to use these tags to form groups with others having the same tags. In practice, 4 to 5 groups will be created: a large group, two smaller groups and a very small group, perhaps consisting of just one individual. That’s just fine.

Selection: The final ten minutes are spent determining the three tags that are most representative for the group. These tags are placed on a board arranged one under the other in the first column of the board. The board has four columns, one for each

Awareness 91 of the four time blocks. By posting representative “tags,” participants indicate the work styles, wishes and challenges for the group to which they belong.

2. Social concepts The second time block is used to inform and inspire participants about the “new way of working together.” Social or stigmergic collaboration is explained in this segment. Important concepts such as crowdsourcing, co-creation, and platform are discussed. Tags are available for all important concepts and techniques, and these tags can be used by the participants in the 4th and last segment.

The segment is inspirational as well as, now and then, a little abstract with regard to tone and content, although these are also illustrated by striking examples. In this block of time, the tags identifying the indicated concepts are placed in the second column on the board. Participants may, of course, supplement these with their own tags. Examples of concepts are: “collaborative document” (wiki), “eBay,” “rating.,” “collaborative filtering,” “crowdsourcing,” “user-generated content”, “co- creation”.

3. Social media It is time to be somewhat more concrete and to inform participants about social media. Items such as social bookmarking, web meetings, wikis, blogs and all such concrete media are briefly explained in this segment. Tags are available for all the important media and techniques, and these tags can be used by the participants in the 4th and last segment.

This segment is therefore much more concrete in tone and content. During this phase, the third column of the board is filled with tags indicating the discussed technology and media. These tags may be supplemented by others supplied by participants. Examples of tags are: “tablet-p c ,” “wireless network,” “smart mobile,” “web-cam,” “social spaces,” “concentration spaces,” “home worker,” “coffee bar.”

4. Social solutions The last half hour is reserved for the participants to take the initiative. The first time block enabled them to take stock of and tag their wishes. In the second segment, they were given new concepts of collaboration, for which tags were also available in the form of sticker sheets and post-it notes. In the third block, they were presented with media and applications, which were also noted on these tags. The

92 TeamPark board at the front of the room now has three columns full of tags: “challenges,” “concepts,” and “media.”

At this point, participants must choose a problem from the first column and combine it with a concept from the second column and a medium from the third column, so that a possible solution is created. Of course, several solutions may be possible. They will fill the fourth column of the board.

It is primarily this time block that will generate awareness. At the end of this time block, during the discussions of the identified solutions, participants are told that the process through which they have just passed in brief, does not vary greatly from what will soon occur on a large scale. The changes of which they now have conceived do not differ greatly from the changes that the introduction of a social platform entails. This makes the process much more tangible and conceivable.

This workshop provides a great deal of valuable information that can be used as input for the strategy phase.

The p r campaign As indicated above, giving the organization a social dimension is, from the pr perspective, not very different from the introduction of a new product on a consumer market. A stimulating campaign will help to generate early curiosity and even demand. Commission an external marketing firm or the organization’s own marketing specialists to design and implement a campaign running synchronously with the rest of the transformation. First of all, the campaign does not have to be entirely content oriented; it is sufficient to attract the attention of employees. As implementation of the TeamPark program advances, the marketing message must correspondingly develop and, therefore, become more concrete.

If the awareness phase is viewed “only” as one involving the recognition of possibilities and needs without necessarily being followed by the rest of the program, it would be better for the expanded pr campaign to be initiated in the strategy phase. Subsequent steps can only be taken once things have reached this far. The strategy phase will give rise to personas (more about this point below), and marketing people know what to do with them. In pr, it is usual to work with

Awareness 93 personas, and this is also the case in social media. These personas and how to determine them will be discussed in the strategy phase.

Roadmap A roadmap charting the sequence of the process is required to make the organization aware of all the stages that have to be negotiated. It will outline the required effort, time and associated costs, as well as the various types of partially overlapping and parallel operations that have to be performed.

These processes are described in the roadmap along with the included activities that can be packaged into a project. Bite-size chunks with a clear front and back, start and finish. The various “colors” must be drawn in the roadmap. Consider the information, marketing and establishment of functional specifications from a business perspective, but also include selection as well as items like migration, as they are important for it.

The roadmap must connect these items, colors and divisions with each other and bind them together. In this way, the roadmap fill in the details concerning time and activity, while ensuring that the activities do not occur in isolation but as part of a sequence viewed from many perspectives. Coherence of activities and compartments is crucially important for successful implementation of the possibilities outlined by TeamPark. Appropriate moments can also be identified to communicate progress and explain the new possibilities. These can be effectively re-applied as part of your pr campaign.

The roadmap consists of guidelines divided into three plans, one each for the strategy phase, implementation phase and bringing-to-life phase. For an extensive description of these sequential phases, see the following chapters

Activities described in a roadmap and fixed in a documents will, not of course, spring to life. It is important that this roadmap and the objective remain in sight. To enhance the roadmap’s dynamism, it might be incorporated in a wiki structure and graphically elaborated as an artwork that hangs on the wall. Such techniques provide better communication than a laptop screen.

94 TeamPark Recommendations for the ensuing process The phase is concluded by recommendations concerning the subsequent phases. The results of the workshops and the roadmap for the entire process are summarized for the organization and refined into clear recommendations regarding the route to be taken.

We can learn a great deal from the various moments allowing interaction with users. Placing workshop participants in an informal atmosphere and allowing them to exchange ideas create a wealth of end-user information.

The possibility offered employees to examine their own work from a distance, the manner in which they undertake such activity and the alternation of tasks often yields fresh insights into the organizational culture and structure. These human factors are extremely important to the TeamPark implementation process. They give you a feeling for the steps that will have to be undertaken in order to make working with TeamPark a success. Your employees are your most valuable cost centers and you should listen carefully to them, as they will indicate what they require to be better satisfied and more successful.

Listen to them and make a note of any remarks about work style; also allocate a little responsibility to do something about these points. It would be unusual if the comments by participants in brainstorming sessions and workshops did not ultimately find their way into the selected range of solutions. This must be recorded in the recommendation report and, if appropriate, plotted in planning. Would it not be nice to involve the potential users who have indicated or are aware of the greatest difficulties, and have them take part in building and rolling- out the solution? A more passionate instigator could hardly be found.

Awareness 95 Notes

96 TeamPark 11 Strategy

The most important products and work of/in this phase are:

• A vision document that supplements the current understanding with a glimpse of the Intelligent Organization. • New core values that account for the new ways of working (together) and the new outlook (in principle, current core values should be sufficient). • The (initial) explicit social graph • If applicable, an initial s n a (Social Network Analysis) • Definition and establishment of measurable goals and k p i s for the organization’s social side and for the Intelligent Organization as a whole. • A process or scenario analysis in which the most important processes or scenarios are described and in which the misplaced, under-performing and hidden social processes are identified. • A baseline measurement of the workforce that clearly reveals the employees and the types of employees possessing the greatest will to change, needs and/ or possibilities. • Personas based on the baseline measurement. • A few high-impact scenarios/use cases that provided immediate benefits from “socialization” to the largest possible group of employees; these then become the identified social seeds. • Package selection and proof of concept • A communication plan

Strategy 97 • A training plan • A project plan • Communications material

Introducing a new social platform in your organization is much more than technical hocus pocus, it demands sound strategy. This strategy must take care to clearly describe goals and measures, which will in turn ensure that that social platform actually becomes your social platform and is aptly suited to your organization. The previously-formulated roadmap can be further elaborated, fleshed out and made more concrete in this phase. You will also determine the manner in which the social platform will be implemented, how the altered organization will appear and how it will be created (including which steps will be required to create it). All this provides substance for your vision of the Intelligent Organiza- tion and the manner in which you will allow your employees and, possibly, other employees to work with you, and be trained, as well as how you will measure and adjust performance.

Formulating vision and core values Absolutely one of the most important things that must occur, preferably at the earliest possible stage, is the formulation of a social vision and a new set of core values. These items must, of course, comply with the overall vision of the company and its pre-existing core values. A clear and properly communicated vision will prove its value throughout the entire implementation process. It will provide for a more consistent and effective execution of the process and, ultimately, lead to better results.

The Vision Game Formulating a vision or a vision statement can also be delegated in a playful manner to the internal crowd of employees. This promotes the feeling of commitment and also increases awareness.

In our own projects, we therefore use the “vision game.” which we employ at the beginning of certain workshops, both to immediately loosen up those in attendance and to actually obtain some idea of their thinking on the future platform.

98 TeamPark The aim of this game is to have users collaborate on their own vision statement. For this purpose, they are given white boards or sheets of paper on which there are a series of words with which they are to formulate a statement. The words must be combined together to form a sentence. For this purpose, attendees are divided into groups of 7-10 individuals, each working separately on the statement.

By way of example and practice for the game, begin with a series of letters in arbitrary sequence that must be combined into a word. This word will then be the first word in the complete sentence. For example, ‘a’, ‘a’, ‘i’, ‘o’, ‘o’, ‘o’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘l’, ‘l’, ‘n’, ‘r’, ‘t’, from which the word “collaboration” must be spelled.

Following their own insight and based on your assessment of the group, many or few words can be provided, or only the words from an pre-established vision statement. Depending on progress, the final word of the sentence can also be revealed about half-way through.

The success of this game is fully dependent on the enthusiasm and skill of the game leader!!!!

Drawing up an initial social graph Every organization, no matter how bureaucratic, has social structures that can be presented in a graph. Such a figure is a network model in which the nodes stand for people and lines for their interactions. Once this graph is drawn, it yields useful information. For example, it reveals the so-called “heavy nodes”, people who already work in a very “informal” manner or who, if they are at the hub of formal structures, are very important for the organization and perhaps even constitute single points of failure for one or more processes. They are, in any case, of special value in determining strategy.

In addition, knowledge sharing can be improved by analyzing the graph and, where necessary, intervening in the relevant processes by deploying pointed measures.

Strategy 99 The social graph can be examined and used in various manners; in this regard, it is like any other bi. The best-known manner is illustrated in the figure below.

Example of a small social graph

The desired representation depends on the manner in which the analysis has to be performed. The social graph may be used to find the following information:

• The heavy nodes or exceptionally well connected people, perhaps the “catalyz- ers” or “seeds” of the next phase (discussed below). • Communication distance between individuals: a suitable representation of it is the “distance table” as conventionally used to indicate travel distances between cities. • Sharing of knowledge or activities • Agreements with the formal structure of the organization: the organizational chart. • Clusters of information sharing of collaboration or “communities of interest” (important for scenarios).

The technique of analyzing and using this information is called “social network analysis.”40

40 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network#Social_network_analysis

100 TeamPark An important application of this data involves keeping abreast of changes. As the TeamPark process advances and the use made of the social platform increases, changes will become apparent, and their measurements and kpis will have to be coordinated. In principle, “snapshots” can be regularly taken of the instantaneous social graph, so that the differences can be overlaid.

Cultivating the social seeds The transformation into an Intelligent Organization is a long-term and extensive process. In the meantime, the company must simply continue to perform at least as well as ever, while any changes must always quickly demonstrate that they are necessary in order to keep everyone in step. Such coordination is accomplished by initiating the changes where and when there are the greatest chances of success, and implementing them, step by step, in a measured manner. The chances of success depend on various factors of which human potential, process-based probability and infrastructural likelihood are the more important.

“People, process and technology”

It is extremely awkward to force new processes on a group of employees who are certainly not longing for it, who are not comfortable with change or for whom it is the wrong choice for other reasons. The transformation must begin by selecting the proper group of people. People who are at home with the new way of working together or who are willing to set to work, even if it will cost them some effort: these people must be found.

Normally, it would be impossible to find an enthusiastic group of people, who are straining at the leash to immerse themselves in the new way of working and social media and who are willing to invest a great deal of effort in matters that do not immediately improve their own work or directly contribute to improved business operations in general. But nothing succeeds like success. The transformation must therefore carefully intercede in selected processes so that ongoing operations are directly improved in ways that are apparent to everyone. These processes must be carefully selected.

The task is to seek out the combination of people, processes and media that gives itself to the new way of working together. Once the right group of people/employ-

Strategy 101 ees, the right processes and infrastructural possibilities are assembled, the result is what you might call a social seed. A change germinates within this “sub- assembly.” The figure below illustrates this point. It constitutes the basis for the change trajectory.

Stigmergic processes and an appropriate platform can be developed from these rudiments. Very simply, this means that new procedures are devised to enable employees to work together on the platform. The platform must therefore be provided with the appropriate media, such as a wiki or a document share. Instead of reliable workflows and synchronous communications, the processes must be set up to rely on communication and collaboration by means of the platform and the media available there. The resulting processes are necessarily of such nature that direct person-to-person, or station-to-station communications are impossible. A stigmergic or social process is recognizable by the fact that all or most of the communication or collaboration occurs by means of the platform.

The entire organization must be gone through step by step in order to identify candidate processes, which are transformed whenever such transformation becomes necessary. This search is an iterative and incremental procedure, which ultimately establishes a certain balance between mechanical and organic structure. This balance is different for every company. The more that a company is knowledge-based, the greater the benefits of socialization (or more accurately: stigmer- gization) will be for its processes. Ministries and banks will be required and able to undergo greater transformations than factories, simply because knowledge work (information processing) represents a larger share of their business.

Human factors and identifying personas Human factors can be brought into the equation through workshops, surveys and inventories. This need not be difficult. All types of demographic statistics and analyses may be incorporated, but ultimately it all boils down to the following variables:

• User requirements • Willingness to change • Communication and collaboration practices

102 TeamPark Account may be taken of user requirements in a number of workshops. The willingness to change can be determined by simply asking end users, and a survey can therefore be used to take stock of the entire workforce. Communication and collaboration practices should be identifiable by means of cleverly formulated tests, surveys and questionnaires. The information gathered in the awareness phase can also be combined with the results from surveys and questionnaires obtained here.

All this user data must be filtered and correlated in order to make it comprehensive and applicable within the final project plan. A plan cannot be drawn up for each person in the organization and this is, in practice, also unnecessary. In the world of marketing and pr, but also in terms of product development, common practice is to work with what are known as personas.41They are archetypes, descriptions of potential users. The idea is that carefully chosen attributes can be used to identify groups or clusters in a crowd of entirely separate and unique individuals. These groups are what we call personas. Each persona is an imaginary user,42 a typical representative of an important group of desirable users. A product can be tested on these personas instead of on the thousands of individuals of whom none are representative of larger groups.

“Personas or personae are fictitious characters that are created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product. Personas are given characteristics and are assumed to be in particular environments based on known users’ requirements so that these elements can be taken into consideration when creating scenarios for conceptualizing a site. Cooper (1999) outlined the general characteristics and uses of personas for product design and development.

In the context of software requirements gathering, a user persona is a representation of a real audience group. A persona description includes a user’s context, goals, pain points, and major questions that need answers. Personas are a common tool in Interaction Design (IxD)”

A similar technique is used in product development. Instead of developing a product (in this case a social platform) for thousands of individual users, it can

41 http://iainstitute.org/nl/dan-willis_personas.pdf 42 http://www.cooper.com/journal/2001/08/perfecting_your_personas.html

Strategy 103 also be built for a number of selected personas. Designers can use personas as if they were real people. Appropriately selected personas will also ensure that all users consider themselves to have had a fair hearing and can recognize the results. The various personas may also provide a basis for making decisions and testing scenarios. The trick is to encapsulate the entire group of users in as few personas as possible, so all their relevant characteristics, goals and requirements are represented. Personas are the social equivalents of job profiles in the functional side of the organization.

After defining the personas, employees can be asked to indicate the persona with which they most strongly identify, and matching may also be undertaken on the basis of survey data.

Persona: Shamira Shamira is a 23-year-old graduate living together with her partner in South Am- sterdam.

She has just begun working for the company and was recruited as a “young potential.” She was given the position of Management Trainee. For Shamira, it is her first “real” job since graduation.

Shamira is a digital native; internet is a necessity of life for her. She has at least three email addresses to maintain contact with her world.

For Shamira, internet is “absolutely normal.” She uses it all the time. Does she read the morning paper? No need, she can user her cell to read the headlines on the subway. A pressing issue, that is what friends are for.

A typical statement by Shamira is: “I’m lost without the internet, my online friends and communities.” It is second nature for Shamira to work on the internet. Shamira is ambitious and interested. She is open to ideas but has a competitive attitude.

On a typical day, Shamira goes to work in the course of the morning. She uses public transit and checks her email during the commute. Arriving at work, Shamira turns on her p c and chats briefly with her co-workers, while getting a cup of coffee. Shamira does not have any internet access, which is reserved for a number of her fellow employees. But fortunately she still has her phone.

104 TeamPark After a day of meetings, emailing, printing documents (oops), presentations, forwar- ding emails, typing and telephoning, Shamira returns home late in the afternoon. Quickly grabbing a bite to eat, she heads out for a little athletic activity. On Friday, the goes directly to central Amsterdam after work. When arriving back home, she takes a quick glance at her social network.

Social computing is simply a part of Shamira’s life, and not just her personal life. She also has many opportunities to use it at work. For instances, Shamira is already thinking about forming a community for new employees within the worldwide organization in order to find kindred spirits, and ease each other’s daily aches and pains. The possibilities are endless....

Persona: Muriel As a director of Wholesale Banking, Muriel has been working at her current job for over 3 years. Muriel is 35 years old. She has witnessed the emergence of the internet during her time on the labor market and in her private life. Everything was dial-up then, and it took forever to make a connection.

The directorship demands a lot from Muriel. Her work life and private life are often intermingled, and although she is not constantly on the internet, she often needs to read her email.

Without doubt, Muriel is active on the internet. She has her own Facebook page, where she posts a great deal of information about her 4-year-old daughter, husband and 2 cats.

Muriel spends a good deal of her time in the car. She must go through at least ten hours a week of traffic congestion and then spend at least nine hours a day at work. Muriel likes figures and a lot of her work involves them. Reports, key performance indicators, status reporting on ongoing productions, all this information must be processed. Because this is not possible at home, Muriel always needs to be in her office.

After work, she spends quality time with her daughter and husband. If necessary, and this is frequently the case, documents are processed further and taken home on a u s b stick. Or simple sent to her personal email address. At the end of the evening, Muriel checks her email one more time before going to bed. Muriel often

Strategy 105 schedules time for sporting activity but frequently does not get around to it. The weekend is for her family.

Muriel is especially interested in the functional form of collaboration and information sharing. Above all, information security is an important part of her work package. Muriel is certainly interested in social computing but feels that this is probably more interesting for her immediate subordinates. Although Muriel has her own LinkedIn and Facebook account, she does not allow herself the time to use these channels to look for information or people. She knowingly admits that she undervalues the need for social computing.

Persona: John John is 63 years old. He has worked for the company for more than 35 years. He also works for a subsidiary, where he is a counter clerk. He is also in charge of the keys for the subsidiary: a big responsibility.

John does not have so much to do with computers. He therefore tends to say “Just do your work now. That’s the most important thing. Computers are a necessary evil, but I could do without them.” John is not especially concerned with innovation and no longer so ambitious. He performs his work effectively and properly and is the nestor of the department.

He goes through the paper at breakfast. Afterwards, this is shoved into the brief- case along with a sandwich and a thermos of coffee. He then drives to work. The workday begins precisely 9 a m , but John must open the office before this time.

John performs his work at the office reception desk. He spends no to very little time on the intranet reading e-mail. He will only access the internal network when directed to do so by a fellow employee. At the end of the day, the office is closed, and John goes home.

Dinner is on the table when he gets home, and John talks a bit with his wife.

Social computing or it in the broader sense is not aimed at John. He prefers to meet people personally and discuss things in meetings. He has heard of Facebook, but knows nothing about LinkedIn and cannot assess its value.

106 TeamPark Identifying candidate processes The processes that are the most eligible for change are those that are currently not being performed very effectively. The first task is thus identifying underperforming these processes. Suitable processes must then be selected from among them. Not all processes are suitable for stigmergic collaboration.

The selected processes must be redesigned: they have to be stigmergized. The form of the new processes is determined in the implementation phase. Since the organization will be supplied with a collaboration platform, processes can be set up in a way that was not previously available. Ultimately, the new social side will also provide a better functional synergy for the organization, but it would be wise to keep the existing framework for the time being. However, keep in mind that stigmergizing processes continuously generates a perception that will ultimately lead to more fundamental changes.

Underperforming processes can first be detected by means of the system of currently defined kpis. They are defined for this purpose. A clever glance at all the available management information might quickly reveal a few candidates. By then re-examining user requirements from the perspective of performance, the most applicable candidates can be identified.

Candidate processes can also be found by searching for certain characteristics:

• “Multi-team” processes Processes that connect customers with teams, teams with other teams or teams with the rest of the organization are by definition vulnerable due to the communication mismatch that exists between teams and crowds in general (formal vs. informal). If the company has defined acrm strategy that, in practice, does not turn out to be satisfactory or if the company has a multi-channel strategy that is not working properly, it is quite possible that the related processes need to be redesigned, but this time based on a social platform. • Unstable, fickle processes Processes that are often changing are also eligible candidates, as are processes subject to frequent team changes. • Hidden social processes Social processes are recognizable by the lack of direct communication and fixed workflows. It may, in fact, be that several such processes are already

Strategy 107 present in the company, but without being explicitly facilitated by a suitable platform. These processes can be accommodated in the social side of the organization without much difficulty.

Identifying candidate scenarios Besides processes, an effort can be made to unearth more detailed scenarios comprising sequential descriptions of specific events.

A useful but labor-intensive method involves diagramming the most important scenarios in the company. Scenarios that reveal multiple or deep dependencies among individuals (lines from person to person to person), are especially good candidates for socialization. All the more so when popular personas are involved (as such involvement indicates high impact). In contrast, social collaboration scenarios are easily identifiable by the absence of (multiple) dependencies between individuals (see example).

A choice can be made from the identified scenarios, taking into account the implicated personas. Without doubt, it would seem logical to choose the scenarios that impact on the most popular personas. They represent the biggest immediate gain for the organization, but they also have the greatest impact on it and may involve the crowd that is least amenable to “‘voluntary change.” As a result, it may be more logical to opt for a more specific scenario, part of a minority process, combined with the most “social” personas, this being the choice that may cause the least disruption to existing business. This consideration will vary for each organization.

Who has the latest version? This scenario involves circumstances where one or more personas require specific information but do not rightly know where it is stored. The information may be available on the file server, au s b stick, the local hard drive, somewhere in an email or on one of the document management platforms.

Other ways to visualize scenarios may involve the various u m l diagrams (use-case, activity, object) or the right kind of flow charts. In our experience, the more playfully

108 TeamPark visualized diagrams work the best because most people can understand then, not just the technicians.

Scenario: Who has the latest version? (actual situation)

Scenario: Who has the latest version? (target situation)

Strategy 109 Package Selection, p o c and Planning At the end of the strategy phase or at the beginning of the implementation phase, a choice will ultimately have to be made of the software products forming the basis of the social collaboration platform. This decision will be based on organizational criteria such as existing infrastructure, and enterprise architecture, which is to say the typical technical criteria applying to each it project. The package selection process and the establishment of a Proof Of Concept (poc) will not be described here.

An action plan, communication plan and training plan should be written based on the results of the poc and to prepare for subsequent phases.

110 TeamPark Notes

Strategy 111

12 Implementation

The most important products and work of/in this phase are:

• Selecting catalysts • Selecting and adapting the processes to be socialized. • Making the initial steps in designing the training programs, going over them, testing them and refining them. • Working together with the catalysts, moderators and floor walkers to perfect the training programs by means of the train the trainers principle.

Implementation is unfortunately a word that is interpreted differently by different groups. It is often unclear what is precisely meant. We might even agree with remarks that dismiss it as vague language. To give you a clear picture of what we mean by implementation in this phase, we will distinguish three different meanings that many, in our view, apply to implementation.

The first type of implementation is technical implementation. Technical implementation makes sure that “it” works. This involves the technical skill of configuring the hardware and software. Furthermore, the hardware and software are linked to other systems. Still no users are being considered during technical implementation; it is a purely technical exercise.

Implementation 113 This changes when we start configuring the software for the purposes of our use and for our users. This step is what we designate functional implementation. The menu structures are configured and the layout of the platform is adapted, for example, to reflect the company logo and letterhead. The social platform is then actually ready for use, which means that it is functionally ready. It is still quite empty and there are no real users associated with the platform. It is not yet alive.

It is therefore time for the users to be steam-cleaned for use. Relevant users will have to cope with the new platform; they should be prepared for its completion. We must therefore ensure that users can use it by providing them with training. And we must furthermore take care that they want to use it by enticing them with our pr campaign. We lure them with content and pr, showing them its benefits and explaining how it might work for them. This makes the platform come alive: it goes live!

The implementation phase is one in which software is, installed, built, configured and tested. All infrastructural adjustments are performed existing components are integrated and everything is made ready for the actual launch. Such activity certainly reveals what we mean by implementation in this third phase: it involves technical and functional implementation, and not organizational implementation. Organizational implementation, the anchoring of the new technology and functionality in the user organization, is incorporated in the final stage of TeamPark, the bringing-to-life phase.

The implementation phase of TeamPark is likely the most poorly elucidated in this book. Why? The phase exhibits almost no differences from any other typical it implementation. It involves infrastructure, software architecture, customiza- tion, integration with existing systems, security, testing, training, process descriptions, and corporate style and its updates as well as often divergent plans.

Misunderstandings between client and contractor will also occur in the implementation process for a range of social software. Project management will also be under pressure at this time. Nothing new under the sun.

Of course there will be some new features, but they will have more to do with the ever more rapidly innovative it in general than with social media in particu-

114 TeamPark lar. For instance, there will likely be discussions about “the cloud” or “on premise”, “single sign-on” or “transparent login.” But such discussions will not be unique to implementations of social software.

Besides software and infrastructure, the need to adjust processes must also be looked at. Processes being socialized must be adapted in order for them to be successful in a stigmergic environment. The new processes also have to be tested. Training will therefore have to be undergone and offered on a small scale. In particular, this phase is also the right time to train moderators, floor walkers and future catalysts. This is all fully in line with the train-the-trainer principle. An activity that can be initiated in this phase involves selecting early adopters or catalysts, as we prefer to call them.

Selecting catalysts Catalysis is a process better known in chemistry than it is in it. In chemistry, catalysis is the process in which the rate of a chemical reaction is either increased or decreased by means of a chemical substance known as a catalyst. Unlike other reagents that participate in the chemical reaction, a catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself. The catalyst may participate in multiple chemical transformations. Catalysts that speed the reaction are called positive catalysts. Catalysts that slow down the reaction are called negative catalysts or inhibitors.

It is clear that, to successfully implement a social collaboration platform, we are looking for positive catalysts and not inhibitors.

Positive catalysts (hereinafter referred to as just catalysts) are indispensable for the success of a social software platform. The choice of catalysts is therefore one of the most important steps of implementation and the principle success factor. It has now become the case that a negative comment or any other form of criticism continues to have a longer impact in the early stages of a social platform than ten positive comments do. This therefore raises a number of questions: Who are the right catalysts? How are the right catalysts to be chosen? And how do you prevent inhibitors?

As already discussed in an earlier chapter, one of the options is to use the results of a baseline measurement of employees. This baseline measurement identifies

Implementation 115 the practices, needs, possibilities and impossibilities of all or part of the workforce. What social media do they use in their private lives? How willing and able are they in this area in general?

If the survey reveals that the largest portion of employees feel uncomfortable on a social platform, perceptions must be altered, the strategy revised, or training and workshops provided.

If, however, it is not possible to find a group of employees who are completely at home with Web 2.0, change-minded individuals willing to make a positive contribution to the new platform will provide an important step in the right direction.

Instead of a baseline measurement, it may be possible to take a short cut by checking if the organization already has any communities on LinkedIn, Twitter, Yammer or any community media, and to write to these groups.

If employees are selected as potential catalysts in this manner, it is still necessary to conduct a very 1.0 personal interview with them before appointing anyone as a catalyst. Such personal interviews enable you to discover the drives and motives of each candidate, and to discuss any resistance that may obstruct catalysis. It would be impossible to select a group of more than 50 catalysts from a baseline measurement derived from the above-mentioned methods.

Skipping the personal interview and using email to inform a large group of catalysts about the plans for the platform will highly likely overlook several of the catalysts’ personal wishes and requirements. Everyone will then attempt to translate his or her expectations into idiosyncratic improvements in the new platform. Existing wikis, document management systems, security policies, forums and anything else that is already in use will play a behind-the-scene role in generating comments to the simplest questions or providing key information. The inevitable initial teething problems on the platform will be reduced by recom- mending existing tooling. All types and degrees of comments in the form of “you see” and “you just have to ask” will be posted on the forum.

A second possible path for the selection of catalysts takes a more functional form. Commitment is developed in the awareness phase by managing the managers of

116 TeamPark various functional departments with regard to the new ways of working together provided by the social platform. For example, representatives of Human Resources, Marketing, Communications, and perhaps even or and several business departments must take on the roles of early adopters. These employees might also be selected on the basis of a baseline measurement, but such an event would only be a fortuitous circumstance. It is more likely that these representatives have not adopted any of Web 2.0. This again means that caution is called for.

Users of even the most intuitive Web 2.0 tools always require a certain degree of perseverance and trial-and-error mentality in order to benefit from the tools. Without perseverance, use will quickly run aground on disappointment, resulting in a relapse to old habits. Representatives of functional departments will have to be given more guidance and training than other catalysts.

The choice of catalysts in both the organization’s organic and functional parts is a delicate process. There may be many wrong decisions taken and only a few good ones.

Socializing (Stigmergizing) processes A great deal of effort should be made to pry processes free from the current bureaucracy and shift them to the social platform. These processes are identified in the awareness and strategy phases and are expected to perform better if they use the stigmergic way of working together. Actual and target versions of scenarios have already been discussed above. Below is still another example:

Stigmergizing processes An example is the so-called bid process which is sometimes difficult to organize in our organization. Our organization is an it service provider that hires out programmers, designers, architects, testers etc. and implements projects. In the bid process, a bid team produces a document containing an attractive and well-constructed offer for the customer. The customer has, for example, tendered on a new software system.

