This summer, I decided I needed a change.

So, after a meaningful and satisfying ride with some extraordinary colleagues, I will be leaving Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (by the end of the month), and starting a new chapter with blend of working, learning, and (predictably) activism.

I plan to work part-time with Social Policy Research Associates (a research and policy firm in Oakland, CA) and pursue what I’m calling my “DIY Second Masters.” Let me explain…

On DIY (Do-it-yourself) U

I wasn’t able to find a formal education program that combined my interests in a manageable way, so for the next few months, I’ll be aggregating learning and professional development opportunities around the following challenges:

• Telling better stories in an age of complexity. A decade of drafting formal reports has made two things clear to me: 1) policy makers could (and should) be better storytellers; and 2) too many policy people do a less-than-adequate job of weaving data into narrative, even when narrative is strong. This kind of skill is becoming increasingly important in helping people and communities make sense of their environments and navigate their choices for making positive change. You might say I’m an aspiring Hans Rosling – if I’m ever half that good, I will consider it a major victory. Oh, and yes, this also means self-directed study in the science of networks and complexity – Peter Csmerley is staring at me from the floor right now (the book, not its author).
• Building network literacy aimed at cultivating innovation networks – I’ve been doing community- and regional-level Social Network Analysis/Network Weaving for some time now. I feel like I know something about the process, but lack real depth of understanding in the interdisciplinary science of networks. Most of what I know, I have learned from the tech/wiki/open source/gov2.0/barcamp communities of which I am a part (and Clay Shirky – I’d be a groupie if I lived out east…). I need some exploratory time here, so June Holley and I are trying to figure out a virtual study group as she drafts her next Network Weavers Handbook. We’re both trying to figure out how to better use our “cognitive surpluses” and with whom we need to connect to do this.
• Understanding new models of community leadership – If I’ve seen one report, I’ve seen a thousand about the increasing importance of collaboration in reimagining and inventing a more sustainable way of living. But the word collaboration does not mean what it did a decade ago, so different fields of practice and the experts within them are using the same lexicon but bringing completely different context to it. I’ve been supporting and working with regional collaboratives in communities undergoing drastic economic change (growth or dislocation) for several years, and have learned something about this. But again, I’d like more depth. And I’m a huge fan of cross-disciplinary, mash-up, experimental kinds of leadership (leaders who think their role is cultivating other leaders), but these leaders are rarely the designated ones (at least early on).
• Inventing ways to support the “gig” economy – and new models of (social) entrepreneurship – I serve on two incubator Boards that are wrestling with these issues. We continue to confront unnecessary barriers at a time when very high (and sustained) unemployment rates demand that we find solutions that are more like “business in a box” than long, drawn-out training, business planning, or “readyness” discussions. I’m not sure what the surge in books and information about the “share economy” says about where we are as a nation, but we need a serious rethinking of the way we manage our shared resources (our litigiousness so often stands in opposition to our sharing impulse – and right now, we really need the latter).
• Better understanding the energy economy as an economic asset (beyond standard sector/cluster analysis…). Green energy, energy efficiency, distributed vs. utility-scale technologies – I’ve touched initiatives in each of these areas, but would benefit from a better understanding of how the energy economy impacts jobs across sectors and entrepreneurship.

Toward these ends, I’ve lined up the following opportunities:

