The Texas Network Retreat is Friday 8 October 2010 and open for registration. The Early-Bird Discount (50%) is only until 8 September 2010. Online registration is secure and quick.

The Future of The Social Enterprise:
Next Practices in Social Networks and Media

Leadership Retreat
Friday 8 October 2010, Chase Tower, Dallas, Texas, USA

http://regonline.com/DFW101

Enterprise leadership themes are social networks, social media, collective intelligence, social network analysis, future of networks, knowledge management, productivity, innovation, measurement and communities of practice.

Registration includes materials, refreshments, Wi-Fi access, meals and post-event reception.

An enterprise social network analysis (SNA) tutorial session with Valdis Krebs of OrgNet - is featured. Valdis’ blog, The Network Thinkers, “TNT” is recommended - http://www.thenetworkthinkers.com.

Nancy Dixon of Common Knowledge Associates - is among the event leaders. Nancy’s blog is also highly recommended -- http://www.nancydixonblog.com/.

Sponsored are The Texas Network and The Future of Networks.

All are welcome. You are encouraged to share this link.

http://regonline.com/DFW101

This event will reach capacity quickly. Group discounts available from the registration page. Register early for the 50% discount and to assure your participation.

Walking makes you smarter.

“Results showed that aerobic training improved the aging brain’s resting functional efficiency in higher-level cognitive networks.”

- Plasticity of brain networks
(14 May 2010)

Leadership Retreat and Action/Research Cluster

Fri, Oct 08 2010, Chase Tower, Dallas, TX, US.

Themes are social networks, social media, collective intelligence, social network analysis, future of networks, knowledge management, innovation leadership.

Sponsored by The Texas Network,  Dallas. All are welcome. Early-bird discount available until Labor Day.

Agenda/Registration: 

http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?eventid=875406

Contemporary business management, the product of most US b-schools, have a predilection to Newtonian mechanics, processes, metrics, Taylorism, Fordism and so forth. We need to flip that model.

The problem is business people always go after the low-hanging fruit of simple process work. This is particularly true and harmful in general business management and for knowledge management (KM). Maybe some managers truly believe in complexity and networks, but they always run out of daylight before they get to it. It is time to correct this pernicious business management and KM defect.

Again, leading complex adaptive systems that embrace mutation and variation for perpetual innovation is a higher-order cognitive activity. Today, it is simply outside the management establishment’s talent pool. While business leadership craves it, orthodox business management and KM has consistently over-promised and under-delivered on complexity leadership.

Do you ever find it ironic that KM, a disciplined that practically invented the after-action review (AAR), post mortems, learning from your mistakes and best practices, is so incredibly fearful of doing it for themselves? KM is hypersensitive to any feedback that doesn’t talk the happy-talk of linear knowledge engineering and tow-the-line of rigid process management techniques. Whenever constructive feedback is offered KMers run and hide behind their portals, BPR, taxonomies and repositories. It’s rather pathetic.

We should all take stock in the enormous failures and costly harm of past and contemporary KM. As one respected KM observer put it, “…the abysmal failure of knowledge processes and engineering.”

Look, processes are GREAT for controlling mechanical activities, working with natural resources, manufacturing, mining, etc. That’s why these industrial processes, in the 20^th Century, created more wealth than the world has ever known.

Problem is, sports fans, the industrial revolution is soooo over. In fact, so is the information revolution (Born 1956 when the US Labor Dept noted white collar workers exceeded blue collar for the first time and forever). It takes discipline to unlearn. It is not easy.

Processes are specifically designed to drive OUT variation. Thing is, variation is essential to knowledge and innovation! C’mon! ‘Knowledge process’ is oxymoronic! It is not hard to see variation and stochastic mutation as being essential to disruptive  innovation.

The push back from the Confucius-type mandarins holding court in many specious MBA programs is a deliberate attempt to hold onto the knowledge process orthodoxy. It’s because people are unwilling and unable to (re)learn. It is ironic, because they are sabotaging their own profession!

Look, many in KM people like the ‘iceberg’ metaphor. With explicit the tip, and tacit everything else. Then, inexplicably, they focus all skill, energy, sweat and effort on the tip! Can you believe this nonsense?!? Same goes for general business management. It is utterly ridiculous and wrong-headed. Industrial and information age models do NOT work for knowledge-based orgs.

