Great TED video interview with Clay Shirky at the TED@State event. Clay has been super influential in my thinking, especially after I read his book Here Comes Everybody last year. I highly, highly recommend this book. It is a must read for anyone in a leadership position. I wish more church leaders would read it. What he says is what is happening in leadership and organizations all over the world.
Check out the video.
I have been reflecting on his writings for a long time, and I have been especially interested in two specific topics he talks about in the book. Architecture of participation and communities of practice. I have more thoughts on a theology of these for the Church (but that’s for another post).
I wrote Clay an email last year to tell him about his influence on my thinking, and he promptly responded with a nice email in return.
When asked about what has had the biggest impact with what is going on right now in Iran–blog, Facebook, Twitter)–this was Clay’s response:
It’s Twitter. One thing that Evan (Williams) and Biz (Stone) did absolutely right is that they made Twitter so simple and so open that it’s easier to integrate and harder to control than any other tool. At the time, I’m sure it wasn’t conceived as anything other than a smart engineering choice. But it’s had global consequences. Twitter is shareable and open and participatory in a way that Facebook’s model prevents. So far, despite a massive effort, the authorities have found no way to shut it down, and now there are literally thousands of people around the world who’ve made it their business to help keep it open.