• Joi Ito’s P2PU Digital Journalism Class (via video – I’m catching up now as I learned about the class too late to enroll formally and was still traveling too frequently to participate live). More here.
• Seeding2.0 Conference, organized by CP Squared – a community of practice on communities of practice (week of August 23, 2010 near Seattle, WA). I’ve been following CP Squared for some time, and finally joined the group (I used materials from this group to support CSW’s learning network practice as well as share learning within the Community Initiatives team for which I served as the founder and Director). I’m not sure what to expect, but CP Squared comprises top-notch thinkers and doers in the space of learning, innovation, and dissemination via networks.
• Social Innovation Exchange Summer School, Singapore Management University (Singapore, September 15-17). Organized by the Young Foundation, the event draws social innovators from all parts of the globe for a three-day learning, networking, and idea-accelerating experience around the theme of innovation in cities. While I have not attended before, I have the utmost confidence in the Young Foundation, having used and shared their materials over and over again. [Full disclosure: I once had the privilege of working for Executive Director Geoff Mulgan (seen here at the Center for American Progress) who has a remarkable talent for blazing trails in exactly the directions I'd like to go].
• CyborgCamp (Portland, OR; October 2, 2010). My first attempt at DIY U was about 18 months ago. After bonding with then recent-graduate Amber Case over a shared admiration for Simon Singh at a WikiWednesday event, I hired her as a tutor/mentor to help me think through the impact of social media on the work I was doing. While she did help me with some technical issues, the more important role she played was helping me integrate and makes sense of information and models from a variety of fields. She has since popularized (if not founded) the field of Cyborg Anthropology. CyborgCamp, was an outgrowth of her interests, energy, and the amazingly engaged and supportive cast of characters that is the Portland tech community. I could only attend part of the inaugural event. This time, it was on my calendar and my tickets were purchased well in advance.
• Stanford Social Innovation Review’s 5th Annual Non-Profit Management Institute (Stanford Campus, Palo Alto, CA; October 5-6, 2010). I attended last year’s Institute – it was a terrific way to engage (together with other people) around some of the most interesting management ideas emerging from across many disciplines and the thought leaders, researchers, professors, and professionals experimenting and advancing them. This year’s focus is leadership – so I’m in.

I have been trying to explain this DIY U concept to friends, family, and acquaintances, more than a few of whom have raised their eyebrows. Imagine my surprise and delight at Anya Kamenetz’s “Is TED the New Harvard” piece in Fast Company. I think I am now obliged to buy her book if nothing else, out of gratitude. So if you feel tension in your forehead, please head on over there and read Anya’s work.

On Working with SPR

It would have been enough to reengage (I worked with the firm in the late 90s when I lived in the Bay Area) in the great (and increasingly experimental) work SPR does. But my first project is one focused on leadership. How fantastic. And I’ll be working with the indefatigable Vinz Koller and Dr. Alison Gash, who has studied the role of collaborative governance and leadership in her academic career.

Now What?

Because I like to practice what I preach, I do plan to share what I’m learning here – and possibly on other blog or social media sites connected here – both to document my own experience and to make it available to others who might be interested in any of these things.

I guess that’s DIO (ourselves) U.

If you found this, you know how to reach me. And Twitter (@kristinwolff) is the easiest way to see what I’m up to on a regular basis.

Washington, DC was first out of the gate in 2008, with Apps for Democracy, the brainchild of Peter Corbett (iStrategyLabs) and Vivek Kundra (then the District's Chief Technology Officer, now our nation's first Chief Information Officer).

Many cities and communities have since embraced similar efforts: New York, San Francisco, and Seattle among them.

This week, in conjunction with OSCON (O'Reilly Open-Source Convention and a programmers' paradise), Portland, Oregon honored its own Civic Apps competition award winners – Sara Sharp, Robb Shecter, John McBride, Andy Wallace, Edwin Knuth, Max Ogden, and Gary Kee.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams emceed the event. Dozens of tech denizens were in attendance, along with venerable OSCON host, Tim O'Reilly.

What the Civic Apps Movement is Really About

It's irresistably exciting – the idea that government could make data available to enable new intelligence, create new services, even spur new businesses that meet the real needs of citizens and residents. But there's also something more profound going on here: we are redefining what it means to govern.

Tim O'Reilly hints at this idea in the video below ("open source is not about what we thought is was about"), and Andy Wallace reinforces it.

Andy built PDXBus because he wanted to use it (apparently, so did a lot of other people, myself included). Before open source (the behavioral code, not the actual code), Andy might have shared the idea with TriMet and a few friends, but it may not have made TriMet's list of top priorities. And then, who knows?

