Social Computing ... Observations And Implications

I was watching this awesome video which Luis Suarez has made, posted over at his blog. There are some very imortant point that Luis is making over here, especially when he says that with social computing it is no longer you versus others, its you as part of a team, of a community.

What i liked probably the most was the idea that in an open platform as social computing can provide, it quickly becomes clear who is contributing how much, and what. The whole idea of free-riding is something which can be taken care of. Though, to my mind, that is a tad oversimplistic. Folks will find out ways to get around this. This also could have implications for the way people work ... bringing in more transparency ... and, to my mind, this is one of the very reasons this kind of a change would be resisted in a large number of organizations. Not just because change is usually resisted (which i believe is not, its just that the value proposition of the change is not usually communicated well enough ...), but also because a lot of people are not comfortable saying out things in the open.

What is also interesting is that unlike with email, you can control what you read. Of course, this might mean you miss out on something. But, as Luis says, networks have a way of informing you. While this is valid logic, this rests on the assumption of adoption. And, this is where the chicken-and-egg situation i have written about earlier comes into the picture ... the network cannot deliver value till there are plenty of people in it, and you wont have plenty of people in the network till it start delivering value.

There are two things i would add to the number of excellent points Luis has made ...

Let us first ask, what is the most important asset for an organization (knowledge-based, i am assuming here ...)! The most probable answer you would get to this question is ... People! Yes, they sure are. But, if people are the most important asset, why is it that Knowledge Management systems are content-centric, and not people centric? After all, content is a proxy for people, isnt it?

Look at facebook, for instance ... the focus of the entire network is the people ... when you login, you see what your friends are doing ... you are seeing content which is generated, for sure ... but, content that is generated by people, or, in other words, content in the context of people, which brings people to the centre of the entire schema. Ditto for twitter, too ... the first thing on a tweet is the picture, and the name of the person who has written it. Even your favourites are content, but they are about the people ... the focus being on the people who are generating the content.

This has another benefit ... Unlike documents, or static content, which goes obsolete over a period of time (by the time you post it, as Luis says), the people who write the content dont! People are more up-to-date than platforms are!

Another thing which comes up is, if you are emailing a document to ten different people, you are sending ten different copies, one to each one of them ... you are in effect isolating one from another. Contrast this to the social computing paradigm, where you are bringing people together, by bringing them to a single copy of the document.

Next Generation?

Interesting post ... about the future of the web ... this post talks about Web 1.0 through Web 4.0 ... if you leave the jargon aside, and just look at the content ... there is an interesting point the writer is making. About communities being the real essence of web 2.0, and the movement of these communities from asynchronous to synchronous modes of collaboration.

Having said this, i dont see the difference so much in terms of a paradigm, as in terms of a technology. Whereas the difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is essentially one of paradigm ... from a publishing mode, with a webmaster creating and managing content, and people having the option to write to the webmaster, and the webmaster choosing what they want to do with whatever people have written, to a mode where the webmaster has more or less become redundant, with more and more content being generated collaboratively. This change has been a change from uni-directional content, to multi-directional ... more so, a change from content-centric, to people-centric.

There is a point, however, that the post is making. For example, you can get reviews about restaurants in Kolkata at this site. Thing is, when you are going out, these reviews are not something which you can access on the go. Which is probably the direction which the web might take ... just-in-time information ... built largely on the manufacturing model of JIT?

Sign Of The Times

A little girl was asking her Mom how many nickels make up 50 cents. Innocuous question, except that this is India. And we dont have nickels and cents here. Right? Almost ... Well, this got me thinking about the way things have changed.

As a child, when 25 Paisa were still around (as were 2, 5, and 10 Paisa coins ... inflation obviously hadnt hit us so bad back then), nobody used to call them 25 Paisa. For the time-honoured system of Annas was still alive and well ... that 16 Annas made the Rupee, and that 25 Paisa was "Chaar Anna", or "Chowannee", depending on where you came from. And 50 Paisa was "Aath Anne", or "Athyannee", again depending on where you came from.

That was also the time i used to hear my Grandma wonder aloud about "the things today's kids are learning!" ... we were learning such novel concepts as Kilograms, etc. ... remember, Grandma had grown up learning to convert Ratti, Maashshe, and Tole ... words which are fast fading ... except for jewellers who refuse to give these up! And, courtesy jewellers, women actually know more about these units than men do!

Cut to today, and you have Dad (me) wondering about "the things today's kids are learning!" ... and it makes me wonder ... maybe Grandma had a point? OK OK ... so i am getting old!

AppGap On Facebook

AppGap has put up the recording for the webcast on Facebook for Business ... Quite an interesting one, this ... the summary is available here. They are making some very important points. One thing which they point out is that facebook has a way of getting group information propagating seamlessly, and information tends to find its way to other groups quite easily on facebook.

