Communities of Practice – Page 1348 – Public Intelligence Blog

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Personal Aggregate, Filter & Connect Strategies

by Jeff Jarvis

A while back my PhD student Sam and I were talking, and he asked me about my RSS feed. His question was something along the lines of ‘what blogs would I have to read if I wanted to be able to make the connections that you do on your blog?’ As we talked, I realised that it didn’t matter if I gave anyone else my exact RSS feed, they wouldn’t be able to replicate my blog – and the reason for this is aggregate, filter and connect.

When I first thought about aggregate, filter and connect as a framework, it was in an attempt to explain why Amazon’s business model worked better than that of other online bookstores. The first time I talked about it in public, it was to explain how open education might work. I’ve been working on making it in to a general model of how we create something unique when we’re primarily dealing with information.

As such, it can be used to explain business models, like Amazon’s, or blogs, like mine. The more I’ve talked about the model, the more other people are picking it up, which is great. Some of these recent discusssions have gotten me thinking about how aggregate, filter and connect works at a personal level. This was really Sam’s question. I’ve talked about how Charles Darwin basically used an aggregate, filter and connect strategy, Phil Long talks about it as part of personal knowledge management, Harold Jarche has discussed it as both a general model for business and for personal knowledge management (an idea that Jack Vinson picked up, and connected to the concept of enhanced serendipity from Ross Dawson), and Glenn Wiebe used the framework to discuss both Joseph Priestly’s inventions and teaching. So we’re starting to get a bit of discussion Today I’d like to illustrate the concept by discussing how I use it.

Phi Beta Iota: Full reading recommended! These folks are redefining both the meaning and the practice of being in harmony with reality, with others, and with relevant information.

2010/02/032011/04/11

Reference: How to Use Twitter to Build Intelligence

Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice

emergent by design

2009 December 21

by Venessa Miemis

1. What is Twitter?

Getting started on Twitter is like walking into a crowded room blindfolded: you know there’s somebody out there, but you’re not quite sure who they are, where they are, or why you should care.

My initial Twitter experience was kind of like this: The 46 Stages of Twitter (here’s the educator’s version)

After digging deeper, I started to see patterns in the way information was traveling, and in the connections between the people I was following. Based on those observations, this is my current opinion:

Twitter is a massive Idea & Information Exchange.

Granted, there is a TON of noise. I’m not suggesting that Twitter is a utopia where it’s possible to get 100% pure relevant content to what you want to know all the time. BUT, there is a tremendous wealth of information and human capital out there that is certainly worth exploring. Businesses are finding it’s useful for interacting with customers and gauging public opinion, educators are collaborating with one another and integrating it into their “personal learning networks (PLNs),” and individuals are using it to find out more about specific interest areas.

I read a piece recently by Howard Rheingold titled Twitter Literacy, in which he said:

Twitter is not a community, but its an ecology in which communities can emerge.

Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the hat to Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Pierre Levy for the tip-off. As Haiti demonstrated recently, Twitter was the only intelligence-communications system that worked in the first hours and days, followed by texting. The US Embassy and CIA fired blanks. See Journal: Haiti Rolling Directory from 12 January 2010.

2010/02/03

Journal: New QDR–Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Ethics, Military, Reform, Strategy, Threats

The New QDR

The Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Monday, February 1, 2010, was a day that should live in budgetary infamy. The Defense Department released its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and its accompanying Fiscal Year 2011 budget request, which is the first year of the Fiscal Year 2011-2015 five year plan (2011-2015 FYDP). These documents are available on the internet and can be downloaded in PDF format here: QDR and the FY 2011 budget.

Even by the dismal intellectual standards of Pentagon bureaucracy, the QDR and the FY 2011 budget, taken together, establish a new standard of analytical vacuity, psychological denial, and just plane meaningless drivel. I will keep this short by using just one important case to prove my allegation. Judge for yourself if it is necessary and sufficient to make the point.

. . . . . . .

The chaos in the accounting system provides the intellectual “grease” to lubricate the engine driving narrow bureaucratic agendas that are causing the force structure meltdown. Senior decision makers can not possibly understand the trade offs they are really making when they put together a budget, assuming they wanted to, which is also in doubt.

Phi Beta Iota: The Pentagon is only as competent as the combination of three factors:

Continue reading “Journal: New QDR–Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL”

2010/02/022010/02/02

Journal: Politics of Fear–Spending on National Insecurity

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Military, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Threats

Answer: It all depends on what you think should be included, but once this is clear — this spending will be be exempt from any cutbacks needed to reduce the deficit.