Instead, TriMet made data available that Andy could use to build an application that we could all download onto our phones and never have to stand wondering what to do at a bus stop again.

This is one (tiny) example of a broader and ongoing renegotiation of roles between governments, residents and citizens, and businesses happening all around us.

Cities and communities that experiment with data and information sharing, engage residents in problem-solving, make it easy for diverse people to connect with one another and their government(s), and allow the lessons of small collaborative ventures to influence the larger structures of governing and managing at a mass scale are laying the foundation for gov – and community – 2.0.

And the winner?

It's us.

Innovation and Transformation

Last week, the Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think-tank based in Washington, DC, hosted From Small Innovations to Social Transformation, a panel discussion on public sector innovation in support of the Center's Doing What Works project. Accompanied by the release of two new reports, "Capital Ideas: How to Generate Ideas in the Public Sector" and "Scaling "New Heights: How to Spot Small Successes in the Public Sector and Make Them Big", the event featured the reports' authors Jitinder Kohli (CAP) and Geoff Mulgan (The Young Foundation, UK), as well as panelists Willam  Eggers (Deloitte), Judith Rodin, (Rockefeller Foundation), and James Shelton (US Department of Education).

New Social Compact For Innovation

Public sector innovation matters. It's not about about government adopting new set of best practices, but about fundamentally renegotiating the roles of government, business, philanthropy, and civil society – transforming how we govern ourselves, share the commons, and construct a sustainable foundation for future generations across the globe.

The panel offered a torrent of highlights:

• The unapologetic assertion that government has a role to play in innovation, that progressives should quick to embrace it. (G. Mulgan)
• The US government did play an important role in the creation of the American (private-sector) innovation system, which was been the envy of the world for many decades.
• Key industries poised for growth in the coming years include those in which government plays a key role – health and social care, education, and energy and infrastructure, for example.
• The demand for public services so far exceeds the resources available to provide them (and increasingly so – see California's current budget woes) that incremental productivity improvements or marginal budget-cutting will be enitrely inadequate.
• The case that problems are too complex and interdependent – and the stakes are too high – for the old model of philanthropy-as-social-venture-captial and government-as-scaler-and-funder-of-programs to be effective over time. (J. Rodin)
• We need a more systems-based approach where every sector (business, government, philanthropic and non-profit, and citizen) innovates where it can, intentionally connecting, sharing, and leveraging assets and insights on an ongoing basis.
• We need not just product-based innovation aimed at the solutions to a particular problem but also process innovation that will help all sectors find better solutions to all kinds of problems (and build an evidence base) over time.
• We can also take advantage of our vastly increased connectivity to emphasize recombinant strategies - taking existing innovations and mashing them up in new ways to create new value out of them in business, government, or communities across the globe.

Resources for Change

The reports themselves are easily accessible, genuinely informative, and directed at those in and outside of government.

Go ahead. Watch and read for yourself – and share with every innovator, innovation champion, and change agent you know.

[Full disclosure: I worked with Geoff Mulgan in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit in 2001 and have followed his work (and adventures since). I am an unabashed and unapologetic fan, but I would (and do) champion good ideas wherever they come from.]

Last week, I participate in a two-day event that brought together researchers, thinkers, urban leaders, policy professionals, and social innovators to share strategies for strengthening regional economies and improving the quality of life in the world's urban regions. Graciously hosted by Keshav Varma, Head of the World Bank Institute's Urban Program, the Innovative Cities' agenda was organized around the theme of competitiveness, but covered a wide range of challenges urban leaders face: intra-regional competition, social inclusiveness, positioning on the value chain, "smart" policies, transport and infrastructure capacity, and cultivating a healthy business climate.

Unfortunately, I had to leave for a flight just prior to the last panel – the summary panel. So I will offer my own top takeaways, based on no criteria other than personal resonance. I have not been able to stop thinking about these issues since I left the symposium.

