Designing for Civil Society

Reality checks on using Web 2.0 for social change

Is the potential for social media to change the world over-hyped, or are social change organisations too slow in seeing the potential? If change is coming, will nonprofits be by-passed as we start to organise without old-style organisations? Does it all depend upon context?

A new book, and recent conference sessions, raised these questions for me yet again.

Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody leaves us in no doubt about his view of the potential for Web 2.0 to change the world:

Everywhere you look, groups of people are coming together to share with one another, work together, or take some kind of public action. For the first time in history, we have tools that truly allow for this.
In the same way the printing press amplified the individual mind and the telephone amplified two-way conversation, now a host of new tools, from instant messages and mobile phones to weblogs and wikis, amplify group communication. And because we are natively good at working in groups, this amplification of group effort will change more than business models: it will change society.

It's another step on from Charles Leadbeater's We-Think ... We-Act together, differently. I've been reading the book, and Clay's blog, at the same time that I'm editing some video from the recent Circuit Riders conference. There's a big gap between Clay's vision for the future, and what I heard from people who are currently providing front line technology support to nonprofits that are in the business of social change. Who is more realistic? There's a video of Clay speaking recently here, and you can see him in person at the RSA on March 18.
Here's the videos from the opening session of the conference, where Circuit Riders talk about the reality of using new technology tools on the front line. The session were skillfully facilitated by Marc Osten from Summit Collaborative, and I asked him to provide me with a recap on the two questions he posed... firstly about whether Web 2.0 tools are available to change the world, and then whether Circuit Riders have the skills to satisfy the organisations they serve.

If you have problems with video play back, they are on YouTube here

Here then is video of the first session, where the question was whether tools are available. Some people felt they were, and were being used - giving as an example the recent Parliament roof protest where protestors used a mobile phone to talk to the world directly via news media. Others were more sceptical.

We then moved on to the second question - whether Circuit Riders had the skills needed to satisfy their client organisations.

This second question brought a rich discussion about the need for both technology skills and those necessary to help organisations plan and change. I think the discussion gives us some insights into ways we can address the questions I posed at the beginning - and consider whether they are the right questions.
Much of Clay's book is about how people who may not not have operated together before can use the Net for a whole range of purposes. Almost all the Circuit Riders discussion was about how to help existing groups adopt technology which is often unfamilar to them and may not have immediately obvious benefits.
I'm sure we will see more and more of the organising without organisations that Clay describes. At the same time, people will continue to organise by meeting and working together using a range of old and new communication tools. The issue is perhaps what works for whom, and in what circumstances.
I also ran a workshop at the conference with Laura Whitehead and Nick Booth. There's an excellent conference round-up from Laura here, and reports on the workshop from Paul Henderson and Beth Kanter, who joined us by video from Boston.
I also posted an item to The Membership Project, where I'm developing a new site, with others, to explore how the social web and other factors are changing the ways in which we may belong to groups and organisations. My posted was triggered by hearing at the conference one Circuit Rider say, a little ruefully, "The committee won't go for it". I guess the key issue then is whether you think we will continue to need committees or not. Even The Tuttle Club, where Lloyd Davis is organically growing a social media cafe, is getting a bit more formal with a move towards incorporation. Will there be virtual Board meetings?

Technorati Tags: nonprofit, nptech, nptechuk, puppy

Meeting Harry's friends at the social media cafe

I finally made it today to The Tuttle Club, the London social media cafe organised by Lloyd Davis. At present it is only open on Friday morning above the Coach and Horses in Soho ... but as Lloyd told me the aim is to develop a permanent space that will provide for a mix of sociability, work and learning.

I love Lloyd's approach. While others might have agonised about the business plan, membership criteria, and marketing, he has just got on and evolved it in the spirit of social media: prototype by focusing on the people and expecting the connections and creativity to follow. There's more about how it started on the Club blog, and you can sign up for future prototyping events here.
Lloyd explained that the club is named after Harry Tuttle, the Robert de Niro character in the movie Brazil. He's a freelance heating engineer in a dystopian world where freelance heating engineers are illegal, and he's treated as a terrorist. Lloyd says:

He makes things work, he makes things happen by poking around in the stuff without going through all the paper work. To me he's a revolutionary figure, working below the radar of everything .... and that struck a chord with me in terms of the sort of bloggy, podcasty, social media types that we are.