The Table prepared by Winslow Wheeler, Director, Straus Military Reform Project within the Center for Defense Information.

Chuck

Defense Spending — Winslow Wheeler, Straus Military Reform Project.

2010/01/312010/01/31

Journal: US Office for Contingency Operations

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Military, Peace Intelligence

TIP OF THE HAT to Manna

The idea of a new agency for S&R ops was put forward a few months ago by Stuart Bowen, IG for Iraq reconstruction. After reviewing DoD and DoS efforts there, he proposed a US Office for Contingency Operations (USOCO). A whole of government agency to unify command and avoid the situation mentioned above between USAID and SOUTHCOM. Makes too much sense to get very far.

“That proposal may be controversial in some circles — particularly in areas the development community, where there’s concern that USOCO might represent a more cumbersome bureaucratic structure. But Bowen’s idea is attracting some powerful allies, like the widely admired former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. “I do support the concept,” Crocker, the incoming dean of the George Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University, emailed me. “The current situation requires a perpetual reinventing of wheels and a huge amount of effort by those trying to manage contingencies.”

Proposal Circulates on New Civilian-Military Agency

Iraq Reconstruction Inspector General Urges Office to Report to State, Defense

As the United States’ special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen has blown the whistle on millions of dollars worth of waste, fraud and abuse. But one of his final acts in the job will be to address something more fundamental: the way U.S. civilian officials interact with their military counterparts during the complex wars of the future.

Maybe a role for the “fourth battalion.”

USASFC Command Reorganisation By Sean D. Naylor

Meanwhile, the fourth battalion will convert to a special troops battalion. This will include ele¬ments previously in the group support company, such as the Spe¬cial Forces advanced skills compa¬ny, the signals detachment and the regional support detachment. New organizations will be added, including a military intelligence company, an unmanned aerial systems platoon, two human intelligence sections, a signals intelligence section and other ele¬ments, according to a slide brief¬ing Repass provided to Army Times.

Continue reading “Journal: US Office for Contingency Operations”

2010/01/312010/02/01

Worth a Look: 1989 All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation–The Four Requirements Documents

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Historic Contributions, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools

The software chapter in Book: INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH–Chapter 22 Technical Intelligence Enablers Loaded is being doubled up as our smarter colleagues churn it around, it will probably be extended several pages and have more linked references.

Here are the four requirements documents for the all-source fusion analytic workstation converging in 1989–we do not have this today because no one has ever tried to manage the US Government's approach to IT–distributed chaos and centralized ignorance just will not do.

1989 Webb (US) CATALYST: Computer-Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science & Technology

Reference 1989 Analyst 2000

1988 Generic Intelligence Center Production Requirements

Reference: 1989 USMC Work-Up for JNIDS VI All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation

1988-2009 OSINT-M4IS2 TECHINT Chronology

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

2001 Porter (US) Tools of the Trade: A Long Way to Go

2010/01/302010/01/30

Journal: DoD Mind-Set Time Lags Most Fascinating

10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Key Players, Law Enforcement, Military, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Strategy, Threats

Full Story Online

Pentagon Shifts Its Strategy To Small-Scale Warfare

By August Cole and Yochi J. Dreazen

Wall Street Journal January 30, 2010 Pg. 4

The shift in strategy sets up potential conflicts with defense contractors and powerful lawmakers uneasy with the Pentagon's growing focus on smaller-scale, guerilla warfare.

In particular, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has come to think that the Pentagon's traditional belief that it needed to be able to fight two major wars at the same time was outdated and overly focused on conventional warfare. The new QDR moves away from that model, a mainstay of U.S. military thinking for more than two decades, in favor of an expanded focus on low-intensity conflict.

Phi Beta Iota: This is most fascinating; it is also not the last word. Here is the timeline in short and long versions. Short: 22 years from advance guard to leadership; 12 years from internal think tanks to leadership; probably further delay from leadership acceptance to bureaucratic implementation: another 20 years.

1988: Commandant of the Marine Corps Al Gray and the USMC Intelligence Center figure it out. General Gray publishes “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990's,” American Intelligence Journal (Winter 1989-1990).

1992: USMC seeks redirection of one-third of the National Intelligence Topics (NIT) to Third World. Across the board stone-walling by other services and the US Intelligence Community.

Continue reading “Journal: DoD Mind-Set Time Lags Most Fascinating”

Category: Communities of Practice

Reference: Personal Aggregate, Filter & Connect Strategies