Thanks to Martin Dugage of France’s Boostzone Institute, who provided the following commentary on the video clip.

My emphasis below … I am reminded of Euan Semple’s classic post about implementing social computing (The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?), and I don’t doubt that one of, if not the, the hardest part is senior managers and executives getting used to the idea of less or different control.

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Cisco is undoubtedly a lab for E2.0, and Chambers is definitely in the pilot’s seat. His point about collaboration revolves around productivity and speed.

My attention was drawn by a couple of things he said, such as the new ability of the company to pursue 26 top priority projects at the same time instead of just one or two last year; or the fact that Chambers meets more customers now but less often face-to-face and more often virtually, less often one-on-one and more often as a group; or the fact that he had to get rid of 20% of his staff composed of control freaks who didn’t get it.

Chambers believes that communities are the very core of E2.0, and he admits that he had a hard time getting used to it.

-[ Snip ... ]

Based on Cisco’s own experience in the past several years, organizations will completely restructure around these new capabilities. Indeed, he offers up his company as a paradigm of this vision. Once a hierarchical, command and control-based organization, Cisco is now much flatter, a company running “off of social networking groups.” Councils with cross-functional responsibilities suggest and take on many more projects (from emerging markets, to video, and smart grid boards); from one to two major ventures per year, to this year’s 26 launches.

The next generation company is “built around the visual.” Cisco employees do non-stop teleconferencing with collaborators around the world. The company hosts 2500 such virtual meetings per week. It also employs Webex, Wikis and blogging to move work along.

With this kind of communication and carefully managed process to match, “operations can be turned on a head,” says Chambers. It’s the recipe for market-dominating speed and scale. Chambers is “loading the pipeline” with projects that assume other companies will want what Cisco has and makes.

“If we’re right, we’re developing a huge wave of revenue opportunity.” Perhaps this is one reason why he’s “an optimist on global productivity, global economy and our ability to handle the challenges.”

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The power of the social world is like gravity or light. It seems mysterious. It is easy to wax mystical about it. But I think that what is emerging via observation - just like all good science - is the math. What is ironic is that this math is well known and has been part of human knowledge for millenia. It just has never been applied to the social world before.

It is of course the Fibonacci sequence - the sequence that nature uses to order all relationships if they are to reach their full potential. You may know of the key number that seems to be the limit of Trust for humans of about 150 - called the Dunbar Number after Robin Dunbar.

Many in the Blogosphere have been working on this. Many have seen the sequence emerge naturally in say Guilds in Gaming. Some like Stowe and Valdis are seeing this in the power use of Twitter.

Here is a summary post I made on my own blog 2 years ago that pulled together the field of knowledge that existed then. It is my hope, I am a Historian, that people with a sharper brain than I can add much more to this in the future. I am more convinced than ever that the true potential of the power of social media to get important things done will be revealed once our understanding of how all of this works improves.

Not just marketing and media - but the ideal groupings for work, for learning for health, for credit, for families and for all of our lives. A world reset to our natural design versus a machine world.

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Dave Snowden posted this recently - I could not get Cognitive Edge to accept my comment so I post them here after his post and then add some comments and list of useful links that add to the topic.

Log(N) = 0.093 + 3.389 log(CR) (1) (r2=0.764, t34=10.35, p<0.001)

Recognise it? Well of course, it’s the best-fit reduced major axis regression equation between neocortex ratio and mean group size for the sample of 36 primate genera taken from Dunbar’s 1992 paper which was popularised, and not unduly trivialised by Malcolm Gladwell into a natural limit on human group size of 150 (or 147.8 to be exact). The idea is a simple one. The human brain has co-evolved with social conditions and as a result there is a natural limit on the number of social relationships we can maintain. Dunbar linked the number to village, nomadic and military size over time. The number is exercising several people on the ever idea-stimulating value networks list serve. The argument there relates to if this is or is not a natural limit on a network or a virtual community.150 is not the only natural number.  There are two others, so I could have titled this post The rule of 5,15 & 150. All of those numbers, plus a need to think more about identity than about individuals, should influence either evolutionary or engineering approaches to community/network design.