Me too - can you resist becoming a friend of Harry? And if you have any free or low-cost space where Lloyd and friends could take prototyping to the next level of working and learning, even better. It doesn't have to be permanent at the start - just a place to get together and experiment. You'll find Lloyd's main home and contact details over here, or pop in one Friday. Qype have sponsored the coffee and croissants.

Technorati Tags: tuttle club

Social entrepreneurs are not superheroes

One of the matters that was at issue in the unheated debate between Charles Leadbeater and Andrew Keen the other day was the balance between group creativity (promoted in Charles' book We-Think) and role of the individual, celebrated by Andrew.

This tension is sometime evident between social entrepreneurs (who don't go a lot on committees) and those in the community and voluntary sector suspicious of individuals raising large sums of money for good causes, sometimes without much evident accountability. Are they just in it to build their profile? Do the ends justify the means? But then, can you ever get anything done unless you cut through the bureaucracy?

Politicians and media love social entrepreneurs (unless they crash) because they produce great human stories and photo-opportunities ... but they can appear somewhat self-regarding, which is why I didn't much care for the style of i-genius when it launched. A bit too "get the T-Shirt ..."
They are currently preparing for an i-genius World Summit in Thailand, which certainly sounds super:

The conference will be held at the superb 5 star Indigo Pearl resort, which not only provides us with a stunning and inspiring venue, but is also eco-friendly, consistent with our desire to run an ethical event.
Our ethos is to create a place to meet amazing people and form strong partnerships, and to host an event where the participants create the energy to make great things happen.

Anyway, the School for Social Entrepreneurs has a nicely-balanced post on their blog, Superheroes and celebritisation, picking up on a piece in the Guardian by Rob Greenland in which he says social entrepreneurs are not superheroes. Rob - who also blogs at The Social Business - writes:

We all know that social entrepreneurs can be great storytellers, but I think we are in danger of believing our own hype. Social entrepreneurs are inspiring, but they are not superheroes. Indeed, they are all the more inspiring for not being superheroes. However, a superhero story is much easier to tell, so that is what we tend to hear at conferences and in marketing material produced to justify the significant investment in social enterprise support programmes. Nice, positive stories, easily digested by politicians and policy wonks - but do such comic-strip portrayals inspire anyone else, or do they leave the rest of us mere mortals feeling powerless?
There is also a danger in focusing on the sector's big-hitters. I love the Eden Project, Cafedirect and the like; I'm just bored of hearing about them. My clients are even more bored. In the last month alone, three clients - all from voluntary sector organisations making that painful cultural shift into charging for services - have asked me for examples that might inspire them. Each time I struggled. I could either give them the same old stories, or more complicated ones from my own experience of people like them struggling to adapt to that pick-and-mix world of income generation, grants, donations, service level agreements and contracts.
I am aware that in writing this I'm setting myself up as the sector cynic, but I assure you that is far from the truth. I am massively enthusiastic about social enterprise and social entrepreneurship; I just believe that the reality of social enterprise in 2008 is a little more complex than the picture that tends to be painted.

As usual it's not an either-or. After citing a couple of earlier posts here and here, the SSE author writes:

Basically, our take is that successful social entrepreneurs create networks, build movements, inspire communities (and involve and engage them), establish teams and so forth: there are no superheroes who do it alone, and most social entrepreneurs you speak to will always emphasise their team and the many people who help(ed) make it happen.
But (and this is one thing I'm taking from Andrew Mawson's book, review to follow), individuals do drive and lead change. Someone brings the group together, someone has the casting vote at the meeting, someone keeps things ticking over, and someone initiates things. There are risks in promoting individuals as the solution, but there are equally risks in endless committees, muddled partnerships, well-meaning talking shops and so forth.

