The natural inclination right now for geeks of a certain type is to start dreaming up new standards bodies, or how they can participate in the Open Web Foundation to make a Super Awesome Twitter API Evolution Committee. Here’s my recommendation: Don’t. Don’t do any of that shit, and don’t run off to make membership badges for the Treehouse Club quite yet. Instead, just iterate and ship. Keep making new apps and see what you can do to stretch the limits of the existing methods and structures.

[quoting Anil Dash]

It’s everywhere. It’s natural. I’ve written about it before as “designer’s ego.” I’m not a developer and I don’t understand the full implications of the Twitter API, but the logic applies universally. People just really want to do great things in big, carefully planned and orderly ways — but that’s not how the best stuff gets made.

Conventional wisdom says that open standards are created by endless deliberations among experts and big tech companies, and those do sometimes gain traction.

But this is how it usually happens: Someone goes first. No one thinks of it as an open standard. Then someone clones it. All of a sudden people get ideas. Inspired, someone goes third. At this point it’s inevitable that there will be a fourth and fifth and so on.

[quoting Dave Winer]

Creating new things is all about putting different things together — e.g. WordPress or Tumblr + the Twitter API — but the moments of opportunity don’t last forever. Opportunities don’t stay ripe forever, sometimes if you don’t make something out of them right away, they’re gone before there’s time to ask permission or run it by the committee (assuming you can even explain it without a working model).

Copenhagen might be another case where the desire for Super Awesome Committees (and Super Awesome Rallies) has got in the way of actual accomplishments — though in that case I think big attention-getting efforts may help the cause, even if they don’t accomplish as much as we’d like in real terms.

In other words, sometimes we need a big lever, sometimes we can just use our hands and the lever gets in the way.

It depends. It comes down to managing a moving equilibrium between open and closed approaches by applying a kind of Coasean logic.

As long as agents can effectively conduct transactions (or “integrations,” or whatever) without some kind of overarching structure, then no formal association is required. But for some cases the cost of finding and facilitating integrations might be high enough to require an organizational structure or plan.

The problem is that once you make it structured, the structure itself consumes maintenance resources and attention, even if nothing is accomplished.

Umair Haque had a great, thought-provoking post on something like this a while back too.

Start from the ground, look at what’s around us and what we really need. Don’t trample what’s already growing in order to plant a new orchard… you might starve before fruition (if there’s any at all).

*Originally posted at brianfrank.ca, December 18, 2009.

[Sorry for re-posting an oldie but I've been getting a lot of lectures from Londoners on this topic -- as if I'd never put a moment's thought into it -- and there were also a couple of comments to the effect of "if you aren't doing something about change then don't criticize." Posting here is a reminder that I've stuck my neck out and failed a few times too -- and learned from my mistakes.]

Runs the full gamut, from articulating directives and sharing best practices (across a mind-boggling array of government agencies) to tapping citizens’ expertise and making use of applications developed from outside, figuring out how far to go with transparency, and creating a culture civic engagement is the norm.

Interesting inside-perspective on the challenges of spreading this very innovative, very massive, very important movement through the US administration. It’s mostly big picture stuff — not much we can start doing today but it’s all part of the same vital domain we need to be conversant in.

I’ve already expressed doubts about the “transporation hub” idea here and here. It isn’t a bad idea to beef up London’s transportation capacity as one specific part of a broader plan, but as the central component it will ultimately fail to do what we need our plan to do in the long-run, which is to create an identity we can rally around and sell to the world with one voice.

Unless you already spend a lot of time thinking about transit and local economic development — i.e. unless you’re a municipal politician — you’re unlikely to be very turned-on by a “1-2-3-Transport Hub!” rallying cry.

We need a common, compelling, comprehensive, and coherent concept that engages and inspires Londoners to invest themselves more deeply in support of the local economy and community. We need a plan that centres-on one simple theme that people just intuitively grasp and identify with — like putting a bunch of little flames together to make one hot fire for boiling a lot of bigger pots.

Some of the more thoughtful local leaders have been talking up the need to “beat our own drum” and “sing from the same hymn book.” The music metaphors are very appropriate. In the same way that some songs just stick in our head, some ideas just seem to naturally generate interest and action.

From Made To Stick to Animal Spirits, there’s been no shortage of great arguments for a more human-centric approach to promoting business and economic development.

