InsightNG

"What does collective intelligence mean? It's important to realize that intelligence is not just something that happens inside individual brains. It also arises with groups of individuals. In fact, I'd define collective intelligence as groups of individuals acting collectively in ways that seem intelligent. By that definition, of course, collective intelligence has been around for a very long time. Families, companies, countries, and armies: those are all examples of groups of people working together in ways that at least sometimes seem intelligent."

"This piece inaugurates an occasional series by or about linked data practitioners that will be cross-posted on the DLF site and  LOD-LAM.net. The first post in the series is a personal reflection on the linked data landscape written by Jerry Persons, technology analyst at Knowledge Motifs, Chief Information Architect emeritus at Stanford, and author of the CLIR-commissioned Literature survey in support of Stanford Linked Data Workshop."

Collaborative learning teams are said to attain higher level thinking and preserve information for longer times than students working individually. Why is this so?

"For about five years around the turn of the century most of my days were spent helping clients manage their knowledge. Back in 2000 knowledge management (KM) was really big. Every year I'd head off to Amsterdam for the obligatory industry conference, KM Europe. We even had our own home grown conference, KM UK, with pretty much the same people but with less impressive venues. Then suddenly things went quiet - KM Europe was suddenly cancelled in 2005, KM UK limped along (and is still going today). KM had lost its way. The promises hadn't been fulfilled. Of course KM just didn't disappear overnight - it just degraded gracefully. One client, a very large UK multinational, shed their KM teams and announced that KM was now 'embedded in the business'. KM still goes on but it's likely to be on the margins and not essential for peak organisational performance whereas in 2000 KM really was positioned as a game changer. So what happened? That's a good question and one which this post is my first attempt at exploring why KM failed to deliver on its early promises. And why do this sort of navel gazing now? Because knowledge management appears to be making a comeback but this time it has a shiny new suit and it's called social learning."

"My biggest learning from working with senior executives, consultants and entrepreneurs around the globe was that we waste a lot of time with talking without necessarily understanding each other. This happens because we just use words, without using visual concepts and tools that could facilitate the conversation. "

"Visual thinking can be applied to anything. The way we think about things visually is a matter of perspective. And perspective is the source of all great storytelling. With our new Visual Storytelling series, we use information design and data visualization to bring a new perspective to the stories of everyday life. Some pieces will be serious, some humorous, but the aim is to provide a new way of telling stories that we can all relate to."

"For Usher, creativity is not something a lucky few are born with. Instead, it's a skill that takes hard work and discipline to develop and hone. According to the 46-year-old, "Creativity is not a science. But it's also not magic, either. It's a learnable skill, and anyone can learn to be more creative." Learning how to be creative, however, takes time and practice, and to that effect, Usher offered several tips to attendees to help get them started on the path to being more creative. Related Reading Technology | Building a World of Sound and Shapes Technology | To All My Independent Artists According to Usher, the greatest obstacle to being creative is a combination of fear and resistance. As we grow up, we learn the rules and limits that govern our lives. That is, the codes of love, life, work, and law become intrinsic to how we function as a human being, and we quickly learn to love those rules, because they bring about predictable and dependable outcomes. After all, it's as Usher says, "When I'm driving a car, I love the fact that you will stop at a red light." Real-life needs rules to function properly and effectively, but being creative, by its very nature, entails stepping out of one's comfort zone and embracing potentially disastrous outcomes. "

"From simple charts to complex maps and infographics, Brian Suda's round-up of the best - and mostly free - tools has everything you need to bring your data to life"

"Much like other crossover sensations from the creative world such as design thinking and information design, the visual thinking phenomenon has sustained interest for some time now. From the most staid corporate institutions to the most enlightened young startups, visual thinking techniques are being sought after as part of a new business toolkit in the quest to create "cultures of innovation." Post-its, whiteboards, and flipcharts are infiltrating once stodgy conference rooms and work spaces. Unbridled creativity - not industrial-era efficiency - is the key to better products, smarter services, and increased profit. But behind the glowing promise of the vizthink movement, a challenge persists for many in the business world: how best to harness the power of visual thinking to achieve real results?"

"The ability to network successfully can be one of the greatest assets in business. It allows some people to find incredible opportunities, while others just watch from the sidelines. Effective networking isn't a result of luck -- it requires hard work and persistence. What does it take to be a super networker? Here are seven of the most important habits to develop:"

"Janice Lawrence of Semantic Arts recently shared a list of five business benefits - and truly, public benefits - of semantic technology solutions. Here are the benefits that she came up with along with links to some of our own articles underscoring each point. "

"Collective intelligence has been around for a long time. What is different today, however, is how collective intelligence, combined with technology, has the power to create what has been described as a "global brain." Technology optimists like Thomas Malone, who heads MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, argue that this global brain will develop into an awesome problem solving tool that will be able to tackle seemingly insurmountable problems. "

"Considering I'm a creative coach, some people are surprised to learn I'm a little sceptical about creative thinking techniques. For one thing, there's a lot more to creativity than thinking. It's possible to sit around having lots of creative thoughts, but without actually making anything of them. But if you start making something, creative ideas seem to emerge naturally out of the process. So if I had to choose, I'd say creative doing beats creative thinking. And for another thing, a lot of 'creative thinking techniques' leave me cold. Brainstorming, lateral thinking and (shudder) thinking outside the box have always felt a bit corporate and contrived to me. I've never really used them myself, and after working with hundreds of artists and creatives over the last 14 years, I've come across plenty of other creative professionals who don't use them. I don't think you can reduce creative thinking to a set of techniques. And I don't think the process is as conscious and deliberate as these approaches imply."

"If you've ever had to make a snap decision between two unfamiliar choices, you may want to thank your subconscious for making it possible. According to new research, the brain's memory areas link new memories to old associations, providing a roadmap for decision-making we don't even realize we have. The research, published in the Oct. 12 issue of the journal Science, focuses on the hippocampus, a region nestled deep in the brain that helps consolidate memories. Scientists have long known the hippocampus links memories and integrates them together, but the new study is the first to look at the region's role in biasing the brain toward certain choices."

"The sensational rise of Big Data within the reporting and analytics realm resembles an uncanny likeness to the escalating popularity of bothersome big-haired British boy 'band', One Direction."

"In the FastCoDesign article, How do you create a culture of innovation? the authors note four skills that most successful innovators exhibit: 1) Questioning: Asking probing questions that impose or remove constraints. Example: What if we were legally prohibited from selling to our current customer? 2) Networking: Interacting with people from different backgrounds who provide access to new ways of thinking. 3) Observing: Watching the world around them for surprising stimuli. 4) Experimenting: Consciously complicating their lives by trying new things or going to new places."

"RDFa (or Resource Description Framework - in - attributes) is a W3C Recommendation that adds a set of attribute-level extensions to HTML, XHTML and various XML-based document types for embedding rich metadata within Web documents. What does that mean? It means that RDFa give your content more meaning… it allows content to make sense to the search engines. Right now, when a bot crawls your site, it only picks up content and spits it back out - it has no idea what that content really means. With RDFa, the bots can now identify specific information through implementation of RDFa code and appropriate snippets. "

"This is a two-minute tutorial on Purpose in critical thinking. Purpose is one of the Elements of Thought. The information in the video is based on the work of Richard Paul and Linda Elder."

"The ability to distribute real-time information through social networks like Twitter is a powerful thing, but a new study points out that one of the downsides of this phenomenon is the fact that much of the content that gets linked to eventually disappears."

"Knowledge Sharing is the Learning, Learning is the Knowledge Sharing"