Creative Waves - Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design - page 43

those around you and the environment you are
working in, much like open-source projects.

laborating, but it is also a powerful social charter
that ripples upwards into the professional world
as much as the corporate landscape is starting
to change from above. Put simply, many hands
make light work.

Collaboration, open-source
and the rise of the Pro-Ams

organisational Change As Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller argue in The

Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller, 2004),
a combination of technical and social changes
have led to the rise of 'professional amateurs' or
Pro-Ams. These groups generate a great deal of
social, as well as financial capital and, according
to Leadbeater and Miller, are “the new R&D labs
of the digital economy” (2004, p. 67).
From astronomy to activism to software design
and saving lives, the Pro-Ams are a powerful
force and one in which collaboration, often via
the Internet, is key:

Working Progress , also by Demos (it is interest-
ing in itself that this research has not come from
an academic institution, but an independent one
who's motto is 'building everyday democracy'
- they work outside of, but often advise the UK
government), examines the nature of organisa-
tional change and the 'disconnect' between young
people and employers (Gillingson & O'Leary,
2006). The authors reveal that organisations are
finding it difficult to recruit graduates with the
right skills even though they acknowledge that
graduates are more highly qualified than ever:
Graduates used to working in the peer-to-peer
environment of the university find it hard to shift
to organisational hierarchies and difficult to relate
to their bosses ( Ibid. p. 14).
At the same time, these organisations them-
selves are changing and the hope is that these two
changing patterns, from what has traditionally been
seen perhaps as the 'top' and the 'bottom', have a
chance of meeting in the middle. They argue that
hierarchical companies are slowly shifting and
being replaced by the networked, organisational
structures that we have already seen online.
Gillingson and O'Leary (2006, p.38) surveyed
Human Resources directors from FTSE200 com-
panies and the top four employee qualities the
directors rated most highly were:

Traditional innovation policies subsidise R&D
and accelerate the transmission of ideas down
the pipeline and into the market. Pro-Ams are
helping to turn this closed model on its head...
ideas are flowing back up the pipeline from avid
users to the technology producers. (Leadbeater
& Miller, 2004, p. 64)

Open-source software projects, in which many
hundreds and thousands of people voluntarily
contribute to the greater good, are the clearest
example of this. Software projects are so complex
it is virtually impossible for a single entity (even
a company as large as Microsoft) to manage the
process. By creating an open environment in
which anyone can contribute changes thousands
of workers and testers are brought into play and
they can apply multiple minds to the complexity
of the problem.
All these people contribute their time for free,
on the understanding that the more they contrib-
ute the more they receive in the end (because the
software is improved) and there is also a social
kudos to this. Again, this is a valuable ideal for
educational situations in which groups are col-

• Communications/communicating ideas

• Problem-solving

• Team-working

• Creativity and Innovation

These are several of the qualities we have
researched and engendered in our past Omnium