1. Jurisdictional boundaries are rarely aligned with where problems need solving, but collaborative approaches can make a real difference.

The first panel (on intra-urban competition) featured economic developers and urban planners from the Washington, DC region: Gerald Gordon (Executive Director, Fairfax County Virginia Economic Development Authority), Steve Silverman (Director, Montgomery County Maryland Department of Economic Development), and Richard Reinhard (Deputy Executive Director, Downtown DC Business Improvement District). After a brief presentation from each on their approaches to development and key priorities, moderators Stephen Fuller (Center for Regional Analysis, George Mason University) and Greg Clark

(OECD, LEEDs Program) began asking hard questions about shared strategies and significant challenges. Transportation surfaced immediately, as did the incentive structures and institutional barriers to collaboration on long-term (read: expensive and shared) priorities. Rich Reinhard (attributing the framing to his boss) offered the following insight:

"Our policy and program tools exist at three levels: federal, state local. Our problems exist at three different levels: global, regional, neighborhood."

Therein lies the problem.

At the risk of sounding like I've got a hammer and have discovered a bevy of nails, I have since come to see so many contexts in which this misalignment impedes shared action: jobs policy, site selection/location, educational cachement areas, investments in higher education or business support programs, etc. Government services (and the policies that drive them) are nearly always tied to jurisdictions in ways that inhibit scale and discourage broad, public participation through which creative solutions can emerge.

A specific example was raised in the room: a DC-commuter admitted "slugging" (essentially, organized hitch-hiking to DC from northern Virginia) and wanted to know (quite rightly) why it is illegal and what the alternatives might be.

At one level, this is a commuter-specific issue economic development professionals tend not to want to spend their time addressing (imagine the safety and liability issues...). But it is also an example of a larger pattern of citizen-led innovation (enabled by technology among other things) that could inform regional policy approaches on transport and other issues. So many citizen-led innovations emerge as neighborhood-based social practices (and occupy a legal grey zone), that it is hard to link them to policy making, let alone share them across a region. Moreover, this is the kind of innovation that can be shared any any direction – advanced economies have as much or more to learn from emerging ones as the other way around.

This speaks to new role of leaders - it's less about being the one with the solution, and more about knowing how to cultivate, test, and grow ideas that work (see reivew of Open Leadership for more on this subject) collaboratively, at different levels, and on different time horizons.

2. We need many more conversations about the enabling role of technology in helping cities thrive (citizens and residents, not just governments) so that we can inspire new models of governance and leadership.

Relina Bulchandani (Cisco Smart + Connected Communities initiative, of which this blog is a part), Gerard Mooney (IBM Global Government & Education), and Debra Lam (ARUP) made important presentations about how shared data and information platforms, systems (and sensors) integrated into the built environment can change what's possible for city leaders trying to manage extremely complex systems.

Relina's presentation emphasized how ubiquitous connectivity and the proliferation of mobile devices give us the potential to reimagine many aspects of work, learning, commerce, and life. By partnering with cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam to redesign urban information architectures, Cisco is helping city leaders reinvent the way they collect data, turn it into intelligence they can act upon, and share it with citizens and residents who can apply it (and contribute to it) too.

Gerald described similar partnerships with urban environments in the context of IBM's SmarterPlanet initiative, an effort to help cities get smarter about systems that support water, health, public safety, and transport, and begin to place citizens at the center of their work.

ARUP is an employee-owned engineering and design firm helping to green the built environment. Debra's presentation focused on measurement and feedback systems in the built environment that can help influence behaviors of people and communities. She offered some terrific visualizations that made evident why data transparency and presentation matter. When her slidedeck is made available, I will link it here.

Debra was also the first speaker to champion middle managers and experienced civil servants. While most of the symposium focsed on leaders and leadership, she argued that it is middle managers that make things work – these doers should not be overlooked as key agents of large-scale metropolitan change efforts.

3. We're not just reinventing strategies and tactics, but our fundamental approach to economic competitiveness and urban development.

