If you are unfamiliar with this campaign, it is an open competition initiated by the President’s husband, Dr. Martin McAleese, to find two direction-changing innovations for the island of Ireland. Each winning proposal will receive €100,000 in cash, but the proposal will then be taken out of the hands of the proposer and developed with governmental support into a national programme.

We are now down to the five finalists. One central plank of the campaign was to crowd-source ideas that could deliver tangible benefits for Ireland. Interestingly, only one of the proposals shortlisted was among the top fifty most supported on the YourCountryYourCall website. The proposal to ‘Make Ireland a Global Media Hub’ came in as the twentieth most supported, with support from 318 people and a discussion that amounted to 36 comments. The most popular proposal on the other hand received 1,947 expressions of support and 576 comments. The crowd clearly isn’t always right.

These are the final five. My own vote, for what it’s worth goes to transform Ireland into a Data Island – a ‘world-beating entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem around Digital Services.’ Winners to be announced on September 17th.

D3279 Creation of a “Superbrand” to market Irish Tourism & Food
The proposal is to create a new “Superbrand” to market Irish (all Island) Tourism and Food under the one banner – together with some practical and creative thinking in terms of implementation. The focus of the proposal is to build out job opportunities in both sectors.

The Proposer, Brody Sweeney, is from Sandymount in Dublin. He has been involved in retail chains like Prontaprint and O’Briens Sandwich Bars, as well as the business charity Connect Ethiopia. He is currently working with Diep at Home and Eat City, and is Board member of Paddy Power.

D6541 An opportunity for Ireland to become a Global Media Hub
The proposal sets out initially to create an Irish Content Industry Association which would then drive the development of a cultural and creative quarter, a Media Park to attract global content industries, and creating the necessary legislative and regulatory environment to make Ireland a leading global centre for the creation and distribution of digital content.

The Proposer, Neil Leyden, is a screen writer and a digital media consultant. Neil formed the Digital Media Forum in 2004, now a network of over 600 digital media companies, with the intention of seeing different sectors of the creative and technology industries collaborate for the economic betterment of Ireland.

D8134 Establishing an intellectual property (IP) based financial securities market in Ireland
The proposal deals with positioning Ireland centrally in the evolution of the Knowledge Economy by setting up an Intellectual Property Services Centre (IPSC) anchored around an IP-based exchange with significant potential to create long term employment opportunities and revenue streams.

The Proposer, Gordan Hyland, is originally from Belfast. Gordan has lived in many countries and his career has been focused primarily in the areas of microelectronics, consumer electronics, multimedia etc. He is qualified at masters level in technology, finance, law and management.

D9686 Installation of Solar PV Electricity Generation on existing windfarms
The proposal is to install large scale solar photovoltaic panels on existing windfarm sites, utilising the existing land, electrical infrastructure and grid connections.

Peter Enda Kavanagh is the Proposer. Originally from Gorey, County Wexford, Peter lives in Lusk, County Dublin. Peter is an Electrical Engineer and specialises in the grid connection and preconstruction of large scale windfarm projects.

D10140 The Data Island Strategy
Through the development of a Green Mega Data Centre Freezone and an International Innovation Area - The Data Island Strategy sets out to build a world beating entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem around Digital Services and to position Ireland at the forefront of its associated spin-off industries.

The Proposers Cianan Clancy & Colm MacFhlannachadha are both from Skerries, County Dublin. Cianan works for a Fortune 500 Consulting Firm and concentrates on helping businesses optimise their business processes and IT systems; Colm has over 25 years experience in sectors as diverse as energy, electronics, medical devices and food manufacturing.

Good luck to all the finalists and congrats on getting so far along the process.

If you were to ask me what Starbucks is good at I probably wouldn’t say ‘coffee’. What Starbucks is brilliant at is loyalty. I’ve had better and cheaper coffee than I’ve had at Starbucks, yet I continue to gravitate towards their outlets because I enjoy the experience. The coffee business as a whole has realised that loyalty is critical to it survival. Starbucks are the leaders in this space and their mobile apps offer a lesson to us in other businesses.

