Clay Shirky on online community.  Clay's contrasting of "audiences" versus "communities" is also relevant in the enterprise environment.  "Employees", like "audiences", are intentionally gathered sets of individuals, linked by organizational affiliation and by the business processes within which they need to participate.  The bonds that hold communities together, however, are edge-based forces - the same forces that bring people together to solve problems, to innovate.

Center vs. edge.  Orchestrated organization vs. self-organization.  Business process vs. business practice.  Fragility vs. resiliency.  Complexity vs. chaos.  Control vs. empowerment. [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]
3:42:43 PM    comment   

Unplugged U.  This is the breeding ground for the next wave of technology-augmented communication, coordination, collaboration.  When these people enter the workforce, the nature of the workplace will be transformed ... from the edge.

In case it's not obvious: we'll spend the vast majority of our time blanketed in bandwidth.  (2.5G? 3G? 11G, 54G.)  And the cellular/PCS phone isn't likely to be the access device, fundamentally because of the walled garden value added services "smart network" business model that emerged from a view of spectrum as a scarce commodity.  It's not. 

Smart devices, operating in a peer manner via generic plumbing and thin servers.  Powerful software, thin services.  Cool PCs of a broad variety of mobile form factors; pocketable WiFi devices - even phones.  Personal, "federated" and transparently self-synchronizing with one another.

As Dan so estutely observes in this essay when he talks about the role of cell phone usage, we continue to change how we choose to fill the time in the "whitespace" between our activities.  Ponderous thought, then radio or walkman, then mobile voicemail and conversations, then blackberry or i-mode or sms messages, then ...? 

Perhaps most importantly for enterprises, technology has enabled the whitespace to be leveraged by time-pressured people on the move, already significantly reducing the cost of coordination within sales forces, and between laptop-armed managers and executives.  Reduced human transaction cost, reduced agency cost.  To a line of business with critical processes and projects that are people- and knowledge-intensive, time and coordination matters, and collaboration technology delivers.

Perhaps most importantly for individuals, technology has enabled the whitespace to be filled with whatever happens to be meaningful to us.  We've got choice, and ultimately we're in control of our own time and attention. 

Exciting things are happening in edge-based communications; we've just barely scratched the surface.  If you want to know where things are going, ask a teenager or new college recruit.  Talk to the oyayubi sedai.  It's relevant. [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]
3:41:39 PM    comment