Introducing the SA Blook. An online book written by SA bloggers.

*An experiment in online writing*

Yes, blog + book = blook.

But unlike a traditional blook [not that I've seen many myself, really], where chapters are written by one blogger and published one by one on the blog, how about a blook written by a group of bloggers and published across a spectrum of different blogs?

[Image courtesy of Flickr]

And I'm not referring to fiction either. I mean a blook about a subject that is relevant to all of us, something that a variety of writers could each contribute to - using their own specific skills, knowledge and experience.

This is an experiment in online writing. With the rapid development of blogging and social media , globally and in South Africa, it makes sense to try something new every now and then. This is something like that, trying to bring together great writers/bloggers by allowing a group to write about a variety of themes relating to one topic, just like chapters in a book.

Here is a rough explanation of the process I have in mind:

• Several bloggers have been identified [I'm still looking for a few more - so don't be shy to let me know if you're interested in participating] and will be asked to write one chapter around a specific theme - they will have full freedom to choose the title and content as long as it matches the theme and is positive/constructive.
  
• Posts should be suitable in length and easily readable [ie the book should be easily digestable by readers used to reading blogs, rather than being a several day or week undertaking].
• Everyone will be asked to publish on their own individual blogs [there is no point redirecting content from individual blogs as this will dilute the impact and audience reach], with a link to the contents page at the bottom with a brief explanation of how it works.
• Everyone will be asked to publish on the same day at around the same time.
• The main blook post will be published here on OutThink once all are live. I will post the introduction and contents here, with links to all the relevant "chapters" posted by the participating bloggers.

As I said, its an experiment, and I have no idea whether it will work or not. But hopefully it will be part of the online collaborative learning curve and people will be able to take good parts of this idea and develop it further... who knows what could come of it.

As for the subject of the blook and the themes, for now that's a secret and each blogger will be the only one informed of the theme that they are writing about...

... I'm hoping that this will make the final blook all the more interesting - it's part of the experiment, to see whether this can work. Another approach would be to disclose everything upfront and allow everyone to collaborate and work together, but I've decided on this approach for the first one.

There's still a bit of a way to go, but I will post updates here as it progresses.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please leave a comment or contact me here. I would love to hear it.

On the origin of diamonds, deals and dermatological advancement

This morning's brekkie run saw the second inaugural [second overall but the first one I attended] reunion of the old Sunninghill team at Doppio Zero, a generally agreed "central" location [other than for those coming from Rustenburg, Australia and Pretoria...]. The breakfast was quite good, thanks Doppio. We'll come again.

Sadly, all hopes of a monthly Friday morning breakfast club were dashed yesterday by Jamie, who pulled out due to petty matters such as work commitments [!] - Jamie, where are your priorities? Now we'll have to settle for one of the other less-interesting days of the week.


It was great to see friendly faces again, even if it was only four this time around [G, Siya, Sjoerd and myself] and interesting to hear how things are moving. It's always fun trying to balance casual chat and banter with professional confidentiality requirements and we had much of that as we tried to fill in the blanks in our own minds and unravel the vagaries of each others' war stories. I could easily believe we all left there with completely different corporate scandals in mind.


So, to borrow the lingo from yesteryear, it was largely on the origin of diamonds, deals and dermatological advancement that we applied our minds this morning.

• Diamonds - well, opportunities abound and even in the dark recesses of big holes in our country, large fortunes are made seemingly overnight by people just like you and me. Eye opening, to say the least.
• Deals - how the plethora of deals has been affected by the sudden knee-jerk reaction by markets to emerging market fears. Hmmm, who would've thought that raising R8 billion could be so difficult.
• Dermatological advancement - without going in to detail, suffice it to say that Vereeniging will never be the same as it has just received a [much needed?] boost to its citizens' aesthetic development potential. Sjoerd has more details for anyone interested...

We also had a quick rundown on the virtues of technological development in South Africa [by yours truly] which I'm trusting we can all explore together as this grows. Thankfully, not only were there no pink shirts present, but the pink-graphed report that Siya requested never showed its face either. Phew.

We missed those who couldn't make it and hope to see you all for the next one.

Looking forward to next time guys, when we delve into more possibilities and opportunities available all around us. Perhaps for the next theme we could also borrow from Mr Adam Smith and ruminate on the wealth of nations.

[And please, if I have missed something major here, leave your comment]

Later.

When knowledge becomes a commodity

I was fortunate enough to work in one of the largest professional services firms in the world for a number of years. As legislation changed, I watched as specialisation became a necessity, and technical issues were discussed and debated to death, and just as a decision was about to be made, one small new fact often caused the whole process to start from scratch. Tedious. Pain-stakingly so. Time consuming too. And the value was [is] debatable.

It makes me think of that old primary school maths riddle about the frog that gets stuck in a well and wants to get out, and for every three bricks he jumps up, he slides down two. The well is twenty one bricks high, and the riddle asks how many jumps he must make to get out of the well. For now, the answer is irrelevant. Suffice it to say that he would get out a lot faster if he only slid back one brick rather than two on each jump.

Think about all of the firms doing this [in all different fields]… working so hard to be a bit ahead of the game, but in actual fact everyone is working on similar problems at the same time. They call this little bit of knowledge “competitive advantage”, but just think if they all worked together on a single platform, everyone could move forward as an industry at a much more rapid pace.

