I don't want to pour cold water on the inspirations that these fantastic initiatives can provide. But (you could tell there was a but coming, couldn't you?) we should also be cautious about how easy it is to 'read across' from software coding or populating a knowledge base to the often quite fuzzy and diffuse settings where civic innovation takes place. To give one crude example: software either runs or it doesn't, it produces a verifiably accurate output, or it doesn't; working in social and civic spaces often isn't like that.
If we're going to learn the lessons of Open Source and successful wikis, we need a relatively fine-grained analysis of what it is about them that makes them work, and how transferable these lower-level features might be to the kind of work we're tackling. One of the best I've come across is Paul Duguid's analysis of so-called 'peer production' and what he calls the 'laws of quality' (in Open Source, one such law is "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow [easy to fix]") in his Limits of Self-Organization paper. It's quite a long in-depth paper that covers Wikipedia, Gracenote and Project Gutenberg. If you haven't got the stomach for that, here's a briefer commentary and summary by Seb Schmoller.
11 comments:
How might peer-to-peer networks lead to civic innovation projects? - that's one of the issues your helpful check on open source read-across throws up for me. Thanks David. Personally I'm looking for a peg on which to hang ideas about about open source thinking (if you have done that I don't need to), openness of power-holding organisations to collaboration, and ways to organise effectively in project teams within this ethos. I think those are some of the issues RSA Networks wants to explore. Maybe we need to invent a new way of thinking, and new set of labels.
Cheers, David (and sorry for the delay in responding). I'm all for getting all the value we can out of "open source thinking".. I guess I'm just wary of trying to apply it beyond the circumstances where it works well. To take your "if you have done that, I don't need to" case, open source works well if the "that" is an easily defined problem with clear success criteria (e.g. make this software module run and produce the right results; add this fact to this encyclopaedia entry). But in social/civic/political settings the definition of the "that" that needs doing is often itself a bone of contention, as are the terms in which you can count it as "done" effectively.
For example, if your challenge is to, say, inspire and lead a membership-based organisation towards a new form of engagement among each other and with the wider community, which elements of this can you 'lift' wholesale from other people who have "done that" in other settings? Often you have to re-configure what they did to such an extent, to take account of different context, that you might as well have started from scratch...
(A few years ago some e-learning professionals touted a vision of 'learning objects', each of which could bring about specific learning outcomes, and we'd all be able to assemble our own programmes by mixing these reusable objects to meet our specific needs. Needless to say, they haven't achieved this/won't achieve it, because - in my view - learning tasks and outcomes just can't be treated in as atomistic and context-free.)
David J - thanks for keeping this running. Your checks on broad-brush over-enthusiam for "open" should help us focus on what's the new ways of doing things that could be really helpful in RSA Networks. Is it, in part, being prepared to open-up conversations and explorations with people from different sectors and disciplines to tackle "civic" issues innovatively? If so, will there be enough energy and enthusiasm to move through from exploration and personal learning to project development?
What the story?
I'm not sure now whether it's wiser to keep this running or let it fade, but I'll give it one more crack and then we can see whether it's worth persisting...
The challenge with opening up conversations and explorations with people from different sectors and disciplines is that different disciplines don't see problems in the same way. Their conceptual toolkits mean that one sees a nail in need of a hammer, another sees a need to reengineer the joinery, and another thinks that fixing things to other things is the wrong approach in the first place.
For effective multidisciplinary collaboration you need what the knowledge managers and sociologists call boundary objects. These are terms/concepts that different disciplines can agree on sufficiently to keep discussion going without talking at cross purposes all the time.
But you can see, I hope, how fuzzy and slippery this is getting -- too fuzzy maybe to lend itself to the kind of solutions that off-the-shelf open source methods offer. And that's where I came in.
Is this making sense, and does it matter?
We seem to be at risk of disappearing into socio-speak and areas rather than sticking to plain English.
Of course - it seems to me - people from different areas will have different concepts, understanding, definitions, names etc.
Part of collaborating is discussing those, and arriving at some mutual understanding if not agreement.
Part of of being open in tools as well as as ideas ...... open source thinking if you will .... is to have both-way collaboration with organisations and individuals not part of your 'own' network. A sort of network neutrality (though we'd like you to join ours, it shouldn't matter). At a communications level the various blogs, discussion for, do need to be a bit more seamless ....
