I am often ambivalent about big firms and this includes the “uber-cool” Google. While I think a lot of what they do is actually quite amazing, and I am an active user of many of their products, there still lays a certain level of mistrust that everything is perfect as it is sometimes portrayed.
But, every once in a while (which in the current innovation cycles means every other month) they come up with something that seduces me again and makes me belief that the doubts are unfounded. Today, is such a time, Google announced “All for good” which “helps you find and share ways to do good”.
This means that if you’re in the mood for helping, you can find where you can help near you (if you were to live in the US) doing whatever you want to help with. Once again technology is at the service of good. Good one, Google.
While tinkering around looking for info, I found a great website full academic goodies for the thesis: Gnovis. It describes itself as:
“an online academic journal and forum that cultivates new ways of seeing and understanding culture through critical inquiry. gnovis presents work by graduate students pioneering interdisciplinary perspectives on issues in technology, media, politics, and the arts.”
Adding to this are some great blog posts. My personal recommendation for anyone interested in participating is the post named “Thesis Blog: Approaching Open Culture” by Brad Weikel, where he tries to deal with the definition of Open Culture and finds some familiar struggles I faced when researching for my own thesis. Truly a must read.
Weikel also tried to blog while he wrote his thesis in an attempt that reads very familiar to what this project is about. I will write to him soon and see if he can drop in to the project blog and drop his two cents, or maybe even more.
On the An Open Thesis Blog, I’ve recently added on the side bar a video that gives a very short introduction into the project. I hope this helps translate what it is all about in the quickest of terms. Please feel free to leave any comments or to spread the video around.
Here is the video:
Later on I will be adding some slideshows that go a bit more in depth into how can people help out and the tools to do so.
Ushahidi is a platform that allows people to submit information on a crisis situation (like the N1H1 virus or the Gaza Strip situation) via web, text message, etc. Then, it allows the information to be mapped and ordered, aggregating the different sources of information to draw up the a bigger picture of the crisis situation.
As an example you can check out the page set up tracking the voting in the recent elections in India.
This innitiave is an answer to anyone doubting how the intenet can be utlized for social good by collecting and aggregating the information that crowds posses.
This is a nice video I saw a couple of weeks back that talks on issues I would like the thesis to adress. Interviews with many people involved in different ways in this crowd collaboration discussion such as Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody) and Charles Leadbeater (We Think).
Imagineering may sound a bit Disney-ish. This is not personal opinion, but acquired insight after months of talking to people about what I am doing in the Netherlands. The best way to look at it is as a business innovation process that is founded on the idea that business success does not mean ‘make the most money’. One way to express it, can be through a slideshow I prepared in the beginning of the year:
Now as you see, I do buy into a ‘poetic’ lenguage of sorts. I can do business lingo, I can do academic lingo… but I believe that sometimes things can get across better with a powerful metaphore. Though I have learned that there is a time and place for everything.
So on that note, I will give a description offered in the webpage of the university I go to, about the Master Program:
“In a creative economy there is a growing need for high level professionals who can create and innovate value from the experience perspective. This Master in Imagineering is designed as a roadmap for that new ‘outside-in enterprise logic’.
…Imagineering, value creation and value innovation from the experience perspective, is a new approach towards the trinity of branding. It is a way to discover the possibility of a new kind of convergence between consumers’ desires, technological capabilities and organisational innovations. These three elements will be combined to form new enterprise logic. “
This is basically where the thesis starts from: creating new value for citizens. And since I do believe in the power or wisdom of crowds, I not only want to talk about it in my thesis, but also put it to practice in the writing of it.
I hope this illustrates what this Venezuelan student is doing in the Netherlands. If not, here are some useful links:
Go to the blog for the academic thesis on how crowds of citizens can participate in transforming their city to better fit their collective reality. Now with the wiki up and running, waiting for input.
Important Links
Imagineering Academy
The Imagineering Academy is a community of scholars and practitioners devoted to energizing and transforming the process of value creation in organisations and society as a whole. We research theory and practice of using imagination in creating value.