Why do they [we] keep re-inventing the wheel? [over and over and over]

John Taylor Gatto said something ludicrously true: “Professional interest is served by making what is easy seem hard.”

People often point fingers at lawyers, but now its true for every profession, seemingly without exception. In the stand-off between competition and collaboration, all we get is professional cannibalism, since the great race not only results in a much slower overall pace forward, but also often confusion.

It's a tough one, that. If necessity is the father of invention, perhaps competition is the mother. Competition is lauded as one of the great drivers of innovation, but this really looks to me like a case where competition slows down or totally derails the real possibilities of innovation...

... and sadly, when competition is the be-all and end-all, if often ends up in one place - commoditising the product. In this case, that would be knowledge.

So if knowledge truly is becoming a commodity, how long before knowledge also attains that critical price of free? [whether or not collaboration would change that is debatable too, since it may just relegate the knowledge to free as it would be much more freely available]

And what happens when it does?

The results, particularly in professional service firms, will be startling!!!

In case you were wondering, I’m sure the frog got out of the well just fine. But I wonder if his professional adviser ever did…

Links
[listen to Chris Anderson discuss critical price here at TED]

[read about Tom Peters' take on Professional Service Firms here - I love it, btw]

[Interesting information about free worth reading:

• Local free thinking summary at Huddlemind Labs
• ReadWriteWeb discusses the danger of free
• Keep up with some of Chris Anderson’s latest free news here]

The beauty of collaboration

We've all heard of 'collaboration', the current buzzword for teamwork, and a word which stirs visions [in my mind, at least] of exciting partnerships and collective brainpower which unleashes countless volumes of great ideas... and more importantly significant action [through accountability]. You can read more about my thoughts on 'collaborative business model engineering', which explains a bit of where I believe this, combined with free sharing of information, can lead to.

Well, I've always been a big believer in team - that there's more power in you and me, than there is just in me.

But it's only recently that I've realised how incredibly important it is to 'see' mind-to-mind with someone. You can be surrounded by interesting people with a variety of skills all day and yet never be truly challenged within yourself. Don't get me wrong, I think there is GREAT value in all the people that I am surrounded by, and its always invigorating to learn from family, friends and colleagues. But when you can find someone like-minded who shares similar perspectives... it's absolutely awesome to be stretching the limits of my own imagination [in a good way] due to the positive influence of such a person, rather than being stretched [in a bad way] by people with little regard for my abilities, weaknesses and with very little regard for my own well-being or aspirations at all.

The thing is, as wonderful as collaboration is, if you don't find the right people to collaborate with, you'll probably just end up highly frustrated, more confused and certainly doubtful of any ability you [and they] may have to really impact on society in any meaningful way.

For me, conversations I've had over the past few weeks have brought new insight, challenged existing preconceptions and - on the whole, taken me to a new level of thinking. And amongst the madness of day-to-day living, where lifting your sights to see bigger things is difficult at best, its so refreshing.

Sure, most of the challenging thoughts and ideas are inherently long-term, but that to me is the best part - because long-term benefits are almost always much more valuable than short-term ones.

So I'm looking forward to more mind-bending conversations, perhaps a collaboration that can rock the status-quo a bit... and who knows what we could build from there! The possibilities are just stunning!

To the idea magician who has challenged me in this way - THANK YOU! And see ya later, innovator!

Collaborative Business Model Engineering [CBME]

I think at this point it's appropriate to insert something I wrote a little while ago, which I believe to be one part of the solution:

"you only have to look to the success of open-source initiatives, such as redhat linux and mozilla firefox, to see that trends in many business models are turning towards open-source collaboration, with many individuals combining their skills, knowledge and experience to achieve one goal, and to provide the next substantial level of growth.

it seems only sensible to believe that bringing together creative ideas from many different sources could well generate the next substantial breakthrough in empowering communities, particularly in poverty-rife third world countries, to provide for themselves and better their own standard of living. to do so will require creative input from many talented people, and the critical debate and analysis to really extract and refine all suitable solutions. this collaboration of talented and creative individuals could generate business models which can realistically be implemented and which are suitably sustainable.

lets say we call it ‘collaborative business model engineering’ [cbme].

would this really work, though?

why not? just take a look at how entrepreneurs have seized opportunities provided by open-source development, such as Mark Shuttleworth with Ubuntu Linux. certainly, their are many benefits to such an idea-generating environment.

for example: in today's information age, ideas (or "intellectual capital", if you prefer) are considered to be incredibly valuable. however, it is this status that has lead to many excellent ideas being effectively wasted, as the "owners" thereof either cannot or will not action them, for a variety of reasons. these reasons include a lack of financing, a lack of skills, or simply a lack of belief in the idea. cbme could provide adequate exposure to a wide variety of skills and experience, thereby identifying and resolving problems with the idea/business model. cbme could possibly provide a forum for connecting willing entrepreneurs with willing financiers. and the discussion and analysis generated by cbme would also ensure that worthy ideas are not merely discarded before being given a fair chance.

in fact, this could be the biggest hurdle to overcome in effectively implementing cbme - namely, instilling the belief in contributors that a sharing of ideas will not result in the world coming to an abrupt end.

however, with a bit of collaboration, innovation and creativity, cbme (and possibly on an open-source basis, just to be a little more insane) could well provide substantial benefits to all participants. ideally, this could also take place in a community environment, providing a feasible method of community upliftment as well.

the question is, do you believe cbme could work?"