Implementation 117 The process begins by identifying a bid manager who gathers the right people around him or her. This is done by phone or email, and by waiting for replies. In general, the team is made up of relationship managers and similar positions.

Eventually, an appointment is arranged on collective agendas and the team meets for the first time. After discussions, the composition of the team may still change, making team composition into a iterative process. Once the team is assembled, the work can begin. Communication usually occurs by email.

During the drafting of the document, the team regularly calls on people who are not part of the team. Much expertise is possessed by people known as professionals. The first question is therefore which professionals to call on. Several top- down lines have been established for making such choices, and these will hopefully lead to contact with a professional with the appropriate knowledge and sufficient time to collaborate. Usually, such a professional is found by his or her manager. In one certain case, a few dozen professionals had to be involved in a bid process at one particular moment in time; they has to provide references, which were tantamount to success stories of similar past projects. But, although a bid team of 5 or 6 individuals can still get away with emailing each other the additions and the latest version of the document, such a method becomes virtually impossible when dozens of outsiders have to participate as well. Collective meetings or even regular consultations are impossible because the outsiders are implicated in a very different workflow, and no time can be scheduled where everyone can meet.

Yet this is the way in which most companies currently organize this task. Supposing TeamPark analyses show that this process is always fraught by problems, and a decision is made to move it to the social side of the organization. What might it then look like?

A new process should certainly be devised that makes use of an appropriate social platform in a fitting manner. Synchronous communication was a problem in the original process. All team members are sequentially dependent on each other, and this represents a lock-in that can inhibit all those involved. Not only was a great deal of communication required (circulation of all changes to all people involved) and the process very vulnerable (assembly of the latest version out of received updates), it was no longer able to be coordinated. The solution is as follows.

118 TeamPark The bid manager, who remains a leader but not a directly intervening manager, has to publish the open or available bids on the organization’s central task board so that appropriate people can take on the tasks. Nobody has to go looking for suitable team members; the appropriate people will find the task themselves.

Publishing a bid is a matter of establishing a collaboration space (community). The proper communication tools are all readily available in this collaboration space, which then shows up on the appropriate front pages and activity streams.

A person may still be assigned to perform the tasks that do not attract anyone to perform them. Or the tasks can be made more attractive by making the amount of credits earned for doing them dependent on the urgency of the tasks.

Collaborating on the bid document does not occur by email but primarily through a collaborative document or a wiki. A wiki is a document on which several people can collaborate at the same time. No co-ordination is required; everyone can work on the document in his or her own time.

Consultation can of course occur over the phone or by email, but also through the forum associated with the collaboration space.

Supporting documents can be uploaded to the collaboration space.

Anyone can see progress and read along on the forum. Working together on bids is made part of their k p i s and scorecards, and they are trained in the new procedures.

Every time that additional information or participants turn out to be needed, an announcement is posted on the organization’s task board, so people possessing the knowledge or time, can jump in. Projects and problems (or their owners) do not have to look for information, although this is not prohibited, but the crowd can easily find problems for which they know a solution and with which they can earn credits.

Ultimately, the resulting bid process is not subject to direct control and does not involve direct communication. A form of mass collaboration has now been esta-

Implementation 119 blished, one that makes scaling up very easy and does not obstruct the new way of working.

This requires a suitable platform, new procedures as well as k p i s and training in order to provide assurance within the organization.

In this way, the entire organization can be examined and processes deemed suitable or desirable can be converted into stigmergic or social variants. The greater the number of processes that can be transformed, the more flexible and efficient the organization becomes and the more varied the work is for employees and the easier it is for the organization to incorporate strategies involving c r m and the new way of working.

Designing training programs Specific target groups have different training needs. For instance, users with greater background in the web and technology probably have more experience with the possibilities of introducing a social platform than their less technically- minded colleagues. Requirements will also differ for internal users, your employees, and any external ones, such as customers, suppliers or other business relations. Answering the question “what’s in it for me?” is the best way to meet the needs of each of these user groups. The previously established personas and scenarios can provide you very good support in this respect. They help you to adopt an end-user perspective and, from this viewpoint, you can aptly map out the training and educational needs.

Train the trainers To improve the training and, at the same time, to train the early adopters as catalysts and moderators, a training program is, so to speak, tested on this target group. This group also probably contains a large number of web-savvy users, so it is good to involve a number of less experienced users in order for feedback to be collected from several perspectives. For example, there are people in the Com- munications department who can support you during the pr campaign, or a number of managers who normally might use modern 2.0 solutions to a lesser extent.

120 TeamPark By providing training, you supply experience about the content and form that you might give it. By listening attentively to the experiences of these initially trained individuals, you will be able to prefect training strategies and, even better, co-ordinate them with subsequent target groups.

Implementation 121 Notes

122 TeamPark 13 Life

The most important products and work of/in this phase are:

• Providing Training and Education in order to teach the user the necessary skills. • Organizing Install Parties, Workshops and Life Hacking events: occasions that not only affect the atmosphere but also generate the experience of an event. • Pro-active presence of expertise on the work floor by making use of Floor Walking. • Using Catalysis to provide quality content and vitality to the platform at an accelerated rate. • Active Community Management of companies to prevent uncontrolled growth while encouraging contributions. • Moderation and monitoring of content in a way that keeps the platform free of inappropriate language and encourages quality. • Thorough Measurement and Evaluation to maintain a grip on successful deployment and rapidly gain experience.

It is not enough just to provide the organization with a platform, it must be actively brought to life with great commitment. How a platform should be given vitality largely depends on the type of platform and its application. A platform geared to the outside world (for example customers or suppliers), is very different from an internal platform for the organization. Customers and suppliers

Life 123 cannot generally be told what to do, unlike employees who may be provided with new procedures and media. In general it is impossible to train and instruct visitors to a customer platform, while such options exist for employees working on an internal platform.

Best Practices How do you get people to the point of participating in the activities of a social platform? The success of social software is unfortunately not predictable. Why was YouTube successful and not Google video or Yahoo video? Why Hyves in the Netherlands and not MySpace? Why Google and not Alta Vista? No one can say. Does this mean that everything must be a gamble and that nothing can be done to compel success? The answer is obvious: of course something can be done. But what is it that must be done to make a community successful?

It starts by furnishing the appropriate social software. TeamPark provides software with a balanced and adapted social character and strong vitality It supplies software that facilitates organic processes. It ensures an agile starting point. It is now up to the participants to make something out of it, but this will not likely happen on its own. How to go about it then? In this case, there is no one road to Rome, and the getting there does not involve hard science. For example, below are recommendations from Flickr, Google, Joshua Porter43 and Juri Engeström or Jaiku.44 We give them to you to be placed alongside the building blocks that we consider important and that we, obviously, will describe in greater detail.

43 http://bokardo.com 44 http://www.upstream.nl/comments.php?id=521_0_1_0_C

124 TeamPark Training and instruction Without doubt, we can briefly and succinctly say that new opportunities require new skills, and therefore training. Of course, such instruction might take the form of a conventional tutorial in which a user must click here and click there and that commonly accompanies well-known product introductions or that make up most technical training programs. It is much more fun and profitable to receive training in the form of a case study or game. An example is provided by the “day in the life” experience: a fun and informative run-through of a possible workday complete with an extremely likely set of tasks. Such activity ensures that par-

Life 125 ticipants stick with it and that the training procedure attains a slightly longer half-life than standard workbook-based training programs.

Think of it as a kind of serious game in which the roles are assigned to personas and tasks of the scenarios created in the strategy phase. For a case study in which certain goals are to be accomplished, there should be points that have to be scored. In effect, scoring points is actually a minor matter, and much more value is derived from the discussions subsequent to the analysis of the results from the various scenarios. They not only touch on the skills that the participants have gained and whether they had difficulty in acquiring these new capacities, but also and in particular the manner in which the various scenarios impact on the participants. And therefore on the user’s organization as well.

By including the most important functionalities in the various scenarios and thus the case components, participants are exposed to these functionalities in an organized manner without merely learning to press buttons while disregarding the deeper meaning of the functions involved. The training programs are tailored to target groups and must provide relevant scenarios. In discussing a scenario, current common practices can consequently be compared to the procedure just used. Clearly, such comparison provides a big assist in any attempt to make the new way of working concrete. It furthermore provides a clear boost to the organization’s transition and the socialization of the selected processes.

Besides such planned training, it is also useful to use a kind of ad-hoc training method. For instance, catalysts can be used as a kind of on-demand social help desk that can be called or emailed directly. In addition, a well-trained official help desk may provide comparable support and training. This clearly requires a different attitude from a help desk that is geared to resolving issues as quickly as possible, after which it breaks the contact with the employee. It is not only intended for technical support and troubleshooting. It is, in fact, concerned with offering real support for the work of the employee. In other words, sincere help and support in the training of skills.

Perhaps the above-described feels rather ad hoc and does not therefore fit so well in the structure or culture of your organization. It is also possible to add somewhat more structure. Organize informal walk-in sessions for end users. For example, set up an innovation café that provides not just a demonstration but also

126 TeamPark makes it possible to conduct brief collective training sessions. A physical location that is highly visible to end users and staffed by people who know how the organization can be provided with further help. They act as the eyes and ears of training. With feedback from participants, they can adjust the instruction and training plan initially published during the strategy phase.

Install parties Besides the above-mentioned training, instruction and support methods, there are also a number of ways to enliven the platform further. The approach required to instill such vitality involves collective common experience; it does not so much adopt a training perspective but one more concerned with sharing knowledge, experience and insights.

Install parties may help users still having difficulty accessing the platform to overcome the obstacles. This is actually a form of technical support. The approach is not intended to personally help everyone at the party but, by means of a short central presentation, help users along the way and then allow new users to help each other keep everything in play. Of course, this is supported by additional expertise from a number of specialists such as catalysts or the staff at the help desk.

It is great that such informal settings can constitute a party in which people become excited about helping each other. They are also made eager to see more of the possibilities and to share acquired knowledge with others. This positive attitude exists not only at the install party but also outside it, when participants return to work in their separate organizational units. The well-known wildfires of a cultural trend will spread throughout the organization, and the last step of successful implementation and deployment in the user organization will find enthusiastic support among your own staff. The network organization will be used to train and support your employees. This undoubtedly has much greater effect than having the transition managed by a small department comprised of a limited number of people.

Life 127 Workshops Such an install party is actually a type of workshop in which users not only view a presentation but also can and must begin to work with the new platform. The nice thing about workshops is that the distance between experts and potential users is super small. In informal settings, you are easily able to reach your goals because there is direct contact with end users. There is cross-fertilization and exchange of best and possibly worst practices.

To obtain a good atmosphere in the workshops, they should be started with a little input: reading a presentation on the possibilities or something similar. After all, participants expect you to establish the framework. Do not be formal; that would put a brake on contributions and reciprocal self-help. Introducing an unexpected activity has proven to work well at the start of a workshop. An example might be the tags from the workshop in the awareness phase described earlier. Especially if it also involves a part of the physical activities, we quickly separate ourselves from the daily grind and open our minds to new possibilities. By linking results from the awareness phase to choices in the strategy phase as well as to the platform going live, users obtain the feeling that they are finally getting what they are asking for. Establishing such links always kicks this workshop off on the right foot.

The group for which you plan and organize the workshop depends mainly on the culture of the organization, and to a lesser extent, on its structure as well. In a more formal organization with hard lines of control, it may be difficult to assemble a wide array of users in one group and get them to help themselves. Think of a top manager who is given an explanation by a newly-hired young whipper-snapper. Could this happen in your organization? It would be nice if it could, because this would mean that you already have an open and informal culture. You might then include users from your entire population in the workshops. If, however, things are not so simple in your organization (and its culture), then you would be wise to offer separate training to the various layers and try to break down this structure here and there.

You would do well to follow a good example; for this reason, enthusiasm from (internal) leadership or your major (external) accounts is required. If you are forced to separate into different groups, then you would do well to train and support management and the leading customers, so they can be at ease and feel

128 TeamPark comfortable with the new approach. If this leading group is first given such training and instruction in the form of workshops and the like, you can then work together to train and support the rest of the organization. It may be that management might not always have the best capacities in this regard and, if the organizational culture allows it, it could be more interesting to encourage cross pollination among layers. Do not be afraid to experiment, obtain results and make adjustments where necessary. You can best judge if your organization can handle such cross-pollination.

Life hacking The deployment of it resources in an unconventional way in order to be more productive at work comes under the somewhat unconventional name of Life Hacking. Wikipedia describes it as a mix of time management, knowledge management and personal development, with a touch of Web 2.0 and a dash of MacGyver.

In discussing training, we already mentioned the idea of using the workday as a basis for scenarios. We were then talking about hypothetical but very real and realistic scenarios. Life hacking is about real people and real scenarios. How could we do the same things differently through creative use of the opportunities that arise? Think about how meetings are currently being conducted: How difficult is it to schedule a date or time when everyone is available and how are we recording and processing the minutes of such meetings?

Planning meetings and other appointments is easier when following the policy of an open agenda. If the organizer can quickly see at a single glance who and is available and when they are available, the continuous fruitlessness of trying to make arrangements is over. There are also other solutions to be considered in which potential participants indicate when they can and/or want to meet. As a consequence, organizers decide when the meeting is scheduled on the basis of this input.

The creation of minutes after a meeting is another activity that is often regarded as irritating. One of the participants creates a Word document that is then end- lessly circulated by email until a dictator finally molds it into a final form. There are other ways: a dynamic document in the form of a wiki, for example. One of

Life 129 the people from the meeting enters a draft in the wiki, which is then supplemented by everyone else. After about four days, a manager switches the wiki to read only and the minutes are completed.

Clearly, these are two examples that may be more or less applicable to your organization. They are again presented as types of general sample scenarios. You will have to explore the creative possibilities for your own organization. The open secret is to break away from the notion that “we always did things this way” and reconsider the ways that there are and to collectively choose or create the approaches that best suit your organization. Such activity is done together, on-site and specific to your circumstances. The possibilities of tooling have only a few restrictions and any limitations that you encounter should be dealt with by thinking: “What would MacGyver do…”

Floor walking We already have already presented and discussed a number of structural and ad-hoc methods of training and support. Most of them will not take place at the workstations of employees or other end users. However, such locations will precisely be the sites of floor walking, the presence for the newly introduced platform on end-user work stations. Think of it as a pro-active help desk providing direct support immediately on site. How good can it get for you end users!

This is not only incredibly convenient for your end users, but you are also doing yourself a big favor. After all, you will be capable of recording the knowledge and information of real users on site. By being present and providing support for the work, you can ensure that, in addition to the basic functionality, attention is also given to the somewhat more specific needs of a particular user or user group. This will give you valuable insight into the real impact of the new possibilities on the work and lives of end users. You can re-apply your training program to better suit the needs of this group.

The nice thing is that, if you are present on the floor, you not only assist in the execution of the regular activities but can also discuss tasks and work out how they might be handled. For instance, you can discuss the MacGyver approach from the perspective of Life Hacking and apply it to end users. Floor walking is a rewarding and refreshing way to deal with the introduction of new possibilities.

130 TeamPark It encourages involvement of the various layers and departments throughout the organization, from the beginning of the process in the awareness phase to changes on the floor in the vitalization phase.

This all entails direct interaction with end users that is dominated by education, training and listening. Another side of vitalizing the environment concerns issues that take place behind the scene. They are not directly perceived by users who, for that matter, do not have to know about them. They are, in fact, tasks and activities that are executed on the platform itself. Such tasks are intended to encourage users to actively contribute, to prevent uncontrolled sprawl and to promote quality.

Catalysis Catalysts are used to encourage users to use the new platform and to bring them into contact with their fellow employees. But what is to be done? Where to begin? What exactly are the typical activities that will attract your users to the platform and/or keep them using it? It must first be said that here they need to follow their hearts. On the bottom line, catalysts are selected on the basis of your existing Web 2.0 behavior and motivation. They have taken part in discussions concerning the strategy of the organization, the objectives and the ultimately measurable results and changes with the head catalyst. They have an enthusiastic and positive attitude.

Social collaboration and communication is not yet just another new hype; instead, it appears to be a development that will bring about many, many changes in the world. Catalysts are among the vanguard at the beginning of something wonderful. They are meant to share this enthusiasm by working on the platform. They will work in the new way of working and provide a good example. They will furthermore set up communities, involve fellow employees and win them over. This will be done not just with words but with deeds. They will transform the new way of working into the way embraced by all employees as no other. That is what it is ultimately all about. Exemplary stigmergic collaboration will convert fellow employees to a better way of working together.

Life 131 Simply providing a good example will not however be enough. If you want to focus attention on something new, then you will have to be noticeable. You must go the extra mile. Below are a few examples.

Organize! What should be organized? Obviously, you will have to speak to people about their work and area of knowledge within the company in order to gain their conversion. Organize life meetings, virtual meetings for knowledge sharing and, in particular, combinations of the above two elements, causing active and intensive knowledge sharing to occur.

But additionally, much nicer and perhaps more effective, talk to people about their hobbies, interests and talents, as they will be most at ease in dealing with these subjects. And do not do this only online. Think, for example, about organizing photography courses, cooking courses, painting courses, language courses, sports days, survival days, track days and driving lessons. Connect these activities to a contest or something else that will give it a push and make sure that any results are shared on the platform (such as content in the form of photos, stories or recipes). Contests, playful competitions, reviews, everything is possible.

After a photography course, participants should be given the opportunity to upload their artistic work to their own library or weblog, whereupon an experienced photographer and other participants may express criticism or even praise. A nice incentive would be to hang the best photos in the office or in the department. There is a wide range of fun and stimulating activities that may come to mind. Discussions will arise on their own and an online photo club will emerge. Do not be afraid of the hobby element. The aim is to “launch” the platform. Online socialization is in itself is a goal and, in the beginning, it is especially important for people to simply access the platform and feel that hanging out there is a pleasurable experience.

Organize cooking classes and allow participants to subsequently post their recipes on their weblogs, or else on a wiki, so that others can revise the recipe. At the end of the year, a cookbook may be published at the cost of the company. A recipe appears every month in the company newsletter. The best recipe will be served in the cafeteria on every first Monday of the month. Be creative! Organ-

132 TeamPark ize race track days with car dealers and leasing companies where people can try out different cars, in addition to their own. Have the reviews posted online and ensure that people can extensively discuss the cars and even rate them. Everyone will want to voice their opinion. Make sure that dealers and leasing companies inform your employees through the community. Give them their own accounts for this purpose. For dealers, this is also a welcome opportunity because it enables them to approach many people with little effort and without having to resort to “spamming.”

Allow people to do as much as possible themselves, while still working in consultation with the organization, which lays the course or channels the activity. Make an announcement on the platform. Make a budget available and see if the amount is enough.

Maybe even include software that allows online gaming among employees such as a tetris league, a tic-tac-toe battle or a Sudoku tournament. Think of the possibilities of Windows Messenger (msn) to cultivate activities among employees.

An online auction on the platform is of course obvious; it will begin to function well almost immediately and, if the company is large enough, a playful form of online dating will also become instantly popular. Soon, perhaps. a carpooling initiative will follow et voilà, this would have direct benefits for regular business operations.

Bookmarking and Activity streaming Bookmarking is an activity with immediate added value for the business. Social and enterprise bookmarking involves the link dumping of articles from other web sites and communities within their own platforms. A link dump is a brief summary of and a hyperlink to an external article or community. The members of the community can vote on these link dumps. This means of communication may be used to keep each other informed of market developments, while voting automatically has a sifting effect, as the voting procedure automatically separates major and minor items. In this way, account managers can, for example, keep abreast of what they feel to be important developments.

Life 133 Another low-threshold activity with immediate added value is Twitter-like activity streaming. As its primary purpose, activity streaming can help to keep fellow employees informed about what you are doing. It is enjoyable to stream and quickly creates spin-off, such as actual unsolicited but welcome and useful assistance with work or problems. It brings information to you without you actively issuing a search command.

Satisfaction One of the main incentives in fostering a community is to provide rewards. Participants must personally see the benefit of their contributions. Very rewarding is confirmation that a contribution has been noticed by others. It is now the trend to have a corporate blog to which ceos also contribute. Often a comment will be provided in such cases out of common courtesy, and that is true enough. It would be much better if the ceo would comment honestly on the items of others. This is often much more stimulating than other blogs that are less interesting to the community.

If an initiative germinates in the organic environment with a half-life longer than a few days, then go there and give it some attention. Give the initiative takers the necessary extra time or budget.

Reward is also facilitated by the proper technique. Many intranets have the capacity to post blogs and upload media (the collaboration/work-group solutions of most large software producers have this capacity as part of their standard packages), but no-one can then find the contributions because a collective front page is missing, for example.

Community Management At the time of writing, there are currently many different definitions of community management in circulation. These vary from a market community expert to what we call in this book a catalyst. Within our TeamPark method, we understand community management as nothing more and nothing less than the optimization of the communities on the social platform.

134 TeamPark Communities are created on a social platform because, at a given moment, a user feels the need to create a community. It is just that simple. The community of 1 user is born. If you can create a community so easily, then uncontrolled growth is guaranteed. Not everyone will go and see first whether a community exists that has about the same or very similar purpose. As a result, many communities can be created having the same subject. Another consequence of this organic way of working is that other major areas of knowledge that are important for the company may not have corresponding communities created for them.

The previously discussed Human Resources and Marketing departments will create important communities for themselves. But who will create communities for “current account,” “do’s and don’ts of the decimal accounting system,” and “iso-9002 tips and tricks”?

For optimum benefit to the company, a balance has to be struck between areas of knowledge, the organizational structure of an organization and the communities on the social platform. And not just that! A great deal of sprawl and overlap will occur even within the more social communities on the platform.

We have already learned that management of platforms may not be of the type that leads. Soft guidance and a gentle hand on the wheel are better ways of describing how the platform should be managed.

Methods to be employed by a community manager include filtering, bookmarking and influencing. The communications manager can join the communities and, working from within, try to direct the attention of the members of the community or “one member” to other existing communities dealing with the same subject and to bookmark this second community. Nothing however is mandatory. If individuals persist in their structure, then that is the way it is. Communities that do not yet exist but are important for the organization can be set up and brought to life.

Moderation and content monitoring Moderation and content control are dirty words in the blogosphere. The original bloggers and forum users did not want any intervention in discussions or comments, or any incursion of “censorship” as they were quick to label it. This

Life 135 view is oversimplified and untenable on a large social platform. In addition, moderation on a social platform involves much more than just policing comments and discussions.

The diversity of people, opinions and insights creates the tendency to do things in a new, idiosyncratic way more frequently that is desirable, while collaboration means that things should be done is the same, uniform manner. Starting numerous communities around a single issue may, at a given moment, become undesirable. Maybe it was just a mistake caused by the starter of the community not taking a good look round. New clone communities should simply be merged with existing ones, and there is no harm done. Content can easily be entered in the wrong place, and should simply be moved. Keywords that differ from the standard ones must simply be adjusted. This seems obvious and, as previously described, can be performed without any discussion; simple notification is sufficient. This is not censorship and it is not against the “organic base” of the platform. There are people who constantly need to be charged with these activities, and the platform must be continuously moderated.

It may also become more serious. According to Godwin’s Law, “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” This type of behavior and negative contributions cannot be tolerated, and any such deviant activity should be cured by means of moderation.

Now fortunately, moderators are not always checking the platform, and the majority of the participants will certainly have good intentions. Entirely in line with the trends described in this book, moderators need not therefore just play the role of platform watchdog. We have common goals and it is in our common interest that the platform remains a pleasant place to contact each other and share knowledge. If someone oversteps the mark, anyone can in fact effectively intervene. Anyone can give a user a thumb down or possibly indicate, in a polite comment, that a certain contribution does not have the most appropriate tone or touch the right strings. It is therefore a shared task and joint responsibility to keep the platform clean and friendly. User Generated Content has its own filter and undertakes its own clean-up activities.

136 TeamPark Of course, moderators must also prevent users from sharing outright illegal things or flouting the imposed legal framework in some other way. Such illicit activity can cause your organization big problems and perhaps even financial loss. At a certain moment, it becomes time to act, return the users to the right path and help to prevent worse from happening. Intervention should usually be interpreted in a gentler sense, although sometimes it must involve a bit harder form of enforcement.

The moderator may intervene by gently placing a message that indicates, or points to the generally applicable rules. The message may remind users of the platform’s purpose, as well as the common manners employed at the company. A personal appeal and warning given offenders indicate that things have gone too far. In this case, too far means that other, more serious steps might be taken if the rules are transgressed. Moderators show their teeth but do not bite right away.

It should be evident that a moderator intends to act more resolutely and intervene more firmly, if need be. This may involve the temporary suspension of certain rights and even a temporary ban. Consider revoking the right to contribute or even imposing a temporary reading ban on an offender. This should teach him or her a lesson, shouldn’t it? Exclusion from the community in which the said user has gone too far is also an option. If it is truly necessary, you will have to exclude people from the platform to protect and preserve the good of the well- meaning majority. A ban is a measure of last resort , even if it is still only temporary.

Measurements The more that is happening on the platform, the more you are able to determine whether your previously chosen strategy is successful and meets your needs, and where you possibly can adjust. You can then decide whether your stated goals will be met and whether they were realistic. You will have opportunities to adjust and to reset your course based on previously determined kpis. Depending on what you have decided in this regard, you will also have to make some measurements.

Some things are very easy to measure. For instance, you might determine the total number of users that have logged on, users with a better than half-finished

Life 137 profile and statistics concerning repeat visits. This provides an initial indication of the target audience that you are reaching. If very few users take the trouble to check the platform out or if users do not bother to partially build up a full profile, than they obviously do not feel sufficiently attracted by the platform. Additional marketing and/or pr can help steer more potential users to the platform and point out the benefits of use. Small incentives may also work very well. Examples may be publicizing the user of the week or spotlighting specific features. Spotlights are a wonderful way to alert potential users to selected topics by using pr to shine a figurative light on them.

Besides user measurements, there are also a number of valuable factors to measure with regard to contributed content. One possibility is the number of contributions in the form of blog, forum and wiki posts. But also the number of communities and the range of the participants and content in the communities. These relationships may give you some insight into what are known as trending topics. What is currently happening in the communities on the platform? You can also use such data to determine if additional community management is required, or any other form of pr.

The insight will help you to see if greater emphasis should be placed on business or recreational items. The trick is to adopt a consistent approach made up of the right mix. Ideally, you have outlined what this mix is for your organization in the strategy phase. It is certainly not always the intention to have a nice fifty-fifty split between business-related issues and. let us say, other content. It is your platform for your communities, your people and your organizational goals. And therefore up to you to make the most effective division.

Besides these quantitative issues, it is also good to measure or otherwise assess the level of quality and consistency of any content. Let us explain this point a little more clearly. Besides the statistics about use and raw figures regarding content, you can gain insight from evaluating content. Such evaluation could entail recording the number of times content is read, or at least visited. But also the number of comments received and the number of votes or stars that have been gathered. Another important element on the social platform involves adding keywords by providing content with tags. The extensive use of standardized tags makes the platform better suited to content searches and, as a result, increases its value for the organization, as well as for the user.

138 TeamPark Additionally, a completely organic platform can also be evaluated. This is done using tools that make the social graph apparent to the organization. Groups or “clusters” form as a result of shared interests or connections. Making these ties explicit will reveal new action points for promoting collaboration.

The organization’s social graph shows where the hotspots are. You see the people who are most frequently consulted as sources of knowledge or who most actively participate in the dissemination of content. You discover where the real knowledge of the organization is located. It is important for any organization to detect and cultivate this informal organizational structure. The hotspots must be nourished.

Below are a number of ways to make quantitative and qualitative measurements of your social platform, which we list purely for the sake of providing you with inspiration.

Measurement Quantitative Qualitative Users and Created Recently Active, Completeness, Relationships, Photos, Profiles Judgment Bookmarks Made Public, Private, Per user, Unique bookmarks, Top 10 Percent, Users with at least 1, Tracking list, Users linked in bookmark, Users with more than 10 bookmarks Tags Added Unique Tags, Number per user, Unique collaborators, Top 10 percent, Users with at least 1, Users with more than 10 Communities Created Active, Public, Moderated, Private, Unique owners, Unique users Blogs Published Group / Team / Community blogs, Unique makers, Unique writers, Number read, Number of comments, Number of notifications, Tags Activities Created Types, Members, Unique owner, Users with more than 2 Homepage Available Widgets used, Unique users widgets Files Number and Recently updated, Number of times shared, Private, total size Recently downloaded, Tagged, Rated, Commented on, Recommended, Added to collections Wikis Number and Recently updated, Attachments, Tags, Popular Tags, size of wikis, Comments, Recommended, Unique users who have Wiki pages recommended

Life 139 Making these measurements over time will disclose recognizable patterns. Chang- ing numbers provide input concerning the growth and evolution of the social platform. In addition to noting any changes that have occurred since the last measurement, it is also interesting to note the evolution of the types of changes that occur over time. The 2nd derivative. Such as the number of new profiles in the past week as compared to the previous week. Or the number of new tags or new taggers that there have been added. Not measured in pure numbers but as a change. These figures give you short (days, week) and longer term (months, years) insight into the trends regarding the adoption of the platform and provide you with a basis on which you can easily adjust and re-orient your catalysts and pr campaign.

140 TeamPark Notes

Life 141

Final Word

February 4, 2010 - Social software has 210,000,000 hits on Google and even as much as 589,000,000 on Yahoo. It was the hot topic last year, but how hot is it now?

Over six months have elapsed since writing the first version of this book, and a great deal has happened during that period both here at Sogeti, but most certainly all around us. The questions that we originally asked were: “Will socialization of the company really catch on?”, “Is it simply a hype that will quickly pass?” These have largely been answered.

To Illustrate: In November 2009, we held a customer seminar on the subject of this book. It was attended by 135 participants representing 90 companies. The turnout was a good one for such a seminar. We organize many similar events for our clients, and there are about 3 exceptional sessions a year, at which over a 100 attendees show up. We were consequently delighted. Following each seminar, we call up participants and ask them about their views of the event and whether there is any need to clarify a few points in a personal meeting. In general, there is a moderate response to such an offer, in the sense that about 1 in 10 clients need to have to plan in an additional hour in their already busy schedules in order to discuss the relevant issues. This time, the follow-up calls to our seminar revealed that 85 of the 90 attendees wanted to make an appointment. Unprec- edented! We would dare say that any business employing knowledge workers is currently in the process of preparing for the acquisition of social software for its organization.

