Focusing Knowledge

At Paladin Consultants, we develop software – database applications, web services, and custom software ranging from interfaces to off-the-shelf commercial software, to complicated stand alone one-of-a-kind programs whose application is unique to a particular business, or industry.  We take as an article of faith the strength of the concepts of communal intelligence.  The growth in prosperity and productivity of Americen industry since the ’80s, in our opinion has been directly attributable to up to now a friendly climate for capital investment, and the productivity advances brought on by this shared communal intelligence in technology from the Internet, Microsoft, Unix, and Open Source programming models.  Although capital investment incentives have been crushed by the economic downturn, and by ‘social experiments’ brought on by the new administration, the forces and structures of communal intelligence and largely still operative.

These advances in technology bring benefits and challenges for small businesses like ours.  First, we much do the work for our clients for which they have hired us.  That’s how we get paid and earn our living.  Second, we must find new work, because when current projects are finished, we will need new ones to take their place.  Third, we must continue to learn so that we do not become obsolete and unable to compete.  Unfortunately, only one of these items is directly revenue producing.

Way back before the turn of the century, I remember reading that the amount of knowledge in the world was doubling every five years.  On a visit to my Uncle Joe, who was a senior chemist at duPont at the time, I asked him if he thought this was a true statement, how one could possible know this, if it referred to unique knowledge or many folks knowing the same thing, and all the things a curious kid might ask.  He allowed that he wouldn’t be surprised if it were true, and mused that perhaps it could be measured by the amount of ‘stuff’ written in scientific journals, etc.  The DNA molecule had been modelled, we had put a man on the moon, developed nuclear weapons, and so on.

If it were a true fact them, it is certainly doubling much faster now.  We have the Internet, digitized books and other media, catalogs – all manner of convenient and expanding knowledge and technology.  And there is every indication that these trends will continue- perhaps at an even faster rate.

Animal behaviorists have long been aware of the ‘Honey Dance‘ that bees to to alert other bees to the location of nectar.  A bee will find a source of nectar, then go back to the hive and do a dance that shows the other bees the distance and direction of his (there’s only ONE queen, and SHE doesn’t look for honey!) find.  The bees have developed a way to share information, and use communal intelligence and collective effort to maximize their efficiency in gathering food for the hive.

This brings us to the human honey dance!  Todays writings in blogs and websites in continuing to explode over the internet.  Now I am sure that there are many folks writing things out there that may be of great value to me and my company.  But I have no idea who or where.  That’s where the social networking sites come in.  The early entry was Facebook.  My daughter has a Facebook account since high school, and has about 1000 ‘friends’.  They’re not real friends, of course, but the culture of their tribe mandated that ones population of Facebook ‘friends’ was an indicator of popularity, and therefore success.  But they are almost 1000 people that she can correspond with, ask advice from, and, perhaps have commerce with.  And maybe that’s not so bad a thing!

Facebook was followed in the business worls by LinkedIn.  Now LinkedIn, though limited to 3000 invites per person, can theoretically give you access to 27 billion connections (not counting the folks whi invite you)!  Twitter is another source of these ‘loose connections’.  I’ve seen some folks on twitter with 50,000 plus followers.  The statistics are unclear about how all these connections translate into actual business.  And I do not see managing connections in numbers anywhere near these.  But maybe it’s not about managing connections.  I’ve met some very interesting and smart folks through LinkedIn and Twitter, and have given and gotten a fair number of ideas.  I suspect that in the longer run, within your network of followers, the folks who are able to share new ideas through their reliable ‘Honey Dance’ will eventually earn the respect of the other players in their network, whatever it’s size.