Bruce Katz, Director of Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program, launched the Symposium with some key observations about cities:

• They will drive the next economy and create low-carbon ways to work and live.
• They will grow in importance (because urban migration is increasing worldwide).
• They will insist on new approaches to common, urgent challenges like long-term infrastructure planning, trade policy, and regional development.

Many other speakers used these as a foundation for their own observations about important changes within and across cities – growth, aging, poverty, access issues (energy, water, food), etc. – and described approaches to their key challenges.

But competing paradigms did emerge, provoked in particular by Bijal Bhatt (SEWA), Deputy Mayor Jerry William Silaa (Dar es Salaam), Michael Joroff (MIT), TIm Campbell (UrbanAge) and Melanie Walker (Gates Foundation):

• Are we building clusters or making places? How are these agenda linked?/li>li>What role does human capital play in development?
• Is competitiveness about growth or about broader indicators of health, soul, and prosperity?
• Is development about sharing lessons from the US and Europe with the rest of the world, or about co-creating and sharing new models for sustainable working and living?
• Do leaders make places or do citizens?
• How do cities learn from each other (who doe the learning?)
• How do we think about integrating the poor in development strategies? Are there things leaders need to do differently to ensure engagement?
• How do we start measuring/comparing true costs of development, resource extraction?
• How do we scale approaches that work (and does that mean replicate? grow? network? or something else?)
• When (and how) are we going to integrate citizens and residents in not just policy review, but actual implementation – engaging citizens in placemaking as we do leaders?

We began defiing components of a "new operating system" for cities of the future.

And that's when I had to leave. I'd be grateful if another attendee could summarize the last session in the comments below. I will attach any materials I receive in the next week or so to this post.

Many thanks to Sabine Palmreuther, Jennie Datoo, Narmeen Iftikhar, Damon Luciano, Kashev Varma, and everyone else at the World Bank who helped organize the event, and the speakers and attendees who made it come alive

Fundraising for Public Education

I'll be frank. I have mixed feelings about (seemingly endless) school fundraisers. As a policy wonk, I understand that needs exceed resources, but am perpetually frustrated when we are not transparent about the value of donations and contributions in public-school budgets, making it impossible to know what it actually costs to educate a young person. As a member of the village (no kids of my own, but aunt or god-parent of many), I do not favor buying things I don’t need in order to provide basic learning opportunities for the next generation. And as a citizen, I have a nagging suspicion that the effect of engaging hoards of parents, teachers, and children in fundraising exacerbates existing resource inequities and lets budgeteers (in state legislators, school boards, even foundations) off the hook, encouraging ever more local fundraising over deep thinking about sustainable solutions for providing high-quality public education.

Enter DonorsChoose.org.

I was prompted to try DonorsChoose while doing some fundraising research – I had not used the site before and was looking to compare its functionality and ease of use to other similar services. I logged on, set up an account, and found a request from “Mr. Tourzan”, a teacher in a rural, southern Oregon school. His request hooked me right away: stream monitoring kits to be used in the first environmental-science magnet program (also a K-5 program) to collect data with the intent of both presenting it in a public symposium, and using it to inform water policy in the community. This was something I could get behind. It’s science, civics, math, environmental stewardship, outdoor-education, and peer-learning all rolled up in one.

I made my contribution, finished up my research (loved the site by the way), and moved on with life and work.

Envelope: Courtesy of the USPS, DonorsChoose.org, Mr. Tourzan, and his Students
This week, I received a 9 X 12 envelope from DonorsChoose.org. I opened it half cringing, expecting a plea for another donation. Instead, I found hand-written, illustrated, and teacher-edited thank you notes from Chris, Vivian, Bryce, Cora, Cassia, Kazes, Julianne, Thomas, one that was unsigned, and one from Zach Walker at DonorsChoose. I read them all outloud half-laughing and half-crying. They were hilarious: heartfelt and specific about what each students liked best (e.g. going to the stream “6 times!”, talking at the symposium, adding in the poisonous chemicals, watching the “0xygen go down”, etc.).