So what’s the idea for London?

The more I think about it, the more I keep coming back to livability.

It’s hardly a new idea, the term is habitually bandied around the political scene. Every Londoner ought to have a natural affinity for it – as if everyone who moves or stays here is pre-wired to like it. Think of people who pick London as the ideal city to raise a family, or the most comfortable place to retire, or (somewhat at-odds with the other two) the place with the best student experience.

And think of the businesses we’re known for. Off the top of my head I can’t help notice that a disproportionate number of prominent companies founded in the London area have embodied a “life”-oriented ethic — or at least image.

The first that come to mind are GoodLife Fitness, and of course London Life with their famous “Freedom 55″ campaign. Then think of Canada Trust’s fit-to-your-lifestyle brand (which was adopted by TD after the merger). Now Libro Financial has been growing, largely thanks to their similar, people-centred, ‘liberating’ value proposition.

Regardless of how closely those firms adhere to their purported values (I’m not in a position to verify one way or another), they demonstrate that those values resonate with people here — or at least, people who build successful businesses in London tend to project a human-centric set of values — perhaps more critically than other cities.

So it doesn’t have to be just about London being a place to live more sustainably & generatively (i.e. more “livably”); beyond that — and this is where our immediate concerns about jobs and growth begin to be addressed — it can be about selling London as a natural location to establish and grow more progressively positioned enterprises.

In other words, this is our pitch for attracting entrepreneurs: this is where the good, human-centric enterprises succeed.

It doesn’t matter if the business is manufacturing, high-tech, service, healthcare, whatever… it’s the values that will distinguish London’s economy.

And here’s the kicker: since the start of the global economic crisis, these more humanistic, sustainable & generative values have generated a ton of buzz. There’s a lot of mainstream brainstorming on high-level concepts like resetting the global economy, creative capitalism, humanistic capitalism, constructive capitalism, etc.

We can assume that even more entrepreneurial activity and investment in these areas will follow… here???

I don’t know — maybe this is ridiculously ambitious, but what’s the harm in thinking and talking about it?

Perhaps it’s just a dream that London could ever prosper as a centre of “a new economy for living”… but I’ll tell you this: if such a centre ever did develop — anywhere — I’ll want to hop on the next train there.

On Saturday I read a passing mention of it in the subhead to some comments by Chris Bentley, Amit Chakma, Anne Marie DeCicco-Best, Ed Holder, Gerry Macartney, and Howard Rundle, but there weren’t any details other than the date.

Then there was nothing about it on the city’s website. Nothing via the promising-looking link to London’s Next Economy — a page that has apparently not been updated since September 2005. Nothing on their Twitter or Facebook either. And nothing about it on the London Economic Development Corporation’s site. Couldn’t find anything on their events or news listings. Nothing on their Twitter. Searching with Google and Bing didn’t turn up anything relevant at all. Nobody was discussing it, none of the stakeholders, none of the participants (whoever they might be) seemed to have made any mention of it online whatsoever.

Which made me wonder, is anyone actually taking the event seriously? Is it the general public’s need to be informed that isn’t being taken seriously? Is that because the general public doesn’t care to be informed? (Or did I just miss something obvious? — which I wouldn’t bet against.)

Thankfully I only had to wait three days for the next edition of the London Free Press and by Tuesday morning I was reading all about it. This is from Chip Martin’s article:

More than 200 leaders of London business, labour, education, finance, government and other agencies will brainstorm this Thursday in a bid to devise an economic action plan.

The movers and shakers in the local economy are being brought together by the London Economic Development Corp., at the request of city council, to plan how London can succeed in the future.

…

White said the focus was expanded to deal with all aspects of the city and its economy where concern exists about unemployment levels, the loss of manufacturing jobs, comparatively low population growth and the challenge of finding suitable employment to retain university and college graduates.

After the summit, White said the LEDC will take the recommendations it produces, consider them in light of the city’s strategic plan and recommend a course of action to city council likely next month.

Well put it that way and it sounds pretty important, but the relative silence makes me wonder whether everyone thinks this is just a waste of time.

It’s just the impression I get when I don’t see anyone demonstrating ownership, nor any of the participants taking it upon themselves to acknowledge the event. Nobody, not even the LEDC [screenshot] or the London Convention Centre [screenshot], have posted it on their calenders.

