Google announced several days ago that it will start allowing users to collaborate and edit its maps in order to improve details and keep up with new construction. Although there are several restrictions in place such as the regions available for editing (you can only edit in the small Caribbean Islands) and size (you can only edit in a high zoom mode so that people don’t change the shape of countries), this is a major step in collaboration online.

Google is considered an Internet giant in search, advertising, mapping, email and a slew of other things. But this latest step reinforces Google’s appreciation for collaboration and open source. Inspired by the likes of Wikiepdia it’s increasingly clear that collaboration can come from anyone — not just a panel of experts. Does this move make open source, collaborative efforts more legitimate? We think so. Even though there will be teams of people ‘overseeing’ or fact checking this experiment Google’s latest move validates in the power inherent in the web as a platform enabling collective intelligence.

Is it now fair to say we have reached the era where collaborative software is an essential part of life and business? As a current college student, I can affirmatively state that Wikipedia is engrained into my life, as it is for most of my friends. Even top college professors look to it for “dumbed down” explanations and visual aids.

Based on my experience with Workstreamer, we fit right into this trend. I truly believe that tools like Workstreamer that encourage social collaboration will enhance the fantastic information exposure we’ve come to expect from the likes of Wikipedia. I love the idea of allowing people to share, edit and learn what they want, when they want, and how they want.

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Tags: collaborative software, google, online collaboration, seo, social media, wikipedia

In an article on Globe and Mail titled, Online collaboration lands young authors book deal, we see examples of how online collaboration tools are literally changing our world

Danielle Bennett from Victoria, B.C. and Jaida Jones from New York, both 21 years old, had never met before a chatting on LiveJournal about the renowned C.S. Lewis novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. After connecting on the site, the two budding authors exchanged emails and begun bouncing ideas off one another for their own fantasy novel.

As the conversations continued, one thing led to another and they began collaborating online to produce a science fiction novel. Each girl would stay up late after school and write between 6 and 7 pages before sending it off to the other to edit the latest chapter.

After 18 straight days, their novel was complete.

With some help, the girls hired a literary agent, but initially received negative responses from publishers before catching a big break with Random House who offered each of the authors $30,000.

Although they didn’t make use of online social/collaborative tools other than email, the girls were able to achieve an amazing success and prove the power of online collaboration.

Just think — if people are getting novels published through email exchanges, then the potential for people to connect and collaborate on a global scale offers tremendous potential for revolutionary hybrid companies and innovations.

Tags: book deal, collaborative novel, collaborative writing, CS Lewis, livejournal, online collaboration, random house, social tools, write a novel

Workstreamer wanted to highlight a recent post by Abbie Lundberg titled, Digital Natives in Our Midst. We felt Lundberg’s central point is an important and in need of exposure:

Digital Natives view as “co-workers” anyone within their network who can help them solve a problem.

Lundberg’s terminology “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” was coined by Marc Prensky in 2001, to describe the emerging dichotomy in both education and the work place.

Lundberg then argues that due to a divide in technological abilities, it is increasingly difficult for the baby boomers, or “digital immigrant generation” to teach and lead the up-and-coming generation digital natives as young people are more proficient at using technology than professors and/or bosses. Obviously there both significant positives and negatives associated with this change.

Furthermore, Lundberg notes that my generation utilizes the entirety of its social network to answer work-related questions (i.e. an i-banker calls a law buddy for a question about a deal). This is something that she claims is largely enabled by technology, and specifically social media.

In addition, many firms are losing potential revenue because employees are both giving and receiving work-related advice free-of-charge; this poses a serious threat to many firms that relied on secured-knowledge for revenue.

In sum, Lundberg believes that this new phenomena has the potential to really shake things up. But enough about what Lundberg thinks…what are your thoughts?

….Click here to follow Abbie Lundberg on Twitter.

Tags: abbie lundberg, co-workers, coworker, digital immigrants, digital natives, gen y, marc prensky, millenials, online collaboration, steve preefer