Images can be a powerful tool to communicate a community's identity and culture for social network attraction.
Photographer Alice Merkel captures COINs 2010 Conference community connectivity, conversations, and capacity building in this I-Open Collection on Flickr.
The collection portrays community creativity and collaboration present in five areas of the Swarm Creativity Framework - a transfer of I-Open's Innovation Framework, a heuristic model of investment in Open Source Economic Development.
Curating images focused on a community's core assets generates higher levels of authentic communications, builds audience trust, and strengthens transparency for network attraction.
How To Build Research-Industry Networks with Conversations, Communications, and Collaboration
Written by Betsey Merkel
Research-industry networks develop knowledge in research and business for collaboration and capacity building. The COINs 2010 Conference is an example of how to build this type of strategic engagement for competitive network advantage.
As a co-sponsor of the COINs 2010 Conference, I-Open worked in collaboration with the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, and Wayne State University College of Engineering Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, in Savannah, GA USA.
This second international and highly interactive program presented training, workshops, paper presentations, and keynote conversations of research and industry leaders focused on aspects of the emerging Science of Collaboration.
As a result of the committee's support, we were able to dedicate a six-month pre-conference period to share specialized communications and develop on-line community.
Broadcast Conversations
I-Open introduced the concept of broadcast interviews and conference conversations to the COINs steering committee to strengthen programming and develop conference experience.
We chose Livestream as our provider, having worked the toolset to broadcast Northeast Ohio conversations since 2006. Livestream offers a sophisticated library widget (shown below) which is easily copied to blogs and websites.
Within less than 30 days of uploading content to the COINs Conference channel, archive broadcast programming had attracted nearly 100,000 viewer minutes.
Technology tools, like the Livestream widget, enable sharing knowledge at levels appropriate to the development of networked collaborative communities.
Frameworks are a good first step to organize strategic communications in environments that are otherwise information complex.
Frameworks establish community values, roles and relationships. They serve as a high-level perspective on categories of investment, and offer starting points to community engagement.
The Swarm Creativity Framework was designed to loosely guide the organization of knowledge shared by the COINs 2010 conference community in support of the emerging Science of Collaboration.
The Swarm Creativity Framework is a heuristic model of investment based on categories of knowledge important to strengthen the discipline, Swarm Creativity. Categories are associated here for the purpose of generating creative economies, of which collaboration is an integral capacity.
The Framework is featured in the COINs 2010 Conference Instructions document below and is a transfer of the Innovation Framework, a successful model of investment in Open Source Economic Development. COINs 2010 Conference Instructions
In addition to what we share, how we share information is important.
Contextual transmedia communications distributes information across dedicated social media infrastructure. Each platform has it's own thematic community, interests and preferred multimedia.
The publishing process used to engage with the tools, leverages values-based storytelling. This influences strategic thinking and social behavoirs of the 'meta' community.
The map shown below visualizes how information was shared to attract and connect COINs 2010 online community.
Collaboration
Collaborative workspaces develop community by sharing communications, connecting resources, increasing transparency, and organizing project work.
Workspaces sustain and amplify conversations between meet ups so project development can continue.
The Swarm Creativity workspace sponsored by I-Open for conference collaborators, is shown below.
In Summary
The development of research-industry networks is paramount to engage locally based, globally connected economies for competitive regional advantage.
Further, investment in the strategic orchestration and management of dedicated process to support creative approaches to knowledge sharing is critical. This, coupled with data management, content marketing, and continuous technology innovation cultivate collective intelligence.
The COINs 2010 Conference offers a tested, comprehensive and sophisticated example of how research-industry conversations, communications and collaboration access the innovation capacity of community.
Working this way, universities and colleges can act in partnership with business and government, each occupying a unique leadership position within a larger, collaborative initiative.
My highest praise goes to the COINs Steering Committee, academic leaders from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Collective Intelligence, Savannah College of Art & Design, and Wayne State University's College of Engineering, who despite unknown outcomes, supported and adopted these creative ideas early in conference planning.
Jackie Stevenson, Founder and CEO, The Spirit of Leadership, studies and convenes social leadership experiences found in nature that transform organizations and industry.