Digital media is still fairly new but we’re getting to a point at which, for many of us, this seems unfathomable.

Then again, why wouldn’t everybody think a summit is a waste of time? We’re talking about over 200 of London’s busiest people using a substantial part of a workday for this. And it’s not like many of them would have much difficulty finding an audience for their input if the right insight and urge happened to occur to them at the right moment.

Ideas can occur anytime, anywhere. The post-summit action shouldn’t be to merely recommend an economic plan, it should also (if not primarily) be to establish a framework for ongoing deliberation — preferably a more open and dynamic kind — to capture all of the ideas and insights that go undocumented and forgotten week-after-week.

I’m disinclined to oppose any kind of public forum — and I sincerely hope everything goes well on Thursday. My complaint is that these kinds of challenges and opportunities should never stop being discussed in public — i.e. online.

I’m a fan of the the “Beyond Crisis” special report the Free Press has been doing. I can’t seem to improve on their “six key areas” idea (as much as I’d like to … It deserves more coverage by bloggers etc in the city, including me. We should be building more discussion around it.

Btw, TechAlliance deserves credit for (very) recently getting a shiny new sociable site — the first institutional site I know of in London with an RSS feed… I just can’t wait to see more!

I started thinking we need someplace to just try stuff. If it works, then great: we can replicate it on our own sites or even develop something more permanent, public, and professional. If it doesn’t work, then that’s ok too: without actually losing anything, we can cross-off a few ideas from the list and move forward to the next few –a little wiser and more experienced than we were before.

This whole idea is like that. It might turn out to be a complete dud. If that’s the case, then fine: on to the next thing.

So what did it accomplish?

1. It didn’t have to accomplish anything

First of all, if nothing else, it simply scratched an itch: intrinsic motivation. I’d been blogging about London for a while and started feeling like I wasn’t backing up my words with any action. (It’s arguable whether LDNbeta resembles any kind of “action” yet, but anyways) I got the idea one weekend and I just had to do something about it — one of those creative-person urges.

2. Established a model to work with

Consistent with the notion of “rapid prototyping” (also knowing I had to capitalize on the motivation-surge at that moment), it only took about 24 hours from the initial moment of conception through buying the domain name, installing and setting up WordPress, writing that inaugural post, and hitting publish so I could start sharing not just a vague idea but a working demonstration.

3. Learned about the limits of social media

It was an effective way to get the idea across (I think) but it turned out to be not such an effective way to get other people involved, i.e. to generate real results.

I learned that although social media can be an efficient way to get noticed, make introductions, share information, and stay in-touch with people, it isn’t well suited for generating collaboration during the development stages of new projects and initiatives. That requires a lot more in-person (or at least verbal) networking and relationship-building.

Collaborators have to establish foundations of mutual understanding and trust; that means eye contact, handshakes, laughs, and maybe a beverage or three.

4. Developed more domain-relevant knowledge

It compelled me to do more reading, thinking, and writing. There were a lot of things I’d missed before — probably still are, but in the course of that process I earned a better grasp of what I don’t know, what I still need to learn, and where to go from here… I became more “oriented”: I found a number of similar initiatives I could defer to and point at for reference.

5. Signaled interest, ability, and intent

Conversely, I was raising a flag; other people took notice of what I was doing — people who were already on the same wavelength, thinking about (and possibly starting) similar or complementary projects [not just in London]; sending the right signals with one’s existing work can greatly expedite the process of establishing mutual understanding and trust.

If we can see that someone has already read and thought about (and tried) many of the same things, then first contact becomes easier, more natural (for me, at least) and more fruitful, and I’m very grateful to have made some new connections with people who share some of my passions and interests in the past few months.

6. Focused sense of direction, and humility

There’s more material, substance, and momentum to build with now. There’s a bit of a platform to build on, I received some feedback from others — or at least a better sense of what people are interested in — and perhaps most importantly, I’ve eliminated a lot of possibilities, formerly-unknowns, mistakes, and dead-ends from the long list I started with.

