Mark Surman Plenary Speech, TechKnowFile 2009
Date:
May 26, 2009 - 10:00am - 11:00am
Location:
MacLeod Auditorium, MSB, University of Toronto
Presenter/Moderator:
Mark Surman In this keynote address at the University of Toronto's TechKnowFile conference, Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, discusses the idea of "a university that thinks like the web."
Just in case you were unable to make out the details in the video embedded in Mark's talk, here is the original:
Mark Surman is in the business of connecting things: people, ideas, everything. A community technology activist for almost 20 years, Mark is currently the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation , with a focus on inventing new ways to promote openness and opportunity on the Internet. On the side, Mark convenes conversations about ‘ open everything ‘ in his home town of Toronto and around the world.
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So now what?
Mark's talk was great - he really has a handle on the widening gap between the open source/web/free flow of information/ubiquitous access movement and traditional academia. So now we are faced with the eternal problem of TechKnowFile - we all enjoyed the talk, and thought many of the ideas were great - but now what? How can we make steps, even baby steps, towards a university that thinks like the web. More importantly how do we get students involved and excited about an effort like this?
I suppose one of the dangers is to not mistake things that are trendy (twitter, facebook, etc) with things that are sea changes in the way information is handled (wikis, blogs, tagging).
Discuss!
Students
I think the key is finding faculty members that would be willing to try and apply collaborative philosophies in their teaching. I know several computer science (and other)faculty members that like the idea of open source... but can we push this one step further? Can we actually make open source/open thinking/open collaboration part of the curriculum? I'm not just saying using something like DrProject (specialized LMS for computer science fostering collaboration and teamwork), but actually working on real-world applications... whether they're gigantic open source projects like Mozilla Firefox (what Seneca College is doing), or simply an app that the university could use... such as a mailing list manager (e.g. extend PHPList).
Check out my U of T Summer of Code forum post.
Many facets to this question...
Software Development is not the only aspect we can provide the open source philosophy too. We could amalgamate several disciplines to work together to make this happen including the media, art, music disciplines (you get the idea). A perfect example of this can be found in the production of computer games...you have developers, artists, actors, musicians and business people all working together towards a common goal.
This would require the collaboration of several people, including those who are in academia, staff and of course, students. Imagine creating a multi-disciplinary project course that involves people getting together across several disciplines to build something...or refine on something that has already been built and evolve it into something even better. For example take something like Compiz for Linux - now that would be a cool project that includes many facets of development, art and music (possibly even psychology)...Inviting Faculty for a little pow-wow on what is possible would probably be the next steps if you wanted to entertain that idea, but you don't have to take my word for it check out an example of what I mean for yourself... ;)
Cheers.
Thinking U of T
I agree that there is a clear application to this kind of thinking to software development and even computer science/technical disciplines in general - those audiences already get some exposure to this kind of philosophy and those academics tend to at least be aware of this space. To shamelessly use Bob Cook's term - how can we take this and "Think U of T"? How can we integrate collaboration and open source, including students, into how ALL programs run, into how decisions get made, how feedback is solicited and even into how the university is administered. Isn't this kind of model the ultimate in transparency? Where not only do we let the stakeholder see the man behind the curtain, but maybe let them pull a lever or two. How can we make the democracy that is the university (elected representatives on governing council) more direct (the ability for individuals to contribute)? It could be as simple as modeling some processes after the document in the video that Mark Surman showed - wiki-style editing and collaboration.
How can we even get our own input as (mostly) technology professionals coordinated so that decisions that affect all of us are discussed thoroughly and openly? The suggestion of an ideastorm-like site may be one way to handle this - topics could be decided from the center (CIO) or contributed from the edges and then the process of discussion and synthesis of ideas into a recommendation can begin. How about 24/7 Advisory Working Groups on the web? The hardest part as I see it is the workflow - how do you choose when the discussion and debate should end and the production of a reccomendation that has plurality support, if not complete consensus begin?
Where do you draw the line?
A word of caution along the lines of Paul's ideas: where do you draw the line? Democracy is good and all, but sometimes people ask for something that eventually ends up being a shot in the foot. Leadership is key in maintaining balance between restrictive control (and thus innovation curbing) and freedom to change (innovation encouragement).