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December 04, 2004
Civil Communities of Practice
Back to the soft stuff. "Might social problems that communities confront be structured as the kind of knowledge creation and/or problem solving that the open source software community has found new ways to solve?". So asks Pekka Himanen (author of "The Hacker Ethic") and colleagues in a recent report. An essential component of such an approach would be an OS-style referee process through which different ideas, corrections,and improvements are integrated. The report suggests that the tools and governance principles of the open source software community could, in some modified form, yield new approaches to community organization and problem solving. The design question raised is this: What incentives and design principles will facilitate the development of Civil Communities of Practice? [Jerome A. Feldman, Pekka Himanen, Olli Leppänen, and Steven Weber, 2004. Open Innovation Networks: New Approaches to Community Organization and Problem Solving. Helsinki:Finnish National Fund for Research and Development ]
Posted by John Thackara at December 4, 2004 05:56 PM
Comments
I wonder why there's no comments?
Posted by: Kristi van Riet at December 7, 2004 11:53 AM
I think the reason is that folks are afraid to comment on a platform that thousands of people read. That is the main reason that I don't comment.
Perhaps you could 'seed' some comments. Get an email discourse going (very informally) with an expert or two per entry (you probably do this already in one way or another). Do this ahead of time, and then direct the person to the comments. Stage the comments section for a little while until it feels comfortable for a group of about 12-25 people. Later it will go by itself.
Posted by: Debra Solomon at December 11, 2004 04:14 PM
