The main problem I have is that every time I go back to the website it’s changed, a bit like my girlfriend’s mind. And perhaps like that, it resists rational enquiry.”

- editor – A Million Penguins (wiki book project)

"Any open system has the capacity to respond to change and disorder by reorganizing itself at a higher level of organization. Disorder becomes a critical player, an ally that can provoke a system to self-organize into new forms of being ..... chaos is necessary to new creative ordering".

- Margaret Wheatley; Leadership and the New Science

The second comment I would make concerns underlying motivations, which lies very much within the culture realm. We have tried communities of practice for example, and unless participation is integrated into people's concept of the boundaries and work routines of their job, there has to be a pretty intense and personally specific ownership issue that motivates people to visit and regularly check posts and participate. These concerns have moderated my excited "aha" moment to "oh-ho".

The surprising change related to wikinomics playbook concept was the opening up from an author to contribute and be part of the books evolution and thought processes. Usually an author has a lot of ownership of their own property and guards it with copyrights. It becomes the intellectual property they grow from in the forms of more books, speaking engagements (and) consulting.

Motivation to participate in the wikinomics playbook creation was a function of:

1. Relative interest and belief that the concept has merit

2. Interest in sharing with others to gain a larger view

3. Releasing the fear of “losing” intellectual property or ideas

4. Recognition from the group and others that your contributions were welcomed, appreciated, and had value

The motivation to participate less was seeing that the content and structure did not evolve quick enough to see the relative value. Hosting a collaborative interactive forum around topics would have been useful and the morphing of the topics as a result of such groups would show belief that what was being gathered had value.

The Wikinomics construct should continue to evolve to add to and reinforce the domains and interests of the collaborative community. This may be around topics, industries, technologies, business acumens, philanthropy, philosophy, community groups, etc.

- Ron

I think we must be careful to keep this in proportion. Collaborative workspaces and tools give us a crucially important extra dimension to our business and social activities, but they don't replace the need for and value of face-to-face communication…..I think we all know that, and we should be careful not to give the impression in our discourse that all the old ways of working are done for!

- Peter

One line catches my attention today. It is: "some people just don't work well with others ..... if someone says "I can't or won't", you should consider whether this person really belongs on your team".

Here's the thought running through my mind this morning: could wikis be simply trading one tyranny - the tyranny of control - for another (the tyranny of the collective)?

-Gabriel

Wikis are needed! Why? With the prevalance of email and the tendency for email to "encourage" hiding in your office to say you are focused..Wikis serve as a way to merge our thoughts and ideas and utilize pools of knowledge. While I am excited to learn more about how to begin the adoption of Wikis in the workplace I hope the new book gives an idea of how to begin utilizing the Wiki framework. As I said in another post, Wikis are not about bottom-up management, they are about round table solving of solutions where titles are null and void, where intellects win and where ideas are valued, not ruthlessly critiqued. So many meetings have the paradigm of "shooting down" ideas in the realm of command and control while that idea only masks the egos at play to "prove" they are smart enough to show why an idea will not work. Wikis change the paradigm...the goal is a refined idea...not an idea beaten into concensus!

contributed by Todd Dunn on Sep 19 1:44pm