Oh yeah, and this video coves user generated content, social media, personal publishing, blogs, online community, video, web publishing technologies like HTML, XML, and RSS and has same great music from deus to go along with it (oops, this is the deus I meant from the music in the video - two new music finds in one!).
Competition and the free market are great and I don’t mean as a passing fancy. That doesn’t mean that a free market capitalist system, or the businesses and individuals that drive it, are free of problems. Don’t jump to political conclusions though - I’m not hinting at a political agenda. I’m talking about financial systems and business and how we might be able to use a model like open source software to make business a lot better - regardless of where in the world your chair sits in this flat world, or what side of the political spectrum you favor. Participants convening today at The Talent Unconference have an opportunity to employ radical transparency and what I’d call open source business by dropping their guard.
At its core, the open source software movement has successfully demonstrated that an open model, relying on the power of individuals operating collaboratively and freely towards a similar goal, can be vastly superior to a more traditional, centrally managed approach to making software, where a singular goal is pursued in orchestrated, measured steps. Open source software development presents benefits across the board, from the obvious one around cost, to innovation and speed to market - the latter being ever more critical in today’s world. I believe we would all benefit by using more open source thinking in traditional business areas like recruiting, marketing, and sales. But what does that mean?
“Companies ensure quality through rules to prevent employees from screwing up. But you don’t need that when the audience can communicate with one another. People just produce whatever they want; the good stuff spreads, and the bad gets ignored. And in both cases, feedback from the audience improves the best work.”
One of my core goals in my own business is to start answering the question of how open source can be applied to business. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know exactly how to apply the model in all areas. I am feeling my way along and I expect that this will be journey that has no real end, just increasing iterations and maturity as I move forward. Some business practices are more simple to apply an open source model to. Take the traditional business conference. Back in 1998, the xml development community first used the term ‘unconference’ in an announcement for their upcoming get together. Later, technology maven and blog pioneer, Dave Winer used the term and brought it to its current prominence while organizing the first successful BloggerCon. From there, the concept quickly spread among geeks like Shannon and I until today, when we’re seeing unconferences for a multitude of businesses, hobbies and other pursuits, far from the Tech world where they started.
This week, the Talent Unconference organized by Jeff Hunter of Talentism is taking place (starting today actually) in the Bay Area. When participants look around the room they’ll be sure to see traditional competitors - the very people that you’d normally be last to share your best ideas with. I suspect some, if not all, of the participants will hold a little something back (even if it is subconciously) from the discussions for fear that that they’ll lose some competitive advantage. I would argue strongly that the open source software movement has proven that the best rewards go to the individuals that are most free with their talent, time and hard work. Think about how meaningful that is. Talent, time, hard work. To me, what would make this a true open source business event would be nothing less but full disclosure and participation. If you hold back, then what you’re ultimately saying is:
you have a completely unique idea (lets stop kidding ourselves)
you have an idea that cannot be improved upon by input from others (hah!)
Go on, I challenge you to convince me otherwise.
While I agree that it is possible to lose some competitive advantage in spewing forth your ideas at an event like the Talent Unconference, you would only lose if you failed to pursue your ‘idea’ and fail to learn something from ideas contributed by the other talented individuals present. If ideas were the only important element to successful business then there wouldn’t be a difference between FedEx and the U.S. Postal service. Put another way: You can take my idea, but it doesn’t mean you can implement it any better than I can watch Tiger Woods swing a golf club and then go win a golf tournament. Let’s not forget that execution is more often the missing ingredient in highly successful businesses. And I’ll close on those last two keywords: highly successful.
I think that ‘highly successful’ is the most likely outcome for open source business. Sure, we can all have a successful business using traditional practices, but there’s much more to be gained than lost by letting go. What may seem like giving in, is really the ultimate win, when you go open source.
p.s. Reading this post you may wonder why I’m not at the Talent Unconference. Well, both Shannon and I would have really loved to be there, as I explained in an e-mail to Jeff Hunter back in December, but our family and client commitments kept us on the sidelines for this round. Judging from the positive reaction to this event I’m very hopeful that it won’t be the only opportunity. One of the main reasons I wrote this post today was to support what Jeff, and everyone who IS at the event, are doing.
Congratulations for showing up, all of you - all glory comes from daring to begin.
My Dad just sent me a Fortune article called “I got my job through Second Life” all about real people and real companies finding jobs directly through Second Life. It reminded me that most every job I landed over my career was through my small network of friends and associates and how the same has been true for my business exceler8. Here’s an excerpt from the Fortune story.
