Month: October 2005

Learning Landscape

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Jay Cross uses a landscape analogy to describe informal learning:

Courses end; learnscapes persist. Organizations and their members are living things, and the landscape/learnscape analogy invites us to consider nature, symbiosis, interconnections, genetic make-up, adaptation, the change of seasons, and life cycles. People are not plants, so the analogy doesn’t stretch into self-expression, thinking, identity, personality, and collaboration.

This got me thinking about how useful I’m finding ELGG, the learner-centric environment, which has the tagline “learning landscape”.

Elgg lets you set up a personal presence online and then use it to interact with others!

Create your own weblog, journal, store of files like photos and Word documents, communities, social networks.

Use Elgg to enhance reflective thought, your development, your resource base.

Share them with your friends, teachers, instructors and other Elgg users. YOU decide who can see what!

Unfortunately, since no one can pronounce or understand the name ELGG (I’m told it’s a Swiss deer), I suggest a petition to change the name to “learning landscape” or something like that. It looks like ELGG is making very exciting progress and it will be a heck of a lot easier for me to convince my clients to use it if they can pronounce it ;-)

The New Workplace

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In the Future of Work Agenda October issue, the authors discuss the hidden economy, driven by the movement of knowledge workers to smaller towns, creating much-needed revenue for the local economy:

What makes all this interesting – and important – is that these "free agents," entrepreneurs, and remote employees of large organizations based elsewhere are essentially "exporting" their services outside the local economy – thereby importing income that they then spend locally on food, clothing, toys for their kids, home improvements, recreation, restaurants, and all the other necessities of life.

They go on to call for the creation of Business Communitiy Centers (PDF), which are similar to the Innovation Commons that Boris Mann has proposed. The authors are also offering to manage the networking of these centers or BCC. Their approach seems to be much more of a top-down or franchise model than the grassroots, community-led initiatives in Charlottetown and Vancouver:

And, in the spirit of full disclosure, we are currently in the process of forming that national management company precisely we can promote and support Business Community Centers around the country. And we are actively discussing the BCC concept with several different commercial property developers and local economic development groups at this very moment with the goal of launching one or more of them in the very near future.

The BCC is an interesting concept but there doesn’t appear to be anything in these articles that the Queen Street Commons hasn’t already discovered and done.  Yes, Canadians are leading the way in creating a new workplace model, so let’s get the word out.

Another Commons Node

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I first stumbled on the idea of a work commons when I saw the San Francisco-based Gate-3 Work Commons, which is now closed because they ran out of money. I don’t know the details but it seems to have been a "build it and they will come" type of operation. Meanwhile, here in Canada, the Queen Street Commons is based on a more grassroots model. On my recent visit to PEI, I met with Robert Paterson at the QSC and saw a dynamic community. The model seems to be working. Even more recently, Boris Mann is actively pursuing the creation of an Innovation Commons in Vancouver. Early seeds are being planted for a potentially large network.
With more people working from home or having clients spread all over the world there is a growing need for work Commons to share knowledge and provide social support. The QSC is a good example of "think globally and act locally". I am still hoping to get a Commons started  in Sackville, as there is a lot of interest from the many independent contractors and artists in the community. Once we get a few more going we may have the makings of a "wirearchy" (see previous post) of Commons as a viable alternative to The Corporation. We have the technology (cheap broadband, low-cost hardware, open source software) we just need to keep working on the business models. At least there are now pioneers like QSC that we can use as examples to learn from.