Finally, the most recent insight I had is that maybe my proposals haven’t so much prescribed what ought to be done, they seem to have merely described what’s going to happen anyways. Things have gone in the direction I’ve been pushing but I can’t see any evidence that my pushes had any causal efficacy. So part of me wonders if I’ve merely been an opinionated annoyance to the people who are actually getting things done…

Regardless, that possibility has motivated me to make some changes; if I’m going to make a meaningful contribution (and you can feel free to read it with the word “I” changed to “we”) I’m going to have to work harder on:

• meeting and building relationships in-person
• original research (both the journalistic and the academic kind)
• deference to people and organizations that are ahead of me
• focused and assertive criticism of what people and organizations need to correct or improve
• professional presentation — such as limiting the use of the word “I”

Those are the intentions, at least — essentially the same things I need to improve on in general… and come to think of it, the foregoing list of accomplishments looks more or less like the core imperatives I keep coming back to — i.e. the whole reason I blog at all…

Well, so much for the “what I did this summer” story. Time to look outwards and ahead.

I have some high hopes for where this whole movement might lead. The rumbling on the horizon sounds deeper, the cadence more persistent — pretty hard to ignore now.

And now that everyone’s coming back from vacation or whatever, I’m looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish in the fall, winter, and beyond.

[Note: some minor changes were made Aug. 30.]

If you’re like me then you’ve already blogged about why you blog – so you can just share a link to that (i.e. in the comments or add it to LDNbeta’s FriendFeed).

(Here’s one of mine.)

When we have a better idea of what everyone else is doing this for, we’ll be better able to help and encourage each other, and add value to everyone else’s whatchyamacallit, ‘social media existences,’ or whatever.

No rush.

The problem is, the global movement as a whole doesn’t have a distinct, identifiable name yet, as John Geraci discussed for O’Reilly Radar:

Gov2.0, e-gov, e-democracy, open gov–these are all names that get applied to what is happening. And they are great for describing a certain aspect of this movement, the aspect that actually deals with government.

…But that ecosystem doesn’t fit neatly  under the hood of “Gov 2.0″ or any of the other “gov” labels.

Recalling my post last week about the four pillars of an open civic system, these “gov” names–e-gov, gov2.0, open gov–focus on the G2C aspect of what is going on, to the exclusion of the other aspects of this open civic system that is emerging.

And this new civic system should have a name, because it is a real ecosystem. It is also a movement, with more and more people focusing on it around the world every day. It is also increasingly becoming an industry.

So what do we call this new thing?

My own preference is simply “open government.”

What was the secret?

Sure enough, when the critical population density was reached or there was a certain degree of migration between subgroups there was also archaeological evidence of modern human behavior.

“As population density increases, people migrate between groups more,” Thomas said during a telephone interview. “That increases the probability that any skill that’s difficult to learn doesn’t get lost or decay.”

Sounds familiar.

I’m re-reading Richard Florida‘s Rise of the Creative Class (it’s actually a better book than I’ve been giving him credit for) and — as any reader of this blog ought to know — he makes basically the same case (in my interpretation):

Density = Creativity = Prosperity

This is the theory that LDNbeta is premised on. In fact, this is the same general notion I advocated in the previous post.

Different people have different knowledge and skills, which complement each other in complex ways. It’s like we’re each a piece of a giant, dynamic puzzle. The more people we meet, and the more ways we interact, the more likely we are to find good creative fits that lead to bigger things.

“The basic idea conceptually is you can have individuals who are really great at inventing ideas and concepts and ways of approaching the world, but you need a certain population density to be able to have that stuff catch hold and spread.”

via aldaily

Update: Here’s much more from American Scientist (via 3qd):

Successive pulses of population expansion and contraction in southern Africa might explain why the Still Bay rose to prominence so abruptly across such a large area and then vanished in less than a millennium, and why the Howieson’s Poort began 7,000 years later and lasted about 5,000 years. For technological and behavioral innovations to be spread widely and rapidly, a cohesive network of social contacts is needed to promote the transmission of new ideas and inventions. Periods of population expansion of the L3 haplogroup could conceivably have created such a network and prompted geographically widespread trade and exchange of high-quality stone and symbolic artifacts across southern Africa. In this hypothesis, the gap between the Still Bay and the Howieson’s Poort represents a period of population contraction, during which social networks weakened or collapsed. The reasons for this calamity remain an enigma…

It might have taken another explosion in population size to reinvigorate this social network across southern Africa, resulting in the widespread transmission of the latest technological innovation associated with the Howieson’s Poort (backed blades for hunting weapons). This integrated, subcontinental network of hunter-gatherer communities was maintained for more than five millennia, but then disappeared about 60,000 years ago, perhaps in response to the population contractions and isolations identified by genetic studies. Similarly sophisticated stone-tool technology did not reappear for another 20,000 years—the end of the Middle Stone Age in East Africa—when there is evidence for renewed gene flow south of the Sahara.

