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Closing and Future Directions
Download Ann Hill Duin’s “Future Directions” Powerpoint from the closing session of the Networks & Neighborhoods in Cyberspace Symposium.
These are my personal thoughts and reflections on the closing session. I did my best to accurately report on the thoughts of Ann and the other participants. Please feel free to comment or post your own blog as well. 
Ann Hill Duin did a great job of summarizing the panels from earlier. Her big question - Where do we go from here? We need to make things that are “disruptive” if we want to move forward and create new things. For example, the University of Minnesota recently altered their requirements for tenure to include incentives of interdisciplinary research. This is a big change, as professors will be required to reach beyond their normal spheres of influence…and potentially have a greater influence.
The way people interact and share information is changing. That is, many of the major name brands are losing market influence to more collaborative online environments:
- Blogger.com now has 100M (up from 10M in 2005); beats CNN.com
- MySpace.com beats MTV.com
- Wikipedia.com beats Brittania.com
- Skype adds 220,000 subscribers per day
Vision for the future. Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0.
Ann’s presentation opened up to more of an interactive discussion than a presentation, so the following paragraphs are a mix of Ann’s thoughts and those of the audience.
There are distinct differences between the traditional model of choosing research partners vs. the “shared leadership” model. When choosing our networks and partnerships, they should be based on the quality of interactions rather than on titles and positions. Members should be interdependent and help each other to learn and grow intellectually, moreso than simply providing a portion of the needed data. That is, good leaders “provide multiple means to enhance the process.”