There's more balanced thinking in the post, ending with " ... people should judge organisations by their transparency, the quality of what they do, their stated governance and so forth."
Not sure who wrote the piece: it's just Posted by SSE. I think they could risk a bit of celebrity:-)
Photocredit Randy Son of Robert

Technorati Tags: socialentrepreneurs

Climbing out of the walled garden

As I remarked the other day, there's a number of new platforms wishing to claim they are the Facebook of the nonprofit sector, or generally suggesting they are the best place to be online. They often go for the old-style model of creating a "walled garden" behind a login, staking out territory in ways that reflect the competitive and territorial style of those anxious about retaining their membership and so their funding.
It was refreshing to meet up last night with the team behind the new UnLtdWorld site, which is taking a different direction. Yes, you do register, login, fill out your profile and start communicating with others within the system. However, as this slide full of logos show, the aim is to create a "collaborative ecosystem" whereby it is possible to join up with other systems in order to get content in and out.
I was at the launch event for the site, and sound levels didn't really allow for detailed technical explanations, though you can find some here. I was able to talk to both Alberto Nardelli, the Social Network Manager who directed development with the team from Curverider, and with the Chief Executive of Unltd, Cliff Prior. As Cliff says in his profile:

UnLtd is a charity which supports social entrepreneurs who live in the UK - people with vision, drive, commitment and passion who want to change the world for the better. We do this by providing a complete package of funding and support, to help these individuals make their ideas a reality.

I first invited Alberto out into Weston Street, underneath London Bridge Station, hoping for some quiet ... but found we were on a bus route. The lighting was pretty bad too. However, he and Paul Henderson of Ruralnetonline managed to carry on a conversation started inside The Bridge club.

Click to play

I later found a quieter spot to talk to Cliff, where he provided a convincing account of how UnltdWorld may - with its open approach - be able to achieve something others could not on their own. One of the great strengths of system is that it is rooted in offline networks of social entrepreneurs developed by Unltd over the past few years.
Click to play
On joining the system, I didn't at first quite understand how best to use it, because I was looking for somewhere to blog or otherwise makes substantial contributions. Cliff explained I really needed to fill out my profile more fully in order to connect with others of similar interests.
Then there's the "shouts" - postings limited to 300 characters. Short for a blog item ... but aha! think of it as a long tweet, the 140 character items you can post to Twitter. Social entreprenuers like to do more than they talk.

Technorati Tags: puppy, unltdworld

Pimlico School Anti-Academy Protest: Lloyd reports

Lloyd Davis has a great piece of blog reportage from last night in London:

On my way home tonight, passing Pimlico School, I saw a couple of policemen inside the gates. I prickled, thinking poor them, it’s so cold and they’ve got to go in there and find someone who’s disappeared over the fence or something.It turned out there was something less dramatic but just as interesting and exciting going on. A group of ex-governors are protesting against the demolition of the school and its transformation into an Academy. They were helped by some anti-grafitti artists who used a high-pressure hose to clean off the words “Anti Academy School” on the front wall.

Watch the through-the-bars interview with a former governor who ends up in debate with a passing pupil about the virtues or otherwise of the iconic/brutalist architecture, and whether it could be renovated rather than demolished. Here's Melissa Benn in the Guardian last October, and the Westminster City Council press release. Will anyone else cover last night's events? Maybe, but I doubt with such a human touch.

Tags: education, socialreporter

Reports from the e-democracy symposium

I didn't go to last week's e-democracy and empowerment symposium in London, but there are now some reports from those who did, plus webcasts.
Richard Wilson and Alice Casey of Involve gave us some context. They blogged at the Guardian, noting the government is keen for local government to harness technology to revolutionise its services, but concluded a culture change is needed first:

For e-democracy to work more than anything else, yes even more than money, we need an injection of staff time. Staff time to experience working in new ways. Staff time to listen, engage and understand all citizens, and time for staff themselves to become properly supported and empowered. Then, and only then, can they start to empower others.

