Crowdsourcing…

Studying for my Information Systems exam I found this really interesting video about crowdsourcing. Check it out…

Government 2.0

I just finished a group presentation for a Knowledge Management course I am taking for my MBA. The company we presented is a huge data mining firm called Attensity. They focus on a wide variety of industries with specific attention being placed on goverment. Check it out…

Check it out… Did You Know 4.0

Cities Go Climate Positive

I recently had a friend from Australia stay with me for a few days. We spent some time in Niagara Falls and saw the sites in Toronto. It was a pretty fun filled couple of days. After seeing the falls, we checked out Ben Harper, watched the Jays and the Yankees, went to the Hockey Hall of Fame and climbed the CN tower.

As we took pictures of the city from the CN Tower, I couldn’t help but to notice the number of energy guzzling sky scrappers that I stood face to face with. I thought to myself – imagine if all of these massive buildings supported a natural green environment on their rooftops. I’m sure I am not the first person to think of this and I’m sure it wouldn’t take much. Lay a tarp down, drop some top soil, and wait for the seeds to grow! Think of the difference this would make if half of Toronto’s buildings were able to take part in this green initiative. Carbon emissions would decrease, the environment would be much cleaner, and there may be a few more homes for wildlife. Whenever I have some sort of idea like this, naturally I turn to youtube. Check it out:

NIN Fans, iPhone Fans and Everyone…

Check out this new iPhone App by Trent Rezner, Rob Sheridan and Digg’s Kevin Rose.

Us Now

I recently had the opportunity to check out the premier of a documentary film called “Us Now.” The film features Canada’s own Don Tapscott, author of one of my favourites: “Wikinomics”, as well as JP Rangaswami and Clay Shirky. The main idea of the film describes Social Networking and discusses how websites like facebook, flickr and youtube allow us to “reorganize almost any aspect of our own lives.” The film goes as far as discussing a new type of goverment where ‘the people’ are much more actively involved in the process via the internet. Imagine a goverment run the way wikipedia operates… open source government? Really?

Check out the trailer:

Did you know?

Here is an eye-opening video that was originally created by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Bronman. For more information check out

http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/

Enjoy!

A $1540 MBA

A few years ago a friend sent me a document titled The Personal MBA. Cleaning up my computer I came across the document and started surfing.

The Personal MBA is a way of mastering business without business school. The concept of the PMBA outlines 77 books that help with the following: quick start, productivity and effectiveness, psychology and communication, design and production, marketing, sales and negotiation, entrepreneurship, management and leadership, strategy and innovation, finance and analysis, as well as personal finance.

I realize I am not going to have a plaque on my wall after reading these books. However, with the plans of making some money and travelling for the next year, why wouldn’t I invest $1540 on a Personal MBA? It will give me a solid foundation and help create a business mind so that when the time comes, I will be locked and loaded. And where else am I going to get an education with such a collaborative effort from the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferriss, Donald Norman, and Garr Reynolds?

And think about the amount of money you waste everyday on useless things. I bet if you wrote down how much money you spent on food and drink for 4 months, you would easily find the funding for your PMBA. Not to mention, you can always hit up the public library and deal with a few late fees.

PS I figured each book would cost approximately $20 each totaling $1540. Thats a pretty cheap MBA if you ask me.

 

Dooms Day Seed Vault

Here’s a prime time example of mass collaboration. A friend of mine told me about a vault that was built in Norway. It took scientists 7 years to collect 1.5 billion different species of seeds. The idea behind the vault was to preserve the world’s food source in case of an emergency. I watched an interesting video from 60 minutes at this site http://www.croptrust.org/main/#videos

First off, I think it’s quite scary to say the least. It seems like we have totally destroyed the planet and are preparing for absolute chaos. However, the other side of the coin presents this idea as a great one. In case of any natural disasters, or human mismanagement, we have a resource that can save our crop diversity.

Workipedia: Office Wikis and the Collaboration Revolution

Check out this post from fastcompany.com. I’m thinking I should send them a resume!

Gone are the days of paper here at the offices of FastCompany.com. Virtually all in-house office communication is done electronically. E-mail is a given, as is teleconferencing. But what our office does, along with an increasing number of other streamlining-minded businesses, is employ wikis extensively.

The only paperwork I’ve had to do since I began working here is filling out timesheets and filling out W-2s. Having a paperless working environment has done wonders to decrease our carbon footprint while making project collaboration extremely simplified. We use Drupal, an open source content management system, to build our website. We use BaseCamp, a message board project management system as the primary tool of communication about upcoming projects instead of e-mail. No memos, no print-outs of drafts, and best of all no TPS reports. It’s all online.

Tools such as Drupal and BaseCamp make running a website simple and easy (most of the time). But it’s not just businesses that are using wikis to de-clutter their offices and streamline the way they operate: Newsweek reported late last year that the United Nations uses in-house wikis to help facilitate negotiation and debate about various issues of international importance. So too does the U.S. intelligence community; in fact, its collaborative sharing system among sixteen agencies is named “Intellipedia” (aren’t those government types clever?). The movement goes even further – some foreign governments are even using wikis to “involve constituents in policymaking.”

I guess the days of lawmakers hashing out deals in smoke-filled rooms are ending just as quickly as the all-night office brainstorm session. Two heads are better than one, especially when it comes to the kinds of services I talked about. Effective collaboration has always been the make-or-break factor with group projects. Wikis are just the way to do it.