And this provides an immediate answer to the second question. Besides the ever- increasing number of hits on Google and Yahoo, interest still is growing, along with the number of blogs, seminars, books, articles and conferences on the subject.

Every day we gain more practical experience due to the questions from our customers, colleagues or readers of our blog http://TeamPark.org. Without doubt, we are extremely grateful for this wealth of input.

Final Word 143

innovation and inspiration and innovation Sogeti From crowd to community vision and inspiration

innovation and inspiration Patrick Savalle, Wim Ho and and Arnd Brugman From crowd to community | community to crowd From

TeamPark

and and Arnd Brugman Arnd and and Patrick Savalle, Wim Ho Wim Savalle, Patrick inspiration and innovation

platform and method and platform TeamPark

Sogeti innovation and inspiration

4EAM0ARK 4HEMETHODISMETICULOUSLY SCHEMATICALLYDETAILEDINTHEBRIE½NG 7HEELSARESUBTLYINCORPORATED4HEIMAGEOF!RNTZICONOGRAPHYUSED HEREISAREPRESENTATIONOFDIVERGENTBUSINESSLINES²

$ESIGNTEAM&RANCISKA&RANSENAND*OSVANDEN"ERG from crowd to community

From Crowd to Community Vision and Inspiration

2nd (revised) edition

Patrick Savalle Wim Hofland Arnd Brugman

2010 Sogeti Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 The Netherlands http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/

You are free:

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Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

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2010 Sogeti

Foreword

Information technology (it) has now become a full-grown industry. Not bad for something that has only been around for about fifty years. What has become apparent in recent decades us that it is not only aiming a radically innovative technology at business but also at consumers. The introduction of gadgets, methods, technologies, tools and complete solutions have succeeded each other sometimes at an increasingly accelerating rate in recent years. Some introductions have been very successful and irreversibly altered the world of it. On the other hand, there are many innovative technologies that have never realized their promise.

It is undeniable that it fascinates us. Mostly, it offers the business world innovative progress and opens it to new opportunities of doing business. it is also en- thralling because younger generations have grown up using it as a tool, just as tv became an essential adjunct to the post-war generation. Generations X, Y and Einstein view it as a natural part of their lives and embrace new applications as their own without ever having to consult a user manual. It is an exciting world in which big players such as Microsoft, ibm and Oracle influence and perhaps even dominates the playing field. Young people are virtually now learning about xbox game computers, for example, when they are still in the cradle.

Recent developments in business provide the potential of making the best possible use of all generations. This means that, in addition to the line organization and processes, there is more and more need to cultivate the social potential that an organization possesses. We have to use all the internet functions that are available to us in order to encourage and facilitate social networks and collaboration. All Web 2.0 capacities can be used to support this activity and then “let it all happen.” In this sense, support means allowing space and investing trust in people. I am convinced that the majority of employees will then experience more satisfaction, the greatest stimulation and, ultimately, obtain the best results for the organization.

The TeamPark book explores these developments in complete detail. The writers then began the book, it seemed to me, with a mixture of “hope and fear” about their topic. Not knowing where they were heading, on the one hand, and allow-

Foreword 7 ing for the possibility that a brilliant vision, on the other. Patrick, Arnd and Wim have been able to inspire me about what was going on in organizations, as well as resurrect the social side of organizations. In addition, there turns out to be a number of recognizable phases that can be negotiated in order to unlock this potential. In brief, a clear idea of a book was born. To avoid writing it too strongly in the Sogeti tradition, we have produced a two-sided readable book and worked on it for about one and a half years. I am more than proud about the final result. I have been heartily encouraged by the recognition and enthusiasm of the first readers, rewarding our perseverance. Fortunately, the period of “fear” is long behind us and only the “hope” remains. I am absolutely certain that every reader will therefore enjoy and profit from the reading of this book. I also trust that it will also help you find a way to unlock the potential of your social organization and derive added value from it.

Frank Langeveld, Director of Sogeti Rotterdam, March 9, 2010

8 from crowd to Community Content

Foreword 7

1 Start here 13 The future is social 14 Technological “convergence” 15 Customer communications 16 A new way of working. 17 Globalization 17 The limits of the spider model 18 The limits of the machine model 19 Symptoms of maladjustment 20 The crowd in every organization 21 Crowd control 22 New ways of working together 23 Big bang or evolution? 24 The Intelligent Organization and TeamPark 25 Playing or working? 27

2 Vive la Revolution! 31 On March 14, 2004, everything was finally ready 31 The new web 33 Hanging out and living online 33 We are the media 35 The customer is part of the company 36 Producer and consumer at the same time 38 Social technology 39 The new worker 42

Content 9 3 Web 2.0 45 The Weblog 49 Forum 50 The Wiki 51 The marketplace 51 The media library 52 Social link dump or social bookmarking 53 News aggregation 54 The activity stream 55

4 The “Crowd” 57 The Ron Paul revolution 58 We are all ants 60 The collective has its own life 64 Collective Intelligence Quotient (cq) 71 Crowd-control: channeling talent 72

5 Socializing with the crowd 77 Office warrior (fragment) 77 Nvidia 80 Nike 81 Response 1.0 versus response 2.0 82 Viral communications 84 Astroturfing 86 Community resistance 88

6 The new way of working together 91 From chaos to perfection 92 Stigmergy as defined in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 93 The human body 97 Madmen and fools write their names on doors and windows 98 Mass-action and brute force tactics 100 Bundling of forces 101 Broadcast versus direct communication 101 Synchronous versus asynchronous 102 Self-scaling and anonymous 103 Performing complex tasks without a leader 103

10 from crowd to Community 7 Various types of social collaboration platforms 105 Mechanical versus organic 105 Types of social activity useful to the organization 107 Social networks: implicit social activity 108 6-degrees of Kevin Bacon 109 Productive social activity: an alternative to teamwork 112 Crowds: creative social activity 113 What does such a crowd then do all day long? 114 Switching the crowd on and off 115

8 “2.0” 117 Enterprise “1.0” and “2.0” as Yin and Yang 119 Communities alongside Teams 120 Mintzberg and co. 121 The autonomy of Fairtlough 122 Thomas Malone and democracy in your company 122 Self-organization 123 Interaction 124

9 2.0 in business 127 Old companies in a new world 128 Knowledge processing factories and intensive personnel husbandry 130 The end of Taylorism 131 A new model for knowledge work 133 The future of your organization in 7 points 136 “Der mensch als industriepalast” 136

Final word 143

Content 11 12 from crowd to Community 1 Start here

Communities and social websites are all the rage at the moment. Wiki’s, blogs, forums, you name it—if you don’t have them at your company, you’re just not up to snuff. Web 2.0, “Enterprise 2.0”, you just can’t get away from this burgeoning trend. Everything has become “2.0”. All of society is in flux.

Of course, social change has always existed, but the speed and scale of the current transformations are unprecedented. As in the case of any hype cycle, the exact degree of penetration and omnipresence at which “2.0” will settle is not entirely clear, but the change will certainly be great and irrevocable when it does finally reach this stable state. What we suggest and will try to make acceptable is that Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are not empty slogans, not even memes1 but forces, concretely applicable concepts. Undoubtedly, the term “2.0” will be as often as not incorrectly used, but it is, at the same time, hardly possible to underestimate its pervasive effect at any level, be it social, cultural, political or, in any case, commercial.

Despite the enormous influence that Web 2.0 is now having on the manner in which people use the internet, the concept remains rather vague and unclear to many. Nevertheless, it is perfectly clear to us at the innovation and inspiration department of Sogeti. When considering Web 2.0, most people think about internet communities and social websites making it possible for visitors to interact

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

Start here 13 with each other and inviting them to make contributions. YouTube.com, Linked In.com, Facebook.com and eBay.com are all websites that make use of such visitor productivity and inspiration. In effect, we see the very same thing, but only in a larger, more holistic context. The way we see it, the technical, conceptual and socio-cultural trends are not only revolutionizing the world of the internet (called the blogosphere) but also your business operations. In our view, “2.0” resources not only facilitate and activate “visitors” but crowds in general. These crowds are to be found everywhere, including in particular every organization.

“2.0” makes it possible for companies to discover and activate an enormous pool of mostly untapped talent, one that is present in every company, without excep- tion. This talent reservoir is a sleeping giant ready to be awakened. It is filled with crowds that have enormous potential for innovation, creativity and productivity. The methods of tapping into this resource were then labeled Enter- prise 2.0, but what is it exactly? It is not only a company that works with Web 2.0 resources such as wikis, blogs and forums—the terms that you always hear in this regard. If only it were just that easy! Owning a telescope does not make you an astronomer. You remain exactly the same person, except that you have a telescope. Similarly, completely filling a company’s intranet with wikis, blogs and other social software will have little effect. Perhaps there will be increased fool- ing around and tinkering, here and there a lonely initiative, but not the more efficient organization that we hope for. More is needed for this transformation: there must be knowledge and understanding, resources and correct application and an intensive launch phase. What is necessary is a structured approach. And TeamPark provides it.

The future is social Senior executives are still hesitant about setting up a social collaboration platform in their organization. The building of social platforms, the use and the (re)design of the organization is still just getting off the ground and will fully take flight in the near future. A logical development, after the social revolution in our private sphere, is the social revolution of the organization. We have all been able to experience the emergence of Web. 2.0, but the truly great change, the transformation of our business community, the advent of Enterprise 2.0 is near at hand. There are currently no training programs for “social collaboration,” but they will

14 from crowd to Community come. There are still no engineers or business experts who have been schooled in Enterprise 2.0, but they will appear. There are no experienced specialists, they are in the process of gaining experience. And these people will change our world. So- cial practices based on stigmergic collaboration is here and will only disappear if there are no more ants running around in this world (we will explain this in detail later). Not just because social activity further helps companies to optimize their processes in a way not possible with traditional tools. There are already technological and social trends that channel the evolution and implementation of the new collaboration. Even in your organization.

The Gartner hype curve for social media

Technological “convergence” Smart mobile devices are conquering the market. Think of the iPhone that operates on Unix, or the G1 operating on a special version of Linux, or Tablet pcs, Netbooks, book readers, new generation multi-touch smart-phones and laptops with built-in networking. But even more is about to come out. A trend that is

Start here 15 being identified as “convergence”2 will mean that an entirely new generation of “collaboration” tools will be created. Photo cameras, camcorders, navigation equipment, medical equipment, various types of handhelds and mobile devices— all will be derived from the same basics platform: the smart phone and all will run on a generic operating system, such as Android. They will all have the same connectivity and interactivity and all be able to take part in online social processes. The internet, but especially your intranet, will become a web for still smarter and, in particular, more mobile and social devices. With the appropriate mechanism, this can become a smart grid that collects, weighs and evaluates information. The result will enable your employees to work and collaborate in almost any manner. It would be catastrophic to waste this talent and these opportunities, and a good social platform makes such wastefulness entirely unnecessary.

Customer communications Fear of missing the boat is the primary reason that so many companies are now trying to win over the external crowd, which is to say their customers, suppliers and other people from outside the company. These companies hope that, by using communities and crowdsourcing, they can increase customer loyalty, encourage practical innovation and achieve everything that “2.0” originally promised them. Everyone now wants to have their own community. But it is unclear how such proliferate spawning of groups will ultimately be possible. Where will all the customers go when everyone will soon be running after them? They can hardly belong to dozens of communities. Nevertheless, the trend and desire to join in clearly exists at present and, at least for the time being, they are bearing fruit for companies. It is however impossible for customers to be fully included in a company’s functional processes due to the impossibility of forcing customers to provide a certain performance or degree of commitment. Your employees are motivated by the employment contract, while customers have another relation with a company. Employees can be told what to do, as well as when and how. But customers cannot be ordered around. A new type of collaboration is therefore required in order to gain the cooperation of the external crowed, and this is made possible, as you have already guessed, by the right “2.0” platform.

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence

16 from crowd to Community A new way of working. And there is also a social trend christened by Microsoft as “the New Way of Working.”The name given to the associated technology is Unified Communica- tion and Collaboration (abbreviated ucc). The New Way of Working does not involve any prescription of the times and locations where and when work must be performed. The balance between work and private life is shifted. More and more, knowledge workers are paid in terms of performance and no longer in terms of attendance. For organizations that are fully committed to bureaucratic structures and teamwork, the New Way of Working represents a great challenge. In such cases, the New Way of Working may only appear to have limited applications. It would cause the organizational machine to grind to a halt because fixed workflows and direct, synchronous communications—the basis of the existing organization—will not work if half of the team are busy training in the gym or out playing with their children, while the other half are sitting at their desks in the office waiting for the latest updates to documents or answers to their e-mails. The New Way of Working, working independently of time and place, is impossible without a new form of collaboration.

Globalization Ultimately, the phenomenon of (technological) globalization is just “plain and simple.” Modern communications technology is making the world increasingly smaller, and it is now possible to collaborate with people from all around the world as if they were colleagues in the next room. The world will however continue to turn on its axis, and many people will still prefer to work in the daytime rather than at night. Time zones are a reality and will present an obstacle to intensive functional collaboration among team members living all around the world. To function well, these teams will have to remain geographically limited in terms of location or, in any event, involve individuals whose work days at least partially overlap. Than mechanical means of collaboration inherent to bureaucracy and teamwork are interlinked and make collaboration “any time, any place” impossible.

By redefining the entrenched practices of functional collaboration (shifting the focus from e-mail to wiki), a “2.0” platform will break down this barrier.

Start here 17 The limits of the spider model In a bureaucratic organization, a manager reorganizes and delegates by commanding and adjusting “from top-down.” Like a spider in its web, he pulls on the various strands. Instructions are developed at the top of the command structure and then issued to and refined by those at lower levels, until they are implemented at the lowest level. This is known as centralized control. Knowledge and skills are standardized and described in terms of procedures and functions. The standard manner of thinking and acting that belongs to the structure can be characterized using the key terms “standardization,” “top-down” and “central.” Since noise and distortion inevitably occur during propagation, top-down is an inefficient manner to manage large groups. In a significant number of cases, use of centralized management techniques is even impossible. Imagine a situation when a school of sardines has to dodge a hungry barracuda and the head sardine has to wait until: (1) all the information being collected by the guard sardines has been received, (2) it can form a good idea of the current positions of all the sardines in danger, (3) it can come up with a course of action for each individual sardine in a school of thousands, (4) it can distribute a series of instructions over a network of manager sardines and team- leaders in order to have each member of the school move to the right position at the right time. The larger the group gets, the greater the proportional requirement of control and communications and, correspondingly, the greater the inertia of the system. The result is that it is less likely that the system will work

The situation is not much different for organizations. Since the larger the organization, the greater the distortion in both time (delay) and in content (misin- terpretation), companies are divided into departments with a certain degree of autonomy and independent management. Although larger groups—the company as a whole without considering the organizational structure—have special qualities that we would like to use (as we will see in this book), we will have to leave these qualities unused unless we at least define a good method of aggregating their talent without again compartmentalizing the constituent group and unwit- tingly re-instituting segregation.

Central management (“management 1.0”), such as it exists in a hierarchical organization, is also very limiting in the ways that it deals with inspired individuals. The same holds true for creative individuals or other types of exceptional persons. This limitation exists because an anomalous individual displays behavior or talent that is difficult to control centrally and can never be included in a job description.

18 from crowd to Community Especially in strongly hierarchical organizations, people are almost never employed at their full potential. Often, use is only made of the standard, predictable portion of the behavior of every individual. Of course, this is partly a deliberate choice in order to ensure that no one is made irreplaceable.

Centrally managed organizations are furthermore limited by the capabilities and capacities of management; after all, the weakest link determines the strength of the entire chain. Centrally managed organizations are vulnerable as well; if a level in the hierarchy breaks down, the underlying levels are also put out of action and will remain inoperable until measures are taken at the center(?).

The limits of the machine model In a bureaucratic organization, everything is formalized as much as possible. The organization runs as a well-oiled machine and, although that may sound ideal, it represents substantial obstacle to several types of increased efficiency and effectiveness. In a machine, everything is synchronous, running in a predetermined rhythm. Components are directly linked with each other. As the pistons of the engine go up and down, the crankshaft turns around at a corresponding rate. And the rhythm of the valves has to be correspondingly adjusted. All the parts are connected to each other by rods and cables. If just one part of the machine decides to go its own way, the entire group performance is put in danger. The machine is certainly predictable and its performance is repeatable. But the machine is also inflexible and vulnerable. Your organization is such a machine. What might happen if the components now begin to work independently of each other? What would occur if half of the employees would rather go train in the gym every morning while the other half was hard at work? What if team members were spread around the world? What if large groups of people had to work together? And what would happen if customers had to work together with your employees? How useful would “collaboration 1.0” continue to be? The machine would then break down. Direct person-to-person communications would then become useless. This machine model is inapplicable to more circumstances than you might likely suspect, or at least it performs below par under such conditions.

Start here 19 Symptoms of maladjustment The world is changing and, to an increasing degree, our current organizational models are “out of sync” with this new world. The standard bureaucracy-based model for organizations appears to have arrived at the end of its tenabil- ity. Symptoms of aging are clearly visible in nearly every larger organization.

• The freely and unlimitedly scalable collaboration that is so matter-of-course in Web 2.0 is nearly impossible to implement in organizations. • Adjusting and even promptly reacting to external factors becomes more difficult the larger and/or more “efficient “ that a company becomes. Large companies are certainly proverbial supertankers. • The New Way of Working turns out not to work; performing work in any location is certainly well within the control of modern technology; but doing it at any time remains impossible because the synchronicity of workflows makes workers sequentially dependent on each other. • It is impossible to optimize all the processes in a company; there are always misplaced and under-performing areas, and increased control and bpi is only counter-productive in such cases. • It has proven impossible to use all the available employee talent, simply because the company is based on a series of standardized functions and processes (i.e. based on averages).

This is certainly a difficulty, and appears more like a deep failure than a repair- able deficiency. How can a model that has been so successful over the last 100- 150 years all of a sudden reach the end of its line? And still more important, do such large and, at first sight, varied problems have a fundamental solution? To answer the first question, we must go back to the source of the machine bureaucratic model. In 1911, Frederick Taylor published his book The Principles of Scientific Management, which describes how industrial processes can be made more effective and efficient by standardization and application of scientific principles. Later, Henry Ford adopted these principles for a still more efficient model of mass production or industry. His methods were universally imitated.

The world has since changed enormously, but the inheritance from Taylor and Ford still has a dominant presence in our modern society. For modern knowledge work, the industrial model is far from being the ideal. Where workers previously had to go to factories at agreed times in order to physically work together

20 from crowd to Community to produce physical products that moved along a production line, knowledge can be based on entirely different models, simply because it is now easier to send the information to the workers than to transport workers to the information. The internet has made bureaucracy obsolete for knowledge work. The above- mentioned symptoms are the result of the industrial model applied to knowledge work in a transformed society. The machine model is out-dated; a new model is required. And it is also certainly possible! Take the example of the collaboration among ants, bees or termites, or else the example of Web 2.0. All are totally different kinds of cooperation compared to our bureaucratic ways.

The crowd in every organization Increasingly more companies recognize the above-mentioned symptoms and have therefore the desire—if (although?) perhaps still not so clearly formulated—to view their company not just as an organizational structure and to govern it top-down, but also as a crowd, almost an organism. Crowd-based organizations are now being conceived as a large group of independently thinking, self-willed and creative people. But how do you control such a crowd? When the school of sardines begins to evade the barracuda, which of the sardines is responsible for coordinating this action? None of them, of course! Crowds are not directly controlled. Crowds behave entirely differently from hierarchies: enter “management 2.0”! Millions of years of trial and error have led nature to adopt a decentralized approach for the coordination of large groups (crowds). It is easy to imagine that Mother Nature originally tried to control all her creations but, at a given moment, 10 billion biting mosquitoes and 30 million thieving thrushes began to think differently: they began to be motivated desires to “take a look,” “find out for oneself.” And with one mighty gesture, Mother Nature created “Nature 2.0”. Now, people are certainly no sardines, by which we mean to say that individual people are not sardines. But when a large group of organizations are brought together, a collection of people suspiciously displays many similarities to a group of sardines. In fact, there are many points of comparison between a crowd of sardines and a crowd of people.

Start here 21 &UNCTIONAL 3OCIAL

4HESIS3ANS"OLD

4HESIS3ANS

ISLIKEAMACHINE ISLIKEANORGANISM

Functional in comparison to social

To get the most out of large companies requires not just centralized management and administration but also a decentralized mechanism. Every company has, in addition to its “hierarchical” structure, employees in their “organic” relationship: the crowd. What is necessary is a series of pointers to guide the crowd’s direction of movement and to ensure that this organic side of the organization supports its business objectives and complements the hierarchical structure of the organization. The characteristics of the crowd, the instruments of controlling the crowd and the associated social-cultural phenomena, this is what we identify as “2.0.” Key Values: “facilitating” (passive), “organic” and “decentralized”.

Crowd control Who might have previously thought that you could entice consumers to buy things they didn’t need? All sorts of new gadgets, new car models that are not fundamentally different or better than previous ones, expensive clothing and meaningless playthings. How gullible must such a consumer actually be? Before Edward Bernays began trying out “crowd psychology” (a specialism developed by such notables as his uncle Sigmund Freud) by testing it on “the masses,” people only bought the products that they needed. They only replaced things that were worn out. Buying was purely functional, a view that is hardly conceivable to us nowadays. Modern consumerism only began, however, to develop around 1910–1920. It grew out of the desire of large corporations to sell more by encouraging people to make more frequent purchases of newer and increasingly less expensive items.

22 from crowd to Community Prior to this period, we lived in a different world. In the present, we are living in what we might label “the century of the self3.” Although we might think that we buy something on our own accord, nothing is further from the truth. The mechanism responsible for compelling us to buy, called public relations or marketing, has now been refined to such an omnipresent extent that many psychologists are now won- dering out loud if free choice truly exists any longer. We buy new stuff that we actually don’t need and replace old things before they are worn out. Preferably, we acquire brands that attract attention to us and give us a certain desired social standing. Rationality and utility no longer have hardly any role in this process. Social / peer pressure has become the most dominant motivation behind our purchases. This change has not occurred by accident; it has been deliberately engineered based on a clearly formulated theory and represents a pure form of crowd control, as it only really works when applied to crowds.

Indirectly manipulating crowds, crowd control, is extreme: extremely powerful. And people in groups turn out to be equally extreme: extremely weak. Freud, the thinker behind the theoretical formulation, died an unhappy man with a great deal of contempt for humanity. Web designers cannot yet incorporate such an extensive degree of control in their social websites. In this respect, they are perhaps still living in the age of the 1910s and 20s. The architects of the new generation of super malls will, however, provide this capacity in the sales platforms that they are developing for their clients. These will also be specially designed and constructed social platforms.

New ways of working together The key to getting large groups of independent individuals to cooperate, the trick that Mother Nature has come up with, is a special way of working together that was not available to us humans until the arrival of Web 2.0 and is almost never used in our companies. At least, it has not been consciously used. A certain supportive platform is required for this special way of working together. Actually, we don’t want to say anything more at this point, as the relevant stories in the book are much too entertaining to have the ending given away here. Still, this new way of working together is so simple and, at the same time, so powerful that the absence of its large scale application in business is, in fact, very strange. It

3 http://zaplog.nl/zaplog/article/adam_curtis_the_century_of_the_self

Start here 23 will be an eye-opener for many, as it was for us as well. It is also extremely compatible with existing bureaucratic methods of working. We are, in fact, assuming that your organization makes use of the “traditional” way of managing and collaborating. For the time being, it will suffice to state that there are still many opportunities to arrange for employees to work together in a smarter, more efficient but also more pleasurable manner. Such approaches would provide them with more variety and options in their work, as well as give them more freedom of choice regarding their working hours and workplaces.

This new way is what we identify as “social,” and an organization making use of the social sphere engulfing it is what we call “an intelligent organization.” “The organization formerly known as Enterprise 2.0.”

&UNCTIONAL 3OCIAL

4HESIS3ANS"OLD

4HESIS3ANS .EXUS

BUREAUCRACY HOLOCRACY

The Mintzberg hierarchy made explicit using TeamPark

Big bang or evolution? It is a misconception to think that “social” immediately and always represents an enormous change in an organization. Even at the present moment, there are many social elements in your organization that we only need to make evident in order to bring them to their full maturity. Fortunately, most communications in your company do not occur by means of the organizational structure but through indirect and more informal channels. If you were to record who people were emailing, calling, smsing or sending im messages, and if you were to plot all this connections on a graph, you would produce a diagram that we shall label the

24 from crowd to Community social graph of your organization. Thexobni tool is a fine example of a technology that performs such analysis. xobni records the email sent and received in an ms- Outlook environment. It provides a ranking of a user’s favorite colleagues or peers.

At present, the backbone of your organization is formed by a social structure that you have probably never diagrammed or analyzed. Let alone that you should have designed or even conceived of it. It is an organic structure that has grown by itself and continuously refreshes and improves itself. How social can it be?

To put it even more strongly, if you were to seek out the people who form the “heavy” nodes in the network, then you would find “new workers.” And these are people who are already accustomed to operating in the different way of working together.

)NTERNAL "UREAUCRATIC 3YNCHRONOUSCOLLABORATION #REATIVE SOCIAL 4EAMS )MPLICITSOCIAL /PEN 0RODUCTIVE #ROWDS 0REDICTABLE INNOVATION $ISCOVERINGIMPLICIT OPERATION SOCIAL 3TIGMERGIC 7ISDOMOFTHE FLOWSANDSTRUCTURES COLLABORATION CROWD -ECHANISM 3OCIALNETWORKS #OMMUNITIES #O CREATION /RGANISM &INDPEOPLEAND S#2- EXPERTISEFASTER 7EB 02MARKETING /PENSOCIAL

%XTERNALCUSTOMERFACING

Social dimensions made evident

Between social networks to the wisdom of the crowd, there are many degrees of social to which we should all devote some reflection. There is a great deal of room to grow, but such growth can begin simply, starting on the basis of the existing organization.

The Intelligent Organization and TeamPark The employees of your organization can provide even greater performances if they are organized into communities instead of teams and if they learn to

Start here 25 cooperate in an entirely different manner. What this shift in organizational focus requires is, above all, a special platform. In this respect, you might think in terms of software such as MySpace, Facebook or Ning. This type of social software is very effective in forming communities and making use of crowd power. It can be used in what we are calling the “intelligent organization.”

Reforming an organization into an intelligent organization is not just a question of making a social platform available to it. It has to go through a necessary process in order to have the changes accepted and embraced. Sogeti has developed TeamPark in order to provide the organization with a thriving social side. Team- Park is a method for navigating the transition process to the social organization.

Crucial in this regard is the use made of a social platform. Software does not just become “social” but requires certain ingredients, which must also be available in the right proportions. Every social platform has its own “social” character. It may, for example, be content dominant and stimulate the crowd to make contributions in the form of written articles, photos, videos and forum discussions, to name just a few. Or a social platform may be relationship dominant, stimulating people to contact each other and network.

!CTIVITY 3 TIMULI #HALLENGE 0RESENCE 4HERIGHTMIXOFINTERACTIONSTIMULI ASOCIAL ±PERSONALITY²THATFITSYOURCOMPANIESREQUIREMENTS / RGANIC 4HEABILITYTOALLOWSELF ORGANIZATION.OFIXED STRUCTURES FREEGROUPING SOCIALTAGGINGETC #ONVERSATION OLLABORATIVE )DENTITY # 0EER TO PEER ASYNCHRONOUSANDSTIGMERGIC COLLABORATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONTOOLS NTELLIGENT ) 3MARTAGGREGATIONMECHANISMSANDCOLLABORATIVE FILTERSTOUSETHEWISDOMOFTHECROWD 3HARING 2ELATIONS DAPTED ! !DAPTEDTOTHECROWDYOUREMPLOYEESANDOR CUSTOMERS ANDTOTHEPROCESSESITNEEDSTOLEVERAGE , INKED 2EPUTATION 'ROUPS )NTEGRATEDWITHOUTSIDESOCIALPATFORMSANDOTHER CORPORATESYSTEMS.OSOCIALPLATFORMISANISLAND

A good platform is “S.O.C.I.A.L.”

26 from crowd to Community Playing or working? Texts about social platforms within the organization quickly give management the impression that they are primarily concerned with entertaining employees, who are expensive and must therefore continue to work billable and productive hours right up to the last minute. The accounts in this book might also paint a similar picture of a band that has cut loose and now has to be left alone “because work has to be performed in a bottom-up and organic manner.” In effect, it is difficult to imagine that a company’s Facebook might make anything more than an occasionally useful contribution. It is not immediately discernible how uploading clips or getting people to post stories about their holidays might contribute to more efficient business operations. Examples like Wikipedia perhaps generate somewhat more trust, but what then?

At the same time, the fear that such applications are only “played” with is equally ungrounded. Of course, the launching of blogging facilities will not mean that people who, normally speaking, find it difficult to write Christmas cards once a year will all of a sudden begin filling up their personal weblog with literary mas- terpieces on a daily basis. Nor is it likely that people will suddenly start to discuss their hobbies and passions with their co-workers instead of their friends. People who find it all too difficult to decide what they will eat for dinner will not, all at once, transform into masses of enlightened visionaries and, instead of performing their daily tasks, will not abruptly become individuals exclusively devoted to earth-shattering innovation. Certainly not! The social sphere of an organization does not work like that.

