My question is simple: if we are going to think about our organizations as cities, what can we learn from people who “design” cities for a living? Those “designers” are called planners and their profession is planning. Who are they? What do they do? How do they plan?

For those of us who are look at social technologies as being situated in organisations that we treat as complex human systems, the design of urban environments presents some interesting parallels with the domain of social business design. As introduction to this idea, Gordon's post about his joint presentation with Thomas Vander Wal at E2Conf Santa Clara 2011 is well worth reading (and looking at). There is plenty of follow up reading in the post too.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to participate in BarCampCanberra 2011. Off the back of many varied discussions from our Social Business Summit series, I thought this would be a good chance to engage with a diverse audience about workforce collaboration. In particular, I wanted to create a link between organisations and how we organise information. The following are some notes about my thoughts behind this presentation.

Cross posted from the Headshift Australia blog, I've written up some notes about my BarCampCanberra 2011 presentation on enterprise social software. Would love to hear your comments here or over on the Headshift blog.

And don't forget, if you are interested in this kind of thing and work for a large organisation based in the Asia Pacific you should also register your interest in the regional 2.0 Adoption Council.

Lantern, a Melbourne-based non-profit with a focus on mental health, are running a Mental Health 2.0 Unconference today. I was planning to attend but one reason and another I wasn't able to make it down from NSW in the end... however, I thought I might as well share the slides I had prepared. As usual, this is a short deck and imagery intensive - so I'll do my best to add some commentary later.

UPDATE: A <10 minute audio commentary is now included with the slides.

Incidentally, with the support of Simon Spencer (GM Asia Pacific) and Ross Hill from the local Yammer team, the unconference has been able to bring together participants into a microblogging community that has had people talking and introducing themselves before the event starts. So even if I'm not there today, I'll be able to follow and engage with this back channel during the day.

If you are interested - this makes use of Yammer Communities functionality, that lets you create an enterprise microblogging network that extends beyond your own organisation.

I had the honour of presenting this Vital Issues Seminar today for the Parliamentary Library, at Australia's Parliament House. In between interruptions by the bells, Sen. Kate Lundy chaired the meeting and even managed to throw me some curly questions to deal with.

Also demonstrating that the Parliamentary Library is walking the Gov 2.0 talk, you will find a copy of my slides and also a sound recording* of my presentation on the Parliament's Website. This I should add is not only a great resource for people working in parliament, but also those that wouldn't necessarily normally have access to these sessions either.

*BTW that noise at the beginning is the bells ringing through the PA system.

As promised, I've updated my BarCamp Canberra 2010 slides about Project 8 with the audio recording of my talk. Its worth listening all the way through to the end, as the last 1/3 of the audio recording includes some discussion with the audience with some great points from people like Kate Lundy and Craig Thomler.

And remember, after you've listened to the presentation get out there and start remixing the Project 8 materials for your agency or government department!