Sunday, June 28, 2026 Strategy, technology, media, and social systems

I Think

Sorin Adam Matei

Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.

Tag: organization

IThink 01/24/2009

2009 Horizon Report » Technologies to Watch In the first adoption horizon we find mobiles and cloud computing, both of which are already well established on many campuses — and still more organizations have plans in place to make use of these…

A skill for future employees in the Web 2.0 organization

Ten leading platforms for creating online communities | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com That most of us are not fluent community facilitators is something that will almost certainly be addressed as a vital new workplace ability and one that we will have…

ITHINK 10/11/2008

Notre Dames de Reims – Google Search tags: no_tag Cathédrale Notre Dame de Reims by kevin51340 – Google 3D Warehouse tags: no_tag World Heritage Centre – World Heritage Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what…

Laser Monks, Real Savings. Real Monks. Supporting Real People.

The Stewart for Temporal Affairs at a Trappist Monastery in Massachusetts has found another way for salvation through hard work. Selling remanufactured toners: All I wanted was a little bit of black dust for one of our monastery printers. In my search…

Ma.tt » Favorite Posting Bookmarklet

Technorati Tags: wordpress,web,organization,information,bookmark,social media A little introspective review of the best ways to post stuff to your WordPress Blogs. Ma.tt » Favorite Posting Bookmarklet

Creating Online Community: Critical Issues and Practical Guidelines

Submitted by Colleen E. Brown on November 26 to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2007, Purdue University, Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog (http://www.matei.org/ithink) Introduction The need for group membership, social support, and information gathering are part…

Growing online communities

Submitted by Pamela Morris on November 26, 2007 to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2007, Purdue University, Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog (http://www.matei.org/ithink).  “An (online) host is like a host at a party. You don’t automatically…

Glimpses of Community on the Web

Submitted by Pamela Morris on October 14, 2007 to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2007, Purdue University, Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog (http://www.matei.org/ithink). Glimpses of Community on the Web The term “community” has been appropriated to…

Explaining Quality in Internet Collective Goods: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the

One important innovation in information and communication technology developed over the past decade was organizational rather than merely technological. Open source production is remarkable because it converts a private commodity (typically software) into a public good. A number of studies examine the…

The seven principles of designing communities of practice

Wegner’s Communities of Practice concept is rooted in seven design principles. All good online communities, which are variants of communities of practice, should keep them in mind: 1. Design for evolution Design elements should be catalysts for a community’s natural evolution. As…

A Simple Helpful Site…

Powazek (2002) stated three key issues in his book Design for Community that should be initially considered when building a community; audience, content, and community. Likewise, Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002) in their book entitled Cultivating Communities of Practice spoke of a…

Final project idea

Fleamarket, craigslist like environment-Robert Overlapping space, bring abstraction into the game-Zeynep and TJ Wiki-like site with tagging and mapping in a direct way-Scott Calendars and events–How do I locate what is available–Gabriel Process related information, class rating, travel board, electronic smalltown etc.–Brenda…

The Changing Nature of Expertise & Authority – Is it Anarchy?

Authority and expertise has changed. Weinberger’s chapter on “The Hyperlinked Organization” in The Cluetrain Manifesto (2004) and his chapter on “Knowledge” in Small Pieces Loosely Connected (2002) both talk about how authority no longer means what it used to mean. There are…

Differences in online relating

[posted by Lorraine] Joe Walther’s visit to Purdue University introduced us to a wide variety of theoretical approaches to relationships in online environments. The focus of his lectures was how people relate in online environments, or “how does communication behavior affect how…

Emerging technologies, spatial behavior and community belonging

New media and emerging technologies continue to change not only our communication (Gunn, 2006; Jones, 2006), but also our relationships, our work, and our communities (Contractor, 2006; Walther, 2006). At the same time, our societies and organizations – i.e. the bodies within…

SIDE Theory, Small World Networks, and Smart Mob Formation: A Beginners Guide

Submitted by: Scott Sanders to the Online Interaction Seminar, COM 632Y, Spring 2006, Dr. Sorin A. Matei, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907. Summary: Social categorization, which is at the heart of SIDE theory, may often prove to be an incredibly powerful…

Networks Class AT UIUC

SPCM 529, NC, “Communication Networks” Professor Noshir Contractor University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & Professor Peter Monge Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California Available via Access Grid and Polycom Videoconference 3 – 6 pm Tuesday, Central (4 – 7 pm…

Network forms of organizing: A MTML perspective

The metaphor of organization-as-networks directs attention to the dynamic nature of the process of organization as an emergent, evolving, and dynamic. At a global level, theorists have engaged with different forms of interdependencies, whether social, political or economic, as exemplified by Castells’…

Layered, Emergent and Adaptive Communication Network Systems

Lorraine Kisselburgh This week, Noshir Contractor introduces a rich array of information in discussing communication networks, new grid infrastructures, and social networking tools that can be leveraged to strengthen our communities – whether social, work, virtual, or even “exotic”. What follows are…

A project on Internet trust and credibility

Aligning with this week’s discussion of the credibility of information on wikipedia and other online sources, I ran across this project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, on credibility and trust in Internet settings, called the “Credibility Commons“. Interestingly enough, this research project…

The social shaping of knowledge

The social shaping of knowledge through collaborative authoring tools I grew up in a household with a set of encyclopedias prominently displayed in the family room and frequently used as a resource– for our education, to consult during family discussions about issues,…

Songs of the Mock Turtle: Ways of knowing in an online world

For many, the democratic and liberatory promise of the internet lies in the potential to allow collaboration, interaction, and exchange of information, ideas, and resources at a scale not otherwise possible (or at least, not highly probable) in a simple offline world.…

Revisiting propinquity in interpersonal and intergroup dynamics

Drawing on the earlier notion of electronic propinquity as postulated by Korzenny (1978), the role of several factors like communication skills, bandwidth, information complexity, mutual directionality, to name a few, all play a part in determining the amount of propinquity achieved in…

The last re-incarnation of “new:” Long live the new!

Many themes resonate and intersect from the readings and in our discussion this week- and several find echo in the words of my son, who, eternally fascinated by the fact that it takes me a year to find my question and then…