Here are the photos and thank-yous if you’d like to take a peek. My favorite illustration is posted below.

The whole exchange was a great experience.

What’s Going on Here?

Hmmm…..Feeling a twinge of guilt. Why did I respond so positively to this experience (which benefited kids I do not know personally), compared to other recent experiences at the schools of my nieces, nephews and godsons?

Here’s what I came up with:

1. The ask was simple. I knew exactly what was needed and why, how much it cost ($490), and who would benefit. (Assuming one more of those kids adopts environmental stewardship as a lifelong practice, we may all be saved. You’re welcome. Please pay it forward).
2. The donation supported applied, interdisciplinary learning, not pencils, textbooks, or teachers. Personal preference maybe, but I am squeamish about fundraisers that aim to pay for basic classroom supplies, capital expenses, or program fundamentals (of which art, music, and physical education are a part). I want my donations to support programs that address unmet need, explore new ways to offer learning opportunities, or connect subject-matter to civic engagement. Mr. Tourzan’s program meets these criteria (heck, I would like to enroll in his program).
3. The transaction was mission-related. I can’t stand bidding on wine at a silent auction so that kids can have computers in school. There I said it. Again, I understand how we’ve come to this situation, but that does not make it right. It takes a lot of effort to organize auctions and events, and most leave me wondering how we might have invested that time differently for greater gain. Not to mention, I’m not sure what we’re teaching kids when we suggest that their ability to have a decent education depends upon the decision of a private citizen to buy a vacation weekend, massage, or fine-dining experience at an auction.
4. The scale of the request was manageable (for my budget anyway) and I really liked the crowd-sourcing aspect of contributing on DonorsChoose (I like this about Kiva.org, too):  I couldn’t shoulder the whole $490, but together, five of us could. And we could even connect with one another and Mr. Tourzan, here.
5. The approach is entrepreneurial but does not engage kids it direct selling, nor place undue burdens on teachers. It wasn’t that long ago that I sold everything from garbage bins to honey to people who did not need these things so that we could maintain a music class. Enough said.
6. The site makes visible what’s going on in classrooms that participate. This is certainly a higher level of transparency than most schools and districts offer about their special projects.
7. The thank-you notes were an unexpected, personal, and delightful surprise. They engage kids in the effort (and cultivate good writing habits). And the difference between my reaction to those letters, compared to the average polished, corporate-style appeal that arrives at my doorstep…let’s just say I’ll be giving to DonorsChoose again.

And I have not put the letters in the recycling bin.

Share/Save

While I have a particular penchant for the "The Toon", I am not among the the "cuppucinos" Michele Norris refers to in today's National Public Radio face-off. Still it's hard not to be excited about the goings on in South Africa and around the world.

In my own city, foriegn-born neighbors and American soccer (football) fans convene in late night and early morning gathering places, sharing a passion for the game and connecting with each other in a visible and visceral way.

On the web, social networking sites are challenged to keep pace with millions wanting to share their own World Cup experiences with, well, the world.

And on the radio, we debate over the music (?).

* Many thanks to Milton Jung CBNSP on  Flickr for the use of the photo.

Beancounters fret about the worldwide loss of productivity, but most of us find inspiration, and some great joy (reflecting the difference between GNP and happiness).

Millions of people have watched the world cup before, but this time, we will be connecting with one another - Clay-Shirky style.

Many will be learning tech skills, courtesy of their peers. Others will experinece the culture of sharing widespread connectivity makes possible - and demand it in their own communities.

And we'll all practice a kind of global village diplomacy.

What else could we do with this kind of connectivity?

Complexity & Humanity 2.0

View more videos from ResonanceBlog.

The Strength of Weak Ties

Mark Granovetter posited the strength of weak ties in 1973, launching a field of inquiry with a 1985 update focused on the problem of embeddedness - the idea that economic relationships are embedded inside social relationships. A follow-up in 2005 called for an interdisciplinary approach to the "black box" of social relationship so that their impact on economic behaviors and outcomes could be revealed and better understood.