KMers like to group work activities into three buckets: Simple, Complicated and Complex. That’s how they set priorities. This must be reversed to: Complex, Complicated, Simple. Instead of a typical, defective KM resource allocation of Simple (80%), Complicated (20%) and Complex (0%), lets flip it! The KM and business management focus must be be Complex (90%), Complicated (10%), Simple (0%).

CALL FOR PAPERS

Computational Social Science and the Wisdom of Crowds

Workshop at NIPS 2010

December 10 or 11, Whistler, Canada

http://www.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/workshops/nips2010css/

-- Submission Deadline: October 8, 2010 --

OVERVIEW

Computational social science is an emerging academic research area at the intersection of computer science, statistics, and the social sciences, in which quantitative methods and computational tools are used to identify and answer social science questions. The field is driven by new sources of data from the Internet, sensor networks, government databases, crowdsourcing systems, and more, as well as by recent advances in computational modeling, machine learning, statistics, and social network analysis.

The related area of social computing deals with the mechanisms through which people interact with computational systems, examining how and why people contribute to crowdsourcing sites, and the Internet more generally. Examples of social computing systems include prediction markets, reputation systems, and collaborative filtering systems, all designed with the intent of capturing the wisdom of crowds.

Machine learning plays in important role in both of these research areas, but to make truly groundbreaking advances, collaboration is

necessary: social scientists and economists are uniquely positioned to identify the most pertinent and vital questions and problems, as well as to provide insight into data generation, while computer scientists contribute significant expertise in developing novel, quantitative methods and tools. To date there have been few in-person venues for researchers in these traditionally disparate areas to interact. This workshop will address this need, with an emphasis on the role of machine learning. The primary goals of the workshop are to provide an opportunity for attendees to meet, interact, share ideas, establish new collaborations, and to inform the wider NIPS community about current research in computational social science and social computing.

TOPICS OF INTEREST:

-------------------

We welcome contributions on theoretical models, empirical work, and everything in between, including but not limited to:

* Automatic aggregation of opinions or knowledge

* Prediction markets / information markets

* Incentives in social computation (e.g., games with a purpose)

* Studies of events and trends (e.g., in politics)

* Analysis of and experiments on distributed collaboration and

consensus-building, including crowdsourcing (e.g., Mechanical Turk) and peer-production systems (e.g., Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers)

* Group dynamics and decision-making

* Modeling network interaction content (e.g., text analysis of blog posts, tweets, emails, chats, etc.)

* Social networks

PAPER SUBMISSION:

-----------------

Papers may be up to four pages long and must be in the NIPS 2010 format. Accepted papers will be made available on the workshop website. However, the workshop's proceedings can be considered non-archival, meaning contributors are free to publish their results subsequently in archival journals or conferences. Accepted papers will be either presented as a talk or poster. Submission instructions will be available on the workshop website closer to the deadline.

Deadline for submissions: Friday October 8, 2010 Notification of acceptance: Monday November 1, 2010

David Lazer (www.davidlazer.com)

Associate Professor of Political Science and Computer Science Northeastern University & Director, Program on Networked Governance Harvard Kennedy School Harvard University The netgov blog: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/netgov/

- SocNet

SIAI Newsletter: June-July 2010 Edition
A bi-monthly publication on noteworthy happenings in the world of SIAI

Where to Find Us

The Singularity Institute has been extending its web and outreach presence these past two months. As always, you can find us at the SIAI homepage and at the SIAI blog.
Hip readers may want to follow us via Twitter (@singinst) or Facebook Causes.  Recently, we have set up a Crowdrise crowdsourcing and crowdfunding account for volunteers and fellows and a YouTube channel to host our collection of videos – with a few future surprises.

Singularity Summit 2010 is only a week away, so this could be your last chance to arrange attendance. Your friends at SIAI have been working hard to make this Summit the best and most exciting yet, with a spacious and centrally located venue in downtown San Francisco, the Hyatt Regency.  To bring down costs for our most enthusiastic participants and for students, we have $100 discounts for students, for non-student referrals, and for those who register for discounted hotel rooms at the Hyatt.  To obtain  discounts, send us a scan of your student ID, or let us know if you have referred someone or are planning to reserve a Hyatt room.  You can help us promote the Summit by visiting our Facebook page for the event and clicking the "like" button.