What I plan to do is elaborate the numbers and their origins. I then want to look at the way in which the debate around Dunbar’s law is limited by atomistic ontology. This all too common assumption, found in the anglo-saxon world assumes self sufficiency and moral autonomy of the person, and sees communities as assemblies, voluntary or otherwise of individuals. Moving away from social atomism allows to take a different view on communities, their limitations and possibilities, but that will be tomorrow’s blog.

1. Five is linked to the natural limits on the short term memory. This was first put forward by Miller’s 1956 paper and relates to time more than items (it is a common urban myth to see it as items). This means that it will vary a bit by language, different languages can compress more or less data into a defined time limit. If you have ever spoken through simultaneous translation then you will know that it takes 30% longer to say something in Spanish that it does in English. Given that the Welsh generally speak english 30% faster than the norm, this can present problems! Translation aside, the number is useful and it relates to common sense experience (always helpful). Think about how many directions you can remember, or how we organise telephone numbers. Another way to validate this is to think about models, or lists and see how many elements they have. More than five and you need a crib sheet. One of the reasons I restrict models in my own work to five elements is because of this. Less then five and they pass the paper napkin test which means they are sense making models as they can be drawn from memory, which means they can be used operationally without reference back to authority.
2. Fifteen comes from anthropology and relates to natural levels of deep trust. I define deep trust here as the ability to tolerate a degree of betrayal. The number varies a bit based on the average size of the extended family in a society and is probably an habituated pattern of behaviour learnt during key periods of plasticity for the human brain. Now readers might be able to help be here. I got this number from two sources several years ago. The number was actually an upper limit of thirty but I reduced it to fifteen for alliterative purposes as well as accepting the realities of modern civilisation compared with the tribal systems from which the number originated. Unfortunately I have lost the reference and I am trying to re-discover it to reference in the book. All help appreciated! Again this manages a common sense test. Think about the social groups to which you belong and which pass the relaxation test. This test is a simple one, its who do you feel able to relax with, without worrying too much how your are seen. I realise that this does not always apply to families! However other than in pre or post divorce situations the ideas is that it should. The size there is definitely under fifteen, and more typically is a small number of groups of around eight or nine on average.
3. One hundred and fifty is Dunbar’s law and in effect is the number if identities that you can maintain in your head with some degree of acquaints that an individual can maintain. It does not necessarily imply that you trust them, but it does mean that you can know something about them and their basic capabilities. In other words you can manage your expectations of their performance and abilities in different contexts and environments. For the moment lets consider this in terms of individuals (the switch to identity is for tomorrow’s blog). Consider your work groups and the size of your organisation. How many people do you know by name? How many people would you invite to a party? Again you can see the common sense experience coming though in the number. Now the assumption in Dunbar’s working and subsequent writing is that this level of knowledge requires physical proximity. However we now live in virtual as well as physical worlds so the nature of interactions change. The natural limit is probably in place, but its form, and the nature of its creation will have new variants for a new environment

Now these three numbers, 5, 15 & 150 have an alliterative quality which helps us remember and use them. They also have some fairly immediate and practical implications for communities and networks. That is what I want to look at in tomorrow’s blog which will come from Hong Kong. I am shortly leaving for the KMAP2006 conference at which I am keynoting for the second year, and I will also run workshop on uses of narrative in knowledge management. Hopefully I will meet up with some old friends and make some new ones, the conference has an interesting mix and looks less academic that last year when it was held in Wellington, New Zealand.

Great to find more discussion about these numbers. My bet is that by thinking only mechanistically we have “forgotten” their power and organize without any socially valid reason. This may surely be why so many organizations are so dysfunctional such as schools with say 1500 kids and no sub units. Why hospitals that merely have shifts of individuals are so unhappy. Why there is so much “stress” in most workplaces when the work itself is mundane.