I've posted on RSA Networks on the 'Commission for Health' project - that refers to Inequality and Health - that has some different approaches that I'm not sure of, but they look important. Key though is that the academic was aware of the RSA, see's stuff about the lectures, but hadn't known there were Fellows, or about this opening up. He may not join, but should I think be part of the collaborative thinking.
David, Dominic. Is the question for RSA Networks this: what are the conditions, processes that are needed to gain benefit from the diversity of disciplines and interests in the Fellowship, in the pursuit of civic innovation projects?
Or is the diversity not such a benefit?
David(s)
I think diversity is very definitely the benefit, from the Fellows as well as the wider world.
Yesterday's presenter has mailed me as follows.
How can this be followed up? Whether by including Prof Wilkinson etc in on-line discussion, developing the project, inviting to speak / present etc?
Dominic
thanks for telling me about related RSA interests.
snip
Some of the RSA web sites you mentioned open only to members so I could'nt read all, but it does sound as if there are common interests and I'm grateful to you for suggesting me as a participant in future events.
I was pleased to find that more than half of yesterday's audience had given me their names an addresses to be kept in touch with our new effort with The Equality Trust.
best wishes, Richard.
Richard Wilkinson
Professor of Social Epidemiology,
Division of Epidemiology and Public Health,
University of Nottingham Medical School,
Queens Medical Centre,
Nottingham NG7 2 UH.
Firstly, sorry for the socio-speak. I plead guilty, and will try not to re-offend.
Second, yes, diversity is valuable, both as a means to an end and as a benefit in itself.
Finally, and most challengingly, "what are the conditions, processes that are needed to gain benefit from the diversity of disciplines and interests in the Fellowship, in the pursuit of civic innovation project". I don't have a magic answer to this. I don't think there is one. Given the diversity of perspectives, a good degree of messiness is inevitable. (The open source model may seem to offer a 'cleaner' approach, but I have doubts about its applicability to this kind of problem.) I suspect the processes necessary are the ones that we are embarked on already... We may just have to be patient and tolerate the mess.
Sorry - I should have :-) after the comment on plain and simple English.
I think the difficulties are over-estimated. A working example - pursuing the open structure model - would be the Internet Engineering Task Force, and their working groups. See http://www.ietf.org/overview.html for an overview.
It's 'simple' practical, and task / objective oriented. Having worked in one of the WGs as a non-techie (a quasi-engineer), I don't underestimate the difficulty of framing the question. Indeed trying to extend the same approach to societal areas has proved a real and so far unresolved challenge.
However, in this model the RSA would be the secretariat, and Fellows, staff, and the wider world make up the WGs etc. I haven't thought out who charters/legitimises, but it must surely be under of the equivalent of a steering group, and an architecture board, in which the Fellows as well as other interested parties are represented?
Dominic
I've sort of cross-posted to the other one - RSANetworks? - 'cos this is as much as about having needs drive the functionality as the other way around.
So since my thinking kind of developed between them, here's from what I've posted there, if you see what I mean, rather than duplicating what I posted there from here (I hope that hadn't lost you ....).
In fact by reposting that's an issue in itself - we seem to have at least 3 if not 4 streams running that are not connected or linked - a bit like the proprietary e-mail systems before commercial TCP/IP protocol mail etc came along ..... so there's a neat harmony with this:
I think the difficulties (being diverse, open to the wider world etc., and clipped from David J's post 'The challenge with opening up conversations and explorations with people from different sectors and disciplines is that different disciplines don't see problems in the same way. Their conceptual toolkits mean that one sees a nail in need of a hammer, another sees a need to reengineer the joinery, and another thinks that fixing things to other things is the wrong approach in the first place.' are over-estimated. And said that first here!
Rather than concentrating on great features and functionality, engineering this should start by specifying at high levels and then detailing out requirements. Start with the long wishlist - and maybe we have some if not all of that already - and then group, prioritise those needs, and examine how they can be engineered.
That could as well be how to charter a new IETF WG - not a bad approach - that as also posted here first lends itself albeit not necessarily wholly to being applied to how projects should be started, led, managed, directed etc.
Dominic
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