What social factors can, in fact, do is add a dimension to your organization that enables employees to select more varied work, more flexible working hours and a greater range of locations. The result is an organization that operates much more flexibly and efficiently. The people working in an intelligent organization will, in principle, perform the same tasks and produce exactly the same products, but they will accomplish these goals in a different manner. In general, one that is smarter, more efficient and less boring. And this new way of working is something that is impossible to implement in a purely bureaucratic organization without a loss of productivity. One is social and the other is not. “Corporate social,” the primary subject of this book, is something substantially different from “open social.” It is entirely different “out there” then it is “in here,” inside the company walls. We will certainly use open social examples as illustrations, but corporate

Start here 27 social is ultimately an entirely different ball of wax from open social. The needed and, in fact, already existing ingredient is a specific way to abandon the limitations of the current organization, a way to combine the advantages of self- organizing collaboration with the existing methods of working together. We have been busy trying to optimize our organizations over and over again for decades. Process optimization, business intelligence, kpis, the whole shebang. A good social platform can be the next big step in this parade. As boring as it sounds, social, when qualifying organization, refers to nothing more or less than a new way of working together in which normal work is still accomplished, although it is performed differently. The new way is superior to usual practices in some processes, but not in all.

28 from crowd to Community Notes

Start here 29

2 Vive la Revolution!

On March 14, 2004, everything was finally ready ...Everyone who was anyone in the internet world was in attendance at Caesars Palace Hotel in Las Vegas. For months, people had been months squab- bling over who should speak, the advertisements to be allowed and the broadcast- ers covering the event. The introduction of the new Internet—currently still in beta but already nicknamed Web 2.0—promised to be one of the biggest ever events in the recent history of the computer industry. No self-respecting it company could afford to pass this one up.

The ceos of Microsoft, Google and Oracle wasted no opportunity in demonizing each other. Google rewrote all the Microsoft indexes in their search engine to refer to those from Sun, causing serious overload of the web servers there. Apple felt somewhat lost among all this pr power, moti- vating Steve Jobs to release a special sa- tirical mash-up of the media war on iTunes and to develop a clever media campaign. With great success! The viral he created in which Steve Ballmer gave a speech against the background scenery of the film Planet of the Apes brought the house down and continues to be a hit on YouTube. It was outright war. Some column-

Vive la Revolution! 31 ists were even suggesting that the stage for the upcoming event should be re-built into a boxing ring. Caesars Palace is after all a regular venue for the largest and most prestigious boxing matches in the world. It was there that Muhammad Ali chose to first introduce the world to the famous Ali-shuffle. It was also there that a mordacious Mike Tyson bit off a clearly discernible chunk of opponent Ivander Holyfield’s ear. And then, after receiving a warning and being booed, coolly also tried to similarly incise the other ear.

The Web 2.0 launch almost had to be delayed as well. On the morning of the event, a recalcitrant Larry Ellison, capo di tutti capi of Oracle. “moored” his 110 meter long yacht in the Hotel’s outdoor swimming pool. The yacht blocked the main entrance to the hotel so that the organization had to switch to using rear entrances, which many of the speakers and guests initially refused to do. They all had hired the biggest limousines, purchased specially-tailored new suits and gathered a number of representative women around them. And then there was the press, the red carpet, everything that goes with it. Larry’s gesture had upset everyone’s plans. He and his group could easily enter through the main entrance, of course. The yacht, on which there was exuberant partying all day long, could simply lower its gangway, which reached, completely “by chance” of course, right up to the large revolving doors of the hotel’s main entrance. Even today, it is still unknown how the yacht was moved to this precise location without being noticed. The yacht’s trip home was a media spectacle in itself. All this publicity had its positive effect: it made sure that the new Web 2.0 received the attention it deserved.

Web 2.0 has recently also developed its own conspiracy theory, as the very people involved in the development of Web 2.0 began one by one to disappear over the ensuring months, never to be seen again. The few clues that have surfaced in the case are still not understood. Notes were left at the scene of each of the mys- terious disappearances with the words: Lontar Illustrum Natrmm Ustst Xem- plaros. Only recently has this text been identified as ancient Sumerian for “In- ternet deserves a stable platform.” The other evidence left behind, a plush penguin, still puzzles investigators.

32 from crowd to Community The new web The internet has been transformed. The new internet, called Web 2.0, its ubiquity and the enormity of its social impact are without doubt imposing a parallel transformation on the entire world. It is changing the way in which companies approach their markets. It is changing the way in which companies operate. It is changing the way in which people organize their social lives. It is changing the way in which people collaborate. Large groups of people turn out to possess enormous creativity and energy, and Web 2.0 is proving to be a perfect means for tapping this resource. The so-called 2.0 sites are still springing up from the ground like mush- rooms, and there is even a “2.0” jargon/style that is emerging. This new language is even apparent in the very naming of sites: flickr, plaxo, youtube, xanga, twitter, zopa, fleck, wakoopa, flock. When we recently had to think about a domain name, “fleedr” was one of the suggestions. No idea what it might mean, but the domain was still available and “sounded so 2.0.” Well it may just be that the depletion of “normal” domain names originally started this trend out of necessity, but apparently there is still such a thing as “the right 2.0 memes.” Not just names, but also the layouts of those sites have a 2.0 feel: purely functional, simple and colorful. They have large buttons, bulky logos, clear menus and many social features.

All the trends and technologies that we lump together under the heading “Web 2.0” were obviously not all launched on March 14, 2004 as an official new release of the internet. There was never a release of Web 2.0; it is the result of years of gradual evolution. The internet is an ecosystem in itself, a fairly extensive one at that, where changes are constantly rolling off the assembly line in the form of ever more innovative web techniques and new types of websites. Through a kind of natural selection, the most successful technologies, the most powerful memes, survive and become the foundation for new developments. After 10 to 15 years of evolution, something was noticeably created, something that now, in retrospect, has come to be called Web 2.0. We are going to look in detail at this development and will also come up with a workable definition of it.

Hanging out and living online Huge numbers of people use the new web, but mainly just to hang out on so-called social sites. Pure social sites like MySpace and Facebook are among the largest websites in their respective languages. This is a rather strange phenomenon, because the only thing people do on these websites is socialize. They create

Vive la Revolution! 33 accounts and reveal who they are using photos, profiles, blogs and a circle of friends. They send each other messages and join groups. Evidently, there is a great demand for such activity, as nearly 3,000 (three thousand!) servers for the Dutch Hyves (our own Facebook) are moaning and groaning under the weight of pages that a few million active members visit and especially show to each other. The crowd is apparently unaffected by the fact that it often crashes for too long periods of time and will not always do what you want.

On the new web, you do everything online, not just searching information and socializing. If you want to share your thoughts with others, you can do that using a weblog or blog. Answers to pressing questions are to be found on a forum. Capturing and sharing knowledge can be performed together on a wiki. Wiki- pedia is the largest encyclopedia in the world and is compiled by people from around the world. These people have never met and do not know each other. They nevertheless produce a valuable resource, as the quality of Wikipedia is no less than that of the famous Encyclopedia Britannica. You can report activities or news by “twittering” mobile short messages so that everyone subscribing to the ticker-like message flow can then see what you are doing or what is going on. You can keep track of your agenda and daily concerns on sites like Plaxo. Emailing is done entirely online, using Gmail or Hotmail. You make friends on Facebook. You directly place your holiday snaps on Flickr using your mobile phone and link them to Google Earth, so others can view what you all saw. Transgressive, sneaky or just nice clips (especially of others) are directly uploaded to YouTube from your mobile phone. Before too long, everyone will be able to look around the 360 degree panoramic view of our collected images using Microsoft Photosynth. All our holiday snapshots together form a virtual world in which we can walk around and look around, the images automatically “stitched together” into a virtual world by the Photosynth software. All together, we build our own world after based on a “paraverse,” a virtual universe based on reality. An example is the virtual world of Google based on Google Earth. Microsoft’s announcement that Photosynth would be able to the same trick with real-time video caused a shock wave. Real-time video from various sources can be mixed into a new video stream with a more comprehensive and panoramic image, as well as greater detail. Even including moments when we cough and forget to cover our mouths.

34 from crowd to Community And there is no editor or director involved. Neither Wikipedia nor Flickr, neither YouTube nor Facebook and not even Photosynth have editors to provide “content.” Visitors to the site do it themselves, based on themselves, simply because it is fun and cool, and the facilities are available!

We are the media The news media are also undergoing transformation. News is more and more “social” and “user-generated.” It is becoming social because we now are broadcasting “the best news” to each other. This news is user-generated because we are “collecting” and publishing increasingly more of it ourselves, instead of relying on a specialized editor or agency. The phenomenon of social news sites is relatively new, but the last time we looked, digg.com had a larger audience than the cnn website. On digg, everyone can post “link dumps” to articles on the web that they believe to be important or interesting. A link dump is a brief description of an article with an associated link. Others may vote on the news and, a deliberately undemocratic algorithm is then used to determine the news that appears on the front page (often not every vote has the same weight, democracy on the internet being a bad idea because it almost always ends in a dictatorship of the majority, or the death of quality). Articles given headlines, are guaranteed to receive well over ten thousand views in a few hours and often the linked sites crash because of the overwhelming attention. This effect is called slash-dotting,4 named after one very big “nerdy” it website with so many visitors that if all of them are alerted to another website by a link on the front page, the other site immediately crashes due to an overload.

It is easy to see the type of news that, in general, makes the headlines on such sites and incites mass public participation. In the Netherlands, the largest news site nu.nl has its own social variant nujij, and the news that there appears, stands in stark contrast to the news that appears on nu. While nu, like any new commercial news provider, must remain in tune with the interests of advertisers, large corporations and politicians (probably in that order), nujij initially displayed much rawer, more honest and more authentic news. The difference was so great, so ad unfriendly that nujij have begun to manipulate things behind the scenes

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect

Vive la Revolution! 35 in a very unsocial manner because they ultimately just want to make money from the ostensibly “social” site. nujij was the first social news site in the Netherlands affiliated with a major commercial news service, and it is not inconceivable that other large traditional news sites will subsequently think twice before they consider making such facilities available to their readers. Be that as it may, social news will continue to change politics and society; that much is for sure. Less and less news is coming from major news agencies like ap, Reuters and anp, and more and more from the crowd itself. And since, at any given time, someone, somewhere in the world is experiencing the daily news as it happens, the crowd is everywhere. No news agency service can beat it in this respect. Video and pictures taken at the locations where news happens are, one hour later, distributed worldwide through communities and blogs. Aggressors, freedom fighters, victims, bystanders, and others have discovered video platforms like Liveleak and can use their cell phones to share their views with the world. This content is not always pleasant to see but nevertheless real. It will only be a few years before mainstream audiences view live streams broadcast from cell phones, and that will unleash a complete revolution in news gathering. There are no longer any technical problems preventing television programs from being created online by mixing together broadcasts from multiple sources.5 Similarly, it is quite conceivable that, in the very near future, Twitter streams will be used to provide live images with commentary and explanation by the crowd.

The customer is part of the company. It will take time to become accustomed to all these changes. Large companies have to contend with customers that have a large impact on internal operations. The customer is a member of a community, and that community will gives otherwise anonymous consumers a hugh influence. Individual customers can now have companies such as Nike bow before them, a nice anecdote about this later. The customer is now willing and able to collaborate, especially regarding public services. Customers now possess more creativity than the best innovation departments or advertising agencies. In addition, they already most likely possess the best knowledge about the product, as well as about the demand for the product.

5 http://mogulus.com

36 from crowd to Community When cbs television discontinued the Jericho series in May 2007, fans of the series began to send nuts to cbs in large numbers, thus referring to an event in the last episode that aired: “nuts!” Within three weeks, cbs received 8 million nuts, weigh- ing a total of over 18,000 pounds. Nina Tassler, ceo of cbs, decided to create seven episodes and broadcast them in the same year.6

The crowd is powerful, and smart companies, (i.e. “2.0” companies) try to make use of the crowd. Amazon, the largest book and music store in the world, has its Mechanical Turk. Visitors to Amazon can make money by answering questions from other Amazon customers. Amazon moderates the exchange. As yet, such crowdsourcing only involves simple tasks that computers perform with extreme difficulty but that people find incredibly easy. Amazon provides a small fee for anyone who performs such a “hit” (Human Intelligence Task) as writing a review, or identifying and selecting objects in photos.

Dell has its ideastorm.com and tries to use it to better satisfy customer requirements. Ideastorm is a kind of electronic suggestion box. Anyone can propose a product improvement in one of Dell’s products, on which others can then vote. Some ideas have received more than 100,000 votes, such as removing pre-installed Windows Vista from laptops or providing the option to choose pre-installed Open Office instead of Microsoft Office. Dell has promised the community that it will actually adopt many good ideas as possible. “Post,” “Promote,” “Discuss” and “See”! Often a customer’s requirement is, unfortunately, in conflict with the objective of the company. A popular idea was to have all laptops work with a standard power adapter and cable. The response from Dell was very honest, stating that they would never do that because they earn a great deal of money from selling the adapters, and the whole point is that a new adapter must be bought for each model.7

TomTom spends a great deal on the creation of good road maps, but even the best maps have errors. even if only temporarily due to road maintenance or temporary diversions. Instead of entirely re-mapping the road network on a daily basis, TomTom give users the opportunity to report errors and corrections that TomTom then distributes to the rest of the TomTom community, with or without checking their accuracy. The advantage for users is that they may even

6 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805663/trivia 7 http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/73529/Standardize_Power_Cables_for_Laptops

Vive la Revolution! 37 occasionally benefit from the updates of others, and the benefit for TomTom is of course still more apparent: a more reliable set of route directions from a neg- ligibly more expensive product.

In two years, YouTube has grown into what is perhaps one of the largest media companies in the world, at least in terms of audience. During July 2007, YouTube had more than 410 million page views in the Netherlands alone. It registers more than 200 million unique visitors per month worldwide, each remaining on the site an average of 28 minutes. At present, the data traffic on YouTube is as large as all the traffic on the entire Internet in 2000. Although these figures are extremely difficult to verify and change every month, it is nevertheless clear to everyone that YouTube is a significant player in the new media world. It is not unusual for a clip on YouTube to be viewed 500,000 times within a few days. The “Evolution of Dance” clip has now been watched more than 60 million times, and the clip’s performer has become a celebrity on “normal” tv. Broad- casters are hiring him based on his YouTube success. And all this is happening without him or YouTube having to make any marketing effort. A similar thing happened to Esmee Denters, the singer that started her carreer on Youtube with a little help from Justin Timberlake. What distinguishes this activity is that YouTube does not have to produce any of its own content. We make every video that it shows. Us, we, ourselves.

Producer and consumer at the same time More and more peer-to-peer services are popping up: services that enable visitors to collaborate with each other. Typical of such phenomena are the online auction sites on which internet users make deals with each other instead of going to a “store.” eBay is well-known to all of us. In addition to selling our old

38 from crowd to Community washing machines or cameras, we can now use similar concepts to borrow money from each other, as well as cover each other’s insurance risks. Peer-to-peer banks are gradually beginning to become more popular.

At Zopa, the average interest rate on loans is often more than one percent lower than the cheapest rates offered by most commercial banks under much more favorable ancillary terms. A peer-to-peer bank has the additional advantage over modern commercial credit institutions of always having coverage for savings, so that a bank run is impossible. Unlike banks based on the fractional reserve banking system (as in the case of all currently-existing commercial banks), they do not cause inflation. It is not inconceivable that peer-to-peer banks or large websites might, in the future, introduce their own currencies. Savings-point systems such as Air Miles or the Linden dollar in Second Life are intermediate forms.

After “normal” radar detectors were banned, new types of detectors began to appear. Any user driving through a speed trap signals its location with a press of a button, and the network automatically evaluates and distributes the information to all other users. Users are now warning each other about “speed traps,” and it will be very difficult to prohibit this technology.

Social technology A new trend coinciding with the emergence of social computing involves the far-reaching convergence of so-called smart mobile devices. Everyone has now heard of the smartphone, which are nothing more or less than small laptops. The technological and functional structure is exactly the same, with only slightly less power while nevertheless having more capabilities. A smartphone is a laptop plus all the connectivity required for Internet access and networking. Plus a “shit

Vive la Revolution! 39 load” of sensors such as gps, accelerometers, compass and ambient light level meters. In the near future, these features may even extend to pressure, temperature, field gages, sonar, laser range finders, and biometric sensors. Or even a built-in camera with infrared and ultraviolet imagery. Some smart phones run the Android operating system (itself the result of crowdsourcing, as it is based on some open-source Linux software). For many people, futuristic-sounding features such as augmented reality and gps tracking have been available for years. It is now possible for any clever programmer to build software for the most advanced personal-computing platform in existence and, as a result, have instant access to what are ultimately billions of devices and users. This development has thrown the entire industry into an accelerating onrush of changes and, along with consumers, everyone is trying hard to keep up.

The trend that we refer to as convergence is discernibly characterized by the fact that smartphones like the Nokia E72, the Google Nexus, the Sony-Ericsson Xperia-10 or the iPhone 3gs increasingly serve as the basis for virtually all the personal electronics that we gather around ourselves. New cameras will essentially become smartphones, having the same generic software and the same connectivity but with a more highly developed specific function in terms of its opti- cal elements. Every picture that is created is automatically uploaded to a server, or e-mailed, or sent via Bluetooth or Wifi. The photographer can install special software filters in a processing pipeline that the camera applies in real-time to any picture taken. A television will also essentially become a smartphone, again with the same generic software and the same connectivity. It will be a smartphone with a huge screen, connected to all other surrounding smart electronics. It is not difficult to imagine that any type of navigational device, car radio, camcorder, media player, pda and many other electronics will take part in such a social computing grid.

The ways in which viewing television will change have already been demonstrated. Modern tvs are designed as so-called dlna / uPnP media streamers, which means they can take content from any media server in the network, no matter if that network be local or global. And if the television set does not have this functionality itself, the consumer can buy a box that can operate as a media streamer for less than the price of a cinema evening for the whole family. Connect and its ready! If appropriately configured, all reachable media servers on the local network or accessible over the internet are automatically detected. A media

40 from crowd to Community server is itself free, it is freely available software. By installing tversity, Vuze or Twonky on the pc or soon also on the smartphone, the television can be used to view content from YouTube or other online media content stored on the device or network. A media server unlocks all the content to which it has access on the media streamer. And if the media server has access to the internet and large amounts of local content, watching television quickly assumes a very great new pleasure.

It may be confusing, but there is no reason not to think that a camera or camcorder may also serve as a media server and streamer, so you can easily add your own content to the “cloud.” Many of these media servers are also social. For example, Vuze, originally known as the Azureus torrent client (for peer-to-peer downloading of content from the incredible PirateBay site, among others) has evolved into a social media server. This means that you can share content with friends, “rate” it or recommend it to others. A television network will no longer determine what you watch but, increasingly, it will be your social network that helps you make up your mind. And how wonderful is that? You will have something to talk about the next day when you contact each other using the chatbox oh no! This chatbox was already available while watching tv. Everything is so confusing.

The same goes for almost everything for which you can use smart electronics. If you like cycling, you can now use Google-maps to share your performance and routes with your friends or strangers in real-time. You can even challenge others to complete the same route in better overall time. The phone in your backpack records your position, your speed, perhaps even your biometric data like heart rate and power output, and shares all this information instantaneously with your social network, your coach or your fans. Nokia phones are already offering something similar called the SportsTracker and are able to connect to Polar heartrate monitors. Watch where you are currently riding live on Google Earth!

The implications for business are perhaps not readily discernible, but it seems obvious that centralized models will disappear. This will affect every supplier and every business. New business models will be devised, and everything will have to change with them. Companies must be designed so that they can quickly change along with their environments. Rigid top-down management systems

Vive la Revolution! 41 imposed on an equally rigid value-chain will be detrimental. The first signs are already evident. A convulsive entertainment industry is trying desperately to have a ban placed on decentralized distribution models such as the one used by Pi- rateBay in order to patch up leaky copyright laws. On the one hand, they are right, but on the other their stance seems grounded in sand. In any event, it is a lost cause.

The new worker Web 2.0 places the main emphasis on the customer or “visitor.” This is a person outside the company, even though the external limits of a business are becoming increasingly more difficult to draw (as noted above). Many 2.0 companies are merely organizational frameworks that, as befits Web 2.0, crowd-source all their work. In this regard, we might almost forget that customers or visitors, who are also employees somewhere, would also like to reap the benefits of Web 2.0 in their own companies and work. On Web 2.0, they may collaborate with people who they do not know, who live all around the world, and who maintain completely different work-life rhythms and lifestyles. And they can do this without making prior appointments and coordinating activities and agendas all day long. How different is that from their regular work, where collaboration is limited throughout the day by formalized processes (excessively) strict work flows, direct / synchronous communications and enormous overloads, primarily in email. These are clear symptoms of an ill-used and excessively intricate bureaucracy. For some reason, people must repeatedly climb into their cars every morning and drive to pre-arranged locations in order to work together. Such activity is becoming increasingly infeasible because of the huge traffic jams and the currently snarled rail schedules.

New workers want to work anywhere and anytime, at times and locations of their own choosing, and, although a whole bunch of new technology is available, this new way of working, as Microsoft calls it, has not really gotten off the ground.

New workers also note the illogic that prevents them from accessing the social networks made up of their friends and acquaintances outside the company when they are at work. Old companies are still building concrete and virtual walls to shield themselves from the new world.

42 from crowd to Community Notes

Vive la Revolution! 43 44 from crowd to Community 3 Web 2.0

No matter if its emergence is a revolution or an evolution (for the time being, let’s call it an evolution), Web 2.0 is having a huge social impact that will only grow in its significance. Conceptually, Web 2.0 can be described in various ways. Each concept can be characterized in terms of a triad: the name or identification of the concept, its characteristics8 and the collections of things being identified by the concept.9 It can be described by listing its properties (what biologists would call its phenotype10) or by enumerating the instantiations of the concept (what biologists would likely call its population). Later in the book, we will identify the properties of the Web 2.0 but below we will begin by just briefly surveying the landscape and describing what we see. We will thus map out the extension of the 2.0 concept.

There is never only one viewpoint but usually multiple perspectives and often various filters providing additional information. An overall picture is created by combining these elements, appearances and views. Ross Dawson’s blog11 contains some beautiful “landscapes” of which we are showing two examples. Each division, each figure is as arbitrary as the next, but each one provides additional insights. For example, the figure below makes distinction in terms of the content that users supply, the filters that Web 2.0 sites use to segregate the most useful

8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensional_definition 9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extension_%28semantics%29 10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotype 11 http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2008/08/four_great_visu.html

Web 2.0 45 content from noise and the tools provided to convert the filtered content into usable end products.

The Web 2.0 landscape Figure (cc) Vincezo Cosenza / www.vincos.it

An entirely different view is also possible, for example by concentrating on the conversation element. The result might then look as follows.

46 from crowd to Community The conversation element of Web 2.0 Figure (cc) Brian Solis / www.theconversationprism.com

You can experience Web 2.0 “in the flesh” by visiting various social websites. Use this figure to examine how you experience Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 47 Social websites and social media

Web 2.0 is very diverse; it is an ecosystem in the most literal sense of the word, constantly evolving. Some cristallized “concepts” have been formed in the course of this evolution—call them means of communication—each time recurring in the same basic form. The specific forms of these communication tools are strongly linked to certain recurrent communication needs of large communities. At this point, it would be valuable to briefly introduce a few of them. For the time being, we will limit ourselves to well-known media that are primarily concerned with content (e.g. texts, videos, photos, audio). There are of course numerous others, and some that are not just content-oriented. They include buddy lists, chat boxes, tag clouds and many others, but the foundations of any community are, in our opinion, based on the following.

48 from crowd to Community The Weblog Weblogs have perhaps been the engine of the Web 2.0 revolution. They “push” ideas, opinions and other messages such as news to the public. A weblog is a website on which brief posts are made with great regularity and high frequency, generally presented in inverse chronological order (latest on top). Visitors can then respond to the reports. A weblog is a typical one-to-many communication medium. The author of a story determines the subject and the way he or she wants to communicate any message, and the community can then respond to this input. The possibility of responding provides the basis for conversations and has a community-building effect. Wikipedia describes a weblog as follows:

A blog (a contraction of the term “web log”)[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (m p 3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Tech- norati was tracking more than 112,000,000 blogs.

Large blogs are powerful opinion makers. Many “virals” originate their epidemic on such a blog.

Starting a blog is very easy. There are many possibilities, one of which involves using Blogger. Anyone can use Blogger, the weblog service from Google, to promptly start his or her own weblog in a few minutes.

Web 2.0 49 With a little more trouble, standard open source software like Wordpress and Drupal is easy to use in order to design a personal weblog that can, if necessary, grow into a full-featured social site.

Forum Besides weblogs, forums are proven means of communication that we run across in more or less the same form at many places on the Web. A discussion forum is precisely what its name suggests, a place where anyone can initiate a new discussion, to which everyone else can then respond.

Forums have a recognizable format and a simple layout. There is usually a main page displaying the topic lists for each category. It also exhibits the current discussion topics, with the most recent responses shown first. Clicking a given discussion topic opens the relevant “forum thread” where all comments can be seen and responses added.

Many companies that value the opinions of their own customers now have a forum on which complaints, suggestions and questions can be posted. The advantage of such a freely accessible forum is that it provides a place where visitors, along with company employees, can respond to questions and complaints. The activity on a forum can therefore also be used to keep a finger on customer demands.

50 from crowd to Community The Wiki A wiki is a communication medium that is exceptionally well-suited for collaboratively documenting events, processes, functionality and anything else that can be described, without someone coordinating the activity. The technology is such that many people can edit the “wikified”document while, at the same time, collaboratining on the writing of it. Wikis are, rightly or wrongly, seen as the panacea of the intelligent organization. Often the two are mentioned in the same sentence as if they were Siamese twins. Just as in the case of a forum, anyone can start an article. Unlike a forum, others are not expected to comment on the topic in separate responses, but to incorporate comments and responses in the article by revising and hopefully improving the original text. A wiki can be regarded as a kind of encyclopedia that everyone creates and maintains. But it is also a means for many people to work on a document at the same time, without the usual circulation of the latest versions by email.

The best known wiki is Wikipedia, which is intended as a vehicle on which “store all the knowledge in the world.” The software that Wikipedia runs on, Media Wiki, is available to everyone and is free and open source.

In a corporate environment, a Wiki is ideal for collectively producing documents and for storing knowledge, and increasingly more companies are also using wikis to have anonymous visitors work on the documentation for their own products. After installation of the MediaWiki software, each company begins its own encyclopedia of knowledge, geared to its specific field of interest.

The marketplace A marketplace is an auction or mediating facility in which the supply and demand of services or goods can be brought together. Many marketplaces have the form of an auction, but the actual format may depend on the type of goods and services involved. Anyone can offer goods or services, and everyone is allowed to bid or respond. In principle, the offers appear in inverse chronological order on the front page. Often the front page of an auction site is, like a forum, divided into categories. Offers that have found takers disappear from the marketplace. The most famous auction site in the world is eBay, which is also one of the largest websites in the world. In the Netherlands, the best known auction sites are marktplaats.nl and speurders.nl.

Web 2.0 51 Somewhat inexplicably, there is a rather slender selection of standard / open-source auction software, and no comparable communication media can be found in the corporate collaboration suites produced by ibm or Microsoft, for example.

The media library Everyone knows YouTube. YouTube has now become a complete social platform, although it was initially started as a rather pure media center. It originally offered users a means to store their video in a manner that made it very easy to reuse on other websites, and nothing more was intended. There was a communal front page and the opportunity to vote on items, but that was it.

A straightforward library, lacking any social capabilities, in which video, photos and audio can be easily stored is just as much a communication medium as a blog, a forum or a wiki. Just like these media, it is a building block for more comprehensive websites. Video footage to be used in other parts of the site, such as blogs and wikis, can be stored in the library and then subsequently made available to other, external websites from there. Most commonly, this is done by ‘embedding’ such media on a website as if it is an integral part of that site, while the content is actually stored and run from the media-library.

YouTube video is the best known internet video library and Flickr.com. the best known library for photography. The first integrated media libraries for audio, video, photos, documents and slide shows are starting to enter the mainstream (e.g. divshare.com). Any items that a user stores in such libraries (e.g. YouTube video) can be “embedded” into other websites, These types of mass storage websites can be simply and indiscernibly incorporated in individual websites so that the user’s of the individual websites can access the material without knowing it and without requiring website owners to develop their own systems for providing the material.

52 from crowd to Community Social link dump or social bookmarking A link dump is a facility by means of which community members can share their bookmarks, possibly including a brief description of the content in question. Actually, this element was initially the original weblog, but blogs have now evolved into sites that place great emphasis on self-written articles, leaving space for the reintroduction of whatis now known as a link dump.

Link dumps have become very popular, especially in combination with what has been labeled social voting, such as it occurs on the aforementioned digg.com and nujij.nl. In such cases, users evaluate the articles and construct a hierarchy of items. A purer form of a link dump is the immense del.icio.us

The corporate use of link dumps holds great promise. The various divisions of a company, such as the innovation department, a group of product developers or a marketing team, can continuously share the most interesting bookmarks and keep each other abreast of new developments and trends. Any social voting mechanism then ensures that the most interesting items are given proper consideration for the site’s front page focusing what is called the wisdom of the crowd on this subject matter.

Web 2.0 53 Such a practice would result in a system that includes both bi (business intelligence) and ci (competitive intelligence) and that can be used for knowledge sharing in addition to the company’s wikis, for example.

There is a small quantity of good open source software for social bookmarking like drigg,12 the digg clone for the Drupal cms.

News aggregation Websites can automatically “broadcast” new articles or recent changes to other sites, or to special news readers (a kind of email-like program that collects news from websites) who have subscribed to the website’s news service or ‘feed’ as it is actually called. The mechanism behind it is called Really Simple Syndication (rss). Strangely enough, rss has never truly broken through13 but has nevertheless now become a piece of solid mainstream technology. Every modern website broadcasts rss information through its “news feeds.”

A news aggregator is a website or application that displays the news from many other websites in reverse chronological order, possibly allowing opportunities for commentary. Users subscribe the aggregator to various news feeds from other websites, and every time there is a new article posted on these sites, an intro to it automatically appears on the aggregator. It is, in effect, an automated link dump.

It is a communications tool that provides content without requiring editorial intervention. Again, a social voting mechanism can be used to select only the most interesting news for archiving. Like the link dump, it is a very useful communications medium in a corporate environment.

Oddly enough, there are very few ready-to-use “server-side” news aggregators available and support for this functionality is rather meager in most cmss.