The military however still keeps to these numbers. They have to - the task before them demands the full expression of what an organized group of people can do - they tend to use 8 as the base (8 men in a tent in the Roman army = a section) Sections “shrink” to 5 very quickly in action. Below 4, they are not very capable.

My bet is that 5-8 seems to work as the core unit of intimacy. Most sports teams fit this range. It enables you to pass the ball to a space knowing that the person will be there. It enables uspoken flow. It must have been the ideal hunting size.

Dave talks also about the limits to memory. You can remember a 7 number phone number but longer numbers, unless broken into sections of 3 and 4, are very hard to recall.

I recall other material suggesting that most “Tribes” in the hunter gatherer world (our cultural base) were about 35. 8 men and 8 women plus 16 youths and younger children. 35 is the platoon in the military which is the core organizing unit to get any serious work done. The Company would be about 200 as an paper ideal but would shrink in action to the 150 number which is the operational ideal.

VC friends of mine tell me that they get very concerned when they see new companies reach these staffing milestones of 8 -15 - 35 - 150. The hardest one being 15 -35 when you have to introduce some formal communication mechanisms. Complexity obviously does grow exponentially along a log scale.

Other work on gene pools suggests that 500 is the optimal number to keep enough variety. Hence tribal meetings for festivals etc that acted as genetic mixers as well.

What if these hard social numbers were brought back into formal prominence? What would happen to organizations? We see this with blogging now. My blogging social world has settled out along this gradient of 8 close intimates - about 16 close - about 35 reasonably close and a maximum world of 150. My test is my bloglines aggregator. I pay attention along the gradient.

I have also found that I can be assured that those that fit inside the 8 really do fit. I have worked with 2 of them before we ever met face to face.

So is this just an interesting topic or might it lead to an OD revolution? I add some good supporting links in the follow on:-

• Here is Ross Mayfield with his perspective of how these numbers work in the world of social media
• Here is a link to Robin Dunbar’s book - Grooming and Gossip that expands on his paper quoted by Dave
• Here is a link to a piece on the maths of genetics - that we need a population of 500 to ensure enough genetic diversity
• Here is John Robb talking about magic numbers and how terrorist cells are best organized
• A link to a brief survey of mine on the work of John Pfeiffer, author of the Emergence of Man (Out of print) on the numbers of conflict - why groups over 150 have to drive friction
• Ton Zijlstra weighs in here
• Here is I think the most comprehensive summary by Christopher Allen. I find his comments on Guild size compelling

Chris makes the point that while guilds have these total group numbers, it is rare to have more than 40 online at any one time. More on guilds by Chris here

He goes deeper and deeper into the friction that we feel inside organizations today because we do not consider the fall out from not understanding how these numbers work. I find this diagram very helpful -

This confirm my VC friends observation that going from a group of 7-8 to 50 plus is exceptionally difficult. Moving beyond 150 is also a chasm -

I’ve already noted the next chasm when you go beyond 80 people, which I think is the point that Dunbar’s Number actually marks for a non-survival oriented group. Even at this lower point, the noise level created by required socialization becomes an issue, and filtering becomes essential. As you approach 150 this begins to be unmanageable. Once a company grows past 200 you are really starting to need middle-management, but often you can’t afford it yet. Only when you get up past that, maybe at 350-500 people, does middle-management start really working, primarily because you’ve once again segmented your original departments, possibly again reducing them to Dunbar-sized groups.

• Chris also asks in this age of social networking software “Is there an effective limit to the size of your personal network. He adds a comment by a VC friend of his -

Venture Capitalist Jeff Nolan relates similar concerns:

“It strikes me that the social networking theory holds that the more volume you have, the bigger your network will become by introducing degrees of separation roughly along the lines of Metcalfe’s Law. I disagree, human networks do not grow in value by multiplying, but rather by reduction. For me, it’s the quality of relationships that enhances my professional and personal life, not the sheer numbers.”