Starbucks have already leveraged location-based technologies to improve the findability of their stores. They have transferred their plastic loyalty cards to mobile and now they are making payments seamless. Log on to your Starbucks app on your phone, it produces a bar-code which is scanned at the cash desk; your account is deducted with the relevant amount and your loyalty points are  for your next free coffee. totted

Starbucks understand their customers deeply and as a result can create innovative Internet-based solutions that make the purchase process better (easier and quicker) while maximising loyalty. A very smooth transition from ‘bricks and mortar’ to ‘bricks and taps’.

(Note that the apps are not yet available in Ireland.)

Even the little ones are getting excited about Weedle

Increasingly, social media tools are being used by everyone to connect skilled professionals with the people who need them. Business owners and managers are creating Facebook pages to seek to spread the word through the largest global social network. When informing our purchase decisions we increasingly tap into our online networks, such as Twitter, to ask our contacts there what products or services they recommend.

Currently there is no single large-scale way of harnessing the power of word of mouth referrals for people offering skilled services. This is one of the big ideas behind Weedle and one of the main the reasons I joined the company last February.

Weedle enables you to create a personal web page where  you can showcase any skill, expertise or talent that you have. You can add text and rich media such as images, video, presentations, documents and many other file formats. You can then promote your skill page to your family, friends and contacts. This means that in the first instance they will be more likely to use you in future. But it also means that they will be more likely to recommend you to their friends.

The next time someone searches for your skill on Weedle they will immediately see in how many ways they are connected with you; for example if you both grew up together, attended the same college or university, worked together or have a friend in common. We all prefer to do business with people we know. Furthermore, anyone who views your skill page will immediately see the recommendations for you from people whose knowledge and opinions they respect. We are more likely to trust what people we know say before the ratings or reviews of anonymous strangers.

This is the thinking behind Weedle and already people from over fifty countries around the world have started showcasing their skills, expertise and talents there.

One of the early benefits of creating a social platform such as Weedle, where skills are the focal point, is that Google returns Weedle web pages quite high in the rankings when someone searches for a skill that happens to be listed there. In the same way as other social platforms optimise for your name (search for your name on Google and there’s a good chance one of your social network profiles will appear on the first page) Weedle optimizes for your skill. People who know you by name will search that way, but people who don’t know you but who need your skill, will search for your skill title. This is Weedle’s initial SEO (search engine optimisation) benefit.

You can connect with me on Weedle on my personal page weedle.com/brendan.hughes – anyone who joins early can claim their personal web address before it is gone. I would love to hear your thoughts on the concept behind Weedle and on how we have implemented the platform to date. Join Weedle today to see how it works and please, please send us your feedback.

The Innovation Taskforce outlines the importance of innovation as follows:

Innovation entails investment aimed at producing new knowledge and using it in various applications. Increasing productivity is the key driver of economic performance and sustainability. Innovation, in both the production and use of ideas, technology and processes, is important in this context because it drives productivity. Ireland’s future economic success depends on increasing levels of innovation across all aspects of Irish enterprise.

The availability of high quality broadband is strategically important to enabling and exploiting innovation, according to the members of the Taskforce. Communications-intensive sectors such as software development, medical devices and financial services and emerging sectors such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, cloud computing and personalised healthcare all depend on access to next generation broadband.

In June 2009 the Government committed to delivering universal broadband by the end of 2010. The Innovation Taskforce goes further and insists that significant improvement in the quality of broadband is essential, since the applications of the future, such as cloud computing, will require:

1. much higher speeds,
2. symmetric services (similar upload and download speeds),
3. low latency (speed of response of the system to the user) and
4. uncontended access (user does not have to share bandwidth
   with other users due to network constraints)

The taskforce criticises the level of investment from the telecoms operators in the Irish market in upgrading the local access networks; from the network backbones to customers’ premises. The taskforce picks up on the Forfás report from earlier this year suggesting that regulation needs to permit operators to receive higher returns from their investment in infrastructure.