Then it registered.

I always approach innovation and creativity from a fairly broad, “social entrepreneurship” perspective. When I talk about “innovation” I assume I’m referring to a very wide field that incorporates elements from art, science, business, and civics. Whereas most people who talk about innovation are specifically referring to advanced research in technology and science — and then, “How do we monetize that?”

That’s what organizations like TechAlliance and the Stiller Centre do — and do well, I take it — and should continue to do.

But I’d like to see more bridges across creative domains, more interaction between people in business, art, science, and civics (and why stop there?)

It’s one thing to mix and mingle with people from different backgrounds and disciplines, and to contribute to the same projects, each in our own way, at different times and places, but it’s another thing to really work with each other to create something.

This is something I’d like to see more of in London: business people, arts people, researchers, developers, politicians, activists, designers, visionaries, organizers… working together to create something, challenging each other to learn and grow by cultivating new kinds of knowledge and perspective.

Again I come back to the IDEO philosophy that LDNbeta began with. Specifically, the importance of hybrid teams. I especially like the way Bill Moggridge put it in this interview with MIT Technology Review in 2007 (free registration required):

Put together a team with a great engineer, a crazy designer, a good businessperson, and a good human-factors scientist or psychologist of some kind, and put them in a room and get them to try to work together. It’s a big challenge, but they come to a point, surprisingly quickly, where they realize that what they can achieve together is much more than they could do individually.

Where is that “room” in London?

Photo credit: chrisjfry.

For example, I googled “London Ontario Innovation” last night. Here’s what I got on the first page:

1. not from London, it’s for the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation
2. Innovations in Hair, a salon that doesn’t even have their own site; it’s posted to a generic listing service
3. a news/blog item announcing that ‘Innovation London 2009‘ — a drumming competition (?) — will be cancelled
4. Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre
5. a news item on London Topic from March 2008 announcing $11 million for London’s Innovation Industrial Park (finally!)
6. a Toronto-based legal blog post asking, Does Ontario’s Innovation Minister Wear Pajamas?
7. McGuinty Government Leads Delegation To World’s Largest Biotechnology Convention in Atlanta
8. more provincial stuff
9. finally the last result on the first page is for the London Economic Development Corporation — but it’s a PDF file listing federal and provincial support programs, with nothing there about London (except an address) and no links to the LEDC main page

This is what happens when there’s virtually no online dialog about innovation and business issues in London. Someone who might be thinking about relocating their startup to London could be booking their flight to Thunder Bay this very moment after stumbling on that city’s innovation centre while looking (unsuccessfully) for London’s.  

I mean, sure, the “Ontario” messes it up — i.e. the “London Innovation” search doesn’t generate any local results, for obvious reasons — but that just means we need to work even harder.

Having said that, the word “Ontario” in searches for “Waterloo Ontario Innovation,” “Guelph Ontario Innovation,” “Hamilton Ontario Innovation” didn’t turn up such dismal results.

The results were a little better for “innovation in London Ontario.” At least the LEDC’s home page was first, and WORLDiscoveries was there too — after the same salon, drumming competition and pronvincial site came up again — but then the very next result is my own post on London being “the future innovator of non-bullshit politics.” Yeah (I’ve changed the title to read “BS” now but will take a while to reflect in Google). Sorry.

Ideally those search results should look something like this:

1. a list of London-based companies that are actually driving innovation — not just using the word because it sounds hot (though we shouldn’t underestimate the economic value of forward-thinking hair stylists)
2. a London-based innovation centre or initiative, e.g. Southwestern Ontario Centre for Innovation (I made up the name — and by the way, I googled it: there weren’t any London results until the third page) [Correction: maybe the Stiller Centre fits this role... and further correction, so does TechAlliance in a different way... see my next post.]
3. news stories about innovation in London, preferably from recent months and published by London-based sources

Bottom line is that we need more people writing about, blogging and linking to London-related stuff online. For that to happen we need things to write about and link to. Both sides of that equation have to develop together, in tandem.