If, on the other hand, you look at linkedin, you would not find something like this happening. In fact, the groups over at linkedin are not nearly as dynamic as what you could find over at facebook (unless i am missing those which are ...). From this, or from other research, they arrive at the conclusion that facebook users are more social than linkedin users. First of all, i dont think this distinction can be made. You find more or less the same set of guys around. To my mind, this is more to do with positioning ... linkedin have positioned themselves around work ... its a very serious network! On the other hand, facebook is fun ... which is probably why folks believe that facebook is for "kids", while nobody has this opinion about linkedin.

In other words, the social network is heavily reliant on its positioning. Which is true of most of the tools you would come across in the web 2.0 stable ... they are, after all, all about people participation, and people will participate in a way in which they perceive the tool. Hence, this perception needs to be created and managed, more so in the organizational context. A well-hidden social network is totally irrelevant. So if you are looking at introducing social networking at the office, it might be a good idea to run advertisements for this.

About A Story ...

My friend and ex-colleague, Nirmala, has written a nice post about The Story of a Story ... Interesting, the part she writes about what makes a story useful to people listening to it. She does have a point there. We all love to discover the meaning hidden in a story. Which is why, stories with a meaning, or a moral hidden in the story is worth so much more than just a drab statement which just tells you what the story is. This is somewhat reflected in the fact that a lot of folks dont learn from other people's mistakes ... what could be called experiential learning.

Having said that, another aspect which we might need to focus upon, is that the basic idea of the story is to appeal to the thinking processes of the listener ... it is only by doing this, that a story can actually get the listeners to gather value from it ... and the fact that the story must successfully create a context which the listeners can identify with. It is this context which creates an intersection between what the listeners already know, and what the story is trying to convey. This is something i have written about earlier ... that new knowledge is created at the intersection of two fields of knowledge. And, the most important aspect of the story is that it builds up this intersection in a way which can be identified and understood by the listener, so they can build a connect between the existing, and the new.

A Nation's Attitude ...

I have a dilemma. Whenever the media in India talks about, say, Bobby Jindal, they never fail to mention that he is "Indian-American", or Indian-origin, or some other term which stresses the fact that Mr. Jindal's ancestors come from some part of India. Sample this, for instance ...This, though, is not just true of Mr. Jindal, but also of a lot of the successful people, who happen to be able to trace their lineage to India. Nothing at all wrong with this. However, this is restricted only to the western hemisphere. Why, for example, does the media fail to recognize India-born Pervez Musharraf, the now ex-President of Pakistan? They even missed this when they were writing about General Zia, once the President of Pakistan, or for that matter, Dr. Khan, of Nuclear Wal-Mart fame. I wonder why ... Just a fascination with all things Amreekkan?

On a serious note ... much serious, actually ... I am listening to the latest album by Rabbi, titled Aavengi ja Nahin ... some nice songs. On the whole, Rabbi has not disappointed. But, thats not what i am writing about. There is a song titled "Jinhein naaz hai Hind par wo kahaan hain ..." ... this song talks about some of the modern heroes of India ... he talks about Satyendra Dubey, and about S. Manjunath ... heroes to a nation which is too busy fighting about the looks, rather than the achievements of another hero ... the Shaheed ... Bhagat Singh!

India's Food Map

This is a picture which is doing the rounds of the email circuit ... too many people have sent me this one. My friend Arghaya has blogged about it, too. Even though, i couldnt resist the temptation to write about this. Given the current dietary regime i am going through (which means all the good things on the plate are out ...), the only thing i could do with this was write ... otherwise ... yes, you got it ... i would have been eating!

As you can see from this map, diversity is the buzzword when it comes to food in India. From the Gustaba, up north in Kashmir, to the Avial (and they missed out the Mutton Pepper Fry, an old favourite whenever down South ...), and from the Dhoklas in the west, to the Momos in the east, variety is the one word which describes the culinary culture of India.


Of course, there is so much variety out there, that this map doesnt even begin to cover the different delicacies which are on offer in different. They dont talk about Missal Pao when in Maharashtra, or the Jalebis of Punjab (of course, had either by themselves, or with piping hot Milk), or the Kosha Maangsho of Bengal, or the Lassi of Punjab, or Banaras, or the Daal Gosht which comes with the people from Punjab, too!


Of course, there is no way this could have captured the wonders of Phuchkas at Vivekananda Park, or Pindi ke Chholle Bhature at Darya Ganj, or the Mutton Qorma at Karim's, or the Missal Pao at Lalbagh ... But, that would be going into too much of specifics, which i am sure is way beyond any map can draw!