Over on the UK and Ireland e-democracy exchange, Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, was not impressed by the keynote speech from Secretary of State Hazel Blears:

Even by the standard of other Ministerial statements in which politicians clearly have little to say, this seems to have been an extraordinarily vacuous speech. Hazel Blears refers to how online 'dialogue helps us make a better policy that really reflects what people need and want', but did not give a single example of how such public input has led to policy that is in any way different, better-informed or more representative. Referring to the Number Ten e-petitions, Hazel Blears cites 'Burma, Capital Gains Tax, The police pay deal' as examples of important public input. The questions she needs to answer, if her commitment to e-democracy is to be taken at all seriously, are i) how have these e-petitions contributed to government policy-making; and ii) how does she know what contribution they made in the absence of any evaluation of the Number Ten e-petitions project?
Although Hazel Blears' speech was short on detail, it was revealing for a couple of issues not mentioned. Firstly, amongst the successful e-democracy projects cited (Netmums, MySociety), there was no mention of any of the projects launched by the government as part of its national local e-democracy project. It would have been interesting to hear how many of these are still going and are seen as contributing to government policy-making at any level. Secondly, there was no reference to the government's own e-democracy centre (ICELE), which is odd considering that this is probably the main area of government spending on e-democracy. I suspect that these non-references were the most important part of the speech.

Shane McCracken has blogged three items. Part one: blogging and facebook; Part two : Avaaz and NGOs; Part three : Norfolkblurb and youth participation. It sounds as if that final session was one of the few genuinely participative ones.
Steve Dale was presenting on the first day...

...on the topic of building communities in the local government sector, using metaphors to describe how village communities developed around meeting places such as the village hall in by-gone years, and how communities of practice can flourish once a domain of interest is established (I used the Gosport Allotment Holders association as a contemporary example, where the mix of gardening experts and novices find mutual benefit in belonging to a collective). The key point being that just because we now have much better on-line collaboration tools and technologies, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's the people that make communities (of interest, or practice or whatever). A message that was probably lost on a speakers platform that was almost exclusively devoted to Web 2.0 technologies as the panacea for enabling more effective citizen engagement with the public sector. Reinforced of course with a veritable blizzard of 'e' prefixes - e-Collaboration, e-Empowerment, e-Participation, which never fail to give the uninitiated the impression that we're all in the technological fast lane (though some of us suffer from deja vu when we recall a similar e-word blitz associated with the previous dot-com era of the mid-90's. It meant nothing then, it means nothing now!).

Steve Dale also seemed underwhelmed by  Government offerings:

I'd like to think that the government is investing in the right 'e-programmes', but I can't help feeling that their inherent lack of agility and the propensity for the big consultancies to sell them hugely expensive and over-complex Web 2.0 solutions will mean yet more missed opportunities. In the mean time, us citizens get on with life as best we can!   

It'll be interesting to see what the Governance of Britain team over at the Ministry of Justice has planned by way of events and online discussions leading up to a Citizens Summit about a proposed British Statement of Values later this year, which I reported here. Will they go for a big site/big consultancy approach to reach a wide range of people, or try and achieve that with more emphasis on existing online forums and networks, coupled with a hub site to aggregate and keep things moving? Will they have the time and staff to deal with responses,and analyse them?
The latest on Britishness from the Government comes from Margaret Hodge, speaking at an IPPR event.

Technorati Tags: edemocracy

Web critic calls We-Think "a grand narrative"

Last night NESTA hosted a debate between Charles Leadbeater and Andrew Keen, to launch Charlie's book We-Think. This promotes the collaborative potential of the Web, as Charlie explained here:

An idea is set in motion by being shared. The scope available to use for pooling, exchanging and developing ideas determines the extent of our innovation and creativity and so fundamentally our prosperity, well-being and hope for the future. Ideas grow by being articulated, tested, refined, borrowed, amended, adapted and extended, activities that can rarely take place entirely in the head of an individual; but which invariably they involve many people sharing different insights and criticisms. The web allows shared creativity of this kind to involve more people, discussing more questions from more angles with more ideas in play, at least it does as long as people organise themselves in the right way. We have only just started to explore how we could apply this collaborative, participative culture to social challenges.

