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I forked yesterday for the first time. I'm pretty thrilled. Not about the few lines of code that I posted. If anyone notices and thinks the feature is a good idea, they'll re-write my bit from the ground up.* What's thrilling is seeing this ecology in operation, for the software development ecology is now where the most rapid learning happens on the planet, outside the brains of infants.
Compare how ideas and know-how used to propagate in the software world. It used to be that you worked in a highly collaborative environment, so it was already a site of rapid learning. But the barriers to sharing your work beyond your cube-space were high. You could post to a mailing list or UseNet if you had permission to share your company's work, you could publish an article, you could give a talk at a conference. Worse, think about how you would learn if you were not working at a software company or attending college: Getting answers to particular questions - the niggling points that hang you up for days - was incredibly frustrating. I remember spending much of a week trying to figure out how to write to a file in Structured BASIC [SBASIC], my first programming language , eventually cold-calling a computer science professor at Boston University who politely could not help me. I spent a lot of time that summer learning how to spell "Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh."
On the other hand, this morning Antonio, who is doing some work for the Library Innovation Lab this summer, poked his head in and pointed us to a jquery-like data visualization library. D3 makes it easy for developers to display data interactively on Web pages (the examples are eye-popping), and the author, mbostock, made it available for free to everyone. So, global software productivity just notched up. A bunch of programs just got easier to use, or more capable, or both. But more than that, if you want to know how to do how mbostock did it, you can read the code. If you want to modify it, you will learn deeply from

The general principles of this rapid-learning ecology are pretty clear. First, we probably have about the same number of smart people as we did twenty years ago, so what's making us all smarter is that we're on a network together. Second, the network has evolved a culture in which there's nothing wrong with not knowing. So we ask. In public. Third, we learn in public. Fourth, learning need not be private act that occurs between a book and a person, or between a teacher and a student in a classroom. Learning that is done in public also adds to that public. Fifth, show your work. Without the "show source" button on browsers, the ability to create HTML pages would have been left in the hands of HTML Professionals. Sixth, sharing is learning is sharing. Holy crap but the increased particularity of our ownership demands about our ideas gets in the way of learning! Knowledge once was developed among small networks of people. Now knowledge is the network.

This is an aggregator Nancy curates. (I have a similar set-up on Working Smarter, www.workingsmarterdaily.com) You can search for particular topics from among the sources Nancy tracks.

statistics about our changing world. There are for more interesting numbers and resources than I could ever reference so I'm creating this post (which will get revised over time) to point you to their sources.

Right now the demand for access to learning is rising like the average temperature throughout the globe, flooding traditional institutional capacity. At the same time the web offers all-new possibilities for how we can both connect and share information. How can the practitioners of the open-source software movement develop and share new tools and practices to foster learning? What are the most successful ways to supplement and to replace the traditional university's functions of knowledge transmission, socialization, and accreditation? How does openness function as a philosophy as well as a tactic to move forward the frontiers of learning and knowledge discovery?

The 21st Century: Analysis and Definitions
Are You Ready For The 21st Century ?

February 2009
A Future in Crisis

Intuitively, people everywhere are now sensing that they are living on credit … borrowing from the future in terms of the economy, the environment and sources of energy. People from all walks of life are beginning to realize they are borrowing from an uncertain future to finance current levels of prosperity. It's becoming clearer and clearer that the current models for society are mortgaging the quality of life from future generations in order to fulfill current desires.

Thus, mental models are beginning to change, and people don't want a range of disparate studies on various disconnected problems; rather, they are seeking concrete analyses and approaches that can help redirect or remedy difficult and complex situations.

This section of the web site offers readers a framework that explores some new mechanisms for addressing the complexities of the emergent post-industrial society.

The BrainYard Lots of presentations

The economic, social and environmental volatility now facing business means organisations having to operate in a dynamically transforming landscape.

The nature of change itself is transforming. Organisations are now increasingly exposed to dynamic change: change upon change upon change - while dealing with one change, another affects us, then another, and so on. This dynamic change upsets the traditional business paradigm we have been working to over the last few decades.

Preview Gary Hamel's February 2009 article in the Harvard Business Review, Moon Shots for Management.In May 2008, a group of renowned scholars and business leaders gathered in Half Moon Bay, California, with a simple goal: to lay out an agenda for reinventing management in the 21st century. The two-day event, organized by the Management Lab with support from McKinsey & Company, brought together veteran management experts such as CK Prahalad, Henry Mintzberg, and Peter Senge

The 50

From speaking to friends, colleagues and recalling my own experiences I've complied The 50, a list of 50 things I believe every graphic design student should know on leaving college. Some of these points are obvious, others less so - but all are brief, digestible nuggets of wisdom that will hopefully go some way to making the transition from graduate to designer a little bit smoother.

Share the 50

The 50 has been crafted to be shared, spread and debated. Each point has been synthesised into just 140 characters (complete with a #the50 hash-tag) making them memorable and Twitter-friendly. Tweet your favourites, share them on Facebook, and send this URL to your friends - The 50 needs to be seen by as many students as possible - because feedback is crucial for the next step…

Reading list

Social business design

15 Years, 50 Classics To celebrate a decade and a half of publication, we asked the s+b editors to look back and choose the articles that have had the greatest impact. by Art Kleiner

The Future Of All Work, And Not Just For Creatives Posted on May 13, 2011 by Stowe Boyd Richard Florida wrote recently about trends in employment in the US, which indicates the nature of work in the decades to come, or the possible shape of the future of work.

important: management practice

Steve Denning has a great take --  and lots of material on "radical management." That's very 21C.

a synthesis of the thinking in a whole host of recent management books that propose the reinvention of management

We've kept things as simple as possible to help you find the tips you need, when you need them. The articles have been split into three main categories:

for tips to improve your personal effectiveness at work.

containing hints and tips to help you manage your team.

to develop your interpersonal, writing and presentation skills.

Permanent Rule: You may not play the Calvinball the same way twice. Primary Rule: The following rules are subject to be changed, amended, or deleted by any player(s) involved. These rules are not required, nor necessary to play Calvinball. 1.0. The following words in these rules are mostly freely interchangeable, the Primary Rule applies: Can May Must Shall Should Will Would

50 well made short videos of business leaders giving advice