If you know of other good links please let me know.

I have just had the opportunity to spend a week in Paris, meeting and talking with the team at blueKiwi, under the leadership of Carlos Diaz and Christophe Rouitheau, two dynamic and intelligent young French entrepreneurs.  They and their team, thanks to live-wire Bertrand Duperrin, invited me and Stowe Boyd to speak at the launch of the 2009 version of blueKiwi collaborative platform.

I’ve also had the chance to connect with Headshift’s Dr. Olivier Amprimo, a young organizational sociologist, strategist and early-stage entrepreneur who is (I believe) helping to raise the bar regarding the mass customisation of work with his involvement with Personall, the brainchild of he and Jeremy Grinbaum (ex of IBM and Google Enterprise) and Jean-Patrice Glafkides, also an ex-IBMer.

Additionally, I’ve had the pleasure to meet and discuss with Dr. Miguel Membrado (co-founder of several leading search and collaboration related software applications), David Guillocheau and Patrice Malaurie of Talentys, and Philippe Colin of Itexium, an IT strategy and implementation consulting boutique.  There’s even an Enterprise 2.0 Institute at the Grenoble Ecole de Management, headed by Richard Collin

France has a long history and reputation of hierarchical organizations headed by (generally) imperial and autocratic top management (at least, I believe that’s a reasonable way of phrasing their reputations seen from a North American point of view.  I am certainly no expert in macro-economics but am aware of the general belief that France needs some economic revitalization (who doesn’t, these days ?) and that some of that has to do with its organizations and their structures and methods. However, France’s companies and economy still produce(s) some very interesting products and services, the country has healthy financial and medical care and educational systems

But .. and I believe this an important "but" … France also has a very well educated work force (compared to the North American workforce), a culture that enjoys examining and discussing issues (they cannot help themselves ), and workplace cultural habits that encourage and reinforce teamwork. In addition, in no small part due to the maturing of the EU, there are young people from all over western and eastern Europe living and working, and contributing their brainpower and energy, to the workplace in France.

Additionally, the social culture in France is essentially based on discourse, examination of ideas, arguing in friendly (mostly) ways about almost  any issue under the sun In my books, that makes for fertile ground for the enracination (taking root of) effective social computing.

We bloggers with a strong interest in Enterprise 2.0 and who carry out research and practice consulting, strategizing, theorizing, or coaching tend to believe that social computing in the workplace is inevitably tomorrow’s foundation for knowledge work.  According to almost any theory, its use along with the inputs of factual information and decent brainpower should lead to increases in intellectual capital, organizational capability and thus enhanced productivity over time.  If this is the case, then it’s my belief that France’s workplaces of the future should be interesting places should the stereotypical dependence on elite autocracy and its orientation towards hierarchy be reduced.

If the traditional reliance on top-down dynamics can be viewed with a critical eye, and if France’s leaders of tomorrow can bring themselves to adapt to th e new leadership style(s) born of listening, sensing and helping interdependent systems respond to the ongoing rapid changes we face today, then France has a lot of potential with which to work with regard to the promise(s) of Enterprise 2.0.

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These are questions put forth in an interview I had several years ago with Allan Frank, chief technology officer for AnswerThink Consulting Group Atlanta and formerly national partner-in-charge of enabling technologies for KPMG Peat Marwick LLP. As Allan so aptly put it, knowledge management has always been a confounding issue for organizations seeking to better digitize, if you will, their collective knowledge. All too often, huge pieces of that collective learning have walked out the door to other organizations or to retirement.

Now, of course, we see social networking as a way to organically capture an assemble that collective knowledge, both within and outside the enterprise walls. But how is the more informal, almost free-for-all social networking approach meshing with more formal efforts to capture and leverage knowledge?

Xerox researcher Venkatesh G. Rao, said that the emerging tension between social media and knowledge management is a “generational war,” with younger participants opting for Web 2.0-ish approaches, versus the command-and-control nature of knowledge management systems.