Charlie started his contribution with a wry reflection on his failure to engage his 12-year-old son with a YouTube video he made. Here's the video:

And here's Charlie:

Click to play

The surprise of the evening came from Andrew Keen, who has been a fierce critic of Web 2.0 in his book Cult of the Amateur. He is billed as "the antichrist of Silicon Valley" and in 2006 he claimed:

... we are teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Blogs, wikis and social networking are, indeed, assaulting our economy, our culture and our values. Web 2.0 is pushing us back into the Dark Ages.

In the book he argues that the Internet is killing our culture, and threatens our traditional media. He told Times Online last year:

In a world without newspapers, publishing houses, film studios, radio and TV stations there’ll be nobody to discover and – no less important – to nurture talent. The result could be no less catastrophic than Pol Pot’s decision to eliminate talent and expertise in Cambodia by mass execution.
“Once dismantled, I fear that this professional media – with its rich ecosystem of writers, editors, agents, talent scouts, journalists, publishers, musicians, reporters and actors – can never again be put back together. We destroy it at our peril,” says Keen.

Last night Andrew's line was rather different. He called the book great, and a grand narrative, as you can see here:

Click to play

While Web 2.0 has its faults, Andrew was hopeful, even optimistic, that in the future the professionals will reclaim their traditional territory.

The reality is that web 3.0 is actually going to be a moment when the experts, professionals, grab back the levers of power, the tools of creativity. When I wrote my book I was fearful that the masses were taking over and the future of the world was wikipedia. I actually think that the future of the world are professionals, doctors, academics, even politicians who will use the tools of the Internet like anybody else to distribute their wisdom and exertise. So I'm actually much less pessimistic in the way I look at the world about the future.

Perhaps this was not wholly in contradiction of Andrew's previous views, where he emphasised the role of the individual in innovation - rather than the group "we" of Charlie's book. He is now more confident of the capacity of professionals to stand out from the "amateur" online crowd.

Click to play

The whole event was very friendly, and doubly useful as an opportunity to meet some of the people who had contributed to the wiki where Charlie developed the book collaboratively. Nothing like a good NESTA reception to make some potentially collaborative connections, as I previously found here.
You can download the first three chapters, see the first draft, and more background, on the book site.
Update: On the NESTA Connect blog Roland Harwood has provided a summary of Charlie and Adrew's different perspective and this insight:

The most interesting part of the discussion for me was that the web, a platform that lends itself to sharing and arguably the 1960s greatest legacy, is now the platform for modern commerce which is based on individual ownership and competition. So the key challenge will be how will big organisations, whether private or public, will adapt to this collaborative world? Interestingly the debate around the impact of the web in the US tends to be mostly focussed upon the economics, but the debate last night focussed as much on the social and political implications. The consensus from both speakers was that organisations are critical and require a core engine that makes the rules and combines both top down and bottom up solutions.

Technorati Tags: we-think

Storytelling for change: another collaboration thingy

If you want to help people understand each other and collaborate for change you may need some "thingies" as I wrote the other day - social events, games and simulations, online spaces, co-ordinators. Somehow I left off the role of stories, perhaps because I didn't have in mind how they could lead to action.
Then last Friday I met up with Louise Harris and Christine Wilson, at a conference organised by Community Housing Cymru. Before going along to their workshop I tried one other thingy - posting a video of development manager Sioned Hughes, asking people to send ideas on using social media in organisations to the conference blog. That was a great success, as you can see here if you browse the comments. Thanks to Lloyd, Paul, Michele, Beth, DK, Paul, Simon, David, Jeremy, Menka, Nick, Paul, Tim, Ian.
Anyway, back to storytelling, of the digital kind. Louise Harris runs the Big Learning Company, and Christine Wilson works at the Centre for Research and Innovation in Care Services, University of Glamorgan. They recently contributed to the first Public Sector Narrative Conference: Storytelling for Change, which was a collaboration between Public Service Management Wales, ENLA and the Wales Centre for Health.