These apart, this also doesnt even begin to describe how the same dish, made in different parts comes out different. Take the Kadi for instance ... The way Kadi is made in Punjab, or in Rajasthan (which, incidentally, is where the Kadi originates), or in Gujarat is quite different. Or, the chhaunk in the Daal, which changes probably every 10 kms., much like the dialect of Hindi.
Overall, though, nice effort ... Wonderful point to begin an exploration into Indian food! Now, time for Lunch ... hey ... you dont think i could resist eating, having written all this?

Communities And Structure

I had written about whether communities can cope ... some thoughts about a post by Rachel Happe ... Rachel has written some of her thoughts here. It seems i got the central point of her post wrong ... though i do agree with her, something which i havent really read too much about, but have been thinking about for some time.

While i agree with Rachel's central point about the tension between structure, as described by the corporate hierarchy, and the self-forming, self-regulating nature of communities, i also believe that there is some sort of common ground between the two paradigms ... agreed that successive generations have been looking for it, as Rachel points out in the example of the Church, but having said that, we need to keep in mind that most of the work in organizations doesnt bring out the passions that religion does. As such, there are basic differences between the way we need to communities within the organization, and without.

Since i can afford to look at communities within the limited context of the organization, and that makes it easier to treat them, since there is a particular context you are looking at them in, i would tend to do that. And in the organizational context, the organization, through shared goals is the ideal medium for discovering this common ground. Definitely, this common ground would keep on shifting from tie to time, and as such, communities would either need to be realigned, or recreated altogether. Matter of fact, we are yet to see this tension between the structure on the one hand, and the free-spirited communities on the other ... for the simple reason, that within the organizational context, communities tend to be not as free-spirited, and not as self-regulating as they are in the more generic context. This is of course not true for all organizations, but this has been my exerience with the organizations i have interacted with.

And this is the aspect of communities which i refer to when i talk about the paradox of communities ... that while communities are self-forming, and self-sustaining, they are nevertheless looking at the organization for poviding the context for their functioning. Without a well-defined context, they are definitely going to be rudderless, and are going to lose direction. What this however means is that given the context to operate upon, communities can actually keep their direction. This is not to say that they would be laser-focused, or anything like that ... they are definitely going to meander, that being human nature, but having said that, on the whole, communities can be taking direction from the organizational context.

Communities Going Forward ...

I came across this wonderful post by Rachel Happe, thinking Can Communities Cope? ... interesting what Rachel has written in this ... why i say this is because this sort of encapsulates what i have been thinking about for some time now, without being able to articulate it.

Rachel has it right that communities have lifecycles ... lets face it, human civilizations have lifecycles (although we do feel a sense of permanence, but this is only because we are experiencing only a small slice of this lifecycle, and hence, this seems to be permanent, much like a sufficiently small slice of a circle would look like a straight line), so it would be only normal to assume that communities would, too. And this is where the organization must step in ... first of all, the organization needs to realize the value that communities can bring, and once this can be experienced (maybe not directly demonstrated, but experienced, either through participation, or anecdotally), the organization must put in the effort to rejuvenate communities when they seem to be flagging. And, this, to my mind, is the paradox of communities ... supposedly self-forming and self-sustaining, they nevertheless need the organizational push, because this is what provides them the context for their existence, at least within the organizational perspective.

Of  course, this is also having an impact on the structure of the organization. Though, it would be naive to assume that structure would go away ... something i have written about before here, and here. It would, however, be naive to assume the end of the organization (not that i have come across anybody doing that), though change is definitely happening.

Study In Contrast ...

The other day, i was flying Air India, and was reminded about the sheer contrast in the working style of companies operating in India. Let me write about this ... one of them, Air India ... solid government of India carrier, and the other, Airtel ... shining example of private sector enterprise.

Air India, when you walk into the airport, is not the most shining check-in counter. The check-in can be quite an experience ... they somehow havent quite gotten the hang of checking in maximum number of people in the minimum amount of time, though the check-in counter people can be nice, or surly depending on their mood. Airtel, on the other hand, is suave, swanky, the perfect marketing machine ... your interactions with Airtel will get you thinking about the amazing effeiciency, etc., etc. ...

Walk behind the facade, and the story is quite different. While Air India gives you good, rock-solid service with a smile within the aircraft (coupled with some of the smoothest landings you could get, and food which is excellent, too, at least compared with some other airlines ... Kingfisher comes close ... and, i remember reading an article by veteran journalist Jerry Pinto, comparing an experience he had with Virgin, and with Air India ... few years back, though i cant find a link to it!), when it comes to Airtel, the service ends at the front-end. Behind the facade, its all about dropped calls, no network coverage (go anywhere, do anything, except in the heart of Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore ...), and a call centre which has perfected the art of providing no service, and only apologies for lack of it.

Go, Air India!