However, in a post responding to Venkatesh’s observation, Tony Baer called the idea of generational war, at least here, as “hogwash.” As Tony observes, Web 2.0 isn’t wasted on the young: “Twittering, Facebook et al tend to hit more of a younger demographic, but use of Web 2.0 tools is definitely not restricted to people under 30.”

In fact, social media is being embraced with a lot of gusto by end users of all generations. “There have been many of us around for years who have always contributed “folk” knowledge, but until recently lacked the tools to share it.”

There are distinct differences between conventional knowledge management approaches as we’ve known them and social media, however. Tony points to parallels with the software development world. “Conventional knowledge management is more of a waterfall process [one department hands off work to another], whereas social media tends to be more agile [working collaboratively, real-time].”  In other words, conventional knowledge management systems have been top-down mega-projects, versus the more grassroots, democratic nature of social media.

As Tony puts it. the rise of social networking introduces a new dimension to the art and science of knowledge management:

“The question is whether you do so in a carefully organized top down fashion or instead encourage a culture of more informal or organic knowledge sharing. There’s no single silver bullet that works, but what’s always disturbed us have been those top-down enterprise knowledge management projects that to us appeared as little more than make work for highly paid enterprise consultants…. Along came Web 2.0 and social media which provided new technologies for the grassroots to simply not wait for some project manager to start a harvesting session which is then converted into retrievable assets from some application requiring significant custom coding. Instead, the notion of Wikis, blogs, microblogs, chats, forums and so on is to use the right tool for the purpose as the purpose arises. Some call it fun. We’ve thought of the new social media as the next generation Knowledge Management.”

In my opinion this reinforces a major trend that I believe will redefine how knowledge work is designed (I wrote about this massive trend and its importance in the Ark Group publication "Making Knowledge Work - The Arrival of Web 2.0"). 

What I mean by trend is that over the past two years all the major workplace software vendors - Microsoft, IBM Lotus, Open Text, Google, Oracle, EMC Documentum, SAP, Adobe and so on - have all launched (or acquired companies that provide the elements of) "renovated" platforms that have collaboration and social computing at their cores.  As just one example of the ongoing evolution in this arena, see Bill Ives’ recent post about Microsoft’s investment plans for Sharepoint, in which he notes "The next release of Sharepoint, Microsoft will be investing for the paradigm shift to more web 2.0 capabilities".

When a critical mass of large organizations have upgraded or migrated to platforms with collaboration and social computing at their cores, I expect that the changes to the ways people work with information and each other to create and use pertinent knowledge will accelerate.

In the case of Socialtext 3.0, I think it’s very smart to make explicit the "transfer" of massively-adopted consumer technologies to make it easy for people to connect, collaborate and co-create as they are already doing outside the firewall.  Leadership and management will change (or have to) to see this as an opportunity to focus people on what is important and what needs to be done - including increased tolerance for new ideas and potential innovation - and not as a crisis of control.

Rather than recreate all the links, I’ve let Robert Scoble do the work for me from this excerpt from his blog post of September 30th.

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SocialText Brings Enterprise Facebook and Twitter to Wikis

Socialtext is making big news all over the Web this morning. Here’s a rundown, later in the post I’ll talk about why. I also have an exclusive video of Ross Mayfield, founder of Socialtext demonstrating the new features to me.

Ross Mayfield, for my cell phone camera last night, explains the changes in this 18-minute video.

Ross Mayfield, co-founder of Socialtext, writes on his blog “Hello Socialtext 3.0!”

BusinessWeek: Socialtext 3.0: Will Wikis Finally Find Their Place in Business?

Webware: Socialtext co-founder: Enterprise Twitter isn’t enough.

eWeek: Socialtext Signals Marks Wiki Provider’s Move into Enterprise Microblogging.

Dawn Foster notes the move of Enterprises to social.

Zoli Erdos says “Socialtext Becomes Really Social.”