Click to play or view here

The essence of their workshop was that by videoing, picturing, podcasting or otherwise recording the experiences of service users and managers you can, with their agreement, use stories to promote change.
One story we heard was that of a nurse who was interrupted while dispensing drugs to a patient. She gave the wrong thing to the patient, and was so mortified she couldn't sleep that night. In the morning she offered to hand in her resignation: even though the patient was OK she felt it was a terrible lapse in professional practice. Fortunately her manager turned the incident to advantage, and encouraged the nurse to share her experience with the rest of the team on the ward. As a result they came up with a solution - a sash nurses could wear saying "do not disturb, dispensing".
Several things emerge from this story, for me. First, the ward manager recognised how it was possible to start off with a story and end up with a new procedure, re-assuring those involved along the way. Second, the manager is prepared to allow that story to be retold digitally - we saw the manager's story at the conference - and show others how change can happen. Thirdly, I could remember it. When was the last time you could recite a Powerpoint slide without notes?
I interviewed Louise and Christine at the end of the conference, and as I was doing so it occurred to me that storytelling techniques could be really useful for the Innovation Exchange in their quest to get nonprofit service providers, commissioners and investors working together. That where I was thinking about collaboration thingies the other day. I've dropped that possible connection into the interview and will post the idea across to John Craig and colleagues. Hah! - there's another collaboration thingy: blogging as brokerage.

While Louise was emphasising the Welsh talent for storytelling I remembered that my friend Lloyd Davis had been doing something last year with a Surrey Healthcare blog. There are some great videos with professionals, patients, and anyone else Lloyd and the team could engage. I'll pop along to the Social Media Cafe he organises every Friday in Soho over the Coach and Horses. If you want to come too, sign up here. Should be good stories and conversation, and I'm sure action will follow. It's up to you to provide the ending.
Update: over at content to be different Paul Caplan describes how he does a Conversation audit to provide "an in-depth qualitative analysis of how a business, product, service or brand is being talked about on the Live Web". I guess that's the way you can find where your story ends up.

Charles Leadbeater: How the web can create social innovation

I've been thinking I should blog more about Charles Leaderbeater's book We Think than the brief mention earlier. Now the Social Innovation Camp site offers a special contribution from Charles as a guest blogger. In the We-think spirit of build on other people's efforts, I feel free to quote his piece:

An idea is set in motion by being shared. The scope available to use for pooling, exchanging and developing ideas determines the extent of our innovation and creativity and so fundamentally our prosperity, well-being and hope for the future. Ideas grow by being articulated, tested, refined, borrowed, amended, adapted and extended, activities that can rarely take place entirely in the head of an individual; but which invariably they involve many people sharing different insights and criticisms. The web allows shared creativity of this kind to involve more people, discussing more questions from more angles with more ideas in play, at least it does as long as people organise themselves in the right way. We have only just started to explore how we could apply this collaborative, participative culture to social challenges.

The idea that sharing might become the economy’s motive force is deeply unsettling because it turns conventional wisdom on its head. From Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations written in 1749 through to Hernando de Soto’s recent The Mystery of Capital, economists have argued that private property provides the basis for capital, that is the elixir at the heart of capitalism, which propels its constant growth and renewal. But in an economy of ideas most of the animating capital is shared.

The web’s significance is that it makes sharing central to the dynamism of economies that have hitherto been built on private ownership.

That is why the new organisational models being generated by the web are so unsettling for traditional corporations created in an industrial model of private ownership. Traditionally organised and owned corporations are seeking to exploit a platform that animates ideas and markets by allowing sharing on an unprecedented scale.

