rebarbarised

Defining autopoiesis

Tom Quick in Introduction to Autopoiesis, quoted in Ken Thompson's Bioteams:

in crude terms a system is autopoietic if the bits and pieces of which it is composed interact with each other in such a way as to continually produce, and maintain, that set of bits and pieces, and the relationships between them.

Nice and concise. So now you know.

Embracing anarchistic media

From Jim Griffin in an email to the Pho list last night (my emphasis):

As a culture, we must sustain art, knowledge, culture, innovation.

We'll find a way to accommodate anarchistic media. My bet is it will involve actuarial economics and not actual control.

Brands and communities

I rarely read or hear anything about brands that works at an explanatory, rather than hand-waving voodoo, level. This from Mark Earls isn't particularly explanatory

The Great Bullmore once wrote that "People build brands as birds build nests, from scraps and straws we chance upon." (That's the People, out there not you marketers).

The best a marketer can do is host, facilitate and encourage them to collaborate to build brands (and "brand value") with each other. The better you get at doing this, the greater the value of the assets you have in the bank.

... But it at least chimes with something Jay Cross said to me in interview (though not included in Jay's edit of my notes) about informal learning in professional communities:

You can encourage networking but you can’t mandate it – all you can do is create the optimum conditions for it to flourish where and when it takes hold.

Social Innovation Camp

My rough notes from Social Innovation Camp today. See also Guardian coverage plus David Wilcox's blog and videos.

Judges: Paul Birch (dot com entrepreneur), Roland Harwood (NESTA), ? from Office of Third Sector, Becky Faith (?), Christian ? (Yahoo), plus at least one other that I didn't get.

Ontheup.org Personal Development Reports

Stakeholders: young people, team leaders, commissioners of projects

real accounts and real stories from real people in real time

each stakeholder can see needs of the others

Stuffshare.com

a power drill is used for 20 mins in its lifetime

"a place to share stuff with people like you"

free to communities, companies pay

Developed in ruby on rails

trusted networks, lightweight reputation, not eBay

primary instinct is to buy - this has to change

Rate Your Prison

150,000 children have parents in prison

good family relations reduce reoffending

prison visit league table

issue of validating that rating is based on a real visit, but retain anonymity to avoid repercussions for inmates

precedent of patientopinion and positive impact on NHS

Enabled by Design

Denise diagnosed with MS in 2003

aid gadgets make your home look like a hospital

how to connect the needs of people with disabilities to design expertise?

WiBi.it (aka Barcode Wikipedia) 

(domain not working yet, at time of writing)

When buying food, people want more info than is on the label

what does FairTrade really mean?

mashup with reviews from Amazon etc

cvlifeline.co.uk

migrants, women returners - people out of touch with labour market

tag experience, skin it, get it rated

bounty fee from recruiters and employers

monster and guardian could buy white label version of service

The Glue

ageing population, dispersed family members, don't know where the will is etc

1. find local - contact others who have family members near yours, share info about useful people to talk to at local council, health care etc
2. family blogs
3. third part that I didn't get...

prototype in drupal

Winner (£2,000): Enable by Design

Runner up (£1,000): Rate Your Prison

Leveraging brand equity to better improve our monetisation of user-generated assets

Corporate jargon... where do I start?

Every verb has to be preceded by 'better' (and if that involves splitting an infinitive, so much the better). No one in corporate life just does something. No one just does something well. No, you must do something better.

Here's one from everyone's favourite whipping boy strategic leader and eloquent visionary, Bill Gates, "Maybe they'll tell us how we can better improve our products."

Better improve? As opposed to worse improve?