The Science of Social Networks Applied

Most people understand the economic power of networks intuitively - and use them for job-hunting, learning, caring for their families and communities, and a myriad of other things.

Industry has long attempted to harness the power of networks for generating sales, recruiting talent, entering new markets, and cultivating and applying innovation - inside firms and industries, and more recently, through crowdsourcing.

And at the community level, scholars like Sean Safford have been able to show that the health of social networks have a significant impact on the ability of communities withstand economic disruption.

But social networks have been difficult and time consuming to document.

Enter technology.

Today, millions of people leave digital breadcrumbs that make their networks visible - from text messages on mobile phones to updates on Facebook or Twitter.

We are creating more efficient and effective ways to map, measure (and cultivate!) healthy networks, as evidence of their economic power continues to mount.

New Netwok Finds

Last week, these gems came across my radar:

1. Network Diversity and Economic Development (Nathan Eagle, Michael Macy, Rob Claxton in Science Magazine, May 2010 - summary visible with out subscription). Researchers analyzed cell phone data (in Britain) to reveal the social networks of cell phone users. They found that communities whose residents maintain diverse networks were more prosperous than communities with less diverse networks. Conclusion?

   “On a population level, the surprisingly strong correspondence we discovered between the structure of social contacts and the economic well-being of populations highlights the potential benefit of socially targeted policies for economic development.”

   (A plain-English summary of the same study is available at Futurity here.)
2. Social Enterprise: It Takes A Network (Raj Kumar, McKinsey Digital, What Matters). The author argues that the network is (potentially) a more effective organizational structure for meeting "bottom of the pyramid" needs when the goals is to assess impact and not just commercial sales. Significantly, this changes the model for "scaling up" and implies the need for alternatives to program- or organization-based measures as the primary indicators of success.

As social network mapping and analysis becomes simpler and more accessible, more of us can invest more time and energy in network weaving - building the social networks we now know really matter.

The depth and breadth of the formal and informal coverage - much of it live - helped bring the conference to the world.

Tim O'Reilly's "Government as a Platform for Greatness" is below, but the entire collection of presentations and interviews is available here.

There is much to inspire:

• Alec Ross (US State Department), spoke to what Secretary of State Clinton calls  bottom up, citizen-centered diplomacy – or 21st Century Statecraft, citing the importance of technology in enabling its very practice not just in this county, but across the globe.
• Andre Blas (Web Citizen) shared "Vote on the Web", a Brazilian effort to engage citizens the practice of democracy and governing by making Congressional voting transparent and comparing it to the (symbolic) voting patterns of citizens by congressional district.
• danah boyd argues that transparency is necessary but not sufficient for generating intelligence or making good policy, using Megan's Law as an example of the kind of complexity transparent data presents.
• Tim Berners-Lee and Alex Howard discuss open data here, which offers a fine prelude Berners-Lee's presentation on why linked data is like a bag of chips.

Media coverage of the event is here.

Alex Howard's "Week in Review" post on Radar provides a through summary of the event.

Dan Taylor boils the event down to three points in his GovLoop "One Perspective" post.

OhMyGov provides a completely subjective list of top 33 tweets from Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3, but the entire  tweet stream is archived here (thanks to August Jackson at @8of12).

A quick peek into any of these links will likely make even a cynic hopeful about where this all heading.

A follow-up to Groundswell, Open Leadership is Charlene Li’s latest book (to be released today). While similar in structure – there’s a very practical kind of “roadmap” quality to it – Open Leadership is ultimately a more important contribution to modern organizational thought leadership and to the efforts of millions of people trying to apply open leadership in their own contexts.