The key recommendation of the taskforce report is that the nationwide roll-out of 1Gbps broadband be prioritised. To put that in context, the typical household broadband speeds is currently 1Mbps – that’s 1,000 times slower than the level of infrastructure suggested by the taskforce. While individual consumers may today only seek to use a fraction of this, the provision of such infrastructure for enterprise cannot be underestimated.

We can all understand that a sub-standard electricity or transport infrastructure would have completely undermined Ireland’s ability to compete in manufacturing in years past. And so today a sub-standard communications infrastructure does absolutely undermine our ability to compete in knowledge-intensive industries.

A State investment in broadband infrastructure will not be cheap. But the taskforce rightly points out that an intelligent and far-sighted intervention by the State could provide a substantial, competitive and, ideally, unique advantage to companies operating in Ireland. They believe that such interventions could “change and disrupt an entire global industry because those companies using the new infrastructure gain considerable advantage over their international competitors”.

This in turn can attract yet further foreign direct investment, as companies come to Ireland with the State benefiting from the additional employment resulting from companies using the infrastructure, and possibly also from revenues received by use of the infrastructure itself.

In the space of a little over twelve months there have been six separate reports launched by the Government highlighting the imperative for increased investment in essential next generation broadband, including:

1. Building Ireland’s Smart Economy (Dec 2008)
2. Knowledge Society Strategy (July 2009)
3. Next Generation Broadband (July 2009)
4. Global Irish Economic Forum – Farmleigh (October 2009)
5. Ireland’s Broadband Performance and Policy Actions (January 2010)
6. Innovation Taskforce Report (March 2010)

Enough reports already. We know what we need to do.

Martin McAleese and me at the launch of Your Country Your Call

Your Country Your Call, the brainchild of Martin McAleese the president’s husband, is essentially a competition to come up with the next big thing that will positively impact on our country’s future. A website has been established to allow people from anywhere in the world to submit short proposals for things they believe could “game changing” for Ireland.

The proposals are not for new business initiatives, but for new country initiatives. When I think about the kinds of things that we could compare this with I’m thinking of the IFSC in Dublin, Airport Duty Free first implemented in Shannon, or indeed the proposed Global Cultural University which Dermot Desmond is currently exploring.

The carrot here for people to submit proposals is to be part of the story of Ireland – to be able to tell your grandchildren that you were a major part of what Ireland became in the early part of the new millenium. There is also a prize of €100,000 – no strings attached.

The two winning proposals will each receive funding of €500,000 and be supported by a range of experts from across relevant industries, coupled with assured legislative changes as required. The proposal winners are welcome to participate in the implementation of the proposal but they will not receive any other remuneration other than the first €100,000.

So that’s €100,000 to write a few words down on a piece of paper with some great ideas for Ireland. Not bad.

An exciting potential of this initiative is the possibilities of creating new synergies of innovative and thoughtful people collaborating to achieve something truly worthwhile for Ireland. We had talked here on this blog about the need for an innovation network in Ireland. This is what you were looking for. Sure there is a defined time-limit on this, but I am hopeful that something more permanent may emerge.

President Mary McAleese is the patron of this iniative:

This is going to be big so do join in to be part of something historic. Visit the Your Country Your Call website to find out more.

The Internet has changed dramatically over the past few years. When I completed a course in Multimedia Systems in Trinity College 12 years ago, I thought that I would end up creating virtual worlds for people to inhabit. Instead we are still living in the real world (thankfully), but it has been overlaid with myriad digitally facilitated conversations and data units. The digital world is like an invisible but richly decorated tapestry covering the entire planet which anyone can view and contribute to with just a few finger taps on a keyboard or screen. We are at the dawn of a new world that creates endless opportunities for anyone with even the basic tools to access the digital stratosphere.

In my time working as a virtual insurance salesman (the worst kind!) I put a lot of effort into trying to demonstrate to people on the outside that the website represented not just a large faceless institution, but an organisation with people who genuinely have their customers’ interests at heart. Every member of the web team focused on being absolutely customer-focused in everything they did; developing online product propositions and processes that gave customers what they wanted in the manner they wanted it. We engaged with social media as the tool that would allow us to have real conversations with our real customers. We constantly listened to our customers through the range of practices and applications available to us, and changed what we did in order to improve on the service we offered. And we realised that this approach was a key ingredient in the formula for success online.