Still, there are many client-side systems, such as Google Reader and Feedly. And they are, of course, socially oriented. Interesting news can be shared on social networks.

12 http://www.drigg-code.org/ 13 http://www.marketingfacts.nl/berichten/20061005_rss_een_sleeping_beauty/

54 from crowd to Community The activity stream Twittering is one of the latest social crazes. It is sometimes called micro blogging. At the moment, nobody knows exactly what Twitter is actually very useful for, and various uses are being made of the service. News services use it to help spread the news by means of yet another channel, afraid as they are of missing the boat at the launch of a new technology (the same thing that motivated them to adopt rss feeds, a far better technology for that purpose). Celebrities twitter to let everyone know what they are doing, how cool they are and just to collect as many friends as possible. Online reputation is now mainly a matter of having a very large social network, not necessarily a very useful one. Most people use it for a combination of everything, sometimes to enable their network to share in their own lives, sometimes to alert the network to something nice. Ultimately, it should become clear that Twitter may be used to leave a stream of signals on which to float a new kind of collaboration, a topic to which we will devote an entire chapter of this book.

There are many other types of social software capable of maintaining an activity stream, and able to perform this function much more effectively. Twitter is currently an unstoppable fad, but if we look at the much larger Facebook, we see the same potential, though much more integrated and far more targeted. At the moment, Yammer has become relatively popular in our company.

An activity stream is a list of activities, ranging from the banal to the surprising, that gives the people in your social network the feeling that they are in contact with you and you with them, without the need for direct communications. You are keeping in touch: that is what the communication medium seems to imply. And it works! Later in this book, we will describe how this seemingly superficial media has garnered interest in the corporate environment, as it unexpectedly has more added value in business than it does in the private sphere. The activity streams in personal private networks, are mainly filled by people with narcissist and exhibitionist bents the “see-me people.”

Web 2.0 55 Notes

56 from crowd to Community 4 The “Crowd”

In the previous chapter we made a sort of detour through the accoutre- ments of the new web, surveyed several different sites and discussed some of the more firmly established communications tools. Under closer scrutiny, all the mentioned sites and communication tools appear to have one thing in common…

...this collective feature is perhaps the most important part of the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon and the cornerstone of the social organization that we are going to “build” in this book.

In each case, it is up to the users of these sites to furnish the added value. This way of having a crowd help you in your work is called crowdsourcing: outsourcing to an anonymous crowd. Perhaps the best example of crowdsourcing concerns the involvement of the crowd, in the development of open source software. The open source community has repeatedly demonstrated how large groups of people who do not know each other can still collaborate on software that ultimately has better quality than the best commercial products.

No matter how the advantages of Web 2.0 are categorized or which features are mentioned as most useful, it is always the crowd element that all Web 2.0 shares in common. Apparently a crowd has become so very useful that everybody wants to have one of their own.

The “Crowd” 57 The Ron Paul revolution One of the finest examples that illustrates the power of a crowd took place around the most recent presidential election in the United States. In January 2008, the campaigns of the various U.S. presidential candidates were running at full strength. The candidates of both the Democratic and the Republican Parties were doing their best to convince the American people that they would make the best President. Most candidates on both the Democratic and Republican sides had already fallen away, so the battle was to be decided by two Democrats (Hillary Clin- ton and Barak Obama) and three Republicans (John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul).

The crowd-control of Edward Bernays is not understood by anyone as well as industrial lobbyists and their media companies. In broadcasts around the presidential election, all media-expressions were full of subliminal signals. Every question asked by an interviewer or anchor was full of suggestion; no setting was randomly selected, no background was just a backdrop. Powerful symbolism in support of one candidate and distractive loser-symbolism aimed at “undesired” opponents were incorporated everywhere. Media experts saw it on almost all the channels, not just fox, but cnn and other stations around the world that received their material from one of the major news agencies. The average viewer had little chance under such an enormous onslaught of propaganda that was aimed at them without them being aware of it. Yet, a force appeared on the scene during this election whose power could compete with these highly-polished pr machines. It was a crowd, a disorganized group of people who did not know each other. There was a presidential candidate with the best intentions and one that had always acted according to them throughout the terms that he was gov- ernor. He was against aggressive foreign policy and against military interventions or operations abroad. He understood that the dollar was collapsing because the financial system was malfunctioning and that money not backed by gold combined with mega-inflation would be ruinous. He was for a “single” gold standard for money and against the Federal Reserve. He was also against big government

58 from crowd to Community and direct taxation such as income tax. He supported gay marriage and had qualified views about abortion, having brought more than 4,000 babies into the world as a doctor. This man was for personal freedom as long as it was not at- tained at the expense of others and spoke capably on this subject.

His name was Ron Paul, and although the corporate-owned mainstream media did its level best never to mention his name, this neglect began at some point to become increasingly more difficult. A portion of the American people paid attention to Ron Paul’s views and became his enthusiastic supporters. His support remained absolutely massive and, at one point, enabled him to raise nearly as much money as the top candidates. While Obama, Clinton and McCain obtained their millions in large contributions mediated by well-paid lobbyists, Ron Paul’s funding was simply in the form of small donations from citizens, soldiers and veterans. Not industry but people gave tens of millions to Ron Paul! Ron Paul won almost all the sms and online polls. Ron Paul was also regarded as the win- ner of all the debates—although such evaluations are admittedly somewhat subjective. He won because he stuck firmly to the constitution, and America has an extremely good and thoughtful constitution. To argue with Ron Paul is to find oneself arguing with the constitution and the founding fathers. You can do it, but of course you don’t want to.

It was perhaps for this reason that he was not invited to the large national television debates preceding the primaries. However, there are tens of thousands of Ron Paul fan clips on YouTube, many more than the other candidates; his name invariably appeared among terms like “iPhone” and “Britney Spears” in the tag- clouds of large social websites. Ron Paul had his own gigantic advertising blimp, helicopters flew his banners around the country and people placed signs bearing his name throughout America.

At one point, in November 2007, Ron Paul spontaneously suddenly attracted so much money (4.5 million, then a record), that anonymous online supporters organized a second “money bomb” on December 16, 2007. Prior to the event, his supporters were already calling it the Ron Paul Tea Party in analogy to the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, which is seen as the beginning of the American Revolution. Proceeds from the day were more than 6 million dollars, a new record that could not escape mention on cnn. This man was and is ex-

The “Crowd” 59 tremely popular, and yet very few have even heard of him. Isn’t that peculiar? Ask the editors of your newspaper how this could be possible.

Much more unusual and particularly relevant in the context of this book is the fact that neither Ron Paul nor his campaign team organized any of these activities. He did not make or pay for any of the thousands of spontaneous Ron Paul fan clips that he used in his campaign. Nor did he organize or fund any of the many spontaneous demonstrations, meetings and fund-raising events all around the world, from Asia to Europe, from Canada to Argentina! Even the huge blimp flying over the country was not something that he arranged or paid for himself. The only thing that Ron Paul did himself was to deliver an honest and clear message with mass appeal. Internet users are therefore purely and solely the ones that organized spontaneously and en masse; they were the driving force behind Ron Paul’s campaign!

Isn’t that peculiar? A spontaneous initiative that was not managed by anyone, organized itself and developed the potential of becoming something acting as a counterweight to the greatest pr forces in the Amercian political arena, if only for the time being. It revealed the true power of the crowd. If the primaries and elections were held on the internet, Ron Paul would undoubtedly have become President.

The only thing that Ron Paul yet has to do, is provide an explicit platform on which the “Ron Paul community” could emerge. For the first time in American history, this community would be a genuinely democratic political party. Bottom- up and organically grown, and consequently with its ideals penetrating deep into the roots of the organization.

We are all ants With all the technology and all the websites and means of communication such as wikis, forums and blogs, all of which we just reviewed, it is always the added value of the crowd that is at stake. Social software and all other Web 2.0 communication tools are primarily means of facilitating crowdsourcing. Set up the right facilities, ensure a pleasant climate, establish the right ecosystem and let the crowd loose there. Almost immediately, people show an ability to work together and turn out very fine, cool and useful things. And this occurs almost without direc-

60 from crowd to Community tion or interference. It is a form of collaboration that we would all like to experience in our companies, not only with regard to the external crowd, such as customers and website visitors, but also the internal crowd: our employees.

But how do you bring this about? We already know how to control people or employees on an individual basis. You give them a function, some procedures, place them in a hierarchy of control, start the whole thing rolling and the entire machine runs in sync. The key words in such a procedure are “control” and “centralization.” An individual in a crowd is different; a crowd member is no longer a directly accountable individual occupying an identifiable position in a hierarchical structure. There is certainly structure, but it is volatile and designed along the lines of a network. In the case of a webcrowd like the one on YouTube or on digg, the members of the group are strangers, and they live in different places on earth and in different time zones. So how do you deal with this situation? To answer this question, we will first try to discover the general laws governing groups. Nature provides many examples of crowds, but let us examine just one of them: the example of the ant colony. It is not made up of one or a few ants, but a very large number of them.

Ants are very limited creatures. They are insects with little or no scope for individual intelligent behavior. They are tiny borg drones that react purely instinctively to their immediate surroundings. If you’re not a Trekkie (a Star Trek fan) and do not know what a Borg is (shame on you), do not worry; think of emo- tionless workers who exist only in the service of the collective and communicate through a collective consciousness. The Borg assimilation process, by the way, is also not based on free will (see this as a tip). Ant colonies can be huge; there are well-organized ant colonies that stretch over areas of more than 100 square miles. The Ishikari colony in Japan consists of an estimated 300 million worker ants and 1 million queen ants, spread over 45,000 interconnected nests. It can be assumed with some confidence that none of the ants in the colony has any idea about the enormous size and complexity of this mass of insects. Let alone that one of them has the intellectual and communicative abilities required to manage it. None of the workers, not even one of the queens, has any overview of anything other than their immediate surroundings, and there is no central governing body controlling it. In contrast to the bureaucratic organizations that we humans tend to create (because we think that we are smarter than millions of years of evolution), the control of the ant colony is completely decentralized. Each ant performs

The “Crowd” 61 its task, purely on the basis of very limited local incentives and certain instincts: a scent, the presence of other ants, food, enemies, temperature, light, vibration, perhaps the weather, but not much more. However, these immense communities are highly efficient organizations with complicated social structures.

Despite their individual limitations, ants are capable of working as a collective to perform very intelligent activities.14 Ants find their way to food supplies by following the scent that other ants leave when they find food. The more useful tracks are marked by more ants, making the scent stronger and more attractive to the rest. Once the food source is depleted, the ants travel back along a different route looking for a different food supply and the track fades naturally. In this manner, routes compete against each other and the overall quality of the food track network remains high.15,16,17 As a group, ant colonies can even solve simple problems of a mathematical nature. When they drag away the corpses of their deceased comrades, they leave them in a place that is the greatest average distance from all the surrounding nest openings. This does not occur by chance, but happens every time. Similar collective intelligent behavior can be observed in other social insects, such as wasps, bees and termites.

The underground nests of grass-cutter ants are huge buildings with an extensive labyrinth-like entanglement of corridors, complete with sophisticated internal climate control.18 On the outside, only a few “chimneys” are visible, but scientists who once filled such a nest with concrete and then carefully excavated it— without alerting the ants beforehand to the approaching calamity,—could not believe their eyes when they saw the complexity of the construction. Systems of chambers and what was effectively hot and cold plumbing ensured that temperature, humidity and the co2 composition was always at the best level throughout the colony, which had a volume as big as a large gym.

14 http://thinkorthwim.com/2007/05/02/ants-are-stupid-colonies-are-smart/ 15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics 16 http://www.javatroll.com/Ants/ 17 http://onionesquereality.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/adaptive-routing-taking-cues-from-stigmergy/ 18 http://thinkorthwim.com/2007/04/30/ants-an-incredible-documentary/

62 from crowd to Community Consider a flock of starlings, a school of sardines or a swarm of mosquitoes: anyone can immediately imagine the chaotic movements of all the individuals in the flock, school or swarm, but there is a clear and simple mechanism regulating all this chaos into a collective order. On the basis of only three very simple rules, it is easy to simulate this behavior, a simulation that we call “boids”19 or “swarm simulation.” Each average Java or C++ programmer writes the corresponding program in less than a day. Each “boid” in the “swarm” is only concerned with three things: “1) Make sure you do not contact the next boid, 2) Follow the average direction of the boids in your immediate surroundings and 3) Make sure that you do not fly to far from the group.” Three simple rules make central control unnecessary (admittedly, the swarm is also guided by external factors) while creating a strong organization that has its own behavior. The simulation is in widespread use in the film industry. Anyone who has seen the massive battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings or the herds of scaly fowl running around in Jurassic Park knows what swarm simulations look like.

19 http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/

The “Crowd” 63 In mathematics and biology, there is something like a cellular automaton20, a network of interconnected cells, each with its own state and behavior. Every cell in the network only knows about its adjacent cells and its state only changes in response to influences from these adjacent cells. Extremely complex systems can be simulated on the basis of such simple cells in large but simple “grids.” In this regard, complexity is the measure of observable behavior of the whole. The well- known computer game SimCity is based on such cellular automatons. A few years ago, SimCity enjoyed huge popularity in the pc world. Nowadays, the game runs on the iPhone platform and is again attracting throngs of fans.

The collective has its own life But what do ant colonies, mosquitoes, sardines or cellular automata have to do with the internet and Web 2.0? The answer is simple: they are all crowds. Without immediately reducing individual Web users to the status of annoying insects or flighty fish, ant colonies, schools of fish, swarms and flocks have nevertheless many things in common with a large group of internet users. A crowd is a crowd regardless of the species comprising the crowd. Every crowd has features in common with all others. The main one is that crowds are not governed by a central control or authority (and are likely not governable by any such central authority), and there is a great chance that they are self-organizing. The members of a group do not have to possess any great knowledge of the whole and can quickly produce complex behavior or results by following a few simple but cleverly chosen rules or laws. The only thing that is truly necessary is localalized perceptiveness (or sensing), the right stimuli (incentives) and predictable reactions.

20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automata

64 from crowd to Community Another feature of a crowd is that the collective has control over the individuals. The strong influence of the collective on individuals participating in it, can for instance clearly be seen in ants. For example, the fact that the behavior of various types of ants, from queen to worker, depends on the age of their colony as a whole. The colony can be older than the individual ants, but newborn ants nevertheless adopt the behavior that suits the age of entire colony and not the one suited to the ant’s own age. If we scoop out a large percentage of one type of ant, say the worker type, thereby disturbing the optimal distribution of types, the newborn ants will automatically be of the worker type. Actually, this collective- to-individual-feedback need not surprise us, we all know how sensitive we are to the culture in a company concerning the latest trends in our business environments; we rapidly change our behaviors to keep in step with the new surroundings. Fashion, lifestyle and any other expression of Bernays’ theory are based on peer-pressure and therefore feedback of the whole to the parts. Almost all people feel inclined to fit in as best possible.

Fertilized ova successively divide in a uniform manner until, after four or five cell divisions, they begin to differentiate into cells with specialized functions within the organs or body parts that will constitute the complete individual.21 Individual cells have no awareness of the group of cells to which they belong and in which they have separate roles. In this respect cells are mere cellular automata. Since it is difficult to imagine how the relatively static genetic material dna( ) of the cell can store the knowledge of the dynamically unfolding whole and of the role that the respective cells has in it, there must be some form of supercellular communication. Science is faced with a mystery here. Again. Epigenetics22 is an attempt to explain such supercellular links from a more holistic approach based on knowledge outside the cell. It suggests that even the experience of an- cestors somehow influences the genetics of descendants.23 Where might such external knowledge be stored and what types of feedback occur between the whole and the parts? There are theories claiming that our dna is only a receiver / transmitter connected to external databases. You should realize that, while the human genome was unraveled during the Human Genome Project and all the genes are known, this knowledge only applies to the genes that actually encode proteins (read: contain building instructions to create new proteins, which

21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_differentiation 22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics 23 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml

The “Crowd” 65 is the supposed function of dna). These genes only constitute 2% of the entire genome, the remaining 98% of the human genome is referred to as junk dna, so called because biologists believe it to serve no purpose.24 It is as if Mother Nature has stuffed us full of genes that have no function. But Mother Nature does not work that way.

Like probably any combination of parts into a whole, crowds also have emergent behavior.25

Emergent behavior is spontaneously occurring recognizable and identifiable pattern of behavior that arises when individual systems, (e.g. humans, animals, things and environments) are linked. By spontaneously occurring, we mean to suggest that no explicit guidance from others is needed to evoke the behavior.

Examples of emergence are:

Color (viewed in terms of chemistry):

“Elementary particles do not absorb or emit specific wavelengths of light and thus have no color ; it is only when they are arranged in atoms that they absorb or emit specific wavelengths of light, and can thus be said to have a color.”

Life (viewed in terms of biology) is also sometimes identified as an emergent property.

Specific organisms:

“[I]ndividual atoms can be combined to form molecules such as polypeptide chains, which in turn fold and refold to form proteins, which in turn create even more complex structures. These proteins, assuming their functional status from their spatial conformation, interact together and with other molecules to achieve higher biological functions and eventually create an organism.”

24 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_dna 25 http://www.vub.ac.be/clea/groups/vzw_worldviews/publications/vanbelle-emerg.html

66 from crowd to Community The state of nature:

“Another example is how cascade phenotype reactions, as detailed in chaos theory arise from individual genes mutating respective positioning.

At the highest level, all the biological communities in the world form the biosphere, where its human participants form societies, and the complex interactions of meta-social systems such as the stock market.”

Source: Wikipedia

Our favorite example however, is that of “water” or H2O. The fact that an explosive and inflammable gas like oxygen and an explosive and inflammable gas like hydrogen combine into something that can be used to extinquish fires, cannot be predicted by analyzing the parts. The fact that water is liquid cannot be reduced to the properties of the water molecule itself. The resulting, non analyz- able behavior, is called emergent behavior because it spontaneous emerges out of nothing. Emergent behavior puzzles modern science, yet it is all around us, at all levels of scale. Almost all organizations and structures around us have observable emergent behavior in some form or another. It is not uncommon to compare such systems as a whole to organisms.26 In this case, we call them super-organisms. Organisms themselves are already the result of a high degree of emergence, and it is for this reason that Lord Kelvin27 exempted life from his formulation of the second law of thermodynamics (since organization cannot occur spontaneously, there must be an outside energy source that organizes life).

Emergence occurs by degrees. Pure emergent behavior is unpredictable and subsequently unanalyzable. Such systems could be thought to live. Examples include financial systems such as “the stock market,” biological ecosystems, large mete- orological systems, such as “weather” but also large corporations and all society in general. The controversial, award-winning documentary “The Corporation”28 makes it seem very likely that large corporations have their own personality, distinct from those of their directors and employees. Emergence ensures that they collectively have the character of a psychopath without anyone working there

26 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/hannove.php 27 http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/biocom95.html#p1 28 http://www.thecorporation.com

The “Crowd” 67 being able to do anything about it. Imagine, companies like Shell, Exxon, Walmart or ing have the economic power of a small country,29 the personality of a psychopath and only one goal: to create shareholder value at the expense of (almost) everything. The economic crisis of 2009 made it clear that even capitalism itself is an emergent entity that devours itself. In this book, we assume that crowds can do things that none of the respective individuals or a multiplication of them is able to do. Hence, we will ascribe a mild form of emergent behavior to crowds.

According to Artificial Intelligent (ai) scientist Francis Heylighen, it’s only a matter of time before the internet itself is self-conscious and eventually experiences its own feelings as well. The web would then be nothing less than a global brain, the true collective consciousness that it is now metaphorically described as being. And if the internet becomes truly self conscious, it is hoped that it does not then realize that it (or them) would be better off without the more than seven billion parasites that link into it. In the scifi filmTerminator, the network called Skynet comes to this realization and turns against humanity. The network therefore sends Terminator machines from the future into the present. When, in the series based on this film, the cyborgs intended to sanitize us begin to look like the female terminator from The Sarah Conner Chronicles or Seven of Nine from Star Trek, we will, at least in a certain perspective, appear to be progressing. Futurologist and ai expert Ray Kurzweil30 has, for years, been predicting a similar scenario involving computers. It can hardly be doubted that self-aware computers will eventually exist. At that moment in time, a collection of dead parts will have, as a whole, a consciousness that cannot be traced back to any of the parts nor to the sum of them, They will therefore be exhibiting emergent behavior. The computing power to simulate the human brain will exist in 2012, and 10 years further on, a computer will have enough power to upload and launch human brain activity.

29 http://zapruder.nl/portal/artikel/more_power_to_the_corporations 30 http://singularity.com/aboutray.html

68 from crowd to Community In 2025, computers will be able to run the human brain as a program. Will they then also be self-conscious? Figure (cc) Ray Kurzweil / www.kurzweiltech.com

Emergence is completely compatible with a concept that may be more familiar to many people known as holism.31 Holism, an idea first fully developed by Aristotle, states that the properties of a system cannot be fully explained by its parts alone and that the whole largely determines how the parts behave. Emer- gence is a concept that will transform science, which is still dominated by reduc- tionist reasoning according to which everything, no matter how complex, is mechanical and can be viewed as a sum of its parts. This still dominant paradigm of the “clockwork universe.” Is continuing to govern the way scientist think, the way that we see the world and even, as we will view it into the future, as well as the way that we tend to organize collaboration. But there are important new insights. Chaos theory32 reveals that even simple deterministic (previously thought predictable) systems display (apparently) haphazard behavior and fractal math- ematics33 makes it clear that it is not always possible to add up parts in order to arrive at a whole. A fractal has infinite parts at infinite levels of aggregation. Even

31 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism 32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory 33 http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

The “Crowd” 69 quantum theory now requires terms to describe the feedback from a whole to the parts, developing concepts such as “ether,” “x-ether.” “ether waves”34 and the zero-point field mechanisms are cautiously making comebacks as mechanisms for time and distance-independent interactions. This in addition to the concept of “entanglement,” which has been in use’ for some time.

It is conceivable that collectives also possess a consciousness, a collective consciousness, which refers to a whole range of things, from collective memory to collective genes, all suggestive of some kind of emergent quality. For where do the grass-cutter ants acquire the knowledge needed to build such complex structures? The ants have no idea of the role they play in the whole. Which mechanism is at work that fuses individuals into a smart self-organizing collective? The example of ants maintaining the best possible network of routes to food can be explained using a phenomenon called stigmergy (communication via the environment).35 Even Tom Thumb understood the principle behind it. For the sustainability of evolutionary theory, it poses however quite a problem, as species appear to evolve not just on the basis of improved individuals but also on the basis of improved collectives since no one ant can start a stigmergic process on its own. Furthermore, the step from using odor as a tracking aid to building unbelievably well designed structures like the grass-cutter ants is still a big one.

How does a whole exercise any influence over its parts? The current state of science cannot provide us with any answers here, and we must therefore resort to more esoteric concepts. One example is provided by the morphogenetic fields of Rupert Sheldrake.36 He argues that “formative” information is stored in morphic fields to which organisms and other structures are “tuned.” But there are many other elegant theories about collective memory. In this respect, we have plenty of choice. The Akasha Chronicles37 is a mythical name for the collective memory containing all human knowledge and the complete history of the entire cosmos. From Star Wars, we know of “The Force” and the Jedi masters who know how to make clever use of it. “Use the Force Luke, the Force ” In traditional Chinese culture, there is Qi,38 the life energy that forms and permeates all things. In

34 http://www.wbabin.net/sukh/aether.htm 35 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy 36 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphic_field 37 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records 38 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi

70 from crowd to Community modern quantum theory, there is room for a holistic entanglement in the form of above-mentioned ether waves, which relate everything in the universe to everything else without the restrictions of speed and distance.

Collective Intelligence Quotient (c q ) No matter if it involves emergence of collective consciousness or simply complex determinism with a touch of chaos, a crowd as an entity in itself has special talents that we do not immediately recognize in its parts. These talents can be used. A frequently-cited familiar example in the Web 2.0 context (taken from the 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki), concerns Francis Galton, one of Darwin’s cousins, who was a math- ematician, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, geneticist, inventor, statistician and psychometrician. In 1906, Galton39 visited a livestock market where an ox was on display. The ox was the subject of a game that immediately caught his attention. The villagers were invited to guess the weight of the ox and more than 800 of them made a guess. None of the estimates accurately matched the ox’s actual weight (1198 pounds), and the range of the guesses was, of course, enormous. Would you be able to gauge the weight of a random cow in a pasture? Although no individual in the “crowd” knew the exact weight, the crowd as a whole possessed this knowledge, as the average of all the estimates was, in fact, 1197 pounds, almost the exact weight of the ox.

Every crowd has special talents that can be cleverly exploited. In the least, crowds can break down the inhibiting group-think of your own specialist teams. Group- think40 is the phenomenon of team members often tending to reach consensus by contributing conflict-avoiding solutions and opinions rather than critical and informed views. The talents of a crowd, the crowd iq, are increasingly being identified ascq or the collective intelligence quotient.41 cq is a factor that varies with the size of the crowd, the independence of its opinions and personal news-gathering activities and the diversity of its composition.

39 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton 40 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink 41 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_intelligence

The “Crowd” 71 Crowd-control: channeling talent Crowds cannot be controlled by a central authority but they can be manipulated by controlling their environment. In our everyday life, we are constantly being influenced without realizing it. This is done by applying marketing principles and propaganda. It is an subliminal type of control and therefore, for the most part, goes unnoticed by us. Without pr and propaganda, our democracies would not function.

Many “crowd control” mechanisms are indirect and imperceptible. They often operate at a subliminal level, aimed at our subconscious and therefore not consciously noticeable. Anyone curious about the pervasiveness of such control needs only to search for Derren Brown on YouTube.42 Those unfamiliar with the principles behind his work might, when viewing his skills for the first time, well think that he has paranormal if not extraterrestrial abilities. Derren is so unbelievably good, such an incredible virtuoso, that even if you know the principles behind his work, you might still think that he has paranormal if not extraterrestrial abilities. Derren “reads” the impact that the environment and recent perceptions have on a person with such great accuracy that he is almost without fail able to predict the responses that a given person will have to specific stimuli.43 Brilliant is the fragment in which he is able to preset the thinking of experienced advertisers, themselves masters of subliminal control, so that it complies with what he predicted. He performs this stumt by unconsciously exposing them to subliminal signals en route to the studio.

Crowds can be controlled, transformed and played with by constructing frameworks, establishing the preconditions, manipulating their environments, gradually implementing changes, and playing with them. The best way of understanding how this works is perhaps by regarding the crowd as an organic whole that evolves in a given ecosystem according to a few mechanisms. Although it may not be possible to control the behavior of the crowd directly, the mechanisms and the ecosystem can be manipulated and, in this way, the direction of the crowd can, in fact, be channeled. This technique takes more time and is indirect, but it is at least as powerful, to say the least.

42 http://www.derrenbrown.co.uk/ 43 http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1yl0zg

72 from crowd to Community The first paragraphs of the book Propaganda by Edward Bernays, the father of crowd-control, states the following:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas sug- gested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet. They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons—a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million—who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

This work has laid the foundation for modern societies and the doctrine is actively applied by virtually all governments and corporations on earth. Edward Bernays and Milton Friedman—the promoter of the aggressive type of “free market” capitalism that we see today—are in some ways the most influential people of the past one hundred years, along with Frederick Taylor, who we will introduce later on. Disregarding the political implications and social desirability, it is interesting to note that our governments already view and control us as crowds, this in addition to the more obvious and more direct mechanisms that we call “democracy.” Such crowd control occurs in ways similar to those used on the advertisers chosen by Derren Brown in the example that we mentioned earlier. Like them, we are left the illusion or believe that we are thinking inde-

The “Crowd” 73 pendently when in fact we are programmed to think in specific ways. The ad- ministrative elements in a society contain very many active control mechanisms: some direct others indirect. This is not so entirely different from practices in companies comprising both a bureaucracy and an active social side, although companies tend to have an extremely dominant bureaucracy, which is precisely not the case in a society.

Before we mobilize “our” crowd, it would be wise to think about the frameworks that we are setting up and the steering mechanisms that we are going to use. At the largest scale represented by a society, propaganda and pr function very well. On the internet (or intranet), these frameworks and mechanisms these must involve the establishment of the website where a crowd hangs out. Such a thing is certainly possible on the scale of the organization, and we will provide specific details about how to do it below. The behavior of an Internet crowd may be influenced by the proper design of the website. Operation, interaction design and the functionality of a website form the framework within which to channel a crowd and it is this framework that we can manipulate. In this way, we can indirectly manage the evolution of the crowd. In Part 2 of this book, we will introduce the methodology specifically intended to develop websites that are suitable as “crowd control” instruments and that can, subsequently, take your organization to the next phase. It is in this more advanced phase that a company complements its bureaucracy by developing an organic, more “holocratic” side.

The whole subject of crowds is extremely stimulating and inspiring, especially in relation to these holistic characteristics, and a basic understanding of it will certainly belong to the future skills required by each manager “2.0.”

74 from crowd to Community Notes

The “Crowd” 75 76 from crowd to Community 5 Socializing with the crowd

For those accustomed to operating in a hierarchical, top-down managed environment with controllable communications and central coordination, learning to deal with self-managed crowds and communities involves making a serious adjustment. Each community has its own manners and culture, and these factors are part of the previously described manifestations of emergent behavior. In any case, they comprise a self-forming and evolving set of values and norms that do not necessarily have to run parallel with existing business ethics. Few ceos and boards can deal with these issues, the new freedom of the workers appearing, too often as a threat that must be suppressed. Gently suppressed, because the same directors and ceos simultaneously realize only too well how easy it is to become the subject of a bogey “viral,” a fear that makes them appropriately cautious but improperly nervous. In the first days of blogging, businesses did not know how they should deal with employees who had their own blogs, especially if the posts were also about work.

Office warrior (fragment) “Hi”

“Hi”

Socializing with the crowd 77 “You know that here the first person to eat is also supposed to set the table for all”

“Of course”

“From now on, would you please set the table if you are the first to sit down?”

“No”

He stood behind me, I didn’t see him, but his deep breathing betrayed his emotions.

