First off, a big thank-you to Don Tapscott, Anthony Williams, and the Ngenera and JFK School of Government teams for organizing a great event, and for extending me the invitation to attend. Here’s Don and Anthony’s wikinomics blog:

So, here are 15 insights and observations from the second day of their great event:

1. In the discussion of wikis versus traditional knowledge management tools, I was repeatedly reminded of the thought that the best way to put down walkways in a park is to wait until you see how people will walk through the park, and put the sidewalks on the pathways that emerge.  It is the same with wikis:  don’t worry about the form up front.  Only once you get the content flowing will get a sense of the right form and architecture.
2. I was reminded that the “oral culture” of government, which has emerged as an unintended consequence of access to information and privacy legislation is a large barrier to technology-driven change.
3. I need to learn more about Gunther Eysenbach’s concept of “infodemiology

4. “Set your data free” is a mantra government organizations should adopt.  The publication of syndication of data feeds is once of the most important things you can do.
5. Anthony Williams reminded me that I should learn more about the Wikicity Rome project.
6. Tony Burgess reminded us that we need to focus as much as on the informal connections and structures in our organization.
7. Military folks have the best slang -  Instead of talking about doing things more quickly, they talk about “reducing the time between flash and bang.”
8. ALCU’s “Want to stop this from happening” video is worth watching if you haven’t already seen it.
9. As was pointed out, we need to remember that, generally speaking, (or at least in Canada), the private sector knows more about us than governments do.
10. One of the primary misconceptions of government organizations when they do stuff on the web is that PEOPLE ACTUALLY CARE ENOUGH ABOUT YOU TO PARTICIPATE.  (Sorry for shouting).  99% of the imagined scenarios of your forum/site/blog being hijacked by disgruntled citizens will be drowned in a cold bath of apathy.
11. The Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein wiki experiment is a very interesting case study into the implementation of a wiki in a conservative, risk-averse institution.
12. A critical success factor in implementing social software in organizations is the ability to change the dominant culture from one of making information available on a “need to know” basis to one where employees need to justify why information can’t be shared.
13. I was reminded that if I was organizing a conference, the first person I would ask to come and speak is Chris Rasmussen of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and the leading evangelist for Intellipedia.  (Learn more here)  Tidbits from 20 minutes of Chris on a panel:
    • On fears that users can’t be trusted and tracked – “If you are smart, we’ll know.  If you are stupid, we’ll know.”
    • On Microsoft Sharepoint:  “Bringing overly cautious software into an overly cautious environment is like giving heroin to a drug addict.”
    • On people who focus on making web pages pretty and don’t add content value:  “They are all thrust and no vector.”
14. Anthony Williams made the great point that we should, “view openness as the source of our competitive advantage.”
15. Jerry Mechling of Harvard concluded with two great thoughts: “The Key ‘2.0′ power is the ability for low-cost experimentation with faster feedback” and “Leadership in ‘2.0′ collaboration will increasingly be about governance.

Share and enjoy

1. Swivel and Many eyes are data visualizations tools I need to learn more about

2. Blue Shirt Nation is an interesting example of an organic, employee-driven social network.  Need to understand it better.

3. ELGG is an open-source alternative for companies looking to build their own facebook-style applications for behind the firewall.

4. Prediction markets can be useful tracking the likelihood of success for business objectives.  More info here.

5. Watching Jonathan Zittrain’s Web2Expo speech is one of the best ways to spend the next 10 minutes of your day.

6. I love the description of items in a Facebook news feed as “mouse droppings”

7. We should, in Jonathan Zittrain’s words, “view participation on the Net as a form of citizenship.”

8. I should subscribe to Andrew McAfee’s blog.  

10. Bill Marriot’s decision to post the audio files of the blog posts he dictates is pure gold in demonstrating authenticity

11. I still can’t quite get over the fact that the District of Columbia reduced the cost of Intranet deployment from $4 million to $10.6K through use of open source and off-the-shelf technology.

12. The CTO of the District of Columbia passed on this tidbit: If we challenge the “you can’t do that / we aren’t allowed ” mentality we will often discover that what is underpinning those rules is practice and policy, and is usually not grounded in any legal framework

13. Publishing data feeds and analytics provides immediate value for: government operations and communications.  Citizen participation only comes later, if at all.

14. Virtual Alabama is crazy cool (and a little scary). 

Share and enjoy

The burden of putting down 300-500 words in a post is too much these days.

You still have options if you want to keep in touch with my observations, follow the links I think worthy of following, or see what I’m up to.

I tag interesting things on my del.icio.us bookmarks.

You can ‘friend’ me on Facebook.

Or, drop me a line at ian at ketcheson dot com.

i.

Share and enjoy