Summit on the Future of the Corporation

I'd love to be going to this if only it was happening closer to home but as Stuart Henshall says:

So…. great. Can I watch via video? Will it be blogged? Poptech can take electronic questions. Who’s going to record all this? Will it be on a wiki? Will neat visual records be kept and uploaded to flickr? How can this dialogue spill out into the open world? Will there be media there? Is blogging allowed? I cannot help it. I simply equate, blogs, wikis, social networking, real-time communications, identity services etc with how organizations approach the future. You cannot talk about the future of the organization without addressing tools that every college student is immerse in, uses and manages their life and social interactions around. Similarly you cannot look at the future without considering all this power in the palm of your hand. Organizations don’t need walls anymore. I truly believe in open source, leveraging community, and embracing and encouraging conversations…

Comments

[Bob H]

While I don't dispute the desire to have a conference covered by these new mediums. However a teaching colleague once asked about video recording of his lectures said something along the lines of:
"My lectures are interactive performances, if you are not there then you miss out on a once in a life-time experience."

It always struck me as ringing very true, without an audience to interact with I find it very hard to measure and tailor my performance. Also in education there is a great element of interaction which, while becoming broader with global connectivity also becomes a little flatter. It is a challenge to banter so easily with two different audiences displaced in different mediums.

Perhaps I just need more time in multimedia conferences, but it certainly doesn't seem as natural as it could be.

[David Cushman]

If someone wants to fly me there... I have more than a few thoughts on this. :D

[Euan Semple]

Join the queue!

[Stuart Henshall]

Hey David, I've heard the same before and experienced the same type of disconnect when trying to do a streamed video broadcast to a group that you cannot see.

For those outside...I think the opportunity is more about peripheral vision. I'm still assuming this conference is primarily based on panel discussion.

My focus was to questions whether social media tools are being used by participants in this type of exploratory environment. I simply think they will add to the discovery and conclusion... not because they are tools.. rather the understanding of the impact they have on social interactions and conversation.

Thanks Euan for extending the conversation. Maybe they will invite us all.

Cheers
Stuart

[Scott Gavin]

I love this bit: "You cannot talk about the future of the organization without addressing tools that every college student is immersed in, uses and manages their life and social interactions around." So true.

[Jon Husband]

Ywa .. most of the organizational change that many organizations have been wrestling with these past 20 years (how many times have you heard "change is constant: or "our burning platform is over there" .. slight double entendre, OK so sue me ;-) is minor IMO compared with what is coming.

The ironic paradox of it is that social computing is more natural, more aligned with "the way people working with flows of info and knowledge" actually work, respond to issues, get things sorted and done.

20 years from now it will become even more appraent and clear than it is now that the way(s) we structured and designed organizations and work from the end of WW II until the dot.com bust was the last vestige of (pre-hyperlink and Web) core assumptions that knowledge is acquired, accumulates and is deployed "vertically". What will blogs, wikis and social computing in general do to lines of reporting relationships, or "span of control" ?

If organizations do not honour "addressing tools that every college student is immersed in, uses and manages their life and social interactions around.", it will be abundantly clear that they are led and managed in authoritarian, command-and-control ways that may not suit the needs for responsiveness and innovation in an increasingly frenetic, complex and ambiguous business / organizational environment.