ZDNet: “Socialtext enters Twitter for Enterprise sweepstakes.”

TechCrunch writes “SocialText 3.0 blends Facebook, Twitter, and the Enterprise.”

So, why are these changes important? Because they bring the social features that many people have gotten to know on Twitter and Facebook into the Enterprise along with advanced wiki functionality.

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I would add "They represent an early look at the ways most people will work (and the kinds of tools they will use) within another five to ten years"

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People everywhere are beginning to understand, and practice with, the utility of "watching" snippets and fragments of peoples’ thoughts (see Dave Snowden’s KMWorld article titled "Everything Is Fragmented") and being able to instantiate and jump into a possible conversation when something interesting to them flows by.

 It works … for example, late last night I twittered a response to one of Jeremiah Owyang’s tweets pointing to his recent blog post about "What’s After The Social Web?", and shortly thereafter I had a Twitter direct message from Jeremiah in my email inbox saying "sounds interesting, I think you’re on to something .. tell me more".  A professional, potentially knowledge-building, conversation is brewing.

Here’s a summary of Stuart Henshall’s reflections on working with and in knowledge flows with the nascent micro-blogging

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A Master Strategist’s Take on a (Possible) Future of Knowledge “Management”

From the keyboard of Stuart Henshall, one of the most advanced thinkers about the “flows” of information combined with usability and innovation.

Stuart helped out with the blogging at the just-ended KMWorld and also gave a presentation on the last day about how people are beginning to use Twitter to connect, stimulate, catalyze and coordinate flows of information.

I thought he did a great job of outlining interesting possibilities .. but it seems he made some people nervous and some people stretch their minds. That may be because he has been immersed in the world of constant micro-flows of information and mobility for the last half-year while many of those at KMWorld are just now beginning to come to terms with blogging, using wikis and social computing. There may be one of those classic mismatches, the kind that lead to phrases like “You can always recognize the pioneers, they’re the ones walking around with arrows sticking out of their backs“.

Here’s Stuart’s post:.

Social Media or KM / KM or Social Media

I sat in earlier on a session on the Future of KM. There are three very different people on the panel. I’ve been listening with half an ear. This means what I write may have nothing to do with the context of the session. However, part of the reason we come to events like this is to spark other thoughts and tangents.

So far today I’ve not heard the word “flows”, I don’t hear “lifestreaming” I still feel what I am hearing is that knowledge is to be managed, moved, manipulated. Plus I just heard Dave Pollard say that SARS, 9/11, Katrina etc were all failures of classic knowledge management. I can’t quite put my finger on why KM isn’t learning and moving forward more quickly. It suggests to me that there remains a bigger problem.

Individuals are increasingly using personal tools, blogs, wikis, social networks, mobile phone, etc. As they move into this realm publicly they create more information about themselves. I’m increasingly seeing these tools being put to use by marketing / PR. KM seems to be missing these social media implications. Thus adoption of these tools is not being driven by the need to manage knowledge. Rather it’s driven by responding faster, being more adaptive, building on what others do, opening up systems so they can find that they need just in time. It’s a learning centric approach. I see it when I go to blogging sessions and talk to people there. The difference is they are believers.

[ Snip ... ]

I’m thinking more and more that the social media experts are likely to usurp or overturn many KM practices in time. The fact that SAP, Oracle and IBM are today all working with Twitter like updates is at least encouraging.

Maybe they can still sell a knowledge platform?

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It’s interesting that Stuart pointed out the directions large collaboration platforms are taking; Hylton Jolliffe, who manages this blog, just sent me an email a few days ago pointing out that Oracle’s developments with BeeHive may be signalling a new phase, while this ZDNet article (Did Oracle Burst The Enterprise 2.0 Startup Bubble?) suggest something similar.