Personally, I have become conscious that whether it is within large organisations, small businesses, universities, local communities or worldwide networks; each of us is continually seeking to connect with people who share our interests or who have the expertise to meet a specific need. Word of mouth has been complemented by social media in the digital age in helping us find others to connect with. There are many online resources that facilitate these connections, and yet there isn’t one place to go that brings it all together.

So I was particularly curious when Gary approached me about a fledgling Irish venture called Weedle which is setting out to create “new opportunities” for people around the globe by developing a platform that connects people with skills with those that need them. The platform will take a number of the best features of the social web and combine them with some new concepts. At the heart of the platform is a next-generation search algorithm developed in conjunction with the world’s leading experts in the semantic web, based here in Ireland, to create a truly unique and useful online service.

Iain, and the team already in place in Weedle, are passionate about the opportunities such a service can create for people everywhere. For me, this is a great opportunity to be involved in something that seeks to bring people together from anywhere in the world in relationships that are mutually beneficial. My role will be to help make sure that the platform does just that, efficiently and effectively, for all members of the Weedle community.

I will be starting with Weedle in mid-February. I fully intend to keep my own personal blog going here and I hope you will continue to stop by occasionally for a chat.

As I’ve already said more than once, we in the developed world find ourselves in an environment literally saturated with moving and interactive images.

They’re the dominant means by which we increasingly learn about, understand, and hopefully begin to make sense of the world.

In this new learning environment, mass participation in creating, sharing and reusing images has taken hold on a quite extraordinary scale.

Our task is surely to harness these opportunities in addressing the many longer-term challenges we as a global and Digital Society now face.

And with these ‘long-term’ objectives in mind, allow me finish with a bit of ‘tough love’, by re-stating what I see as the crucial the lessons we, living here in Ireland, ought to have absorbed during these past thirty years in considering what makes for a successful society, in an ever-more difficult  world.

Firstly, like it or not, getting education right is the whole ball of wax.

Secondly, and at risk of repeating myself, no education system can be better than the teachers it employs, and the standards it demands of them.

Thirdly, teacher training in a digital age has to be viewed as an entirely non-negotiable and continuing process.

The commitment of Governments and individual head teachers to the best possible quality of teacher training, along with regular, preferably annual, time out for professional development, must be absolute.

Fourthly, there needs to be an undisputed global acceptance of the importance of the education of women.

Educated women are the fulcrum around which can be built educated and healthy families – and those families will invariably be smaller, and better cared for.

There is no magic in any of this.

Fifth: this country enjoyed an early and inspired start due to the courage and foresight of Donogh O’Malley who, in the mid-sixties, when it was thoroughly unfashionable, laid the foundations for a strong public focus on education.

His tragic early death was another in Ireland’s history of all too often losing the best of its leaders before they’re able to complete the goals they’ve set themselves.

But it was largely thanks to his imagination that this country was able to take an early lead in encouraging its young people to embrace what was at the time not just new, but largely untried technology.

The gamble paid off, and a well educated returning diaspora had a lot to do with promoting twenty years of unparalleled growth.

But I’d argue that those early successes were insufficiently built upon; to the point at which public expenditure on education, as a percentage of GDP – was allowed to drift downwards – at the very moment it should have been going up – exponentially!

A minimum of seven percent of total GDP is the figure the Government should set and hold to – all other areas of Public Expenditure, including health, must be allocated by the Cabinet in such a way as to make that figure as quickly achievable as possible.

A world class education system will, over time, deliver a world class health service – the reverse can never be possible.

Sixth, and last – although I could go on – young people learn and teachers teach best in environments that they respect, and which accord with what they see and admire in the best of what they see around them.

The physical infrastructure of many of the primary and secondary schools in Ireland should be a cause for national shame.

And when I speak of infrastructure I most specifically include every aspect of connectivity, and its complementary hardware and software.

Choices were made to spend billions  of euros  on buildings in the private and public sector that now lie either empty, under used or simply not needed.