The conference lineup is filled with more scientists than ever before, showing our transition to a more academic focus in the conference brand. Of the twenty currently confirmed speakers, eighteen are active scientists, researchers, or engineers. Only James Randi (JREF) and Michael Vassar (SIAI) fall into other categories.
Like many other conferences, one of the primary available benefits is networking. It can be hard to find more than a couple people well-versed in emerging technologies, such as BCI, biotech, nanotech, robotics, and AI, but at the Singularity Summit, you will be surprised by the knowledge and intelligence of the attendees. A significant percentage of Summit attendees are CEOs, non-profit leaders, or owners of their own small consultancies; many of them  attend the conference simply to meet similarly intelligent people who are interested in the future of science and technology. Don’t miss the chance to take advantage of this excellent networking opportunity.

Meet & Mingle with the Summit Speakers

Do you wish you could personally discuss developments in robotics, biotech, or artificial intelligence with your favorite Singularity Summit 2010 speakers? Now you can. We are offering a rare opportunity to meet with this unique group of visionaries and leaders at this year’s Meet the Speakers event. Hosted at a private lounge in downtown San Francisco’s Infinity Towers, the event will be an exclusive open bar party for Summit attendees looking for a special way to extend their Summit experience. Meet the Speakers will be held after the first day of Summit activities on August 14. Tickets are offered at a reduced price of $100 for Summit attendees and expected to sell out quickly. Reserve yours online today.  Attendance is optional for speakers, so not all will attend, but most will.

- The Singularity Summit

People struggling to transition from process to network and from complicated to complex, often complain it feels like “…an unstructured free for all.” This is a typical and expected interpretation of key properties like emergence, non-determinism and self-organization. Maturation and evolution from failing, linear and order-system approach to networks and complexity is not easy.

One of the more harmful ethos of contemporary business training is the ‘bias to action.’ People proudly exclaim they are a, “Ready, Fire, Aim!” culture. Inaction is seen as a weakness, a defect. Doing something was better than nothing. While this is okay in deeply heuristically-oriented learning culture, for most it does more harm than good.

Today, there is a headlong flight to the social reorientation of everything. It is important since it is how humans behave. It is not engineering. There is no way to control or command it.

The ‘bias to action’ is counterproductive. The reason is because complex networks are only served, never created. The structures, properties, performance emerges from interaction and flow only. They are not conceived, designed or executed. They do not respond to intervention, reductionism or analysis. BPR is the antithesis of complex network comprehension.

The simple fact is 20^th Century management modalities of controlling, commanding, engineering, processes and management are counterproductive. Enterprise productivity, innovation and prosperity is led by cultivation, coordination and conversation. Modern business must retired their pernicious process hierarchies. They must develop an authentic network comprehension and a bias to thinking, narrative and sensmaking.

It is disappointing to still hear the near-religious advocacy of ‘engineering processes’ for knowledge, knowledge management (KM) and, most recently, social media.

Ironically, KM people, often charged with change management and innovation, are so inelastic they simply reject contemporary, effective and proven practices. Even when their sacred cows of process engineering lead them to consistent, well-document failure, they hold on. Clearly the linear, mechanical, order-systems of KM account for the widely reported 70-80% of KM projects being challenged or outright failures.

Furthermore, it common for people holding these problematic opinions and outlooks to shoot-the-messenger.

Look at the giant, soaring farce of KM Certification. One week-long agenda we saw had no mention of complexity science or system thinking. There was a scant half-hour devoted to social networks. The charlatans perpetuating this fraud know little or nothing about authentic knowledge-based activities. If you dare to challenge the KM snake-oil profiteers, prepare for a fight. These people have duped many, mostly government bureaucrats, and will defend their KM charade for their selfish ends.  

Fortunately, other respected voices are finally speaking up. Hopefully the multi-modal messages concerning the broad-based failure of process-oriented KM will create  critical-mass. It’s necessary to defeat the process inertia in the KM field. Here is a good manifesto.

