Culture.

There is a discernible uplift in energy about the place, but it’s not all roses. Our first experiments at trying to capture meetings digitally haven’t gone down too well. Let’s just say the phrase “Big Brother” made it on the tag cloud of the enterprise social network!

For the moment, we’ve pulled back from exhaustive logs of meetings to what’s become known as ‘working out loud’ – a combination of journaling what you’re doing so that others might find out and follow your efforts, and ensuring the work itself is discoverable during the process so others can jump in if doing so might add mutual value.

There is a fine balance here. Attenzi strives for transparency and openness, which can only mean the same is required of each individual that makes up Attenzi. We want to remove the friction holding back access to data, information and knowledge and yet some people have a genuine reluctance to share, particularly when doing so undermines a mechanism central to their maintaining a certain self-identity, authority or personal power.

Attenzi doesn’t employ a sociologist – perhaps we should.

I’m not criticizing people; it’s more an observation of human nature. We need to establish new mechanisms that legitimately help serve the same human needs and that help Attenzi pursue its vision. My understanding of network science’s appreciation for nodes / agents (people!) means this shouldn’t be an impossible nut to crack, although sunlight will still change the status quo I’m sure, to some people’s pleasure and others’ displeasure.