It’s my personal view that had some fraction of that sum been committed to refurbishing the quality of the schools and classrooms in this country the nation would be far better placed to dig itself out of the hole that all that accumulated debt and waste has helped create.

The good news is that there are really excellent people in this country who understand that education at every level is both the cause and the consequence of any possibility of national renewal.

For too long Ireland relied on the good offices of the Church and the largesse of Europe to address and solve many of these problems.

I came here this morning to argue that, for good or ill, those days are over, and it’s now down to a simple test of national will to invest in the future; to rediscover those things for which this country has rightly been celebrated.

Learning, Culture, and a unique sense of community and place that the world has in the past, and please God will once again, come to admire – and possibly even envy.

There has been a growing mistrust of all that is BIG. Big business. Big government. Big economy. Big media. Big brand. Big church. The past 18 months was particularly torrid for BIG. The corporations and institutions that dominate modern society, for increasing numbers, are no longer seen as the bastions of all that is good. The doubters are no longer just those on the fringes or with leftist leanings. Capitalists, communist and fundamentalist alike are taking a stand.

In many cases we are revolutionaries and not even aware of it. Have you transferred from a monopolistic brand in favour of a new market entrant? Have you read a blog instead of an opinion piece on a broadsheet? Have you purchased online from a foreign retailer rather than head to the local mall? There are many small acts that cumulatively and over time mark a clear shift in intention and action away from BIG organisations.

However BIG is not going away. It has been deeply engrained in our cultures, societies and economies over hundreds of years. All of our structures lean towards BIG. However, not all BIG organisations will survive. The past 18 months has seen its fair share of BIG’s collapse – economies, industries and corporations. Those that do survive will be those that adapt to the new smaller landscape. Those that fail will be those unable or unwilling to play any other game than the one they’ve played thus far.

So what will the small world look like? There will be no big centre for one. Rather, there will be distributed networks of individuals, collectives and smaller organisations. It is a world that is self-organising where people develop relationships that are mutually beneficial with new ways of talking, new ways of working and new ways of having fun.

Small economies – economies that are based on networks – will become dominant and exist alongside larger more traditional geo-specific economies. Connected economies have no borders and so are more difficult to regulate and control, but then we haven’t been that great at regulating traditional economies. These new economies are fluid and in constant flux as they develop out of a need and dissolve once that need is met.

There will be big organisations of course; they are the ones that have learned how to make themselves smaller – more individual, personalised, human. There will be a recognition that power is more distributed. Individuals are now empowered to efficiently congregate with a view to taking a position or acting against any prevailing big trends. Mass market communication will not be as effective as in the past, in fact it may actually stimulate an international counter-movement of empowered and collaborating individuals (trivially, think Rage Against the Machine v X Factor).

Here in Ireland we are well positioned to succeed in this new landscape. Being small and by necessity well-connected internationally we naturally “get” what it means to act small on a global stage. Even our biggest is small, relatively speaking, and thus we have the agility to adapt and innovate quickly. The opportunity is clear for an innovation island such as ours and 2010 is the year to make good on the promises and good intentions expressed in 2009.

The Internet, ironically developed for military purposes, has been the enabler of this small revolution. The heave against BIG was already in motion in the post-War years, but as the new millenium dawns the power of the Internet to connect individuals and smaller organisations became very apparent. Today we are already living in a world that is transformed by the combination of mobile computing and ubiquitous network access.

To survive and thrive we must all learn how to harness the potential that exists in the Internet. We need to get better at using it to achieve our objectives. As one well-known Irish entrepreneur says, we’re all in the business of selling. Whether in charity, research, education, manufacturing, retail or service industries, we are all involved in transactional enterprise. To succeed in the online world we need to get better at selling and processing transactions in this smaller world.

In 2010 I intend to shift the focus of what I write here to identify and share insights and innovations from around the globe on how to sell more online. Whether it’s a shopping cart, subscription process or service application we can all learn from the best of what others do to improve how they bring others through their online transaction processes. If I can manage a post a week on this, then by the end of the year we should have about 50 insights that should help us all get better at what we do here.

