The importance of transparency in collaboration — Via gigaom.com

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By Terri Griffith, Jun. 17, 2011

"Transparency is something we want from our collaborators, know has value, but often lag about providing ourselves.

Don’t you generally like to know what’s going on in your work collaborations? I know my students do. In experiential exercises we do as part of class, term after term, my working professional MBA students (they come to class straight from their real-world jobs) demonstrate that they want transparency from their collaborators. Students who are initially left out of planning sessions can become disengaged, and even confrontative. And they are less interested in participating even if eventually invited in. These experienced professionals report that they would prefer to have the news on the table, even when it’s bad, where they can better manage it and prepare for the ramifications...."

IDEO - Always Relevant: Insights From IDEO’s Humanizing Social Media Event - PSFK

As part of Social Media Week in NYC, design firm IDEO hosted the event Humanizing Social Media. Check-in to the event required attendees to leave their mobile devices behind with their coats, setting the stage for an experiment in human interaction. Participants were given a large blank white t-shirt to cover whatever they were wearing, and their choice of a range of buttons with which to express interests and identity. Below are two brief perspectives and insights on human social behavior that team PSFK walked away with:

Kyle Studstill:

The event was framed as an experiment in bringing social interaction back to its basics, in the face of complex digital platforms like Facebook, foursquare, Twitter and the like – the idea being that impersonal nature of these networks take something away from the simplicity of face-to-face interaction.

What I observed reflected the idea that all social interaction – digital or not – is an exercise in individuals using whatever they have at their disposal to say something about themselves. The buttons were an obvious example of this, but it was also clear in the vastly varied ways participants placed their buttons or even wore the blank t-shirt itself. The entire event begged the question “what parallels can we draw between what happens here in this experiment, and what happens in social networks?”; one clear one that emerged is that the expression of identity through carefully (and often subconscious) curated details of one’s personality applies both online and off.

Future of Film | Filmmaking With a Participatory Audience

Excerpt:

"Actress Q’orianka Kilcher and writer/director Leone Marucci sat down to discuss the efforts they’ve made to develop an early and active fan base for their upcoming film, The Power of Few, and why engaging a participatory audience is an increasingly important element of the filmmaking process for the industry to consider. Here's what they had to say.

What made you decide to engage the online audience in the filmmaking process?

Q’orianka Kilcher: Back in 2006, when Leone Marucci and I first started brainstorming about the possibilities of making of The Power Of Few, we discovered a shared desire to break down some of the barriers of conventional filmmaking. We decided on an interactive and collaborative approach by inviting our fans and audiences worldwide to get directly involved in the artistic process of filmmaking.

Leone Marucci: The Power Of Few is a multi-perspective story that explores the varying influences on a single event, so inviting the world to join in with their own perspective came as a natural extension of the central theme. We took a no restrictions approach and discovered endless possibilities for fan involvement. ..."

read the full post on Tribecafilm.com

LOVE His Work! How Alex McDowell uses 3D prototyping to create his sets (via Wired UK)

"Imagine two worlds, one floating inverted above the other, which almost meet at the tips of their mountains and connect only via a single tower. Imagine that you want to film a sci-fi love story in this extraordinary environment. Now imagine you have a tight budget. Seems terminal. But director Juan Solanas didn't think so.

When planning his film Upside Down in 2009 he hired Alex McDowell, the visionary British production designer behind such smashes as Minority Report, Watchmen and Fight Club, and who has gained a reputation for pushing new ways of bringing ambitious world-building to smaller movies. "New technology is making films more and more expensive," says McDowell, who is 53 and lives in LA. "But my instinct is that we can use technology to avoid automatically saying, 'This is a big digital-hybrid film, therefore it's going to cost $250 million....'"

Kat Cizek blogs on Nieman Reports | When Community and Journalism Converge

In this century, more than any other, to be human is to be urban. Yet politicians, journalists and academics have only a meager understanding of what people's lives are like in such places. News can't simply be about what happens in the financial district of a city's downtown core when some of the most significant stories are unfolding in our urban peripheries. There, the neglected and pressing needs of vulnerable communities are found along with stark evidence of economic injustice. Amid the concrete, I find inspiration for change.

Brian Solis on The Hashtag Economy

Hashtags are to the social web what emoticons were to Web 1.0 and TXTing. While both are forms of expression and sentiment, there is one subtle, but vital difference. Hashtags are not only part of online culture, they are defining a new era of communication on the Web and IRL (in real life). With over 140 million Tweets flying across Twitter every day, hashtags surface a method to the madness – the ability to group conversations into an organized timeline. But what started out as a way to index conversations in Twitter has now substantially altered how people convey, relay and discover information in and out of the popular nichework. The hashtag has also become an effective form of #selfexpression.

In social media, “x” no longer marks the spot, “#” is now the indicator for popular culture and all that moves it. In the social economy, the hashtag is an indicator of value in the Twitter information exchange. Each hashtag represents revolving markets with varying lifespans determined by the significance of the conversation and its continuously fleeting demand. Some last only minutes, while others endure for hours or days.

While many struggle to understand the value of Twitter, those who get it are literally changing how they connect and talk to one another. At some point, a chasm emerges between those who use Twitter and those who do not. In other channels where Twitter users and other non-users are connected, for example email or text messaging,  the culture of conversation becomes noticeably divergent. To begin with, Twitter users, like txters, are groomed to speak with brevity. Subconsciously aware of the character constraints of Twitter, communication is concise, to the point, with an emphasis on shortform bursts. This digital shorthand if you will is only part of what’s changing.  Digital anthropologists have long observed the impact of text messaging on the ability to write in longhand. R U surprised? Prolly not…LOL! Twitter will also become the subject of educational studies to prove that the culture code of communication is transcending status updates to affect everyday engagement. Specifically within 140-character inspired transmissions, the hashtag is playing an important role.

Cool! UK Opera Explores Social Media Practices Offline - PSFK

The English National Opera’s newest production Two Boys by Nico Muhly explores the both humorous and dangerous elements of living our lives online via Facebook and Twitter. This video entitled ‘Can I be your friend’ parallels the same practices we exercise daily, questioning this now accepted practice of letting strangers into our lives via what appear to be safe channels of connectivity.  We acquire new followers on Twitter so what about if someone in the real world does exactly the same thing?

Two Boys runs June 24-July 8

via Flavorwire