“That’s the way things work here”

“But won’t I then always have to set the table, because you always wait until I go eat first? I don’t think so. Just do your own place at the table”

Others were now entering. Unperturbed, I remained seated with my back to them. Picked up a glass of milk, which tasted good. Milk contains many important nutrients, including essential amino acids and calcium. I drink a lot of it.

“You have no respect, (last name)”

“I was just trying to explain things to you nicely, but it seems not to have sunk in. From now on, just make sure that you set your own table and I won’t get annoyed when I come to sit down. I’m the first to come here because I want a bit of peace and quiet while eating”

The others were now watching what was going on. Nothing unexpected. After all, they had all been waiting until they no longer were the first to enter the lunch room.

“Especially since you have just started working here, I suggest you’d be wise to set the tables!”

78 from crowd to Community Unmoved, I ate my Duo Penotti sandwich and, began the next one. I contin- ued to sit with my back to them, and instinctively visualized the position of all seven people present. I was used to combining the information provided by my senses into a mental radar screen. The smallest noises, the weakest beams of light, nearly imperceptible temperature differences, and fluctua- tions in ventilation. I never miss a thing. In my work, as a programmer, I can’t afford to. A compiler mercilessly penalizes any errors.

“d o i t n o w (last name)! “n o w !!”

I didn’t move. These situations were child’s play for me, I’ve been well trained. I had more than 17 years of i t experience, including the necessary practical training. I had the debugging background and coding skills that you can proudly tell your children and grandchildren about. I decided not to wait any longer. In one smooth motion I stood up, came two feet off the ground and with a simple roundhouse kick, smashed the jaw of Richard, 35-year-old technical designer. Richard had no chance, no one could blame him for being knocked out. I packed enough power in this kick to floor an ox without any problem.

I heard the radio in the background. Tiesto’s Just be. Delicious, I just let it act on me. After the break the music becomes exquisite.

Even before Richard fell over the table with a dull thud, I landed softly on one leg and spun one more time. William stood right behind Richard. And I had no problem shattering his larynx. Although my heel left very little of the cartilage structure in his throat intact, William unexpectedly remained on his feet. He was 6’2” and weighed 260 lbs and programmed in Java. To be certain, I deftly landed six, or seven quick and powerful punches in his solar plexus. Short, straight jabs against which no defense was possible. Bullet-time style, my trademark. His constricted diaphragm combined with his crushed larynx proved such a great obstruction to his breathing that William’s knees slowly but surely began to buckle, toppling William to the ground on which he would never stand again. His gasping breath subsiding into a quiet death. An oxygen-starved brain, passing through a series of pleasant hallucinations. I allowed William this final bliss; he had been a likeable fellow, and I decided not to take further action against him. I might be cold-blooded but certainly not heartless.

Socializing with the crowd 79 The above excerpt is exciting to read. Written somewhat in the manner of a Mar- vel comic book with deliberately overdone slow-motion streams of thought. Com- pletely over the top. On first impression, nothing apparently out of place. The relevant story was actually based on an encounter that really happened, in which there was, of course, no physical contact between the main characters. The blog was posted on a personal weblog with the permission of a number of colleagues who where mentioned by first name.44 During a brief preview, some of them vol- unteered to suffer an even more spectacular death, “perhaps something with gush- ing arteries.” The management of the company employing the author and free-lance software developer felt that it provided good reason to get rid of overly expensive employees in a poorly performing and overstaffed project. They claimed that the story had so terrorized the other employees that it was no longer possible to allow the author into the building. Large blogs soon got wind of the story and before long it kicked up a big fuss, attracting a lot of media attention.

The incident took place at a time when similar incidents were occurring in America (a Delta Airlines stewardess posted photos of herself in sexy poses on board a Delta Airlines aircraft on her blog).45 In retrospect, it can now be said that, in the vast majority of the cases, the only real problems were subsequent responses by the managers involved. Nowadays, these types of occurrences will no longer lead to such incidents.

Nvidia Internal communities are, of course still directly controllable (although you should actually not want to exercise such control), but external communities such as clients or customers, can absolutely not be told what to do. On the contrary they might even act with great hostility to any effort at overt manipulation. Nvidia is a manufacturer of what are normally good and fast-operating graphic and sound cards, but at one point one of their products was not entirely flawless when run on the then new Windows Vista. The drivers of the hardware did not function properly, and many users experienced problems with then. The support forum started to fill up with complaints and requests for software upgrades. Nvidia could not immediately comply and began to regard complaints on the support forum as undesirable experiences. It did something that it ought not to have done; it removed

44 http://patricksavalle.com/artikel/office_warrior/ 45 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/27/delta_blog_grounded/

80 from crowd to Community unwanted “threads” from the forum.46 Within days, users started their own forum, much bigger, beyond the control of Nvidia and with more complaints. They also started a class-action suit, a group lawsuit on behalf of injured consumers.

Nike Nike, the sports shoe and apparel manufacturer, spared no effort to meet customer requests for a new personal shoe design. The shoe configurator was a cool piece of web design. Any color, combination of colors, size and anything else that might be included on a shoe was configurable and the result immediately and interactively visible. A brief personal comment could make the shoe entirely unique. A press of a button causes the shoes to be delivered to you within a few days. Pay- ment occurred online of course.

“sweatshop”

...that is what Jonah Peretti wanted to have on his shoes. This was intended to protest against the child labor practices of Nike. Nike, the same company that can pay hundreds of millions of dollars to soccer teams in order to have them run around in Nike clothing, cannot arrange for its third-world workers to receive a decent wage. Nike had four simple rules with which the text had to comply and this text complied with all of them.

Nike still refused to print the text and had the bad luck that Jonah was a talented letter writer, a persistent activist (at least in this case) and a blogger as well. A farcical correspondence between the Nike pr department and Jonah was the result.47 Other blogs picked up on the incident, and it was estimated that 10 million people read the correspondence at the time. A costly mistake by Nike. These kinds of incidents have in fact an extremely “long tail.”

From: Jonah H. Peretti

To: Personalize, n i k e i d

Subject: r e : Your n i k e i d order

46 http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/03/0110248 47 http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies/nike01-02-16.htm

Socializing with the crowd 81 Dear n i k e i d ,

Thank you for the time and energy you have spent on my request. I have decided to order the shoes with a different i d , but I would like to make one small request. Could you please send me a color snapshot of the 10-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes?

Thanks, Jonah Peretti

Response 1.0 versus response 2.0 What do these incidents have in common, except that they lead to conflict? The wrong response! 1.0 Managers are still living under the assumption that the reputation of their company can be destroyed by the occasional unwanted statements by loners. And they are right. Joep van ’t Hek can be held personally responsible for the collapse of the Buckler brand of beer. “A bland non-alcoholic beer for sissies. Not for real men.” At least that was the view of the comedian which, unfortunately for Heineken, had an infectious effect.48 Managers certainly have a reason to be afraid of unwanted statements, but the question is what is then the best way of containment. Ban everything beforehand? Control and establish rules creating a climate of repression that prevents any single initiative from germinating? Or basically allow everything and then if something unwanted happens, retrospec- tively try to give it a playful twist knowing that most unpleasant incidents will not even reach the outside world and will only have a half-life of at most a few days? In any case, trying to suppress the incident by intimidation, censorship and other repressive measures is certainly the wrong response. A crowd reacts generally very poorly to coercion. When anonymous, not present in person and behind an Inter- net connection, many people suddenly become very brave.

Because McDonalds has a lot of money but does not like to give any of it away, they were clever when they were confronted with the flash mob phenomenon.

A flash mob is a very local and temporary public community. Unknown and unconnected individuals use sms, email and other one-on-one communications

48 http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kyrvvajavji

82 from crowd to Community media to organize themselves into a “mob.” The aim is usually a harmless prank.49 One of the first flash mobs emerged seemingly from nowhere in a Toys R Us store,50 where suddenly 1,000 people knelt and began to worship the life-size animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex. The store staff reacted in panic by switching off the T-Rex and calling the police. Response 1.0

McDonalds responded more cleverly, when they were confronted with a similar prank. In a few months, various German franchises of MacDonald’s were “hit” by flash mobs. All of sudden, more than 1,200 men would be standing at a counter wanting to order a Big Mac or hamburger. Some forums mentioned crowds of as many as 4,000 individuals: a considerable number for the average McDon- alds outlet to handle. After the first occurrence, franchise managers were informed of the problem and advised to view any such “hit” as a positive challenge. It provided MacDonald’s with a great deal of favorable publicity. ard, a German television network, was able to show how employees worked like crazy to grill burgers and retrieve new supplies from basements. Franchise managers switched on extra grills. This televised activity was undoubtedly staged, but its lack of authenticity did not seem to matter at the time. In retrospective, it was a memo- rable moment for both the mob and mobbed. And was certainly better than a showdown with the police. Of course, it remains uncertain if the practices of giving a free meal to any customer having to wait longer than 15 minutes remained in effect on these occasions.

Toys’ R Us should not have called the police but the press. They should have treated participants to a cup of coffee. Or tea if necessary. Throughout the year they are always trying to lure as many people as possible into their stores and the large numbers of people now entering the store were all of a sudden being asked to leave. Make up your mind!

The Nike case is different, as the problem involved is a lot deeper. Nike was being accused of hypocrisy, even criminal behavior, and this censurable activity could not be changed fast enough. In the documentary “The Corporation,” Michael Moore offered to accompany the ceo of Nike, Phil Knight, to Indone- sia—fly with him there business class and stay in five star hotels while making

49 http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625344 50 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3134559.stm

Socializing with the crowd 83 inspections of Nike’s sweat shops (i.e. factories) in that country.51 Phil had never been in any of Nike’s many sweatshops, and had never seen with his own eyes how his shoes were being manufactured under miserable conditions and for scandalously low pay. At the time when the decision had to be made, he probably thought that, if he acted as if everything was all right and not go inspect the production facilities, he would get away with it. Phil refused to go with Michael. But Michael Moore received an invitation to travel with him a few months later to...a golf tournament in Australia. The problem here is basic and only avoidable in one way: accepting social and moral responsibility.

The above does not mean that Nike is less socially committed than any other company. On the contrary, the same documentary, “The Corporation”, also clearly shows that every large company has basically the same evil “genes.” When analyzed as a person, a multinational appears to have the personality of a psychopath. All multinationals! They enjoy revenue as large as the national product of a small country and have only one goal: to create shareholder value no matter what. Due to their legal structure, big organizations not only act like they have a single, very powerful, evil person, they are legal persons. Large corporations represent prime examples of the emergent behavior discussed above. It can be assumed that none of the employees at Nike agrees with any decision to use child labor—at the worst, they surrender to the very easy compulsion in modern society to just close their eyes and wait for the next episode of their favorite tv show. However, the company as a whole makes the decision, acting under the effects of emergence. Likely, such “offences” are only considered by the company as a whole in terms of financial considerations counterbalancing the savings and possible fines, as no one will be held personally liable. Like any community, multinationals display emergent behavior. Without any evolving or framing factors to guide or limit this behavior, it may even come to dominate every corporate decision.

Viral communications A community is a wonderful mechanism for obtaining a great deal for very little. For example, it can enact a huge marketing campaign without requiring much money or effort. Word of mouth advertising by internet communities is much stronger than most other dissemination methods because people communicating

51 http://youtube.com/watch?v=coi0V4krciq

84 from crowd to Community with each other can have an infectious effect. Cool content and trends can and will spread throughout a community at lightning speed without requiring any explicit push or strategy. This is called viral communications, and the craze that infects the community is called a viral, as it concerns information that spreads like a virus.

The analogy is of course with the transmission of the biological virus. A biological virus is a passive piece of encapsulated genetic material (dna or rna) that has receptors enabling it to “stick” to other cells. In this way, the virus incorporates its genetic material in the host cell, using this cell to replicate its own dna and, subsequently, infecting more cells. An epidemic occurs when an in- fected person infects more than one other person, and the process persists for a sufficiently long time. Such viral effect also requires sufficientcontact , sufficient infectivity (viruses that infect others through the air are more infectious than sexually transmitted diseases) and sufficientsusceptibility (not everyone becomes sick from the same virus). Infectious diseases are characterized by their exponen- tial rate of transmission: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.

A viral advertisement or a viral video is put together so that communities feel compelled to share it with others. The transmission can hardly be controlled but, if a viral catches on, it provides a very cheap way of marketing that can quickly have an extensive reach and an extremely large impact. The processes involved in this case are not genetic but memetic. Memetics is the study of the evolution of culture and ideas in a manner that is analogous to genetics.52

By far the best viral ever was the Star Wars kid.53 It is estimated that this viral has been viewed by one billion people, and we mean one billion times. Such expo- sure is the ultimate dream of any pr department. The clip did not cost anything. Its technical quality is poor. Nevertheless, it is the most successful clip ever. The internet community started making parodies, which only increased the success of the original. The Star Wars Kid vs. Agent Smith (The Matrix), the Star Wars kid vs. Yodi (Star Wars), Star Wars kid in Psycho, the Hulk, there were even episodes of cartoons in which the Star Wars Kid made his appearance. Even news channels like cbs and bbc, and newspapers like the New York Times paid attention to the kid. The clip was made by a teenage boy in a video cabin at his school during a rush of inspiration that hit him after seeing Star Wars. Assuming that it would all

52 http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics 53 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_kid

Socializing with the crowd 85 remain anonymous, he used a golf ball retriever as a light saber and began handling his matchless light sword to kill virtual enemies. In all his enthusiasm, however, he forgot to erase the recording from the video tape recorder. Schoolmates found the video and then placed it online with the resulting, huge viral effect.

The parents of the boy were less enamored by the action and did not take it at all too kindly. After a brief court case, an out-of-court settlement was reached with the families of the boy’s classmates. The settlement amount is estimated at 150,000 Canadian dollars.

Astroturfing Many webshops allow users to write reviews about products. This move is a smart one, allowing the community to inform its own members without commercial bias. It is of great added value to your website, especially when you deliver a good product. Amazon has been doing it for years. The community is very suspicious of outsiders. It only trusts its own members, certainly not any marketers or manufacturers. Hence, more and more webshops are providing the opportunity for these user reviews. The reviews are considered more reliable than the information that a manufacturer provides, and many manufacturers are therefore tempted to manipulate such reviews, to have their own people write them or even have them produced by their pr department. These contributions, which are of course all very positive, are then passed off as items written by members of the community. This form of undercover marketing or astroturfing (astro turf is a synthetic turf that pretends to be real grass) works well but is dangerous, since sooner or later someone will discover the deceit and then cook the company’s goose. Astroturfing is nothing new; it is similar to the false-flag operations54 that have been dominating terrorism and warfare for ages. Blaming the other side for atrocities they perpetrate themselves.

Sony has had the most amazing commercials for years. Did you ever have the idea that PlayStation was initially prevented from being sold internationally because it was contrary to laws that prohibit export of high-grade military technology?55 We don’t think such an idea was ever really true. More likely, it was a great marketing ploy, which gave the ultra hi-tech device an almost top- secret aura. Or did you ever really believe that Sony’s video cameras were re-

54 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag 55 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/716237.stm

86 from crowd to Community moved from the market because their night vision mode could be used to see through thin summer dresses and fabrics like canvas? Such notions were never true, but they gave the devices some of the features of X-ray glasses, which everyone wanted at the time.

Recently, Sony decided to go a step further. Since the crowd only trusts its own members, there may be some benefit from pretending to be one of them. Sony hired specialized stealth-marketing agency Zipatoni to create a fan blog for their new psp. Only, the people who wrote it were not true fans, but marketing employees. The site was too slick, the stories too positive and the real fans quickly figured the ruse out and condemned it as shameful. They experienced it as an insult to their intelligence, and Sony was caught with its pants down.56 They were furthermore dumb enough to register the blog domain www.alliwantforxmasisap- sp.com in their own name.

Recently, the Nintendo Wii game controller became a phenomenal success among the other attractively presented controllers / joysticks that come pouring out of video screens.57 The Wii is a game console that is controlled by body movement. Alone, in pairs or as a quartet, you can box, play tennis, bowl and much more. Shortly after the release, many articles were posted on the blogs about children who, in the heat of battle, accidentally threw their controller through the brand new 42 “flat screen.” This generated huge (viral) attention for the device. It is of course perfectly feasable for a manufacturer or its advertising agency to organize or instigate such media frenzy. Or it is clearly extremely easy to jump on the bandwagon when such commotion arises all on its own.

56 http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;151875684 57 http://www.wiidamage.com/

Socializing with the crowd 87 Community resistance Are you afraid already, of your own crowd? Do you begin to hesitate to roll out any blogs, wikis and forums within the organization? What if you yourself are the target of their anger, ridicule or ingenuity?

Do not be afraid. To start off with, if it happens or can happen to you, then it will also happen to a competitor at some point. This levels the playing field. To a certain extent, it is part of the game. The question is not whether it will happen—it will certainly happen at least once—the question is how to deal with it. To put it simply, there are very good measures to be taken in advance. In many of the above cases that go wrong, the “perpetrators” knew of course beforehand that there was a risk associated with their actions. They should have known that things might go awry, as a crowd is surprisingly inventive and ultimately difficult to fool. The solution is actually quite simple. Here are some rules that can help you to deal with your community:

1 The community always sees through you 2 The community will call you to count 3 The community only trusts itself 4 You cannot beat them, you must join them!

This means that there is only one “continuously foolproof Web 2.0 strategy,” which is to remain morally and socially incorruptible.

Not very sexy perhaps. No astroturfing. No undercover activity or manipulation of grassroots58 movements (you will have to wait until they spontaneously arise). However, it is the only way to make sure that you can rely, under any circumstances, on that which each community will ultimately respects: a clean conscience and the intention to do what is right!

Integrity and honest behavior are forever and understandable by everyone.

And if things ever run out of control, consider using or recasting the incident to your advantage, Perhaps Heineken should have adopted the term Buckler drinker as a nickname; in this way, the company could have latched onto the public-

58 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassroots

88 from crowd to Community ity that was occurring. We can imagine an advertising campaign for the brand that is maybe, to our mind, on the verge of being socially distasteful. It displays a series of accidents that might be avoided by the unimpaired Buckler drinker but not by the drinker of competitor beers. If kept at the level of suggestion, without too much blood, it might be very effective in turning a bad thing into a Heinekens advantage. Recently, there was an ad for Bolletje bakery products in which a fictitious spokesperson was named Sonja and identified as a baker (in Dutch: bakker). The onscreen caption was: “Sonja, bakker van bolletje.” The real Sonja Bakker, known for her “Sonja Bakker diet” was not so pleased with the confusion that was seemingly invited. The name had to be removed from the ad. In response, Bolletje ran a prime-time announcement (during the half-time interval of a European Championship soccer final) having its apology stated by Dick, “advocaat van Bolletje” (advocaat is Dutch for lawyer and the coach of the Dutch National soccer team is named Dick Advocaat).59

It is very possible that the advertising agency staged the whole affair and that Sonja was even co-conspiring with Bolletje, as she also garnered favorable attention as a result, and this free of charge.

59 http://reclamewereld.blog.nl/regelgeving/2008/06/09/sonja-bakker-spoof-bolletje-moet-van- de-buis-van-humorloze-dietiste

Socializing with the crowd 89 Notes

90 from crowd to Community 6 The new way of working together

Are you already fed up with hearing about ants? Don’t be! We can learn a lot from them. They have already been around 100 million years longer on earth than humans, so they must be doing “something” right. Ants are the true super power on earth. Not we humans. They easily surpass humans in numbers and bio- mass, and unlike humanity, they produce no non-biological waste and do not exhaust their ecosystem, two practices that will ensure that they will outlive us (unless we sweep them away in our fall). The ants of the Pampas in Argentina eat more grass than the large herds of cows grazing there. The ants of the African savannah eat more meat (in the form of other insects) than all the big cats living there. Their relative strength, their efficiency, the tricks that they can employ, make them special and fascinating creatures. Ants are the only species besides humans that have do- mesticated pets. There are nomadic species of ants that carry their cattle, honeydew producing aphids from tree to tree with them and even protect them against rain and storms. In the context of social awareness, the documentary entitled “Ants, Nature’s Secret Power”60 is a must-see.

60 http://www.documentary-log.com/watch-online-d/67/ants-natures-secret-power/

The new way of working together 91 From chaos to perfection Ants are all individually special, but they are obviously not very smart. If a fire threatens the grass-cutter ants, they still continue working at their tasks until they are burned. The drones are small nanotech machines programmed with simple responses to a limited number of stimuli. In this regard, there are many more talented and more thoughtful species on the earth. But where ants really excel, what makes them into an undisputed master race, is their capacity for mass collaboration! They constitute what may be described as a super organism, which surpasses all those other talented individual organisms, Ants are social: “individually stupid, collectively smart, opposite to man,” With hundreds working together, ants operate as an army in search of new food, for example. In large numbers, they project their antennas out of the nest and go off on their search in random directions. One goes left, the other right. Absolutely chaotic they run in all directions, without any planning, without any coordination. Until a single success occurs, then something special happens. An ant grabs some food and brings it back to the nest and, while returning, it leaves a scent trail, a capacity that has been provided them by nature. The next ants sticking their antennas outside the nest will pick up the scent and cannot resist following it. Nature has made them that way too. They simply follow the scent and find the food in one straight dash. In returning from the food source, they also leave their scent, which reinforces the existing track, providing even more incentive for more ants to obtain their food there.

At some point in the life of the colony, there is a web of such traces. The tracks leading to the closest places where food may be found are the strongest because the greatest number of ants travel these paths purely due to the length of the route. Tracks leading to places where food sources are exhausted fade on their own because increasingly fewer ants use them to bring back food, while more and more ants decide to conduct their search in other directions, the scent left along track fades, as it is no longer reinforced. What begins as a seemingly chaotic scene ends in a self-organizing process of building up and maintaining a optimal network of trails. What looked like the uncoordinated actions of ants moving in utter confusion turns out to be a very sophisticated way of working together.

A few special things can be noted about this mechanism. To begin with, ants are able to perform coordinated tasks and to make complex structures (their food network) without communicating with each other. There is no direct communi-

92 from crowd to Community cation. Nor is there any central coordination. Nevertheless, there is an active mechanism that manages to bundle together the combined efforts of many of these non-communicating individuals into a useful group performance. This mechanism is called stigmergy and is based on a whole new way of working together. At least, it is new to us as knowledge workers. Nature has known about it for a long time.

Stigmergy as defined in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The entry in Wikipedia reads as follows:

Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of coherent, apparently systematic activity.

Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents. As such it supports efficient collaboration between extremely simple agents, who lack any memory, intelligence or even awareness of each other.

Stigmergic behavior in insects Stigmergy was first observed in social insects. For example, ants exchange information by laying down pheromones (the trace) on their way back to the nest when they have found food. In that way, they collectively develop a complex network of trails, connecting the nest in the most efficient way to the different food sources. When ants come out of the nest searching for food, they are stimulated by the pheromone to follow the trail towards the food source. The network of trails functions as a shared external memory for the ant colony. In computer science, this general method has been applied in a variety of techniques called ant colony optimization, which search for solutions to complex problems by depositing “virtual pheromones” along paths that appear promising.

The new way of working together 93 Other eusocial creatures, such as termites , use pheromones to build their complex nests by following a simple decentralized rule set. Each insect scoops up a “mud ball” or similar material from its environment, invests the ball with pheromones, and deposits it on the ground, initially in a random spot. However, termites are attracted to their nest mates’ pheromones and are therefore more likely to drop their own mud balls on top of their neighbors’. The larger the heap of mud becomes, the more attractive it is, and therefore the more mud will be added to it (positive feedback). Over time this leads to the construction of pillars, arches, tunnels and chambers.

History The term “stigmergy” was introduced by French biologist Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959 to refer to termite behavior. He defined it as: “Stimulation of workers by the performance they have achieved.” It is derived from the Greek words stigma (mark, sign) and ergon (work, action), and captures the notion that an agent’s actions leave signs in the environment, signs that it and other agents sense and that determine and incite their subsequent actions[1].

Later on, a distinction was made between the stigmergic phenomenon, which is specific to the guidance of additional work, and the more general, non- work specific incitation, for which the term sematectonic communication was coined[2] by E.O. Wilson , from the Greek words sema (sign, token), and tecton (craftsman, builder): “There is a need for a more general, somewhat less clumsy expression to denote the evocation of any form of behavior or physiological change by the evidences of work performed by other animals, including the special case of the guidance of additional work.”

Stigmergy is now one of the key[3] concepts in the field of swarm intelligence.

Applications Stigmergy is not restricted to eusocial creatures, or even to physical systems. On the Internet there are many emergent phenomena that arise from users interacting only by modifying local parts of their shared virtual environment. Wikipedia is an example of this. The massive structure of information available in a wiki,[4] or an open source software project such as the Freeb s d kernel[4] could be compared to a termite nest; one initial user leaves a seed

94 from crowd to Community of an idea (a mudball) which attracts other users who then build upon and modify this initial concept, eventually constructing an elaborate structure of connected thoughts.[5][6]

The term is also employed in experimental research in robotics, multi-agent systems and communication in computer networks. In these fields there exist two types of stigmergy: active and passive. The first kind occurs when a robotic or otherwise intelligent “agent” alters its environment so as to affect the sensory input of another agent. The second occurs when an agent’s action alters its environment such that the environmental changes made by a different agent are also modified. A typical example of active stigmergy is leaving behind artifacts for others to pick up or follow. An example of passive stigmergy is when agent-A tries to remove all artifacts from a container, while agent-B tries to fill the container completely.

In addition the concept of stigmergy has also been used to describe how cooperative work such as building design may be integrated. Designing a large contemporary building involves a large and diverse network of actors (e.g. architects, building engineers, static engineers, building services engineers and etc.). Their distributed activities may be partly integrated through practices of stigmergy.[7][8]

See also • Swarm intelligence • Spontaneous order

References 1. Bonabeau, E. “Editor’s Introduction: Stigmergy.” special Issue of Artificial Life on Stig- mergy. Volume 5, Issue 2 / Spring 1999, p.95-96. http://www.stigmergicsystems.com/ stig_v1/stigrefs/article1.html 2. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, E.O. Wilson, 1975/2000, p.186 3. Parunak, H. v D. (2003). Making swarming happen. In Proc. of Conf. on Swarming and Network Enabled Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveil- lance and Reconnaissance (C4i s r ), McLean, Virginia, u s a , January 2003. 4. abInfoworld: A conversation with Steve Burbeck about multicellular computing 5. Heylighen F. (2007). Why is Open Access Development so Successful? Stigmergic organization and the economics of information, in: B. Lutterbeck, M. Baerwolff & R. A. Gehring (eds.), Open Source Jahrbuch 2007, Lehmanns Media, 2007, p. 165-180.

The new way of working together 95 6. Rodriguez M.A. (2008). A Collectively Generated Model of the World, in: Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, eds. M. Tovey, pages 261-264, e i n Press, i s b n : 09715-6616X, Oakton, Virginia, November 2007 7. Christensen, L. R. (2007). Practices of stigmergy in architectural work. In Proceedings of the 2007 international a c m Conference on Conference on Supporting Group Work (Sanibel Island, Florida, u s a , November 04 - 07, 2007). g r o u p 2007. a c m , New York, n y , 11-20. 8. Christensen, L. R. (2008). The Logic of Practices of Stigmergy: Representational Artifacts in Architectural Design. In Proceedings of the 2008 a c m Conference on Computer Sup- ported Cooperative Work (San Diego, c a , u s a , November 8-12, 2008). c s c w ‘08. a c m , New York, n y , 559-568.

How brilliant is all this? Everywhere around us, the world is filled with entities that respond to certain stimuli predictably and, instinctively. Not just ants or pets, but machines as well. And things! And people! Depending on the chosen perspective and the most appropriate context, we label these people subject, consumer or employee. While able to act intelligently, they are, under certain conditions, not much different from the drones or boids that we previously described. All these drones have a certain degree of instinctive behavior that can be used to cause them to work together on complex tasks without having them come into contact with each other and without having them perform complex actions. All it requires is a stigmergic mechanism, predictable behavior, the right signals and an environment where it all takes place.

Bees are social insects just like ants, and they have many ways of working together, apparently without communication. This behavior is, of course, in addition to the famous example of direct communication involving their thorax wagging “dance” to inform other bees about the routes to their food. If at some point the temperature in the hive becomes too high, one by one, the workers begin to use their wings as fans. They do this instinctively and not all at the same temperature due to genetic differences. Eventually this collective effort cools down the breeding compartments. When the temperature drops, the bees one at a time stop fanning the hive. The story is one of the many tales about nature that have become somewhat clichés. They are frequently used in the social context, but it is not always clear if they actually are correct, or if they are, in fact, more or less urban legends. This is certainly the case with this example, since the harder the bees fan, the more energy they use, which then is released in the form of heat, warming the hive that their fanning action is supposedly cooling down.

96 from crowd to Community In any event, the information instigating their “stigmergic” group performance comes from the environment. Ants and bees behave in this way in nature; consumers act similarly in trendy shops surrounded by incentives to purchase, combined with “traces” left by lifestyle and pr departments, while employees display similar behavior in the social environment that you provide! Stigmergy is everywhere; it can be seen in the societies of social insects, it can be seen in the human body in the form of cells incited to work together by stimuli passed through the bloodstream, and it is also the main way of working together on the internet.

The internet as a whole, at the level of routers and servers, but also many of the websites that can be found on it, are almost entirely creations resulting from a stigmergic process. Take for example Wikipedia. Almost everyone uses the website to look up something. Wikipedia is basically a stigmergic medium. Essen- tially, no direct conversation or communication with other visitors is required for the mechanism to work. Someone reads an article and sees that something is wrong or that something is missing, and can make the necessary revision. The environment is Wikipedia itself and the traces to be followed are the articles. The structure that results is an encyclopedia. digg.com, the social bookmark site of Google, makes the operation even clearer. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Diggers browse the internet daily in search of fun, interesting and/or useful information. Like ants, this search activity happens in seemingly uncoordinated chaos. Each time, however, that one of those Internet ants encounters a useful link, they leave a marked trail in their environment, in this case at digg.com. The other ants can pick up these markings and even strengthen it by voting. Ultimately, a mechanism is created that separates useful information from noise. The digg.com community uses stigmergic processes to maintain what is, in their eyes, a qualitatively high-grade and up-to-date subset of the internet that is changing daily. From chaos, to blazing trails, following them and reinforcing them in a process of self-organization.