The connected planet is a smaller planet and there is much greater opportunity for each individual and small organisation or business to have a greater impact. 2010, for me at least, will be dedicated to seeing how small can make it big. I don’t know where it will end up but I hope you join me on this journey.

The Hughes family Christmas tree 2009

In January we started out talking about media consumption and how we expected the continued growth of user-generated content; the convergence of technologies, platforms and content; and shifting dynamics between consumers and media organisations. We were not wrong and in looking back on this year I suggest it is the year when Twitter and Facebook really came into the consciousness of mainstream media and the general public. Regardless of the particular tools, the era of consumer participation in mass media is certainly upon us.

January also saw a nice mention by Damien Mulley in his ones to watch for 2009. Damien as usual was not far off the mark with people like Pat Phelan, Sabrina Dent, Darragh Doyle, Patrick Collison and Niall Harbison never far from the consciousness of those working in the Internet industry in Ireland. In hindsight I would have added Krishna De, prolific in spreading the gospel of social media among the business and public relations community; Maman Poulet, aka Suzie Byrne, consistently offering an alternative voice in the clutter of political journalism; and Mark Little, who arrived on Twitter mid-year and is a staunch advocate for the journey that traditional media must now embark upon.

In February we had the now infamous gaff by Fianna Fail who invited bloggers to the launch of their new website without telling them that they were launching their new website. A tirade of fury followed and a lesson for all in politics (and business) about how not to deal with the Internet community. I’m reminded of a post I wrote 18 months ago and that still holds through, that there are rules, even if they are unspoken. Lesson 1 – figure out the rules before you engage.

In March the conversation continued about how the social and transactional Interwebs needed to come closer together, with many businesses starting the see the potential benefits of social media on their bottom line. I had the priviledge of being the first chair of the IIA’s Social Media Working Group and in April we launched a guide to blogging for businesses with some great case studies from Aedan Ryan of Puddleducks and Michelle Daly of Paddy Power Trader. I have no doubt that in 2010 more Irish businesses will dip their toes into the social Internet. Many will succeed and many others will fail because they don’t take the time to understand it.

In May the Irish Internet Association held it’s annual congress and NetVisionary awards. A strong international dimension, both in terms of indigenous Internet businesses succeeding abroad and the presence of the world’s Internet giants who chose Ireland as a hub, gave a great sense of the potential that exists for our industry. Little did we know that Fergal O’Byrne would soon be leaving the IIA after four years at the helm. More than ever, the Internet industry needs a strong voice to represent it. I wish Joan Mulvihill every success in her new role.

June saw the local elections and for some politicians a reminder that just because you are engaged with social media doesn’t mean that you will have Obama-esque success. July was a special month for me personally as we had a new addition in the family. Late in the month we had a bit of banter about some stats that I tried to pull together on the top Irish-owned website properties. One of the most fascinating discoveries for me was the meteoric growth in popularity of the boards.ie website and other non-Irish social sites such as Facebook, Bebo, Blogger and Twitter.

In August as the scale of the inefficiencies with our public sector became evermore clear the role of e-government in helping to address those inefficiencies crystalised, for me at least. The ante was also upped on talk of smart economies as the Government announced the Global Irish Economic Forum in Farmleigh in September. I managed to wrangle a pass to the event and I tweeted and shared some of the big ideas that emerged. The official recommendations emerged in October. Other than the recently revealed feasibility study being funded by Dermot Desmond for a global cultural university, there is little public visibility on any other outcomes.

In October we started talking in detail about how realistic it was for Ireland to position itself as an innovation island and the need for an online network to bring innovators together. This conversation is not over yet and the reality of such a suitable network remains unfinished business. Would that the idea had a sponsor (such as Dermot Desmond) and yet the role of individual innovators and agencies such as Enterprise Ireland and the IDA should not be underestimated.

I hope that 2009 has been as stimulating a year for you as it has been for me. I will be taking some time out over the coming weeks to pull together some ideas I have for a new project in 2010. In the meantime I wish you and your’s every good wish for the festive season.

