Next10, Standing out from the wisdom of the crowds
Geplaatst door Rene Jansen
Recently I had the pleasure to present at Next10 in Berlin. With Winkwaves we presented "The smell of human flesh in social media, how the Next Manager can be inspired by roses and innovation portals to stand out from the wisdom of the crowds".
My presentation represented our first thoughts on "The Next Manager", a topic that we will explore and research like we did with "Domweg, grofweg, emotions in social media" earlier this year. A whitepaper on this topic will appear shortly, but feel free to check out the video from my presentation or check the slides on slideshare already:
During Next10, I was touched by some other presenters as well. It was a pleasure to join Stowe Boyd's presentation. Stowe stressed the importance of "the stream" as your primary source of information, and that "the stream" will even become completely integrated in your OS, just as important as the Finder for instance.
It reminded me about Bruno Latour. Bruno is a "French Anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies". His interesting social theory could be summarised (but then I don't give him all the credits he deserves) by the importance of the "now", he states that "theories of social structures" and "agency theories" are stale, because all that matters in the social interaction is what happens "now". Reason why Stowe's presentation reminded me about Bruno's work is since this might be a theoretic underpinning of his statement on the importance of the stream, which is so much about the now as well.
However, I think from information science perspective three approaches stay important:
- the stream is the inspiring pro-active disruption you need to stay creative
- the wisdom of crowd (#daretoask) comes alive in the stream but becomes the most important re-active source of information
- archives are searchable structured reifications of discussions and negotiated meaning for all knowledge exchanges where the wisdom of crowds is a less efficient means (no one wants to answer general knowledge questions like who is Steve Jobs).
Interestingly, the third approach might stay important, but the search results might still come alive in the stream, combined with the first two. WIll spend some more thoughts on this next few months I think.
Stefana Broadbent (Department of Anthropology at UCL University College London) presented about her research how we use different communication channels for different type of relations. Her research showed a (quite forseeable but still interesting) hierarchy of attention that indicates an inverse relation between attention and number of contacts, and a corresponding channel:
- voice (skype, landline, mobile): high and immediate attention, number of regular contacts 3-4 per day
- text (IM, texting, email): deferred attention, close ties, low volume, number of regular contacts 10-20 per day
- social media (facebook, twitter): low attention, weak ties, high volume (>100) (no obligation to reply, so replying feels like a gift)
From a design perspective she mentioned that Facebook supports all three levels, and that we choose what is appropriate. Her suggestion was to read: Charles Derber (1979): The pursuit of attention.
My conclusive feeling, was that we are still in the front group of thinking, even within an international perspective. The fact that my video presentation is in the top viewed presentations of all time Next conference video's stresses this (and I am damn proud about that ;)








