Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Leadership in de-centralized communities

After speaking to various people within open source communities, one thing that is lacking, or would rather be avoided, is responsibility for leading projects and/or movements. Institutions within society in which we are trying to sell the benefits of open source to are looking for legitimate communities which offer proven sustainable results no matter how large or small they might be.

So much momentum has been gathered over the years through the development of communities and their product of innovation that it has produced projects yielded by "leaderless" communities. These communities work within circular networks which are often driven by shear idealist interest rather than practical goals.

Adversely, Traditional institutions are measured though a result based approach that is highly focused on either top-down or semi-flat management structures where the goals are defined by management.

Here is a good comparison of both aspects


I believe there is a spot in societies for both beliefs and their followers, but the future might bring more of a hybrid concept where one concept builds off the other. It will be interesting to see, but overall we need to start thinking more dynamically no matter what school of thought we subscribe to, and unfortunately I do not think we have quite made it there yet.

One day................A day after tomorrow.