Social connectedness and leveraging “the collective” were two big topics presented this morning. IT should embrace these ideas. UCLA research determined that the human brain feels pain and is more sensitive to pain when a person is socially excluded, even in an online social activity. People want to be connected.

I mentioned yesterday that the government makes datasets available to the collective intelligence of the world in hopes of solving our most challenging problems. This collective approach was presented again today. Examples included Ford Motor Co. They gave Ford Fiestas to 20 somethings for 6 months to see what they thought. The British government wanted to audit all the expense records of the Members of Parliament (MP) but didn’t have the staff to do it. They opened up the records to the public and over half the records have already been reviewed. The public participated not just to see how the MPs were spending money, but many participated to just be a part of the process. Several MPs are no longer there and this work will affect their elections next year.

We’ve also heard of individuals who’ve been able to get corporations to respond to issues when they post them in a public digital space. A gentleman’s guitar was broken by U.S. Air baggage handlers and he made a YouTube video about it. Over 5.7 million people tuned in and U.S. Air payed attention. He used typical processes to have his problem resolved and when that didn’t work, he changed his approach. There are many stories like this – because it works.

Analysts also discussed the importance of keeping an fresh eye on institutional IT data and measures - looking for new trends and new patterns that indicate new directions in IT indicators.

TAGS: , IT, Technology, Research, IT Collective