Getting Better at Getting Better

There's a great description of what Doug Engelbart has been been trying to do all his life. Along with being a muse and mentor to many, he's devoted his life to how do we get better at getting better. Adele Goldberg, co-inventor of one of the first object oriented languages, Smalltalk has worked with Doug when she was active in the ACM - Association for Computing Machinery, and helped publish his papers back in 1993. Later in 2002, she wrote this about what he has been saying for 53 years. I really like it, its framed on the wall behind my computer monitor, and today is your lucky day, because I'm sharing it with you. I think its great.


We need to improve how we work together
And we all know that this is true:

The best way to improve is to find others who are improving,
and copy them!

The next best way to improve is to find others who also want to improve,
and work together.

Improvement is:
Process
and Tools
and Learning-oriented
and can be done outside protected business interests.

There are GREAT examples of improvement
Where communities formed from a grass roots need to get help,
and an individual desire to give help....Open Source


The results are tools
and better human communications
That benefit everyone

We NEED to get more results like these into our organizations
and our government

We can speed up our efforts by taking a meta approach.
We need to learn how in setting up the meta world
We can ENCOURAGE!
OBSERVE!
and LEARN from the individual customizations of the ideas.

We need to help people/organizations form communities
Whose purpose is:

- To get help and give help
- To Invent and Use Tools
- Better Communications



YEP, well said Adele!

CRM and Communities will increasingly overlap in the future:

It's a new paradigm that can take us away from the grinding cost-cutting that's prevalent.

Focusing us on finding new ways to improve the value that businesses and customers, governments and citizens can create together for each other.