At this very same conference one year ago (KMWorld 2007) Stuart wrote a post with which I agree 100% (link in the paragraph below) … while people in companies and business everywhere are looking for business case or ROI justification for using social media tools (while understanding semi-consciously that of course useful knowledge gets built in social interaction) they have to work (and experiment) at overcoming a lifetime of working in environments that divide and separate problems, responsibilities and challenges into discrete and divided bundles of tasks that are supposed to fit together like an orderly paint-by-numbers-like template (by which I mean an organizational chart).

To understand how using social media to increase effectiveness, responsiveness and innovation in an environment characterized by constant flows of information, you have to Use the Tools First; Then Talk To Me.

Read the whole post on a possible future for KM here ..

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I’m (still) all for Web 2.0 and listening to the voices of the great unwashed, but there are key aspects of using this approach that leave me skeptical or cold.  He and his colleagues get to pick which items they want to use add emphasis or colour an issue.

Nevertheless, I applaud CNN for actually paying attention to what is happening on the Web.

Mashable has more.

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With Gustav a day away from landfall many of the most experienced people in the field are coalescing on a Ning site that will aggregate as much information as possible in one place. Wiki, Twets, RSS feeds from Blogs, Video - everything.

Here is the address of the site

Leroy Sievers died this weekend. This picture is one of him blogging for NPR on his cancer. His column on the NP Blog is called “My Cancer“.

I post about Leroy today not just to honor a great journalist and a courageous man but to make a point about voice. The human voice that is central to the relationship world that is struggling to emerge from the transactional world that we mainly inhabit today.

Leroy’s column at NPR was unusual in two ways. First of all it was based on a journalist telling a story about himself - what it was like to to live with and die from a disease that had condemned him. Death in our society is itself one of the great taboos. We can talk of almost anything but this. Secondly Leroy did not allow any distance between his public voice and himself. So he could and did talk of his fears and uncertainties, of the days when he despaired and felt too weak to go on, of the joys of little things and the vital importance of friends and lovers.

For those of us in the “club”, his column was an immense comfort. For we too feel all these things. By bringing his voice to the ’sphere, he gave us ours.

And that my friends is the point. Here is the announcement of his death on the blog. Please have a look at the comments - there are hundreds and hundreds already - to see what I mean by him giving us a voice.

For when it all is stripped away, the great power of the 2.0 world is not to sell us more stuff but to help us regain our humanity.

If you would like to know more about Leroy Sievers and what he meant to many people - NPR have a wonderful tribute page here

I find this photo album especially moving as Leroy unlocks the unpspoken words in others and they alo offer a glimpse of themselves - the face tells so much

These services can be used to keep people aware of fast-moving issues, events and changes, and bring the strengths of IM and online presence together in useful ways.

Here comes another dimension to group instant messaging … one which promises to further close the gap regarding utility and the ability to reach into a network and connect with someone to whom you want to discuss whatever it may be that interests you or what you may need to know or find out.

A friend who is well-known to many in the Web 2.0 arena, Stuart Henshall, and his colleague David Beckemeyer (TelEvolution / PhoneGnome, Earthlink), have just launched Phweet, a service whereby a user with one click can ask someone who has just twittered (or pownced, or jaiku’d, or fed a friend or kwipped) whether or not they will accept a VoIP call.  Once accepted, voila !  Connection is established and the voice conversation begins.

In terms of how it operates technically, this service effectively eliminates the need for dial-tones (arguably the last remaining communications bottleneck the telcoms "own") in order to talk to someone else via voice.  Powerful stuff !

Please note that this service is alpha, and applies only to twitter at the moment, though I believe there plans to enable it for the other similar service I have mentioned.

Of course group IM users can already connect with someone they "know" and ask about / initiate a VoIP call in any number of ways, but this service makes the functionality available during the course of using the group IM service, thereby enhancing existing online presence and creating what some are calling ambient intimacy.

Go ahead, sign up and try it out.  I have … it’s easy, fun and potentially very useful, especially for project teams or private networks of people who are connected together on some issue or other.

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Tags: Stuart Henshall, David Beckemeyer, Phweet

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