Paul Berton says “our ability to come together as a region and work as a team with institutions of higher learning and businesses to leverage our innovation, technology and knowledge-based economy… must start with the politicians.”

Not necessarily. I’m having trouble thinking of anything really good that started with politicians. (Think of the web itself, how it developed without top-down leadership.)

In a way, looking to politicians for leadership may actually be 180° from where we should be heading. Politicians have a role, of course, but just one of many — and as we move towards newer economic and civic models, theirs becomes more diminished (or at least less conventionally authoritative).

The true catalysts are whoever happens to have knowledge, skills, and passion suited to a particular problem or opportunity in a given time and place.

We add what value we can, according to what we have to offer. Then, building on that, still-newer opportunities emerge that are suited to other people, they add what they can, and it continues to cascade through various iterations, becoming a little more effective, vital, and sustainable as it progresses.

We have to stop waiting, stop asking. We all need to take an extra step from our comfort zones, towards the future (politicians included, so the zany letter was at least something)… or we’ll be the last ones there.

If a small town of 80 000 people [Chilliwack] can do something like this why can’t London, Ontario.  We have roughly 4 times as many people (within the city limits) as Chilliwack does and the network of bloggers in our city is very strong.  What is to stop London from doing something similar?

I think with the group of bloggers and social media people that are active in London this shouldn’t be something too difficult to get organized.  I’m sure that in London we could easily find a dozen bloggers (or more) who would dedicate 24 hours of their life and blog like they have never blogged before.  With the donations going to a worthy cause I don’t see it being very hard to get people to pitch in a little here or there to support worthy causes.

Kevin’s model is the Blogathon that has been done, successfully, in Vancouver for a couple of years. There’s more here too.

The gist is that any blogger who wants to sign up (or, for that matter, any non-blogger who wants to start) collects pledges to post at least every 30 minutes over a 24 hour period. 

Apart from the obvious benefits to charity, this is a great way to raise the profile of blogging in London and to build an even stronger network (to do even more good over a sustained long-term).

I’m IN.

“Community is great because it makes people feel good, democratizes the process, but also delivers value. One of our writers wrote a story, and the comments pointed out that she only talked to one guy about one aspect of the story. She said ‘I read the comments and thought F*!@ you. I wrote a story. Go write your own.’ But then she admitted it was true, phoned someone else, and updated the story. For me, that’s a gigantic win for us and for readers as well. That’s where the feedback should be. ”

“I’ve also seen a noticeable change in tone in comments and other interactive forums, like Coveritlive.com. As soon as someone from the paper steps in and makes a comment, the whole tone changes. If you just give people a blank wall and a spray paint can, you get a predictable outcome. But as soon as anyone says we should stick to the topic or knock off the personal attacks, it has a noticeable effect.

That’s Mathew Ingram speaking to ReadWriteWeb about his great work as communities editor at the Globe & Mail. He compares their initial use of comments to a petri dish: “because they all just sit in a big heap at the bottom of the story… it’s little micro-organisms that could become community.”

Note that it’s a process of co-creation, an information transaction that can goes both ways and builds shared, mutual value for all. The “F*!@ you” remark reminded me of a recent Jeff Jarvis post on “the myth of perfection v. beta culture“:

And it’s not just journalism that holds this myth. It is the byproduct of the means and requirements of mass production: If you have just one chance to put out a product and it has to serve everyone the same, you come to believe it’s perfect because it has to be, whether that product is a car (we are the experts, we took six years to tool up, it damned well better be perfect) or government (where, I’m learning, employees have a phobic fear of mistakes – because citizens and journalists will jump on them) or newspapers (we package the world each day in a box with a bow on it – you’re welcome). [...]

Online, the story, the reporting, the knowledge are never done and never perfect. That doesn’t mean that we revel in imperfection, as is the implication of The Times’ story – that we have no standards. It just means that we do journalism differently, because we can. We have our standards, too, and they include collaboration, transparency, letting readers into the process, and trying to say what we don’t know when we publish – as caveats – rather than afterward – as corrections.

