I openly embrace the internet culture in all its quirkiness It's a beautiful life and Life is always good
My home site is at Work Monkey Labs. I have just started on Github and Gitpages for web development for Work Monkey labs. More to come. Will take it one by one. Looking for more contributors.
Work Monkey labs has a unique brand voice on the intersection between social collaboration, social networks, Crowds, Collective intelligence and Swarms.
We love being an individual with all our likes, dislikes and interests and yet find comfort and strength in numbers. We love the safety and companionship of others. there is dichotomy as well as merits in being social
We stand to gain by being part of a group. United we stand divided we fall, is a great saying
Collaboration has been defined as the art of working together with the intention of producing something of value. When we collaborate with others, a new relationship is born. We need to be open enough to accept it.
Whether we know it or not, our social cooperation has been the key in our evolution as human species. We believed in the shared thoughts, knowledge and information which led to our growth and development.
Such social cooperation can be looked at both from science and art perspective. There is an element of 'give and take' in our social cooperation which makes it an art. We need to be flexible, help others and to realize long term mutually beneficial outcomes.
As an individual, we may not possess all the expertise in the world. We depend on others to accomplish our tasks. It is the same with others. The adage from Aristotle suits well which says ' The whole is greater than the sum of parts'. In effect, We are not islands anymore. If we pool our efforts, we will be accomplishing more as a group than one person doing it on his or her own.
There is also the science aspects to social collaboration.
It would be interesting to talk about the 'Edge of Chaos' concept. It is understood that most of the systems in the physical, biological and sociological world thrive at the edge of chaos. A state where it is not too rigid and nor too loose.
It is in this state that new ideas and worlds emerge and evolve.
The same situation can be viewed at work environment as well.
When employees operate in semi structures, where it is not too rigid to restrict freedom to express freely their thoughts and share ideas with others and not too loose to create chaos, we can see huge shifts in collaboration at work.
It is in this state or collaborative environment that we can see social collaboration happening it is in this state that social collaboration among employees happen.
Many innovative organisations have followed best practices in this area.
Some of them include setting up innovative ideas hubs where the invlovement is by free expression through emails others include coffee counter conversations within the same office floor.
More to come...