I was listening to Stefana Broadbent's Ted talk this morning titled How the Internet enables intimacy and was intregaued by a couple of her key points.  The first is that despite the possibilities social media provides for connection and communication, despite having hundreds of "friends" in Facebook, MySpace or IM, people are truly intimate with less than 5 on a regular basis. The second is that "institutions" as weve come to know them over the last 150 years or so, have implicitly and explicitly enforced and encouraged social isolation and continue to do so via means that include blocking access to various communications channels, and training people in how to work in teams of strangers. Yet people can often find innovative ways to overcome the isolation and connect with close friends and family, further enabled by emerging technologies.   

A very interesting talk.
(The Economist has an article about her work titled Home Truths About Telecoms.)

No More Consultants! According to Collison and Parcell

Not sure how I missed it, but just came across a reference on Chris Collison's blog for No More Consultants, co-authored with Geoff Parcell.

Interesting premise.. why spend money hiring external consultants without (perhaps first) tapping into the knowledge and experience of staff / employees? Great question. 

There are lots of good resons to hire consultants; validation, "sober second thought," expertise etc. But certainly this should go hand in hand with tapping into the experience and knowledge of the people inside an organization.

The book, and the Ning site, look like excellent resources. Learning to Fly certainly "set the bar pretty high."  I'm looking forward to seeing how much higher No More Consultants takes it.

The Magic of 8 in the ECM World

AIIM President John Mancini has a very interesting initiative going that is yielding some ideas in the broad realm of Enterprise Content Management. Through his Digital Landfill blog, John is inviting people to become an "8 things" author, and ultimately be published in one of AIIM's e-books.

Interesting concept ... and already a number of good guest blog posts on managing your inbox, building an ECM strateg etc. and AIIM has released full e-books titled "8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information — before it's too late", and 8 secrets of an effective content or records management implemementation."