That is why potentially the web reconnects us with a different story about the rise of the West: one that gives a central role to the way ideas are aired and shared rather than focussing on how land and buildings are locked down into property. Much of what we most value – in culture, language, art, science and learning – comes from a kind of gift exchange, in which ideas are passed from person to person, and accumulate over long periods.

As Lewis Hyde puts it in his history The Gift :

“When gifts circulate within a group their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake and a kind of decentralised cohesiveness emerges.”

The more we value activities that depend on the gift of ideas - science, culture, art, learning and innovation - the more we will need non-market institutions to support them. In the past, the church, monarchy, aristocracy and more recently, the state have supported these non-market activities of shared inquiry, expression and experimentation. We Think creates a new basis for the gift economy, in which thanks to decentralised and distributed technologies gifts of knowledge and ideas can circulate from and to many people. That circulation will sustain the mass, digital folk culture that will be the most powerful cultural force of the first decades of the century. Global public banks of knowledge, Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia of Life, the Human Genome, the outputs of the International Polar Year, the free content on The Sims all belong in part to this new commons.

That is why social innovation stemming from the web will be one of the most vital and most disruptive forces of the next few years, opening up the possibility that we could create entirely new ways to organise social endeavour.

Charles Leadbeater is a member of the Social Innovation Camp advisory board. His new book We Think is published by Profile and available from Amazon. The first three chapters can be downloaded free from www.charlesleadbeater.net.

Earlier Pitch up for Social Innovation Camp

Tags: collaboration

Wikipedia founder in the goldfish bowl

The easiest way to explain mass open collaboration online - to people who may not be familiar with the idea - is to mention Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit". I'm a big fan, and generally believe there's a lot of potential for extending collaborative editing to collaborative problem-solving.
As founder Jimbo Wales explains in this video, there's a complex system of governance behind the scenes including a "neutral point-of-view policy", and a core group of editors, so the whole thing operates as "a democracy with a bit of aristocracy and some monarchy thrown in".
The king is now involved in some personal controversy about privacy, neutrality and governance. The Register is running a story Jimbo Wales dumps lover on Wikipedia. It's about his relationship with Fox News pundit Rachel Marsden, how it ended, and how her Wikipedia bio was edited. Here's Jimbo Wales statement, and a report in Valleywag of texts about his possible influence.
I find it difficult to see any editorial wrong-doing from what's reported - however it does highlight the privacy and governance challenges of mass collaboration. It may add some buzz to the launch tonight of Charles Leadbeater's excellent book We-think, which works through the benefits and risks of an open approach:

We Think explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, ideas and information.
Ideas take life when they are shared. That is why the web is such a potent platform for creativity and innovation.
It's also at the heart of why the web should be good for : democracy, by giving more people a voice and the ability to organise themselves; freedom, by giving more people the opportunity to be creative and equality, by allowing knowledge to be set free.
But sharing also brings with it dilemmas.
It leaves us more open to abuse and invasions of privacy.
Participation is not always a good thing: it can just create a cacophony.
Collaboration is sustained and reliable only under conditions which allow for self organisation.

You can down download the first three chapters here.The launch is in the form of a debate between Charles and Andrew Keen, who is promoting his own rather contrary view in his book The Cult of the Amateur. They will be discussing:

Will a new culture of mass collaboration lead to enhanced creativity and ultimately, to innovation, or are we simply providing a forum for the misuse of information and for the erosion of quality? Will a new culture of mass collaboration lead to enhanced creativity and ultimately, to innovation, or are we simply providing a forum for the misuse of information and for the erosion of quality?

It seems Andrew was talking to Jimbo only last week about the flaws he sees in Wikipedia. Hope we get a recap.
There' a neat summary from Roland Harwood on the NESTA Connect blog about success factors for mass collaboration for innovation, based on Wikipedia experience.
More later on the session Laura Whitehead, Nick Booth and I ran last week at the Circuit Riders conference, about social media. Title: Naked in a Goldfish Bowl. As Laura reports, it was substantially about Beth Kanter's success in personal fundraising. There are upsides.
Hat tip to Bill Thompson for tip via Twitter