“And just as the way we surf the web changed, the way that corporate America does business has changed in this middle space. Case in point: the most radical dotcom 2.0 recruitment wave is happening in virtual reality thanks to Second Life. Instead of posting a resume on Monster.com that will hopefully net a flesh-and-blood job interview, your avatar can be interviewed and hired all within Second Life, often for jobs possible only in virtual reality.”
“People who have been in SL since its inception might not be professional content developers, but they have become experts,” says Brandon Berger, senior strategist at OgilvyInteractive’s Digital Innovation unit. Hence, Ogilvy has hired a lot of people directly from Second Life to execute projects for the big name clients who have worked to be in Second Life.”
Imagine arriving for your Second Life interview in this little number…
I first heard about Second Life from Jim Stroud and went to check it out after our phone call. Back then (which wasn’t that long ago) SL hadn’t yet exploded on to the front page of every business magazine, blog page and tech site known to man. Despite my complete lack of interest in online role playing communities (which is strange given my dweebiness and love of online community) I recognize that I have to be involved in SL because it is a highly relevant community for my personal and business interests. I am a social media geek after all. While I find SL’s interface complex, limiting and ultimately boring, I’ll keep trying it for the promise that it holds in meeting real people. There ARE interesting people in this community. And just like other interesting communities, our exposure to the new people we meet in them expand our horizons on all fronts.
Hey Shannon, does this qualify for the category you coined “Job Search 2.0“?
I finally sat down to participate in the 5 things meme - mainly because I am dying to talk about something else, I finally have a few moments to breath, and I was tagged 3 times by women thatI respectvery much: Heather, Astha, and Rosie. (Funny how we seem to all stay to our side of the Mechitzah in the Recruitosphere ;-)). Anyway - I have procrastinated a bit about this one as I have been wavering back and forth between, “I am boring as hell - what would be interesting enough to write about?” and “I CAN’T write about THAT - thats TMI!” This would be more fun for me if Julian was tasked with writing 5 things about me and vice-versa…’cause I’ve got PLENTY to tell you about him. Maybe in the next meme. So here we go:
I wanted to be an Art Therapist right up until I graduated from school and feel head over heals for the web. My degree is in Neuropsychology and Art. Art Therapists use different art forms to help people understand and work through their problems through the creative process. I was going to focus specifically on Dance therapy as I took ballet up through high school and wanted to incorporate that into my life.
I have a problem with organized religion. My dad’s side of the family is Catholic and my mom’s side - well…not so much. I grew up as the oldest of five children and my mom tried to expose me to various religions so that I could make my own decision one day. I went to a variety of churches every Sunday (with my friends - not my family) and learned about various denominations. When I was about 8 - I was officially baptized at the Wilton Manors Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale. They do the full dunking there. While there wasn’t one organization that stuck with me - a deep intellectual fascination with religion did. I took so many religion classed at Colgate that I could have double majored. Julian likes to say that I haven’t had something happen to me yet in life to turn it from an intellectual pursuit to a matter of the heart - maybe - I am open to that. I do know that Harry’s second item in his 5 things meme resonated deeply with me.
Julian and I met almost exactly 6 years ago in Phoenix, AZ at a Knight Ridder Digital National Sales Conference. It was a messy time in both of our lives to meet. I was just getting out of a really hard break-up and he was just getting out of his first marriage. I am not very sappy, but to this day I can describe it no other way than love at first sight, soul mate, ability to overcome everything type of love (not mean that overcoming everything was easy). Most people don’t know that Jules and I didn’t marry until 3 years ago when we were having our second child. I come from a family full of divorce and a common refrain for me was “I can’t guarantee that I won’t get divorced unless I don’t get married”. Since Julian had a hard time getting a ring on my finger - for my 26th birthday, we got matching tattoos in the shape of an infinity. On my 27th birthday, he bought me an infinity ring from Tiffany.
The obsession with the number 8 in our blog names comes from item number 3 above. Turn the 8 sideways, and you have the infinity. Forever.
I love to cross-stitch. Seriously. My last project took me 4 years to complete.
40 minutes after I finished posting about the speed at which information flies around the web saying:
In the Web 2.0 world, we have CEO’s blogging; employees blogging; reporters blogging; all with trackbacks and permalinks. The speed at which a story can spread for all to see in the blogosphere is dizzying. Social media and its uncoordinated actions of individuals - many voices, tones, and resulting comments - introduce a level of unpredictability into the equation that has to be managed.
… these official internal Jobster communications were forwarded to me by a reliable source requesting anonymity. The information was not meant as Organizational Terrorism - the intent was to share the real internal communications and take the place of the blogo-speculation that has come about in the absence of hard facts.
The first e-mail was sent out last week. The second was sent out last night. What would your reaction be if your company sent this to you? What type of employee experience does this provide?
I finally sat down to participate in the 
