The former has very kindly asked me to contribute at his forthcoming NewsInnovation gig in London on July 10… http://barcamp.org/newsinnovationlondon; all of which demanded I think of both a subject matter and a pithy title.

And as the latter Martin, quite correctly pointed out, I’m not the greatest at delivering pithy, three-word headlines on OutWithABang. I tend to bust people’s RSS readers every time.

So, with that in mind, I decided on ‘Collaborative Individualism’ as a way forward. Now all I’ve got to do is work out what it means…

Which, fortunately, I don’t have to do. Cos someone has already done the academic theorising for me.

http://www.minessence.net/pdfdocs/CollaborativeIndividualism.PDF

I’ve no idea who D Limerick and B Cunnington are, but those boys deserve a medal. For within their essay: ‘Collaborative Individualism & the End of the Corporate Citizen’ lies truth after truth after truth.

What’s more remarkable is the date. It was written in 1993. The year that I was still a wide-eyed football reporter on his first, full season following Norwich City to Bayern Munich and beyond.

If you have a moment, scroll down to the very foot of the document and the conclusions, ‘A Continuing Battle…’ ; where, exactly, Limerick and Cunnington are seeing ‘collaborative individualism’ unfold in 1993…. and, in particular, where they saw this new movement, this ‘Fourth Blueprint’ heading…

‘In this era a battle for power between the individual and institutions, collaborative individuals are slowly winning.

‘They won outside the Berlin Wall and the Moscow White House and they are slowly winning inside the everyday organisations of the West.

“The victory is not assured and there may be many set-backs. But there is much that is positive in what has been won…’

That line is worth repeating; that in 1993 Limerick & Cunnington could see even then how collaborative individuals ‘are slowly winning inside the everyday organisations of the West…’

Arguably the British Parliamentary system is the oldest ‘everyday organisation of the West… ‘

And what are Martin B and his pals at The Guardian doing? They’re collaborating with 000s of individuals to tear down the walls of privilege, secrecy and tradition and, ideally, encourage a renegotiation of the ‘reciprocal rigths and obligations between the individual and the institution…’

That’s what this is… in one sense, it’s Britain’s Berlin Wall; a seismic cultural shift in our relationship with now-broken institutions of yore.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/19/heather-brooke-data-accessible

The same collaborative approach underpins the launch of this… http://www.investigationsfund.org./ It’s here, at a hyper-local level, in David Cohn’s www.spot.us project out of San Francisco and, of course, lies at the heart of Paul Bradshaw’s www.helpmeinvestigate.com project recently launched out of 4iP.

In fact, that first strap line could have been penned by Limerick and Cunnington themselves… this is their words made flesh…

‘Collaborate with other people to investigate things you all care about…’

Go back to the PDF document and do no more than read the first page and all our current buzzwords are there…

That ‘collaborative individualism is the dominant culture of network organisations…’ ie, not silos. It smashes down the walls of silos; as in the one that penned the citizens of East Germany in.

Networks and and collaborative individualism ‘go hand-in-hand’ ; they are ‘part of the same mind-set’; and it is the emergence of networks that has ‘torn the individual apart from the static fabric of the hierarchical organisation…’

And that, for me, is brilliant. That’s Twitter, that’s #mpsexpenses and that’s a ‘hierarchical organisation’ that for the better part of 800 years has governed are un-networked lives.

You could, I suspect, make the same case for newspapers; what was once our audience just don’t do the kind of ‘hierarchical institution’ that only puts my news on my door-mat once a day.

And what empowers and emancipates the individual to challenge such institutions and to act collaboratively?

‘Information technology…’

In many ways – and not for the first time – journalists are Johnny-Come-Latelys to all this.

‘Audience on your key-pads, please…’

Let’s collaborate with the individual sat in front of Chris Tarrant and let’s see if we can’t make them a millionaire.

‘Remember, if you want Susan Boyle to be in the semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent, this is the number to ring…’

I’m biased. I’d point a finger at another ‘hierarchical institution’ in need of a re-think; where relations between me, the citizen self-publisher, and you, the dominant institution, are somewhat strained; which is why we set such store by collaborating over the development of www.addiply.com – it is little more than a tool for us all to play with…

Nothing works, but everything might… so you go figure… only tell us what works…

One last line. After that, go read it for yourself.

On technology. And networks. And this global community we now Twitter amongst.

‘As organisations move into new technologies, into more networked arrangements and into global markets, they too will find themselves confronting situations for which their past has not prepared them.

‘As that happens, they will be drawn more and more into either entering or interacting with the world of collaborative individualism.’

In no particular order, but right now you could argue that organisations facing the full might of collaborative individualism might include everyone form the Iranian Government, the House of Commons, News International and the BBC downwards.

TrinityMirror, GeneralMotors, Habitat… Heh, you could even make a case for Google…

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