If there is a common thread between the different conferences that I participated in recently, it’s the emerging of the new mode of peer to peer based “unconferences”.

The peer to peer conference organized by W-S Network in Leuven, Belgium, had not only peer to peer as its topic (and this sense, I think this was definitely a historic event), but also as it methods. There were no speakers, expect for a 20-minute contextualizing by myself, followed by a counter-argument by a ‘devil’s advocate’, but the methodology used was a mix of syntegration and open space. We started by freely listing the topics we wanted to discuss, this was followed by an auction to choose 12 top topics that would be retained, then went through several processes so that everyone had sat at each of these topics, and finally there were synthetic and action-oriented processes to wrap-it up. There was even a facilitator listening in 1) to avoid dominant voices (making sure everybody participated), and another watching the group’s energy, making sure we didn’t slack off.

The ‘Class Composition in Cognitive Capitalism’ in Cambridge, did not have such a process, and one of its consequences was that many participants were very dissatisfied.

The recent Asia Commons conference used a mix of conferencing and unconferencing. Remarkable, the academic speakers from Australia, such as Peter Drahos, declared they had never experienced it in their own country.

Unconferences are the natural result of the abundance and distribution of intellect and expertise, as it is well said in the following quote:

(all the quotes are from the BrainJams blog on Unconferences, and in particular this article here)
“ Isaac Newton remarked that we can see so far into the possible future because we stand on the shoulders of our forefathers. With the open collaborative tools of Web 2.0, we can now stand on the shoulders of our peers more easily than ever before.”

This quote is part of an interesting examination of the new competitive models.

Here is one of the interesting conclusions:

“The traditional, competitive model required that people must “climb the ladder” of success due to the economics of scarcity that existed across the knowledge economy prior to the rise of the Internet. This is often characterized by phrases like “clawing your way to the top” or “stepping over people”. In a world where there is only a limited amount of physical shelf space in a book store and only a limited amount of ‘media’ to shine the spotlight of attention on any individual’s thoughts and insights, this is a natural outcome. However, in a world of unlimited digital shelf space, scarcity gives way to the abundance of human potential. Coupled with the fact that nearly everyone is now able to act as their own personal media outlet, the situation changes completely. In a very real sense, this is a corollary of Chris Anderson’s work on the Long Tail – the only limiting factor becomes that of time and attention. Which leads us to flipping the model upside down from a world of competition over scarce resources to a world in which collaboration leads to higher efficiencies with our time and greater innovation within all areas of our work.”

So what happens if we turn the old model upside down?

“So rather than “climbing the ladder”, we are now “Filling the Funnel”. Rather than stepping on our peers and stealing their ideas, we are learning from our peers and crediting them for the inspiration. Rather than worrying about our ideas not being fully baked and polished, we are sharing them earlier to enable our peers to help refine and polish them, strengthening them and getting the ideas out to a wider audience of interested people.”

What happens to competition in such a context:

“With the very real commercial success of open source software, the idea of open collaboration in public (or semi-public) spaces, the financial question of monetizing openly shared knowledge finally has a compelling answer. Yes, everyone has access to the same intellectual property, but companies are still able to differentiate themselves via experience – the experience they have as a result of working with the knowledge capital and the experience they are able to deliver to both paying and non-paying customers. This confirms my long held beliefs about how value is created in an open knowledge economy, where everyone has access to most, if not all, of the same fundamental ideas and insights. Differentiation comes not from what you know, but how you are able to apply what you know to a given situation.”