• Wikinomics - Don Tapscott
• Grown Up Digital - Don Tapscott
• Here Comes Everybody - Clay Shirky
• Groundswell - Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff
• Tribes - Seth Godin
• Naked Conversations - Shel Israel & Robert Scoble
• The Long Tail - Chris Anderson
• The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowieki
• Join the Conversation - Joseph Jaffe
• Cluetrain Manifesto - Rick Levine, Chris Locke, Doc Searles, Dave Weinberger

And I’m going to add

• What Would Google Do? – Jeff Jarvis
• The Future and Its Enemies – Virginia Postrel
• New Rules for the New Economy – Kevin Kelly 

Anybody read all of these? Anything missing?

You’ll see there’s now a Blogger-style blogroll on the far right that automatically updates via Google’s AJAX feed API (more blogroll plugins here). I’m a big fan of showing the most recent posts because, beyond giving the site itself a more dynamic and engaging feel, it promotes the brainstorming aspect of this project. I’ve already clicked on a few article links that caught my eye as I was setting it up.

LdnBeta’s mission is specifically to stir digital innovation and engagement in London Ontario’s civic and social spheres, but that encompasses a lot of different fields. Everyone will have their own favourites within their niche (which we’re all promoting on our own blogs already — let’s hope) but there also has to be a significant amount of general knowledge shared among developers & designers, visionaries & activists, administrators, practitioners & executives etc in common.

[Is there something essential from your field you think we should know about? Tell us about it in the comments!]

There’s a time and a place for focusing on a speciality, and there’s a time and a place for dialog between specialists and generalists alike. This happens to be a venue for the latter. Titus nailed it earlier on:

Here is how I what Ldn Beta to evolve; It’s a resource, it’s a community meeting place, it’s a sounding board, and an ideas blog. All told it should encourage people to tap into the social aspect of the web and how that effects everyone here in London. It should serve as encouragement that we can effect positive change in the city, and we can do that through collaboration.

So in light of that, I thought of doing something a little ironic (for now): I decided not to include London blogs in the blogroll. 

The first reason is that I just didn’t know exactly where to draw the line — which London blogs deserve to be featured and which ones don’t? Last time I counted I had 101 London blogs in Google Reader (shared here, also check out Bill’s Delicious links and London blog mashup here and here) and lately I’ve been adding at least one more every day or two. When there’s that many it defeats the purpose.

It’s open for dialog (as everything is here) but the best way to draw the line would be to only include those blog(ger)s that are active in the discussion. My next thought was, well, in that case, why not just say the comments are the blogroll. 

So I finally got around to setting up Disqus, which should also open up opportunities to proliferate the discussion to/from other places. The last post grabbed some reactions from Twitter, and you can comment under your Facebook or Twitter profile with the option of having your comments automatically show up in your stream on either of those platforms.

Anyways, work in progress. We’ll try it for now and keep changing as more fun apps and stuff get developed.

[Also, almost forgot: I changed the license from Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike to the more open Attribution license -- which is more consistent with the spirit of things here... Another change I made was to the permalinks, which doesn't seem to have had any adverse effects.]

[Something else too: along with the idea that "the comments are the blogroll" there's still room to highlight other London initiatives like BlogLDN, 1 Love London, and London Photo Walk. Any creative ideas?]

• cities, urban planning & design
• social media & technology
• open governance / democracy 2.0
• information & digital rights issues
• social science & research
• cultural & social issues
• innovation, creativity, and change

• … and of course, London Ontario

Don’t be worried about whether your recommendations are perfect. This is a brainstorm. There are no wrong answers — and there are a lot of seemingly not-quite-related blogs about politics, business, economics, education, law, and media that post relevant content.

I’m going to gather all the best ones into a few categories, maybe

• New Cities (?)
• Social Media
• London

By next weekend I’d like to write an agglomerate post about each category, summarizing what all of the blogs are about, exactly, what their strengths and personalities are, what their ‘place’ is among other blogs (like I’ve done for economics and design in the past).

Next Wednesday will be a kind of ‘deadline’ for recommendations, but there’s no time like the present:

To succeed in the 21st century, cities will have to simultaneously thrive in a global economy, adapt to climate change, integrate a tsunami of rural and/or foreign migrants, as well as deal with innumerable other challenges and opportunities. These issues go far beyond the capacity and scope of almost any government – not to mention the all-too-often under-resourced City Hall.

