Older, but no wiser

Great post from Stuart Henshall, using the metaphor of jazz musicians to describe how collaborative blogging might contribute to accelerated learning; he's thinking in the specific business context of knowledge management, but I think the idea may have wider application. Not sure about the commercial aspects, which seem to indicate a potential that might run counter to open source philosophy, but then I may not have understood his model fully.

"This type of community is like a great jazz club. Infectious, Ingenious, Interactive, and Integrative, playing in an information rich world that demands elegance, simplicity, transparency and clear notes on the solutions employed. We accept in joining that 'all of us' are better than any one of us in creating new sources of value. Band members would be here to collectively harness our intelligence, collaborate and have some serious fun while doing it.

This means that no one can grab it, no one person can put their arms around and everyone must nurture it. That makes it Chaordic. You can empathize with us, and appreciate the collective intelligence within. It's collaborative, emergent, with enough structure to encourage self organization but not enough to signal a fixed agenda, or the next topic. We know where we are starting but not where it might lead us. It's about connecting, It is about flows. It is about curiosity. Ultimately it is about better questions and learning faster. Our tools will be conversations and dialogues. …. We begin with a small group, and begin building on it with a global perspective".

Lots more in the original post. I confess I haven't thought the detail through; I just caught a whiff of the potential being sparked off here.