First, it’s focused on leadership. While this might seem obvious from its title, there are thousands of books on leadership (Amazon lists over 61,000) that are really about a particular leader (e.g., Jack Welch), a leadership style, or characteristics of a collection of leaders. Far fewer interrogate the nature of leadership itself. This one does – simply, and in the context of broader social, cultural, economic, and environmental changes. Pointing to the rise of a “culture of sharing” that increased connectivity makes possible, uncomfortable territory for many leaders to be sure, Li states, “At a time when customers and employers are redefining how they make and maintain relationships with social technologies, it’s high time organizations rethink the foundations of business relationships as well.” Open Leadership reflects transformative thinking not just at the level of practice but about how people in organizations and their customers relate to one another.

Second, the book profiles not just private sector firms, but global charities (The Red Cross) and key government agencies (the US Navy and State Department) responsible for some of the world’s most important and dangerous work. This underscores the emphasis on leadership broadly – not just for firms selling products and services, but for all kinds of organizations and institutions.

Third, the “roadmap” chapters (assessments, choices, etc.) offer practical direction not just for CEOs, but for open leadership and social technology advocates at all levels in their organizations. While Li doesn’t quite come out and say it, Open Leadership is a manual for leading openly from wherever you are. I would like to have seen more (and more explicit) emphasis on leadership outside of a firm context (community level government, multiple organizations engaged in humanitarian work, etc.), but these cross-organizational and network-based models could make nice case studies in a future book?

So What is Open Leadership?

“Having the confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control while inspiring commitment from people to accomplish goals.”

There’s an important nuance here – giving up the need to be in control is different than giving up control. The critical point is that social technologies have shifted the landscape so fundamentally that leaders simply cannot exercise the kind of control over information and decision-making they once did. However, they can connect to and collaborate with more customers and partners than ever before, provide a platform for those customers to connect to one another (engaging the collective “we” in problem-solving), and facilitate meaningful relationships along the way.

Li identifies five rules of open leadership:

1. Respect that your customers and employees have power.
2. Share constantly to build trust.
3. Nurture curiosity and humility.
4. Hold openness accountable.
5. Forgive failure.

And then the book delves into roadmap territory (10 elements, assessments, models, checklists, etc.), so you’ll have to pick it up for yourself to make use of them. Importantly, these chapters (more than half the book) frame choices. How open do you want to be? About what issues? What kind of structure supports the kind of openness you want to achieve?

If you are an aspiring open leader, these alone are worth the price of the book as they will prevent you from having to reinvent a wheel or two. [Note: The chapter on structuring openness provides sage advice, and a myriad of examples, but if you need more, a host of social media guidelines or policies is here on the Altimeter Group wiki].

A Closing Note

While many of the examples cited in the book (Best Buy, the Obama campaign, Cisco, Comcast, Ford, etc.) have been the subject of inquiry many times before, Open Leadership presents them as unfinished stories rather than tales of hero/ines. This does a couple of important things.

First, it strengthens the case for open leadership on the grounds that ever more connected markets, communities, firms, and people both accelerate change, and make it less predictable, a condition for which open communications and information-sharing systems are well-suited.

Second, it portrays leaders as learners for whom adapting to the changing technology environment is mission critical – not just “fun.” Whether it means blogging, tweeting, or platform building, these leaders are not only embracing these practices but making them central to their work.

Anyone who has ever stood in front of a room full of skeptics trying to explain what a wiki is must have cheered at Paul Levy’s defense of CEOs blogging. [If you haven't been in such a position, imagine yourself trying to convince someone like Justice Antonin Scalia that Twitter matters.]

Finally, and on a personal note, I don’t know Jeremiah Owyang, but I’ve been following him on Twitter for some time now. I also read his blog and catch one of his webinars or videos now and then. I appreciate the wisdom he’s shared and sense that I would like him. I was surprised by the story in the chapter on failure (now you’ve got to buy the book), and felt at once supportive of his effort to “get back on the horse” and less embarrassed by my own open mistakes. We’re all learners really. And social technologies, used well, help us share experiences so we all move forward faster.

That’s Open Leadership.

Note: This review is cross-posted on Networked Publics.

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