What five metronomes, two soda cans and a piece of wood can teach us about intranets.

I really liked this video - there’s something very satisfying about watching something self organise. (spotted on the music thing blog).

For things to work well together you need a framework that loosely connects each part, the framework needs some flexibility: the cans move slightly because of the average of the metronome movement, and it’s that framework movement that syncs them all.

I’ve often said here that the web 2.0 promoters are usually wrong when they say social media self organises, because the overlook the framework, the metronomes won’t sync if there is no connection, no framework.

However neither will a rigid connection work, which reflects the style of governance that dominates intranets (and seems to be enshrined in the increasingly old fashioned looking BSI standard PAS 124).

I’m going to avoid calling the equivalent intranet syncing “governance”, and say its a framework - though it is a governance, the “governance of the crowd” and it needs to be in place (note, I was so pleased with that last phrase I googled it, as far as I can tell nobody else has used it yet!).

More on what I mean by this framework, how it works and what an intranet manager should do about it another time. meanwhile… enjoy the clicking..