Wikipedia - "the sum of all human knowledge"

Is the wisdom of the crowd really a substitute for the genius of Aristotle, Shakesphere or Chomsky? Is our culture in reality dumbing down when someone like Jimmy Wales suggests that a sure sign that  “culture is getting smarter” is the fact that we have transitioned over 30 years from watching TV programmes such as We Love Lucy to the “intellectually challenging” Seinfeld and Lost?

Wikipedia is the world’s biggest reference work. It is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by tens of thousands of volunteers around the world and has a vision to be the “sum of all human knowledge”. There are 3 million articles in the English language and millions of others in nearly every other language, including 9,135  in Irish. Wikipedia is the 5th most popular website in the world. In China, restaurant menus offer “Wikipedia stir-fry” to tourists; a testament to the charitable project’s positive influence on one of the darkest places on our planet, bringing a glimmer of the light of free speech.

Despite Wikipedia’s lofty vision and its undoubted value in collating information on every topic imaginable, I am left a little unsatiated by it. It does serve as an aggregator of the things we know, but it doesn’t actually increase human knowledge. It doesn’t bring new insights to human thought.

Jimmy Wales also took some time to promote Wikia, a new commercial project that allows individuals to create wiki’s on popular topics that might not fit into Wikipedia. Some examples highlighted included a wiki on hacking Canon cameras, a wiki on the topic of homelessness in Tampa Bay, a wiki on sustainable living and a recipes wiki. There is also an all encompasing Answers Wiki, similar to Yahoo! Answers, but where there is only one answer to an inviduals’ question that is written collaboratively.

Wales sees Wikia as a replacement for message boards where “super-geeks” are no longer just talking to each other, but are “sharing insights” with a wider audience -  “the super geeks are writing stuff that is interesting to the rest of us.”  It seems that the most popular topics on Wikia however are on popular “intellectually challenging” US TV shows and are used by thousands of people to get a better understanding of the storylines and plots.

There is no doubt that “consumer media is becoming dominant” as Wales points out. He cites the example of a Google search for “muppet” where the  top three links returned are all consumer generated content with the official page of the Muppets often not making it onto the first page of Google search results.

The quality of collaborative writing  has been maintained, according to Wales, because there is only a “very tiny number of malicious people in the world.” However he does suggest that there are lots of “idiots” out there who write “stupid things” and that this is evidenced on Wikipedia by the increasing volume of reversions that are taking place there. A reversion occurs when a person edits an article on Wikipedia and that entry is subsequently erased and the article reverted to the previous version by a senior editor. Apparently this occurs to 80% of the edits made by newcomers to Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales being interviewed by Mark Little at the TCD Philosophical Society 27/10/2009

The downsides of collaborative writing and crowd-sourcing are self-evident, but this shouldn’t take from the intrinsic benefits; in connecting people with common interests, in greater openness and sharing of knowledge and in the potential for breaking down barriers between opposing viewpoints.

It also taps into the fundamental enjoyment we get from expressing ourselves. When Wales tried to offer money to some super-geeks to write content for him, he was met with the response (paraphrased) – “if you give me money you’re going to tell me how to do it and when to do it. Just tell me what you want me to write. I’m that interested in what I do and you couldn’t pay me enough to do it.”

However, can collaborative online projects actually bring forth new insights into existing conundrums or promote advances in human understanding?

Insight is different to knowledge…
Knowledge happens in your head,
insight happens in your being.
Knowledge comes from others and
it accumulates, insight is your own
and it transforms you.

Knowledge makes you worldly but it
weighs you down, insight makes you
wise and sets you free. Knowledge is
old and stale, insight is fresh and in
the moment. Knowledge needs up-
dating, insight is timeless.

- Robin Wheeler

In recent discussions here we’ve been trying to identify a model for an online collaborative network that could successfully bring innovators together with a view to helping to take breakthroughs,  insights and innovative solutions out to the marketplace. One of the fears expressed by some innovators is the fear that others will steal ideas, and so they are proposing that everyone sign NDAs before being allowed to participate in any collaborative network.

Is seems that the knowledge economy and the collaborative nature of what we do online are not well aligned. But sure we knew that already.

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