The human body Although the word stigmergy might sound very scientific and the ant might be a nice example but still have a very “academic feeling,” the phenomenon is to be found in almost all facets of our world. Our world is through and through stigmergic.

The new way of working together 97 Our body is an enormously complex organism consisting of more than 150 billion cells. Our brains cannot possible keep tabs on all these cells. Yet, if we ultimately want our left arm to extend forward, or else our right one, the movement ultimate has great probability to succeed. It is only when you realize how much of our body is comprised of self-sufficient units that you understand what an enormously complex communication is required for such movement. To a greater or lesser extent, the present concerns of all the autonomous units have to be interrupted in order to coordinate their contribution to the whole. They have a double life: self-survival, and simultaneously collective survival. Some of this control is conscious but most of it is unconscious. Some of it occurs directly and instantaneously, by means of electrical impulses that are sent through the nervous system, but the vast majority is indirect. The vast majority of our body’s activity relies on stigmergic collaboration. All the cells in our body are separate entities with their own metabolism, self-perception and specific behavior. It would be impossible for the brains to control everything. Instead, this all involves mass- collaboration on a scale far greater than what the ants perform.

Cells are equipped with receptors, which act as their senses and these receptors respond to signals in the form of molecules or in the form of electromagnetic stimuli. Once an appropriate signal attaches to a receptor, the cell does something. Thus, viruses can attach to a cell receptor and instigate replication of the viral dna. And similarly hormones, lipids, proteins and other chemicals induce the cell to other actions. The body (actually its cells, the individuals of the collective) distributes these chemicals throughout the cellular environment, and each cell subsequently knows what to do and obtains this knowledge independently of every other cell. Cells can communicate with each other without knowing about any other cell or group of cells from which the communication comes. They act on the basis of genetically programmed responses to signals, and it is this programming that ultimately creates a synergistic collaboration. Our body is a giant stigmergic communication platform on which all components emit or leave signals to coordinate the actions of others.

Madmen and fools write their names on doors and windows Stigmergy is opportunism in its highest form. You should realize that the ant carrying food back to the nest and consequently leaving a scent does not

98 from crowd to Community know when or if any other ants will take notice and follow the trail. Nor does it leave the trail for specific other individuals. Perhaps it does not even know it is making the trail. Nevertheless, it marks the trail, which becomes the instigation for a sophisticated self-correcting process.

If ants can resultantly organize themselves so well this way, would it not also be handy if knowledge workers were to leave traces leading to where they are acquiring knowledge for the company? Unsolicited, opportunism? Or is this just a waste of time?

Consider an activity stream, which is often nothing more than a kind of micro blog on which we inform and broadcast to the world and/or our network, or unilaterally say what we are doing, where we are, what we believe and so forth. Manually posted information can easily be supplemented with events that can be added automatically. “Wim stored one file in the “Sustainability” work group under the title ,” “Chris is a member of the ” group, etc. This more or less coincides with a continuous transmission of status information. Mostly, you do nothing explicit for followers or friends in providing this information, but often your “trace” gives rise to further actions. In any event, your followers at least know what you are doing, making it easier to communicate in a specific manner and to find points of contact when you unexpectedly undertake more immediate forms of communication or when you bump into the person in the real world (you know, an old fashion physical encounter). The simple fact that your trace is visible to everyone at least makes it possible for others to help you and to ensure that you keep in touch. Particularly in a corporate environment, activity streaming is very useful because it provides “specific” information and involves meaningful “activities” more often than it does in the private sphere. Twitter and Facebook are in this respect more than just tools for the see-me crowd. Flickr serves a much clearer purpose, as it supports the primary objective of managing the world’s largest photography exhibition. Each time you log in to manage your own photo gallery, Flickr gives you an overview of relevant events, the people who have looked at your photos, those who commented on them, etc. In a corporate environment, an activity stream provides guidance leading to other activities, and to new or different content and conversations. Just like ant behavior, activity streaming starts in chaos and is based on assumptions and opportunism. No one knows who, if anyone, will stumble on

The new way of working together 99 a trail, but eventually processes begin to organize themselves and add value, without requiring any supervision or control.

Mass-action and brute force tactics Due to the absence of central control and the presence of self-organization, a stigmergic environment (let us henceforth refer to it as “just” a “2.0 environment”) is very well suited for what might be called brute force strategies. Information in such an environment is derived from a self-organizing, trial-and-error method. Instead of looking for information themselves, knowledge workers may post search requests in the environment, in response to which their colleagues happening to notice the request may assist in the search. They may do this on their own time, and using keywords in a way that they themselves choose. With a suitable aggregation or ranking mechanism, the most useful results come automatically to the surface, just like at digg.com. What began as an opportunistic marking of a trail has evolved from chaos to useful results through the cooperation of unselected passers-by. The result has been selected using the full collective intelligence of the crowd.

As another concrete example, consider what is known as social bookmarking such as performed on del.icio.us, which differs from digg because a different mechanism is used to optimize group performance. Millions of internet users make use of the service to save their bookmarks online. At one point, some bookmarks become more significant than others because they are kept by more people. There is now a selection of bookmarks that are chosen by users of del. icio.us as being more valuable then others. Without all these people consulting each other, they discover the most interesting places on the internet and implicitly give them a “rating.”. Their result is actually a subset of the internet that others have found to merit highlighting. This is another example of how brute force tactics can yield very useful results when used in the right environment (something that is virtually impossible under central control). Bookmarking on del.icio.us is a continuous process and very useful to the social platform of a large company, but it is quite conceivable that a similar mechanism can be used in a more ad hoc manner to supply solutions and answers to problems that arise spontaneously, again using the social platform of the company. In this case, the community is asked to find and recommend links with possible solutions to a problem. The wisdom of the crowd and the principle of brute force generated by the swarming of the community may turn up useful links.

100 from crowd to Community Bundling of forces An important feature of a good “2.0” environment is a mechanism to “aggregate” or cluster individual contributions into a group result. Such a mechanism is called (how predictable) an aggregation mechanism and is based on such practices as collaborative filtering. We will discuss the details involved in Part 2, but it is important to realize that just leaving traces is not enough. The ants have an aggregation mechanism in the continuous reinforcement of the tracks and the auto- matic evaporation of such traces over time. On social bookmark sites like digg.com, there is a similar mechanism. Found information that receives many votes from the digg community appears on the front page and will start climbing above other items. After a while, however, the item is “exhausted” (read: evaporates) and disap- pears from the front page. The front page displays the currently most valuable collection of information in the view of the community. Programmers refer to this evaporation and decrease in value as a “half-life” or “radioactivity”; it is a useful and easy to program aggregation mechanism.

Broadcast versus direct communication Essential in describing the difference between (functional) 1.0 teams and the (social) 2.0 communities is the kind of communication that is dominant. Teams primarily partake in direct communications from person to person. It does, by the way, not always have to be people who are collaborating; it could also be machines, androids, cyborg or simply “functions.”

Direct communication has a known endpoint; it is clear who or what will eventually respond. Email is typically direct communication. just like a phone call as well. People who do not understand that this form of communication is dominant soon become known in the organization as spammers. Much of this type of “spam” is also an important indication that a good social platform is lacking. Direct communication is the most dominant type of communication in the functional side of the organization.

In contrast to the functional side of the organization, the social side is mainly dominated by broadcast communications (broadcasts or broadcasting). In this type of communications, it is unknown who the recipients will be or even if a receiver exists. The communicative act is discontinuous from the participants in the conversation. A bulletin board or weblog is a form of broadcast communications.

The new way of working together 101 The difference between direct and broadcast communications involves the degree of decoupling and security. In direction communications, the parties are more strongly linked and secure. There is always only a certain amount of direct communications that are possible before the communicative act is so complex that problems begin to arise. This means, among other things, that teams can only ever be of limited size.

A good example is the difference in document preparation by a team communicating by email and the manner in which a document is prepared by a community using a wiki.

A wiki is a stigmergic means of creating a document by engaging the joint efforts of multiple people

Synchronous versus asynchronous Communication can be synchronous or asynchronous. During synchronous communication, the sender waits for the receiver to respond. This makes them sequentially interdependent, and makes the course of the procedure predictable. In the case of asynchronous communication, the sender does not wait for the receiver to respond but the receiver merely interrupts the sender when responding. The sender can do something else in the meantime. This makes the sender and receiver less dependent on each other but simultaneously requires a different approach.

Synchronous and direct often occur in combination, as do asynchronous and broadcast. Synchronous and direct communications will be dominant on the functional side of the organization, Stigmergy, the social form of collaboration, is mainly based on asynchronous, broadcast communications.

102 from crowd to Community Self-scaling and anonymous Stigmergic collaboration can occur among large groups of “workers” without any central control and without direct communications to coordinate complex tasks. The parties involved are decoupled from each other by means of an environment or platform. Because there are no direct communications, it is not necessary to know the parties who will be working together beforehand or even at all. In principle it is possible to execute the most complex tasks without ever knowing who is participating and without ever coordinating schedules. The “workforce” can be continuously changing its composition and size. It is a self-scaling mechanism. And what’s more, it is self-organizing. Tasks are automatically performed at a greater speed when greater capacity becomes available, without requiring a procedure to revise or adjust communications. This makes the principle terrifyingly universal, and it is no wonder that it is also the preferred method of “mass collaboration” in nature.

Performing complex tasks without a leader Forming and coordinating large teams is not something everyone can do. Not everyone has the makings of a project manager. Truly good managers and project managers are people with whom organizations need to be frugal. They possess special communication skills, need to be aware of the political context, must be capable of keeping an eye on everything and have to be able to handle complexity. Stigmergic collaboration means that such people are no longer needed. In a good stigmergic environment, anyone can undertake the most complex tasks and perform them without direct communication and without central control. The only thing that is truly necessary is the right stimuli (incentives) in the right places. The crowd will automatically discover these markers and collaborate on the task. The work will be automatically distributed. Working in this manner, the crowd can even perform many tasks simultaneously, so that their commitment is self-scaling. In the Intelligent Organization, some tasks no longer requires project management or leadership in order to deploy talent required for these projects or tasks.

Instead, any individual with access to the environment can initiate projects of great complexity and large scale without having to understand anything about coordinating and managing large groups of people. Social media is therefore “empowering.” “Yes, everyone can!”

The new way of working together 103 Notes

104 from crowd to Community 7

Various types of social collaboration platforms

Previous chapters have discussed the new way of working together, which they identified as the basis of an organization’s “social” side, the essence of working as a community 2.0. This book is ultimately designed to make you excited about the Intelligent Organization and inspire you to provide your organization with a “living” social side. The adjective “social” in the Web 2.0 context is, of course, associated with “social networking” (activities also encapsulated simply as “2.0”), which represents a step beyond existing ways of working, now retroactively referred to as “1.0.” Smart businesses can use these new insights to ensure that their implicit and explicit social sides make and are able to make contributions to results. New social mechanisms can be introduced later in their social development. We call such companies “Intelligent Organizations.”

Mechanical versus organic The best way to distinguish social “communities” from “conventional” functional “teams” is to make a distinction between a functional machine and a social organism. A machine consists of a predefined set of rods, bolts, nuts, shafts, gears and everything that operates in the manner of clockwork. Everything is predictable and in sync. Machines are built to specification and may be repaired if they do not meet the specifications. The functional side of the organization operates as if it were a machine.

Various types of social collaboration platforms 105 &UNCTIONAL 3OCIAL

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An organism has nothing of the sort; it is not built but grows, evolves, and adapts. An organism cannot perform machine-like, repeatable performances; there remains a degree of uncertainty in its performance. Try to bowl three times using exactly the same delivery. Try to discern the same pattern in the flight of starlings even twice. An organism is, on the other hand, both very adaptive and self-organizing: the ultimate in flexibility and survivability. It can do things that a machine cannot and vice versa. The social side of a company is comparable to an organism. It sounds like something very new and very hip: something for the future. But without realizing it, organizations already have (or to put it more accurately, are), to some extent, “ecosystems” within which a crowd of employees can obtain results and within which organic structures form by themselves. In a large company, two types of work have always been available. The mechanical is recognizable as the form of the company appearing on the “organization chart” and codified in procedures resembling algorithms with which processes must comply. It ensures that a large organization has a predictable outcome, while typically making it inflexible. For this reason, large organizations always generate informal / social structures as well. Communication is not always through the lines displayed on the organization chart and not everything that happens is recorded in process descriptions or foreseen in preconceived plans. Implicitly, most companies are already heterarchies. This book and TeamPark are designed in part to make these structures and their benefits explicit, while making an organization a more organic and a little less mechanical. Everything at work will then become more efficient and still be enjoyable.

106 from crowd to Community What is social collaboration? “2.0” is a new way of working together that breaks down the rigidity of the bureaucracy by combining planning, predictability and controllability with the flexibility, creativity and adaptability of social networking, communities and crowds.

“Social” collaboration needs a special platform that allows for discontinuous communication and free participation modelled on the way nature organizes communal activity (stigmergy).

Types of social activity useful to the organization Just as there are degrees and types of bureaucracy (functional order), there are degrees and types of social activity. Some social forms have strongly functional characteristics; in organizations possessing such forms, the two sides of the heterarchy are most naturally integrated. Other social forms are so organic that they are very far removed from the traditional way of communicating and collaborating, and have to incorporate a whole different approach in the organization. These social forms are not directly implicitly created by-products of conventional bureaucracies. A great deal of innovation and crowdsourcing will be found and included in these new social forms.

TeamPark distinguishes three broad types of social entities, some already implicitly and directly usable as social networking, others more difficult to use and only usable when sufficient “tender love and care” helps to get the ball rolling, such as crowdsourcing. Ranging from less to greater social interactivity, we can distinguish (1) implicit social activity (2) productive social activity and (3) creative social activity.

Various types of social collaboration platforms 107 )NTERNAL "UREAUCRATIC 3YNCHRONOUSCOLLABORATION #REATIVE SOCIAL 4EAMS )MPLICITSOCIAL /PEN 0RODUCTIVE #ROWDS 0REDICTABLE INNOVATION $ISCOVERINGIMPLICIT OPERATION SOCIAL 3TIGMERGIC 7ISDOMOFTHE FLOWSANDSTRUCTURES COLLABORATION CROWD -ECHANISM 3OCIALNETWORKS #OMMUNITIES #O CREATION /RGANISM &INDPEOPLEAND S#2- EXPERTISEFASTER 7EB 02MARKETING /PENSOCIAL

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Social networks: implicit social activity One of the easiest to use social tools is the social network. A social network is a structure that is visible by the record kept of the contacts or connections among people. Social networks are not built like a chart, they arise naturally as a byproduct of interaction, communications and collaboration. Connections exist among people; charting them creates a network diagram that shows the social network to which people belong.

Whatever the degree of bureaucracy and formal organization in a company, there will always be a social structure. This structure can be used for communication and collaboration within the processes of the bureaucracy and to improve understanding of the organization. Communication over the social network may be more effective than that occurring through the hierarchy of the organization chart and may also relieve the burden on these normal lines. Anyone looking for a quick answer to a question from a colleague known to be an expert on the subject will obviously make use of a social network to get in touch with this person. An email will be sent or a simple phone call made. The question will not of course be sent along formal channels, as that would be a far less desirable way to access the information. If no explicit social network exists, the questioner is limited to asking the people who he knows personally, while an explicit social network makes it possible to contact people who are not personal acquaintances. Tags or ratings can be used in a social network to find the right people quickly.

108 from crowd to Community An explicit social network can help organizations quickly find the relevant people and information; it improves collaboration.

6-degrees of Kevin Bacon The analysis of social networks is based on graph theory in mathematics. Analyz- ing social networks is called sna: social network analysis. Analysis reveals many useful statistics and features. A very familiar proposition, based on sna, concerns the six degrees of separation. Between you and any other random person on earth are only five other people who know each other.61

Six degrees of separation: in the social network that connects all people on earth, there are only 5 people between you and any other person Figure (cc) Laurens van Lieshout, cited in Wikipedia

A newsgroup message appeared on April 7, 1994 stating that the actor Kevin Bacon was the center of the universe. The notice referred to an entertaining game developed around Kevin Bacon of which the aim was to connect any other person to Kevin by the smallest number of associations. The game, which was such

61 http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

Various types of social collaboration platforms 109 a huge fad that it is now simply referred to as the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” inspired a number of scientists to investigate the phenomenon.62

The investigations led to new insights about social (self-forming) networks. It appears that these networks do not comply with the standard Gaussian or normal distribution. When connections can be made arbitrarily, such as in the cases of the contacts between people, the design of traffic networks and the links to websites, expectations would be that the degree of connectedness of most nodes would be average. It should therefore be possible to plot connections per node as a standard bell curve. Most nodes would have average connectedness, and progressively fewer would have would have either a higher or lower degree of association. The same situation holds true for the distribution of iq scores in a population where most people have an average iq.63

The Gaussian or normal distribution of iq

This type of distribution turns out not to apply to networks. Scientists discovered that a strong tendency to develop super hubs exists in various kinds of networks, ranging from the internet, to neural networks and air transport networks. These are certain nodes that have very many connections to other nodes. The distribution of the connectedness of each node in the network is that of an inverse ex- ponential function: there are a few nodes with a high degree of connectedness

62 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon 63 http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normale_verdeling

110 from crowd to Community and more with increasingly less connectedness. What was originally a joke on an internet newsgroup eventually leads to a major scientific “discovery.”64,65,66

Nodes in a social network are distributed according to what is known as a power-law function, a characteristic of complex or “organic-like” systems

A little earlier, we were very tough on chaos theory and complex systems. It can now be revealed that this power-law distribution is the typical manifestation of chaotic and/or complex systems. Complex is here meant in a mathematical sense. To cut to the chase, this means that complex systems are “organism-like,” self- organizing and non-deterministic, or difficult to predict.67

Useful facts and statistics about the company can be discovered by analyzing the social networks in a business, and this information can be used for normal operations by making these networks constantly discernible using appropriate social software. Social networks are created by people contacting each other by email, phone and face-to-face meetings, and by people meeting each other and participating together in activities. But they also arise because people use a social platform to make posts on each other’s blogs, providing link dumps, participating in forum topics, rating each other’s content (giving it a grade), faving (adding to favorites), and doing almost everything else possible on the platform. A good social platform would incorporate all these activities in order to build up a social network. This network will enable people to have far more connections than others and, although it is dangerous to immediately draw such conclusions, it

64 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8029774.stm 65 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kdtvv 66 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00kdtvv/Six_Degrees_of_Separation/ 67 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system

Various types of social collaboration platforms 111 may be assumed that people who are super hubs in the social network are crucial for business. They are on average asked more questions than other people, and are used more frequently to find, knowledge, expertise and ways to get jobs done. It is again worth mentioning that these findings merit further consideration. For instance, it might mean that people should be given more time in their duties for the organic side of their work, provided that such contacts occur outside their function and place in the chart. The social network might also be correlated with the organization structure and may cause processes to be adjusted and possible reorganization of the chart.

Productive social activity: an alternative to teamwork A second type of social entities are communities. Communities are groups of people who choose to work on certain tasks, to discuss particular subjects or to share specific interests. While communities may choose their own composition and determine their own subjects, there is coherence, a great deal of mutual communication and relative similarity. This is necessary for their members to work together effectively.

Communities are the social counterpart of functional teams. For instance, both perform tasks that the organization needs, but they involve different forms of collaboration. A team is a small machine, while a community is more like an organism. Unlike teams, communities have no fixed composition; they usually do not communicate directly or synchronously, and have no central planning or control. These feature are replaced by signals and a platform on which to leave these signals. There are few established procedures in a community. Below, we will discuss the platform and tools required to ensure that good results are achieved. Teams and communities can work well together, provided the right technical infrastructure is available.

Unlike social networks and, in effect as we shall see, unlike crowds, communities do not arise on their own as a by-product of the normal course of business. Communities must be explicitly established and require special facilities, such as a platform or rather an ecosystem. In intelligent organizations, social communities are given platforms that are specifically designed as counterparts to the corresponding processes replacing on the functional side, enabling communities to

112 from crowd to Community obtain the same results while implementing, a stigmergic form of collaboration.

Communities give organizations the opportunity of having their people work together irrespective of their location and time and regardless of the community’s continuously changing composition. Such flexibility and adaptability is virtually impossible for teams. Some tasks require teams and bureaucratic methods, other tasks are best performed using communities and social methods. The choice is driven by the nature of the process as well as the environment in which the process is incorporated.

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The same tasks can often be performed in either bureaucratic (teams) or stigmergic (communities) fashion

Crowds: creative social activity The most organic social form is the crowd. The difference between a community and a crowd boils down to the fact that the members of a crowd do not have any fixed or clear relationships to each other. The composition is ad hoc and the members act, in principle, independently of each other and, in any case, without much consultation. Whereas a particular affinity must exist among the members of a community, such lack of diversity is quite undesirable insofar as crowds are concerned and must be resisted. The reason why any possible homogeneity should be counteracted is that it undermines the “wisdom of the crowd,” which requires

Various types of social collaboration platforms 113 crowds to by independent, diverse and uncontrolled. A crowd along with the appropriate software (providing an aggregation mechanism) is used to solve difficult problems, to channel innovation and to find information not widely available by employing brute force tactics and crowdsourcing.

It is in this part of the social spectrum that the “wisdom of the crowd” can be found and where the normally unused talents of individuals and collectives can be used to benefit organizations. Somehow, a large crowd always can come up with a special solution or a perfect idea that individuals overlook. In principle all internet users, not just your own employees, may join your crowd. This represents a huge potential that can be used to crowd-source problems or work. More and more companies are discovering this huge resource of talent, and not just from a marketing perspective. Many of them dare to risk making crowdsourcing of for such tasks as product development a part of their strategy. The automotive industry makes a very strong effort in this regard, with the likes of fiat, bmw and Peugeot launching extensive initiatives incorporating a large anonymous crowd into their design teams. Using nice, well designed platforms everybody can help them develop the car of the future.

Every company can do this by starting with their own internal crowd and upscal- ing to more global reach with a great deal of ease.

What does such a crowd then do all day long? Does the queen ant know what all the worker ants are doing all day long? Is there one sardine in the school that knows what the others are up to? Do your brain cells have any information about the activities that your other cells are carrying out? Are your brain cells even aware of what you are currently consciously experiencing? The answer to each one of these questions is no. Nevertheless, everything still works, producing what may by individually divergent results.

It is not important to know what any one individual in the crowd is doing. What counts is what the crowd does as a whole: the things that cannot be asked of individuals. If securing a group’s optimal performance requires that a few individuals seemingly do nothing but hang around all day long, then they should perhaps be allowed to hang around. Do not underestimate the social control of the crowd in this respect. It might take a while, but eventually the parasites will be automatically remedied; you need not deal with them yourself.

114 from crowd to Community Participants in a crowd or social network cannot be evaluated in the same way as participants in a bureaucracy. A crowd is not based on job profiles, and members of a crowd are not susceptible to performance reviews. No indeed! Perform- ances are to be expected from the whole, and evaluations should also occur at that level.

Eventually, people and groups who come up with ideas and solve problems will emerge. Innovation is fuelled and accelerated. People and groups will pull others along in their wake. To help these others along, they can write stories, update wikis, post activity streams, participate in forum discussions, tell jokes, play tricks, make each other angry, sometimes even be censured. In brief, do everything that is done in any social setting,

Switching the crowd on and off A company that recognizes the crowd operating within its own walls and uses Web 2.0 applications in order to form communities that channel and make use of all the talent existing in the organization is what we are calling the “Intelligent Organization.” Starting an Intelligent Organization involves much more than flicking a light switch. You can only provide an organization’s social environment with the right facilities and environmental factors in the hope that the correct processes will emerge on their own. Think of it as the difference between a rule- based knowledge system and an ai system (a neural network / artificial intelligence). Once switched on, the former delivers useful results from day one, all the necessary knowledge is contained in the system. The latter must undergo a learning process and will only produce results after a certain training period. Such a network can think up its own “knowledge.” The first gives only the results that are identified in advance or for which inference rules have been devised. The latter will frequently yield surprises.

Obviously, there is more to do than just wait and hope; that is specifically why we have developed TeamPark. We will provide a great deal of detail about this point below, but it is important to realize that social practices are very different from bureaucratic activity. The latter has precisely the benefit of being predictable and therefore subject to planning, in contract to social actions, which are much more difficult to predict and plan.

Various types of social collaboration platforms 115 Notes

116 from crowd to Community 8 “2.0”

It is obvious that Web 2.0 and its underlying concepts regarding collaboration add up to more than just a hodgepodge of fads and memes. Despite the apparent diversity of sites and effects, there is a clear thread that can be seen, insofar as stigmergy is, in all cases, an underlying principles. It is therefore no exaggeration to speak of a new paradigm, a new “conceptual framework,” another paradigm for communications and the basis for a new kind of business. Let us henceforth call this paradigm “2.0,” with Web 2.0 as one of its implementations. Let the old way of communicating and collaborating be immediately identified as “1.0”

“2.0” has distinctive features. It is facilitative and enabling, as it primarily allows visitors or workers to get in touch with each other in order to produce results without anyone managing the collaboration. Instead, visitors build relations among themselves and form groups. There is no fixed procedure.

It is decentralized / bottom-up, because all the on-site activity is initiated by the “crowd” or the “community.” Any hierarchy that emerges, arises from the bottom up.

It is organic because the content on social websites are not structured in advance and is not centrally controlled using predefined procedures. The community must grow things organically, bottom-up. No top-down “taxonomy” (set of categories) but a “folksonomy” (e.g. tags and their tag clouds) formed bottom up. Com-

“2.0” 117 munities can be guided by adjusting the framework within which they evolve. The result is a number of features constituting an “ecosystem” that can successfully facilitate a crowd and result in the successful generation of user content. What we have to make available is a framework in which the above features are dominant or, at least, emergent.

The most important characteristic of all is perhaps the fact that collaboration is based on stigmergy and stigmergic tooling while reducing direct communication and synchronicity.

The “2.0” or “social” part of your organization is stigmergic, facilitative, decentralized / bottom-up and organic.

Since we now have features that we can describe as “2.0,” it is also useful to characterize the “1.0” side using the same vocabulary. Although even the most conventional “1.0” organization is never a pure bureaucracy and a company always involves several hybrid forms, there are enough differences between “1.0” and “2.0” to be able to make a general distinction.

A bureaucracy involves central control, in contrast to the decentralization of a crowd. Control is top-down, while the self-control of a crowd occurs bottom-up in the form of self-coordination; it is organic, not synthetic.

“1.0” therefore appears to be the opposite pole of “2.0” due to the fact that it is synchronized, controlled,centralized/top-down and synthetic. As an informal summary, the differences and distinguishing features would likely be the following:68

Paradigm Features68 “1.0” “2.0” Bureaucracy Holocracy Mechanical model Organic model Synchronous Asynchronous Direct communications Stigmergic communications Regulation Moderation Standardized Ad-hoc

68 http://www.slideshare.net/group/TeamPark

118 from crowd to Community Reductive Emergent Controlling Facilitating Centralized Decentralized Top-down Bottom-up

Enterprise “1.0” and “2.0” as Yin and Yang “1.0” and “2.0” are certainly not mutually exclusive in an organization; on the contrary, they are synergistic and mutually reinforcing. Counterbalancing! They are like Yin and Yang, like the south and the north side of a mountain, the left hemisphere and right hemisphere of same brain. An organization possesses both forms, ideally in a ratio that will work best, a ratio that varies for each company. Google is known for having a fairly dominant organic side. Many of the current Google products and services have been created bottom-up by employees devoting a great deal of time and many facilities outside their “regular” working hours to try things out in a more organic and ad hoc form of collaboration. In organizations with very dominant physical production (e.g. factories), extensive social activity would have much less added value then it would for a ‘knowledge processing facility’ like an insurance company or a bank. Each company will need to identify the right mix for their particular circumstances.

In this book, we hope to excite you about a different type of control, and your current organization will very likely have to change to accommodate it. The risk of overdoing it is enormous. Who has not heard of the vicious outsourcing/insourcing cycle? For some reason, nobody manages to get the balance right. Is it not the case that everything must be outsourced because the corporate structure is not fast enough to respond to demand variation and “it is not a core compe- tency”? And almost immediately after complete outsourcing, does it not all have to be insourced again or else all knowledge is lost? Does anybody ever come up with the idea of halving all outsourcing or insourcing plans before beginning with either?

The same holds true for your transformation into an intelligent organization. Consider therefore how “social” you wish to make your organization and start cautiously by realizing half of your plans. It is a question of balance: yin and yang.

“2.0” 119 Communities alongside Teams With “2.0,” your company is able to instigate what is known as crowd or community collaboration, jointly lumped together in the container concept of “social collaboration.” This form of working together supplements the already existing team collaboration. Even if you are not immediately aware of it or if you use another term to label it, the dominant way of working in a bureaucratic organization is set up as team collaboration. Both forms of collaboration may certainly coexist. In fact, both forms can use “each other’s” resources. A very smart team can use a wiki, and a community can often benefit greatly from an online meeting. The functional processes can generally best be left to teams, the social processes for which scalable, self-organizing and discontinuous mass-collaboration is needed, should probably be left to communities. Both forms of collaboration can deliver the same results but, depending on conditions, one form may be more efficient than others.

Initiating team collaboration involves patching together the right team, and then designing and testing the appropriate procedures, workflows and channels of interaction. To establish community collaboration is to assemble and make available the appropriate environment. Because of its generic nature, community collaboration will regularly use the same generic platform. In previous chapters, it has been noted that a certain number of communication media are being developed on the web, each of which is being re-used in a comparable form: the blog, forum, wiki, social bookmarking and more.