The photo album "Nature in Leadership" (below), describes Jackie's laboratory; a farm nestled in gently rolling hills not far from downtown Cleveland, Ohio.
Horses are the teachers and, combined with the ambiance of local prehistoric woods, the lab offers space and time for students to reflect on leadership in nature. Teams share insights and discoveries that affect individual habits of leadership.
Images help us broaden and connect value to our physical surroundings. The Nature in Leadership album enhances our understanding of the video interview Jackie shares with us below.
Social business requires an integration of all we know to advance our conversations and meaningfully connect to both traditional and non-traditional employment opportunities.
The creation of a social media knowledge portrait begins by recognizing traditional work experiences, skills training, formal education, human passion, and emerging interests.
A social media knowledge portrait is a method of organizing human knowledge and intelligence to:
Generate a unique entrepreneurial knowledge base;
Increase serendipity and connect to unforeseen opportunities;
Diversify strategic pathways for sharing and collaboration;
Inventory knowledge, expertise, skills and interest; and
Connect knowledge investments to education, economic and workforce development.
Read more about how to connect what you know to new enterprise opportunities in the paper below.
Kanwal Rekhi, Indian-American Engineer, Businessman and Millionaire Philanthropist spoke at the June 21, 2011 Launch of the Dublin International Business Assistance Center located in the City of Dublin, Ohio USA.
Mr. Rekhi describes the journey of an entrepreneur: the hardships, common stereotypes, and the often difficult access to support and affirmation. He carries a message of strength and perseverance to all entrepreneurs.
Kanwall Rekhi shares a story of education, employment, and self-discovery that lead him to pursue his passion for solving high tech industry problems by leveraging his creative talents.
Among his many accomplishments, "Kanwal Rekhi is a past Chairman and trustee of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit support network to provide advice, contacts, and funding to Indian Americans hoping to start businesses. Forbes Magazine reports that Kanwal has helped energize TiE and as a philanthropist he has made major contributions to education, supporting universities on two continents. He is a prime benefactor of a foundation in India that identifies talented students without funds, and provides them with college tuition and living expenses. He is also Chairman of the Centre for Civil Society,[3] a think tank in India. He is currently a board member of Pan IIT USA, Inc, the alumni organization of the Indian Institutes of Technology." - Wikipedia
Matthew Theobald (1970-2010), Founder, Internet Search Environment Number (ISEN) and CEO, Internous, talks about the role of librarians in the future.
Drawing from his professional career in Library Science, Matt describes an exciting future for librarians as the community connectors between citizens, entrepreneurs, government and organization leaders and knowledge.
Matthew Theobald (1970-2010), Founder, Internet Search Environment Number (ISEN) and CEO, Internous, tells us why databases are the next important application of the Internet. Matt talks about the Database of Databases, and what it will mean to each of us to access the deep web and design our own personal databases of information.
Bruce Waltuck, thought leader in Leadership and Change, talks about how he became interested in supporting groups of people making better decisions together. Bruce shares concepts and lessons for leaders in education, economic and workforce development.
Bruce Waltuck discusses the value of story infrastructure to meaningful change and the role of conversation, engagement and response in social and economic transformation.
"In 1993 or 1994, a friend handed me Margaret Wheatley's book, Leadership and the New Science. Although I loved learning about quantum physics, I was at that time very into W. Edwards Deming and Total Quality Management (TQM). I handed back the book and said it seemed to have nothing to do with my work (oops!). In 1998 I was on a trip with my son to San Francisco. At the wonderful Exploratorium science museum, they had a featured exhibit on "turbulent landscapes." that included many hands-on displays about complex and chaotic forces in nature. Playing with a large pendulum with a magnet on its tip, and other magnets on the table below it (that could be set to attract or repel the pendulum) I had a literally life-changing moment. In the wild oscillations of the pendulum, I knew the laws of physics were still working. But I saw not just pendulums and magnets, but a physical model of how people interact with ideas and with each other. I was hooked. Applying ideas from complexity science to the work of dialogue, change, and leadership, has been my core focus for more than ten years. I am an avid associate of the Plexus Institute, which is where I met Valdis Krebs, CEO Orgnet.com and June Holley, thought leader in Network Weaving."