Open Cities address this capacity shortfall by drawing on the social capital of their citizens. Online, city dwellers are hacking the virtual manifestation of their city which, in turn, is giving them the power to shape the physical space. Google transit, DIYcity, Apps for Democracy are great urban hacks, they allow cities to work for citizens in ways that were previously impossible. And this is only the beginning.

Still more exciting, hacking is a positive sum game. The more people hack their city – not in the poorly misunderstood popular press meaning of breaking into computers but in (sometimes artful, sometimes amateur) way of making a system (read city) work for their benefit – the more useful data and services they create and remix. Ultimately, Open Cities will be increasingly vibrant and safe because they are hackable. This will allow their citizens to unleash their creativity, foster new services, find conveniences and efficiencies, notice safety problems, and build communities.

In short, the cities that harness the collective ingenuity, creativity, and energy of its citizenry will thrive. Those that don’t – those that remain closed – won’t. And this divide – open vs. closed – could become the new dividing line of our age.

That’s David Eaves blogging at Creative Class. Great post: a must-read for anyone interested — or not-interested-yet — in what this is all about. He’s one of the people who helped push Vancouver’s open data, open standards, open source initiative. 

It perfectly resonates with the LdnBeta vision.

Now that this blog/initiative is in its second week of existence, I see that maybe instead of working up to civic and social challenges via discussion about social media, we need to start with a clearer sense of the big picture — going for a frontal attack on the ‘real-world’ challenges.

Then maybe we’ll have a better appreciation of what’s at stake, where we fit in (both where London fits in and how our skills align within London), what needs to be done, what we can do…

For example,

Do you think voting on stuff is a good or dumb idea?…

Has anyone tried, or would anyone like to try any suggestions?

“It would be great to see #ldnbeta concept (or some other iteration) picked up and used to drive the conversation — not just here, but on people’s own blogs, on Twitter, face-to-face, everywhere  – exploring and advocating new opportunities for social media in London.”

In hindsight I should have focused on that point a lot more heavily in the first post.

I don’t want to “own” or even lead this.

I’m just an ideas guy, with more vision and commentary than I know what to do with, but when it comes to the tech side, as well as design, contacts, etc, I don’t have a lot to offer — whereas other people do, and I’m hoping we can all be more assertive with our own own special gifts to build something truly, originally London’s.

I may not be London’s biggest fan but I have a hard time living here without wanting to help make it better, without doing something to be really proud of.

There seems to be a need and an opportunity for more collaborative development in London’s online social sphere (if I’m wrong — and I genuinely suspect that maybe I am, and I’m just embarrassing myself, *gulp* — please correct me).

There seems to be a lot of outspoken blogging and tweeting about City Hall and the LTC, a lot about the London Free Press and A Channel and CTV — not to mention all the “opinions” about Rogers, Bell, etc…

But if we’re such experts on how what those institutions should do, let’s look at how much time and energy do we spend trying to improve London’s social web?

I mean, ya we all work away on our own thing — in the same way that everyone at all the organizations we always complain about are doing their own jobs, not looking at the big picture, where they could really do some good — but are we doing enough?

I definitely don’t mean to diminish PodCamp London, The Meetup, Dan Brown promoting London blogs via LFPress, Greg Fowler’s weekly ‘Online London‘ posts, BlogLDN, London Photo Walk, LondonCommons (I’m sure there are more I’m missing — comments are open…) and anyone who has ever made an extra effort to respond and link to other London bloggers… probably more I’m missing…

What I’m saying is we could have more of that — more momentum, more convergence… and let’s not forget, more tension and conflict. I’d guess the best way to get that is to get more people following, blogging, and commenting. 

So then, if someone wants to start a blog in London, where do they go first?

How accessible is London’s blogosphere to non-bloggers (aka, virtually everybody… potential readers, customers, etc)?

How fast and easily will they be able to follow the breadcrumbs to what they should be reading, watching, listening to, following, emulating and interacting with?

How fast and easily can they find you and the people you follow — the conversations that matter to you?

I realize I’m probably being too self-righteous, but I feel there’s a need and an opportunity and I worry I’m not doing enough and this is the only way I know how to contribute (until I learn from these mistakes).

Am I wrong?

Is there a better way?

What are you good at, or love to do, that you feel is being underutilized?