Michael Helfrich's Radio Weblog has a good post on Social Software and the issue of trust. Apparently negotiations can proceed more smoothly if enabled by collaboration software.
The Virtual Negotiation Table in Southern Asia/New York/Helsinki: Groove was used less than eight weeks ago to broker peace in a nation in southern Asia. During the mid-80's, tension between the majority and the separatists on this island nation erupted into full blown ethnic war, with 10's of thousands of people losing their lives. Leveraged by some very bright folks from the Nobel Peace Laureate, and with the wisdom and guidance of James A. at Groove, a set of "Peace Tools" was developed and deployed to assist in a new round of peace negotiations. "
In an earlier post Michael Helfrich writes about THE POWER OF EVENT SWARMS: We had a lot of success with the use of Groove during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Robert, Josh, and Phil on the Groove Humanitarian Team worked nights and weekends in support of DoD, State Department, USAID, and NGO activities as these organizations worked to avert a major humanitarian crisis in Iraq.
I've been intrigued for some time about technology frameworks, as well as the political/cultural aspects, for facilitating small unit swarming as organizations attack opportunities, tasks, and threats. While small-unit swarming often focuses on the rapid, ad-hoc formation of affinity groups, the discussion usually ends there. Call it "task swarming" if you will.
During Iraqi Freedom, elements of the U.S. government and various NGO's used Groove for Humanitarian Rapid Assessment. After we were done breaking things in an Iraqi city, these folks would come in and assess what was needed to help the people in the city. This was a classic example of task swarming where more than 100 people people from 30 organizations came together within 48 hours and went to work. We saw it many times during the conflict as groups worked to coordinate medical logistics and other humanitarian tasks. Groove worked flawlessly.
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