Why Do Great KM Programs Fail?

This help and guidance is provided hopefully and authentically to give KM some much needed uplift. It is important to rise up, up and out of the late 20^th Century Taylorism and Fordist process thinking and practice, that is so painfully obvious in KM. The simple goal is to raise the level of KM discourse to at least accepted 2010 practices.

KM is about connection not collection. Or to paraphrase James Carville, “It’s the network, stupid.”

The KM barrier seems to be the struggle to accept that modern productivity and innovation, are social, complex and holistic. KM must focus on the future. This key KM leadership behavior is scarce and precious. We’ve learned over decades that KM leadership is not for everybody.

The most glaring example is the Newtonian archetype of KM’s beloved analytic reductionism and BPR. They have failed completely for KM. Take away process mental models from KM practitioners and you are left with a blubbering mass of protoplasm.

Responsible KM leadership has adopted social networks, complexity science and whole-system comprehension. Thing is you cannot evolve from legitimate, honorable and essential disciplines of document management or library science or process engineering to KM. Rather, you must wall-off these processes and fully embrace networks, complexity and enterprise ecologies. Most people and organizations do not make the transformation deliberately. Rather, they slowly, steadily and sometimes covertly reveal themselves. This is often in spite of the specious organizational structure and corrupt managers.

Again, they most profound and prosperous KM network structures are manifest in the organization’s kinetic relationships with its environment and with itself. For innovation to flourish, it naturally casts off useless artifacts like boundaries, hierarchy and the bogus processes that KM defends so dearly. The success of complex adaptive system like KM is predicated on relentless and unrestricted interaction with its surrounding environment. In fact, this is the only way the properties of complex systems like KM reveal and express themselves. Successful KM specifically reject the bureaucratic structures in favor or organic networks.

It is important to take some time to reconsider all the process engineering happy talk that hurts and destroys so much, everything in KM, innovation and productivity. Here are some link rolls to help you along the way.

http://networksingularity.com/2010/05/09/system-thinking-resources.aspx

http://networksingularity.com/2009/09/17/network-research-centers.aspx

The Fall 2010 Texas Network Leadership Retreat is 8 October 2010 in downtown Dallas, Texas  USA.

Please accept this invitation to join the conversation. You may review the event page here:

Future of Enterprise Networks: Next Practices in Social Networks

Special, low-cost, secure early-bird registration is now open. You may share this invitation in your networks and professional orbit:

Space is limited. Register at your earliest convenience to guarantee your participation.

You may also join the online Future of Networks conversations here –

Future of Networks Google Groups      

Future of Networks LinkedIn              

Future of Networks Twitter                

The Network Singularity RSS Feed   (This Weblog)   

Community is so often the missing link (structural holes) to achieving mastery of social media and networks. See:

Five C’s Social Media Excellence

Marsh

Social media are imperfect by definition because they are social. They are complex and messy. Chaotic. Human. Media can’t be controlled, only served.

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

- Marshall McLuhan

Just like authentic conversation, it is the intention and meaning that matter. Idiom, inflection, idiosyncrasies, imperfections, etc., and above all, ideas, compose and propel the richness and effectiveness of social media.

Remember, the mother of all individuated social media, email, was much maligned by people that did not want to use. It was because they could not type, had poor grammar, couldn’t spell and so forth. Fortunately, those constraints retired with the people that believed in them.

In today’s fast moving media ecologies intention trumps perfection every time.

Imagine if there was an expectation for perfect grammar, spelling and prose in the Twitter stream? Trust me, the last thing we want to read is some elegant Dickensian prose offered up as social media. It would not be fun or effective. However, it is fair to say that social media recalls and eerily channels the opening line of “A Tale.” 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

 

- A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
English novelist (1812 - 1870)

Social media, like conversation, are in the moment. There are plenty of other venues for formal prose.

Again, the main point here, and the key subtext, is that social media are plural, pluralistic, diverse, complex, compound, emergent, self-organized. Social media are not a singular concept, good or bad.

To wit, and tribute to Marshall, for social media, ‘The medium is the message.’