The differences between a team and a community can be encapsulated in a simple table:

Types of collaboration Team collaboration Community collaboration Mechanical Organic Central control model Decentralized model Standardized Self-organizing Management Autonomy Direct communications Platform communications Synchronous Asynchronous Procedures and workflows Stigmergy Specialized functions Self-regulating application of knowledge Fixed allocation of workers Extremely varying allocation of workers Fixed team size Extremely varying community size 120 from crowd to Community Mintzberg and co. Of course, there has already been a great deal written about organizational structures. Celebrated organizational expert Henry Mintzberg has discussed the coordination mechanisms and organizational units with which organizations are constructed, ways in which work is allocated, coordinated and executed and the manner in which the company is structured. Mintzberg uses the term bureaucracy for an organizational form in which mechanisms, processes and functions are standardized and formalized. Bureaucratically structured companies have a predictable performance and can be directly managed and changed. No matter how large or complex the organization is, Mintzberg claims that it continues to need a coordination mechanism that he identifies as “mutual adjustment.” This term stands for a more organic, self-regulating manner of working, and it is similar to what we are proposing as the social side of an organization. An example of a large bureaucratic organization that Mintzberg cites in his book Structure in Fives is nasa. During a space flight guided by hundreds of specialists, the large number of unforeseen events make it necessary to switch over to a more ad hoc manner of working, and the standardization and formalization characteristic of a bureaucracy must be relin- quished. The example, though correct, is an unfortunate choice because it does not sufficiently demonstrate that large bureaucratic organizations need an organic side not only during special “events” but on an ongoing basis. Their crowd simply enters the building every workday and, with or without explicit facilities, the social side is an obvious fact, apparently because there is a certain need. Additionally, the example ignores the fact that outside the unexpected situations cited by Mintzberg as an argument, the crowd always possesses special talents. It always has the emergent behavior that cannot be found in individuals.69,70

In a certain sense, Mintzberg describes a template for various types of companies and notes that several forms co-exist, particularly in large organizations. He also identifies this as a “heterarchy.” What we propose and what this book is about is that every company already possesses the properties and a platform for such a “template,” a fixed element in every practical heterarchy. Mintzberg uses the term organic loosely. Some people call the organic part a holocracy, by analogy to a bureaucracy and in reference to a holistic view of organizations. Others use the term sociocracy. We will satisfy ourselves by referring to the social/organic

69 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mintzberg 70 http://books.google.com/books?id=nR5haaaamaaj&q=structures+in+fives

“2.0” 121 side of an organization. Each company is a heterarchy with an incorporated organic side.71,72,73

The autonomy of Fairtlough Another organization expert, Gerard Fairtlough, former ceo of Shell Chemicals uk, includes a reference to the triarchy theory in his book. This theory suggests that there are three ideal ways of doing things: hierarchy, heterarchy and responsible autonomy. In this way, management gives workers some space and encourages them to take responsibility for what they do. According to Fairtlough, the three ways are always present side by side. He even gives an indication of the most prevalent mix in different types of companies:74

Style Example Hierarchy Heterarchy Autonomy Bureaucracy Government 60% 10% 30% Mechanical Factory 75% 25% Zero Organic R&D 30% 50% 20% Simple Small business 60% 40% Zero

Thomas Malone and democracy in your company Finally, Thomas Malone, a professor at mit, extensively discusses the benefits of decentralization in his visionary book The Future of Work, claiming that this decentralization is mainly made possible by progress in (internet) technology. For the first time in history, Malone sees the possible benefits of combining “big- ness” with the potential of “smallness.” He also views a new kind of business on the rise, and the keywords that he applies to it are: self-organizing, self-managed, empowered, emergent, democratic, participative, people-centered, swarming and peer-to-peer. Not much different than how we describe “2.0.” He even intro- duces an interesting “new” decentralized (organic) form or organization: democracy. As implied by the word, the employees may vote on important decisions. This is a form that has been successfully used on many social sites to ensure quality, for example, and a form that may be quite appropriate to the talents of

71 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterarchy 72 http://www.holacracy.org/downloads/HolacracyIntro2007-06.pdf 73 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy 74 http://books.google.nl/books?id=nan1jfmhggcC

122 from crowd to Community large crowds. For example, think of the social voting system on the digg.comsocial news site.75

He also shows that there are gradations again, to which he refers as the decentralization continuum:

← <— Centralized Decentralized —>→ Type of decision Centralized Informal Democracy Market system hierarchy hierarchy Example Traditional Consulting Political Free market, military firms, research democracy, internet, organization companies, shareholders” internal open source meeting markets in development businesses

Of course, different organizational experts have different views, but they all come to the conclusion that an organic component is more or less present and active in almost every organization. Yin and Yang.

Self-organization “2.0” is special because it is self-organizing. If properly implemented and supported with appropriate resources, it is a paradigm that can be used for processes that cannot be effectively performed in a bureaucracy in order to bring about their effective performance (or at least more effective performance). By definition, this can only happen if control is kept to a minimum and processes are allowed to organize and stabilize themselves. If this proves impossible, the solution is just wrong. Implementing control in social collaboration is to reconvert it into functional collaboration.

Like in the case of ants, the activity must begin in relative chaos. In a company, chaos is scary, but the urge to intervene must nevertheless be suppressed. Self- organization only comes after chaos, or perhaps as a result of chaos.

75 http://books.google.nl/books?id=wzl9Luuzgyuc

“2.0” 123 Interaction A certain kind of interaction occurs between the functional and social sides of a heterarchy. We have briefly noted that the functional organization has already discovered social processes and that it ultimately has to be given a place on the social platform. We shall provide more detail on this topic in a subsequent chapter. Conversely, it is of course conceivable that processes beginning as social and stigmergic activities can ultimately be better formalized by mechanizing them, synchronizing collaboration and making communications more direct. Such a process then becomes predictable.

124 from crowd to Community Notes

“2.0” 125 126 from crowd to Community 9 2.0 in business

In previous chapters, we talked loosely about the economic, social and technological influences that necessarily influence your company, as well as about the new ways of working that makes Web 2.0 into a justified fad that is still the rage. We discussed crowds, communities and what their strengths and idiosyncra- sies are. We even provided a new paradigm for cooperation, “2.0” (the organic model), and situated it in relation to the existing paradigm, which we retrospec- tively labeled “1.0” (the mechanical model).

In each case, the carefully disguised but particularly compelling subliminal message was that your company needs to change in order to continue to be successful in a changing world. The mechanical model is exhausted, the organic model is now building up steam. We firmly believe that introducing this model in organizations worldwide will represent a turning point in industrial development. Businesses should be provided with platforms on which employees can work together in a manner similar to the ways in which ants work together. By leaving traces in their habitat, which is their platform, ants can accomplish the most amazing task without leaders and without direct coordination. What a platform for your organization should look like and how your organization can change into a new kind of organization will be the subject of the second part of this book. In anticipation of this discussion, we can now say that the basis of this new organization will likely be a comprehensive collaboration platform comprised of social software, although the platform may also certainly have physical forms. For instance, reconsider the habitat of the ants, but also think of our

2.0 in business 127 daily commuter traffic. That too is a social collaboration platform. As participants in vehicle traffic, a mass-collaboration can start by following and adapting the signals in the traffic environment. Similarly, knowledge workers can engage in mass-collaboration by following and adjusting the signals on the collaboration platform. We will explain all of this in the second part of this book.

Old companies in a new world But there is still another issue to deal with. If we say that your company has to change because the world around us has changed, how are we able to recognize what is going on? What are the symptoms of the resulting mismatch?

There are fundamental things that are going wrong:

• Free and unlimitedly scalable collaboration is impossible Collaborating with customers is difficult, as they refuse to comply with your internal procedures. Teams have difficulty working together with other teams, the rhythms are almost never synchronized; coordination is difficult. Teams can only have a limited size, and the same goes for departments. Large jobs are disproportionately harder to control than small ones. The help desk teams have difficulty connecting to the customer, or difficulty collaborating with the underlying organization. The field organization struggles to share its knowledge with the rest of the organization. Companies have crm strategies com- plemented by a flexible multi-channel approach, but have difficulty profiting from them. Once collaboration passes beyond the team border, things become difficult. • The impossibility of change It seems and proves to be the case that the larger a company gets, the slower moving it becomes and the harder it is to adjust the whole. It is easy to see the analogy to a super tanker that has to maneuver but only starts to responding miles after the rudder has been turned. The flexibility of a school of fish or flock of starlings, which sometimes comprise hundreds of thousands of individuals without losing any dexterity, does not exist in large companies. Such a school absorbs additional individuals very easy, while a company is very difficult to scale up. • Working any place and at any time is proving difficult Despite all the technology being already available, it turns out that the new

128 from crowd to Community way of working has not really gotten off the ground. “Any place” is exceed- ingly manageable, a fast mobile internet connection and a laptop with a web cam is all that is needed. “Any time” has proven more difficult to handle because a fast internet connection and a laptop is worthless if you have to wait for the work of a colleague who currently finds the gym to be a lot more interesting than his work. As long as established procedures and fixed allocation of work means that an employee A is sequentially dependent on employee B, the new way of working will not work. 76 • The end of conventional business process improvement (bpi) Despite all the optimization efforts, despite the enormous amount of business intelligence and benchmarks with which we make black-magic calculations in order to produce new kpis, despite the constant updating of business rules, it has proven impossible to arrange all the processes in an organization st that everything operates at peak performance. Improving process A will often distort process B and vice versa. The analogy with the large, confusedly monolithic super application on which most programmers have all worked at one time or another is easy to see. The resolution of a bug in module A leads to failure of module B. If both the bugs in module A and B are addressed something goes wrong in module C, and in this way programmers keep having to track down bugs. It is not much different insofar as the improvement processes of large organizations are concerned. These processes appear to have run their course. • There is a great deal of hidden talent Large companies are frighteningly incapable of accessing all the talent that exists in their organizations. People are capable of doing much more than what their job profile asks of them. Solutions to problems about which production teams have to think about sometimes for weeks may simply involve ready knowledge possessed by someone in the billing department, for example. A revolutionary idea does not necessarily have to be pulled out of innovation department’s hat, but might be devised by someone outside the team. The most recent task might have been on time if the right people had climbed on board. Additionally, employees often feel that their work is boring and would like to do something else in the organization. The organization does not, however, have any latitude for such interchange as an intellectual box literally dominates thinking, the one constructed from job descriptions and standardized processes.

76 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_improvement

2.0 in business 129 Knowledge processing factories and intensive personnel husbandry How can this be? What is wrong with corporations? How can a structure that once was so successful now be full of enormous errors? To understand such issues, we will return to the 19th century to see the age and context in which the corporate structure was created. The structure was created at a time when work was done very differently than now. For many centuries, industry existed in small forms and was focused on local markets. Products were made by craftsmen operating in small workshops—often at home—and were sold to customers in the neigh- borhood. Apprentices learned it from their masters who they were serving and assisting. Craftsmanship was regarded as mastery. These craftsmen were organized into guilds. Efficiency was not a topic of conversation, and quality was guaranteed by the reputation of the master, regulation and inspection. The industrial revolution gave birth to “the factory” around 1900, which was managed according to guesswork and the owner’s sense of how things should run. Frederick Taylor rightly saw that this way of working could be improved. Taylor introduced what he called “scientific management.” In 1911, he published his Principles of Scientific Management, a publication that can seen as a turning point in industrial development. His ideas have greatly altered society as a whole, not just the manufacturing sector. We have already mentioned that Edward Bernays invented modern public relations, and businesses have since learned how they can create false demand, ultimately resulting in our current, unsustainable and wasteful consumerism. Taylor is also the person who helped change the world into what it is but, in his case, the benefits may not have outweighed the detriments. He was one of the founders of what we now call “machine bureaucracy.” The formal, measurable way of working together that we now normally use and perceive was, in fact, conceived by him. Examples of formal and task-oriented organizations existed of course much earlier, the invinci- ble armies of the Rome being one of them. Or consider how the Vatican and the Templars exercised their influence by means of a hierarchical system of rules and procedures. However, the hierarchical control and continuous measurement and adjustment of factories are generally ascribable to Taylor, especially the mathematical and scientific basis for them.77

According to Taylor, businesses work much better if the work is standardized. Work should be carried out according to established procedures and by special-

77 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

130 from crowd to Community ized and uniformly trained “workers” with limited responsibilities. The word stupid “drone” is not entirely inappropriate in this context because he saw workers as such. Taylor would formalize, standardize and optimize everything “sci- entifically,” allocated the control of processes to managers and had employees work according to fixed procedures, ultimately creating the familiar hierarchical structure, in addition to the primary axis. When organization experts now speak about the “machine bureaucracy,” they are they talking about Taylorism in its purest form.

A familiar story about Taylor’s scientific management concerns the development of the best spade or shovel. Standardized processes such as those proposed by Taylor can be systematically optimized, and Taylor explores the best possible shovel size in a report entitled “The science of shoveling.” At the time, it was customary for workers to bring along their own tools, and each worker evidently had his own idea of the perfect shovel. In several studies, Taylor discovered that, viewed statistically, workers could on average perform the most work with a shovel that could move 10kg of material at a time. Because sand is heavier than snow, snow shovels can therefore be larger than shovels for sand and, if gold dust shovels existed, they would still be much smaller because gold is much heavier than sand. In the case in question, the productivity of the workers went up by as much as a factor of four. It is no exaggeration to say that Taylor is one of the founders of what we now call “business process improvement.”

Later, when Henry Ford used the principles to organize his automotive plants, Taylorism was definitely common property in industry. The much more well- known Fordism, the stereotype assembly-line factory set up is actually “just” an offshoot of Taylorism.

The end of Taylorism The world has not stood still since Taylor had his brain waves. Indus- try has evolved, has renewed itself and productivity has soared. The 20th century is said to have provided a 50-fold improvement in productivity. The basic features of the Ford industrial model are however still clearly reflected in modern business. This not only involves factories or other efficient production facilities such as fast- food restaurants, but unexpectedly ministries, banks, insurers and other knowledge- processing organizations as well. So much has changed since Taylor wrote his book

2.0 in business 131 and Ford built his factories that the model used and vision applied is now no longer the best. The end of bureaucracy as a dominant organizational model is in sight. The model was conceived for a very different kind of society and reached maturity under very different circumstances.78

At that time production mainly involved physical products like Henry Ford’s cars. Many of the features of our current way of working can be reduced to the physical nature of these products and their associated physical production facilities. Products were manufactured on an assembly line and therefore required that the workers sit in fixed positions along the line at the same time each day and carefully perform the same act repeatedly. For one reason or another, we employed the manner of working that was so logical and effective with regard to physical production for other types of work, namely knowledge work. Most companies that we have constructed in this way without thinking are, in fact, knowledge work factories and, with the emergence of the internet and modern communications technology, this form of organization is becoming a complete impediment. And the form is also unnecessary.

If we gave Edward Bernays, and his invention of “marketing” all the blame for a world full of unnecessary, unsustainable but highly fashionable nonsense products, we can make Frederick Taylor and his invention of bureaucracy responsible for all the traffic jams and the nine-to -five workday. And as the need for a sus- tainable society will make Bernays’ ideas undesirable, the fast, reliable and ubiq- uitous internet will make Taylor’s ideas obsolete, at least in terms of knowledge work. What works very well for physical plant and production does not function so well for knowledge work. The ultimate expression of misplaced Taylorism are well-known cubicle companies, intensive personnel husbandry.

78 http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker

132 from crowd to Community Intensive personnel husbandry, factory model applied to knowledge work

A new model for knowledge work Knowledge work is the enrichment of information, for example the supplementation of a license application with the information that will convert it into a granted license. Or enriching a “request for proposal” (rfp) into an attractive bid. Information does not have the limitations of physical materials for which factories had been designed. Knowledge work concerns information, and information can be easily and rapidly distributed on the modern internet and made available to workers around the world. To work with information we do not have to travel to that information; we can easily make the information come to us. The stack of paper on our desk is instantly moved to the desktop of the laptop or tablet pc

2.0 in business 133 and linked to almost any location on earth. We can therefore make factories virtual. The unquestioning use of synchronous communication and and machine-like collaboration expires once worksites are virtualized. We no longer have to physically deliver updated files to the next co-worker in the document production line. Actually, we no longer need factories for knowledge work. There are now other ways in which we may combine our individual efforts into a collective endeavor, much smarter ways as we have seen in previous chapters.

At the beginning of this chapter, we gave some clear symptoms of an inappropriate organizational model. The cause for each of these symptoms turns out to have the same industrial basis: the misapplication of the bureaucracy (the machine model of collaboration) as organizational forms. Although the problems seem very diverse, they miraculously have the same common denominator:

• Although a commumication mismatch always makes the collaboration of teams or organizations with their outside world difficult to organize,, the world inside the team or organization must be organized according to strict procedures, with which the outside world cannot be forced to comply. Organizations that work on the basis of standardized processes will always find it tricky to collaborate with their customers and each other because the entire world cannot be encapsulated in a single comprehensive procedure. Each machine (such as a team but also the organization as a whole) is a composition to which parts cannot be easily added and which does not easily cope with the organic nature of the outside world (as customers). Nor does it readily interact with other machines (as other team or organization) because of differences in rhythm. The machine model prevents uninhibited collaboration. • The fact that our companies are inflexible and hard to change is again a direct result of the extensive formalization and optimization. Because the machine consists of such specific and specialized parts, nothing can be changed without completely shutting down, re-designing and reconfig- uring. • The impossibility of the new way of working (any time, any place) in such a structure, is a direct consequence of standard workflows and their underlying synchronicity and sequencing. The machine model imposes a mutual sequentiality.

134 from crowd to Community • The existence of underperforming processes in virtually every company despite all efforts at business process improvement indicates that some processes are fundamentally misplaced. These processes do not probably fit into a bureaucratic organization. The machine model is not the best for every type of job. • The presence of so much untapped talent in companies is a direct result of the standardization of processes and functions. An organization can do much more than that which is codified in standard processes, and a standard job profile does not, by definition, provide any account of the special talents and other capabilities that an employee might possess. The machine model only incorporates parts with predefined and fixed forms and functions.

How astonishing is all this? The most substantial and fundamental problems plaguing major companies are all the result of a single design decision: choosing a bureaucratic or machine model of collaboration.

As we have seen in the previous chapter, the machine model has specific properties with advantages and disadvantages. To eliminate the disadvantages while retaining the advantages, we have constructed a complementary model based on stigmergy for the purposes of our method and vision. Following the example of ants. The part neglected by bureaucracy will only be activated if the existing model is replaced by a new model that is at least as effective as the bureaucracy while enriching it. This model is based on a collaboration platform: social software. By transferring the purposeful, bureaucratic processes in your company to such a platform will ultimately result in a better functioning company possessing the features of both a factory and the Web 2.0

2.0 in business 135 The future of your organization in 7 points If all goes well, everything will now fall into place, all the unclear talk, the new concepts and ideas, everything should now hit home! In seven points, the ideas of a unique innovation department will extend to an entirely new model for your organization:

• The world around us has changed. • Organizations are displaying increasingly more symptoms of maladjustment to this world • The machine model on which our organizations are based creates this maladjustment. • Web 2.0 has found a new way of working, based on stigmergy, the behavior of the ants. • By adopting this way of working together in organizations, we preserve the advantages of the existing machine model while eliminating the disadvantages. • Stigmergy or social collaboration requires a platform in the form of social software, for example. • Step by step, we can now provide an organization with a social dimension by transferring appropriate functions to the appropriate social platform

“Der mensch als industriepalast” A word of warning. Getting right down to business, we are a socially committed team of people and we see both the positive and negative consequences of our findings. In this respect, stigmergy, like any other technology, can be used in various ways. A hammer can have both constructive or destructive purposes. Nuclear technology can mean both the death and the salvation of mankind. Tech- nology is neutral and has no opinion. Its use, of course, is another story.

We have extensively discussed bureaucracy the pros and cons of it. At the time when Frederick Taylor was bringing industrial production to a higher level by promoting a more scientific approach, people were already warning about the adverse civic and social consequences that such a development entailed. We have now indeed come to regard this kind of approach as highly undesirable. One of the biggest drawbacks to the rationalization of production is that non-productive

136 from crowd to Community but very basic human needs are lost. Simply because such needs are not or insuf- ficiently represented in the data used as a basis for rationalization. A man is not a robot which you can monitor on the basis of indicators such as energy, capacity per unit time and so on. A person is not a statistic according to which you can expect performance based on averages and standard distributions. Work is also not at all an objective. On a philosophical but no less real level, it may even be argued that work is just a tool for or a means to a happy society. By looking purely at the figures, humanity is quickly forgotten, especially since modern science restricts itself to a materialistic perspective. Modern science is based on reductionism, materialism and determinism, ideas encapsulated in the well-known metaphor of “the clockwork universe.” This is in sharp contrast to the man and his psyche that is totally holistic in nature. Happiness cannot be objectively measured, satisfaction cannot be calculated and susceptibility to various physical and emotional discomfort is not conveyed by kpis.79

In this respect, bureaucracy is vacuous. In many of the workshops that we have given, it became apparent that many workers felt their jobs were monotonous and stressful. It is not difficult to see that work becomes boring if people are beaten down into production units with limited job descriptions and continuously repetitive patterns of work in which the same product is provided each time. It is amazing how many people are able to carry on this activity, probably “encouraged” in this endeavor by consumer debts and obligations. Taylor and Bernays, there they are again.

79 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwork_universe_theory

2.0 in business 137 Man is not a robot, familiar figure of Fritz Kahn

It is no different with regard to the social tools presented in the second part of this book (TeamPark, platform and method). The form of the social practices that we have chosen as a basis for TeamPark is based on stigmergy: the manner in which social insects, for example, manage to produce their impressive performances. This stigmergy is ideally suited for reducing people even more effectively

138 from crowd to Community to stupid drones. It is easy to think of a stigmergic mechanism by means of which only the most primitive instinctive responses by workers are necessary in order to accumulate a usable group performance. This is exactly what happens in the case of social insects. Ants have a very restricted environment and respond only to simple local stimuli with simple local reactions. Stigmergy, when properly applied, can be used to get the final bit of slack out of the process. This can very well also occur in the case of humans.

Ask yourself if that is what you want. Ask yourself whether you too are an employee with normal human needs and acknowledge that others also have such needs. Or are you are just part of the emergent entity that aims to generate maximum profits? A company is not just the sum of Taylor’s measurable factors, it is a habitat for people in need of immeasurable things like trust, companion- ship and security. As for the company as a whole, the ultimate goal is for the employees as individuals to become less important, and this is controlled by a force field that is not subject to a scientific approach.

Stigmergic collaboration and TeamPark concepts are fortunately very aptly suited to make work more human and more enjoyable. The can create an environment with greater diversity and variety, one that is more humane, less “optimized” while still enhancing productivity. It is an especially appropriate way to address the inhuman aspects of Taylorism and provide workable solutions. Important considerations that you need before you begin to work with TeamPark concern the type of social activities that you want to encourage and take advantage of. Do you regard workers as ants or do you view them as independent, free, happy people who have a private life in addition to work? Do you opt for an industrial social order where people function like robots or do you wish to choose a more sociable social atmosphere?

2.0 in business 139 Conclusion Close your eyes, concentrate for a moment and trace in your mind all the processes that one randomly selected file undergoes at your company. All the operations involved until the file is completed. Imagine how all the information products in the company are transformed into finished products in this way, converted step by step from input to output by your employees. Do you have a little Charlie Chaplin- like “Modern Times” image in your head? Are you visualizing in your mind a series of virtual assembly lines? If your company displays any similarity to the common denominator in this regard, your head is now filled with people working like machines, fixed work flows, established teams; in short, it is focused on the machine model.

Open your eyes! Wake up! Can it continue to operate in this manner any longer?

Now close your eyes again, sit up, open your palms facing up and bring your thumb and forefinger together. Breathe out and make a “Hummm” sound. Indeed!

Now imagine a company where no one is permanently assigned to a specific task, a specific expertise or whatever. Specific training is being provided, but nothing more. Imagine that people no longer have to drive to work in the morning, they do not even have to begin working in the morning but simply whenever they like, working at their preferred location, during personally selected intervals. A crowd of people throughout the region, across the country, around the world. To go to work, they log on the social platform and find a kind of market place there. Not one for selling used refrigerators or iPods, but offering tasks and assignments. Any work that is suitable for such means of distribution, that can be subdivided into separate assignable relatively modular tasks and is put up for grabs on this enterprise marketplace. The separate steps in all work flows can be executed in such an environment by anyone assuming the responsibility for performing it. In this market, work can be reserved, performed and delivered on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. The platform ensures that all sub-tasks are associated with the right main task and that everything can only occur in the proper sequence. The platform manages a completely scalable collaboration in which no one needs to be controlled, where direct communications are not necessary, not one where people are not stuck in patterns and frameworks.

140 from crowd to Community The image of an organic moving swarm of bees at work in their hive or perhaps ants crawling to work around their nest would be appropriately applied to this situation.

The work, the production and revision of documents or knowledge, has obviously to occur in a certain sequence. There is simply a certain intrinsic order of work that must be followed. What is different is the lack of standard procedures and fixed allocation of knowledge, functions and personnel. In cases where certain tasks remain unfilled and unperformed for too long, the platform can provide a mechanism that can prioritize these task on the basis of incentives. The longer such a task stays neglected, the higher its reward and value that is attached to it. Tasks that are reserved for too long without being performed can even be revoked and re-offered on the market.

The scenario is also likely scalable. Imagine that you do not have any regular employees, as they are no longer needed. Imagine a global pool of independent en- trepreneurs who go the market place of their choosing every time that they wish to earn money and look for work there. Although such visions are possible, it does not have to be so black and white. You can retain the security of having a perma- nent staff performing a fixed amount of work while allowing the remaining portion to be performed by externals, thus providing better flexibility and a regular source of fresh ideas. The two types of working together can be apportioned in any desired ratio.

Don’t you see this as obvious? w e certainly do!

2.0 in business 141 Notes

142 from crowd to Community Final word

May 15, 2009—Social software garners 197,000,000 hits on Google and even more on Yahoo (492,000,000). You can therefore say that the subject of this book is hot. A hype. Overhyped? The answer is both yes and no of course. It seems that, in our society, it is not possible to speak of innovation or any new developments in a qualified manner, regardless if they involve it innovations or just ordinary events. It’s all or nothing, breakthrough or flop, success or failure. The world only formulates a more considered view much later, when all the hype is gone.

Many things have happened while we were writing this book. We have given presentations, organized workshops and conducted discussions with representatives of the top 100 companies in the Netherlands. We have adapted TeamPark in implementing it as a social platform in our own company. There has been a great deal of discussion, sometimes becoming very heated. There have been times when we wanted to stop and moments when we feel that we were riding the crest of a wave, certain that we were mapping out new territory.

The book is actually far from finished. There is much more to investigate and explain. A great deal more practical testing must be undertaken. At the same time, when at the end of a long project, you Google “social organization” and find the following blog, you certainly catch your breath.

June 25, 2008—do enterprises have the patience to develop communities?

Communications, expectations, and business seem to move faster than ever these days. With the constant buzz of the Blackberry, a continuous stream of Tweets, and in incessant interruption of i m s our attention spans have dwindled even more. Our collective attention and patience is a dwindling resource. Yet, community dynamics still require a long-term view. Commu- nities—and I don’t mean flash mobs, groups of 10 people, or event attendees because those are not communities—take time to develop and flourish. Measuring communities based on quarterly earnings calendars is a bad way to go but most businesses are focused on short term performance. We are under such intense pressure to show results that we often abort efforts that play out over longer periods.

Final word 143 This is precisely why I think many companies will fail. The benefits of robust communities to a business are enormous and those tantalizing benefits will lead many companies to try to adopt a community strategy. How do we protect community efforts while they are in the maturation stage? How to we measure maturing communities in such a way that we don’t set unach- ievable expectations that then lead to executive disappointment? How do we keep executives interested and engaged while communities are maturing and not yet performing?

There are certainly ways to encourage faster community maturity. Creating aggressive content strategies and adoption campaigns certainly helps. Hav- ing a constituency that is already familiar with social media tools is also helpful. Regardless of adoption and tool use robust communities require community leaders (not just sponsors), rich interactions between members, and a collective sense of the community as a whole. Those subtle characteristics cannot be manufactured in any other way but to have the community develop those traits organically over time.

Communities are one of the hardest types of organizations to launch, develop, and sustain. Two years is a reasonable ramp period and growth comes in fits and starts—etrics have to change over time too.)80

Take a deep breath! Two years is a long time to stop working in order to build and maintain communities before you might have a chance of getting anything out of it.

Nevertheless, we strongly felt that we needed to finish the first book at this point, and the feeling that now persists is one of satisfaction. No, it will not be easy. No, it will not immediately be only beneficial. But we are firmly convinced that the emergence of social software will in a few years be viewed as a clearly distinguishing moment. A point in time when a transition to a new way of working together was created. The history of work will be divided into a time before social software and the time after social software. Some developments cannot simply be held at bay.

80 http://www.thesocialorganization.com/

144 from crowd to Community Especially when, at the last moment, it becomes possible to include the following message showing that we also have the political wind in our sails;)

Plea for social innovation in industry report (fragment)81

In the Industry Report from the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, Minister van der Hoeven not only draws attention to the need for technological innovation but also the need for social innovation. See citation below:

‘Social Innovation’

To enable the process of innovation to reach its full potential will require an innovative environment in which there is plenty of investment in people and organization; in short, social innovation. Social innovation involves the renewal of the work organization and the maximized use of employee skills in order to improve (business) performance and the development of talent. This calls for innovations in management, organization and employment in companies, organizations and institutions. Making the best use of (potential) labor capital through flexible organization, dynamic management and smarter work practices will increase the productivity of work ……

The existence of this book is mainly due to the tireless efforts of Patrick Savalle, whose constant stream of texts and seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of this field laid the foundation for TeamPark. Together with Arnd Brugman and Wim Hofland, the other members of Innovation & Inspiration, a great deal of pleasurable work has been devoted to the development of the final product since 2008. The above represents a source of inspiration and a starting point. We hope that our stories and examples will inspire you to take action. We therefore urge you to go on and read Part 2 of this book: TeamPark—Platform and Methodology.

81 (Bron: persbericht ministerie van ez en “Industrie een wereld van oplossingen. Industriebrief 2008” pag. 27, zie www.minez.nl)

Final word 145