Loads of comparative national stats. There are several sites available to let you compare your favourite nations to one another online. Each has its merits… [Blog.org]

This is will be a good resource for teaching students in my comparative class.

The Public Goods Problem. During a course on IP rights at SIGGRAPH, Bob Ellis (the org's public policy program chair) commented on how many people perceive music (or more specifically MP3s) as a “public good”. That is, once a musician creates a piece of… [Reality Panic]

Well, what the IGDA has, like DIGRA, and AoIR, and others is a free rider problem. The problem is when the cost of goods provided is considered relative to everything else, instead of comparative goods, people choose to only take what is given, a variation of free-riderism, instead of paying for the extended service. How do you get them to pay? good question…. I know i can't afford all the groups i should belong to.

Creativity Techniques Catalog. Ever been stumped with a difficult problem and looking for just the right tool or techique to break the impasse? Here's handy online catalog of creativity and systematic thinking tools with short, concise descriptions and helpful examples.

Creativity Techniques — At a New Address.
A while ago I posted a link to a comprehensive compendium of creativity tools and techniques. The original collector had abandoned it for some philosophical reason, but fortunately, the folks at mycoted (Creativity & Innovation in Science & Technology) have taken in the orphan, and sited it here. If you revisit the list, wander around the parent site a bit. They've got a equally interesting collection of puzzles there as well. [Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Blog]

[b.cognosco]

There are some neat toys here…..

Open Source Philosophies: 3 Takes.

tobias c. van Veen sent along:

The Architecture of Information: Open Source Software and Tactical Poststructuralist Anarchism

Raises some interesting parallels between the open source movement and various forms of poststructuralist thought. And then it stops, just as the questions get interesting. I assume (hope) there is more to come.

Brought to mind Manuel DeLanda's Open-Source A Movement in Search of a Philosophy, which raises a couple sharp questions, but never digs for any answers.

And finally, because not all anarchism is poststructuralist, its worth pointing to Eben Moglen's Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright. As best as I can tell from his writings and some of his lectures I've sat in on Moglen subscribes to a hyperlogical view of anarchism, if the whole world thinks like programmers, we'd be in utopia. Super intelligent but quite strange all the same.

Bottom line, open source + philosophy = more exploration needed

[Abstract Dynamics]

Not just exploration, some strong theorization. I'm working on my dissertation on more of a social theory/political economy take, both are forms of philosophical or theoretical study. However, most of what i have seen is an attempt to either dislocate open source from context or to constextualize it…

Bridging the gap between research and practice of communities.

My colleagues are organising a workshop “Bridging the gap between research and practice of Communities of Practice“ during C&T Conference (19 September, Amsterdam). The plan is to bring together presentations of a researcher and a practitioner for each topic, so there are opportunities to contrast their approaches and discuss them. The topics are:

• Communities in a R&D environment
• Communities of commercial employees (btw on this topic - Knowledge management for front-line staff by James Robertson)
• Communities and learning

These are some of the challenges around communities in corporate KM context and the last one is about one of my KM&learning interest. Hope to be there, but not 100% sure yet.

More:

• workshop announcement at KnowledgeBoard (you can add comments there)
• workshop details at C&T web-site  and registration form (these are deep links without navigation, if you want proper menus start from C&T Conference site and look for Workshop G)

[Mathemagenic]

This looksl ike it will be a good workshop, if you are going to be in that area, check it out.