Co-creation is at the heart of how Enviu ideates, develops, and markets its solutions for social and environmental issues. With this guide we aim to share our experience with those aiming to involve a variety of actors for the development of solutions for complex issues. Currently, you can download the guide on PDF format, and soon you’ll be able to also order hardcopies. 

This guide is a live document that will mature with your contribution. For this, we have made the contents available on a wiki that will be used to develop upcoming editions. Simply click the “edit” tab, and co-create this guide with the rest of the Enviu community.

Qu’est-ce qu’un Barcamp ?

Un BarCamp est une « non-conférence » ouverte qui prend la forme d’ateliers-évènements participatifs où le contenu est fourni par les participants qui doivent tous, à un titre ou à un autre, apporter quelque chose au Barcamp.

L’objectif est avant tout de partager des projets et si possible, de produire quelque chose ensemble : des spécifications, un meilleur projet, des perspectives de partenariat, des capacités de financement, du code…

Mais un Barcamp, c’est aussi un moment convivial d’échange sur le principe « pas de spectateur », « tous participants » ! 

Une jolie présentation de Christophe Ducamp notre Papa Barcamp !

BarCamp : le PointPuissant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcamp – wikipedia

It is our experience that generative open collaboration environments give rise to specific sorts of conflicts that need to be resolved. The challenges are great for those working on OpenKollab, but the rewards will be worth the effort since it is generative open collaboration environments that hold the promise of mass mobilization and coordination of action on a global scale.

The group’s mission has been driven by idealism, but we have learned the hard way that there are many pragmatic challenges that one must contend with. These challenges can be understood as conflicts that arise at many levels, including:

• The mission of OpenKollab versus participants personal agendas
• The mission of OpenKollab versus participating organizations
• Conflicts arising from differing agendas of participating members and organizations.
• Individual conflicts arising from lack of consensus in the formation of the vision.

All of these conflicts arise out of an inherent tension between the larger group, treated as an abstract entity, and the individuals (or sub-groups) that have a more tangible reality. At first glance it might seem as though the solution to the problem is to engage in sufficient dialogue to generate consensus. Practically speaking, this has proven to be more difficult than it would seem since consensus around high level principles does not necessarily lead to agreement on specific sub-projects and associated tasks.

If the larger objective is to bridge boundaries and create bonds in the spirit of collaboration, practical strategies to overcome these inhibitors will need to be developed.

To mitigate these inhibitors, we are working towards specific task and workflow procedures such as:

Autonomous Information Spaces With Simultaneous Content Publishing: technology mechanisms that allow content to be simultaneously published in a distributed fashion across different platforms (wiki’s, websites etc.)

Hybrid Branding Strategies: strategies that create a brand both for OpenKollab as well as the participating entities.

Commons based Reusable content: what is required is that workflows be structured so that work that is done for the collaborative group is work that can be leveraged by others within the collaborative community.

• One groups output becomes another groups input
• Flexibility given for content modification and re-use
• Subject to commons based content licensing

These, and other such strategies for mitigating conflict in the development of generative collaborative spaces, will be described.

Study participants were asked how many murders occurred in Switzerland in 2006. At the end of each round of questioning, they were given small payments for coming close to the actual answer (signified by the gray bar). At left is the range of responses among participants who received no information about others.

“Although groups are initially ‘wise,’ knowledge about estimates of others narrows the diversity of opinions to such an extent that it undermines” collective wisdom, wrote researchers

New Team Structure

No more pyramids, job titles or direct reports.

Everyone is a member, and every member gets an equal binding vote. When people first join they are contributors. Votes are recorded, but are non-binding. This way, teams can get a sense of the crowd’s voice but ultimately the team members drive the direction of the project.

Contributors are nominated to be members, and are voted in by the core team. The core team is a subset of the members who can vote in new members.

Anyone can be nominated to any level in an open enterprise, and everyone is accountable to eachother. The result is a healthy and dynamic hierarchy replaces the rigid proscribed one.

For more details on this project, read the Google Group message here : http://groups.google.com/group/openkollab/msg/582c1d19beb9d5cf?pli=1

See also Suresh's Posterous here : http://sureshf.posterous.com/

Some principles and dynamics to think about:

• Opening up & loss of control
• The collaborative & organic nature of the medium
• The power and dynamics of network effects
• The importance of constancy and participation vs big grand gestures
• The personal intimate nature of the medium
• The importance of trust and relationship
• The always on - 24/7 nature of the web

Here are some of my quick learning take aways:

• Many of the P&G folks' thought the first task was to figure out the messaging of the campaign, where as the external folks just dived right in in plain English.
• The social web folks jumped on their networks first without necessary realizing the impact and focused on a long tail one-to-one approach figuring that network effects would take over.
• The P&G folks understood the need to identify where to get the biggest bang for their buck.
• The speed nature of the exercise brought out some incredible creativity. I had a sense that this freedom was very liberating for the P&G folks once they got into it. Some of my teammates quickly brainstormed a quick rap [yeah-it's dorky, but they did it without planning or thinking about it too much. We even got the team at Pandora to write a catchy little ditty. [Thanks Tim. It arrived a bit late, but kudos to them for jumping in. Compare that to the month long planning cycles most companies go through.
• The P&G folks were often very process oriented and the invitees where comfortable with more chaos - meeting somewhere in the middle brought out the best.
• Even the "digerati" who understand the principles of the social web stepped over the line a bit in the exuberance of the moment - to me this is a cautionary tale about the future of "influencers" and everyone's personal understanding of their relationships, networks and personal brand. Just as in the real world you are judged by your actions - so too are you judged online. Remember - Google is now the long tail of reputation.
• The need for a different set of skills and expertise - teams needed a human connector to bring it all together and a catalyst to kick it off. I see this as a growing skill set in business as a result of the social web. Think Community Manager meets Senior Executive.

via deborahschultz.com

What we need is to bring knowledge to action.
And for that, we need to network and learn to think collectively.
We need to think collectively.
But why would we think collectively?
Because we are friend to each other.
Now we have the knowledge. Let’s build together our friendship.