Capital C

Locked Wallets

The American Baby Boomer has powered the world’s economy since the 1950’s.  They are the true consumers, whose idea for self-actualization was more, more, more.   They had the optimism, wealth and borrowing capacity to feed their cravings.
Almost over night everything has changed for many of them.  Their savings and house equity has been decimated, they now see their retirement is no longer within arms reach, and they fear losing their jobs. My question is that when we do pull out of this recession, will they again pull out their wallets?   I wouldn’t bet on it, my belief is that you will see a more frugal consumer, who will tuck away more of their savings, in havens they can trust.

Elements of Community

Shared Identity
The lifeblood of a robust community is the creation of a shared identity, deepening the ‘pools of shared meaning’ and forming a community narrative while fostering attachment.

Organizational learning
Organizational learning is best enabled when the philosophy behind communities of practice are clearly defined; their goals, mission and vision are explicit and tangible. Over time, this results in the development of shared mental models and a shared purpose. Sustainability results when systems thinking or the feedback loop is vibrant and vital.

Negotiation of Meaning
The negotiation of meaning is how we experience the world and our engagement in it as meaningful. This is where experiential meets existential in the community; activities and conversations that translate into deeper shared understanding and learning.

Tangibility
Tangibility involves turning the abstract into a ‘congealed’ form, for instance in documents, symbols and other artifacts. Tangibility takes abstract ideas and group activity and turns them into coordinated, mutual understanding.

Active Participation
Active participation (rather than passive) is active involvement in social process. It involves participation not just in translating the tangible ideas into embodied experience, but in recontextualising and personalizing its meaning. Eventually, this leads to the self organization that creates the most robust and engaged communities.

Alignment of Individuals
Alignment requires the ability to co-ordinate perspectives and actions in order to direct energies to a common purpose. The challenge of alignment is to connect local efforts to broader goals and conversations in ways that allow ‘learners’ to invest their energy into common (but personalized) vision.

Knowledge-ability and Scaffolding
Knowledge-ability enables the work of community building and guarantees that diverse participants have access to the resources necessary to learn, and the perspectives and thought leadership required to make sense of the ideas. Young communities need rapid but solid scaffolding to support it's growth and development.

Boundary Encounters
Encounters involving sharing (best) practices and perspectives among naturally evolving groups within the community. These encounters involve connections that effect and align the way each cluster connects to support common goals. Crucial to the success of the boundary encounter is the role of highly skilled brokers, who straddle different groups and exchange process.

Brokers and Brokering
The job of brokering is the translation, co-ordination and alignment between perspectives and ideas. It requires enough legitimacy to influence the development of a practice, mobilize attention and address conflicting interests. Toward this end, brokering provides a participatory connection, based on experience, expertise and judgment.

For a deeper dive into these ideas, I'd suggest the works of Etienne Wenger and Peter Senge.

From Herding to 'Nerding'

Herding is defined by sociologists as excessive collective behavior. Nerding (lovingly termed) is excessive collective behavior online by the digerati. Ironically, this might be the future of mass...

Open Innovation; Open for Business

It used to be a door sign that invited a shopper into a retail environment. Today it personifies the more forward looking organizations, who look beyond their four walls to find innovative products, services, models and people.  Procter and Gamble is using an open for business approach to attract inventors, and to power half of its new product innovations. Others are setting up wikis with their customers, sharing employees with other organizations, or using new software like Rypple to get immediate feedback that then drives immediate action.
Tony Chapman

Visual Thesaurus Brainstorming

Sometimes after a few minutes of idea generating, the sparks stop flying.
Occasionally I'll open a book or a magazine, and start scanning words and images to help the stream of conciousness flow somewhere fresh.
Lately, I've opened up the visual thesaurus, and punched in relevant words to unleash new thought streams. The way the words connect help open new 'idea portals'.
It's like a prewired mind-map! Give it a try.

More Insight On 'Hypercube' from Jesse Hirsh

http://jessehirsh.com/hypercube-casting-a-reality-tv-show

Tony Talks

Here are a few Tony Talks, more to come!
'Creativity in Canada' - part 1 and part 2
From 'mass to my' thinking
BNN; biztalk
Toscano Pizza, CBC perspective
Marketing Thoughts, Nissan Hypercube on BNN
More on The HyperCube (BNN)
Tony On HyperCube and Social Media (CTV)
TC's Toronto

Head, Heart & Hands

 People today are overwhelmed with choices and with that emotion comes stress and guilt.  They in turn are often conflicted with their ‘head’ list – things they feel they should be doing, like exercising more, watching a serious movie or documentary, getting financial affairs in order and their ‘heart’ list – things they love to do.  It often creates procrastination and paralysis, and with that comes guilt – they never get their hands moving.
So if you are one of the many that feel conflicted, or unproductive, an interesting approach is to narrow the head list to just three things, and with each one attach something from your heart list.   If you go to the gym three times this week, then I reward with Popcorn and a Fluff Movie.  If you get your financial plan in order, and stay disciplined to your savings target, then enjoy shopping for those new jeans.  Connect the head with the heart, and watch those hands move.
Tony Chapman

From Social Media to Global Media

A nice twixperience- twittervision. There's something magical about watching a global conversation popping up before your peepers. This goes beyond social media, it's global media. If we can't experience this with a certain amount of awe, we might be getting numb to the magic of digital media...

SkimCulture

We're turning into a culture of skimmers; enabled by microblogs and snappy stat updates, aggregators and data viz magic.
This week, Skimmer launched in beta, an app that will allow you feed your digital streams into one skimmable reality. While not the first, they're another example of this approach to information compacting.
As Churchill said, "we change our structures then our structures change us."
Are our brains going to change to accommodate a 'skimculture', rewiring to nibble many small bits of info, without stomach for the deeper dives? Evolution would say yes.