Thriving in the Era of Rabid Collaboration

The majority of this speech addressed the issue of using collaboration to advance efficiency at the higher education level. From the knowledge point of view, the message that was conveyed was that Universities have a great advantage with their networking capabilities to develop and maintain new operation applications run through collaborative open source methods. Dr. Wheeler spoke about the opportunities and challenges that cloud computing and collaborative solutions development present for higher education. Below is a rough outline of Brad Wheeler's speech that I produced as I was watching the video:

Thriving in the Era of Rabid Collaboration

I. Fast digital networks

            A. high performance networking

            B. battle with commercial carriers

II. Networks enable collaboration

            A. Research networks at universities

            B. Different activities than your rivals, strategy

            C. Can higher Ed have competitive advantage

III. Collaboration as a strategy for higher ed

            A. An unnatural act

            B. Collaboration and cooperation is different

            C. Co-Laboring

                        faculty, institutions, slope of retreat, value

            D. The new normal

IV. Meta University Idea

            A. physical experience at the campus becomes more valuable over time

            B. The free shared stuff ( The Cloud)

V. Collaboration starts at home

VI. Trust is the key to IT

            A. At the Edge

            B. With Leverage

VII. IT Governance

            A. Accountability framework

            B. Matrix example

VIII. Above Campus Services

Neural Network Example

              A neural network is a software simulation of a biological brain. These networks are sometimes called Artificial Neural Network or "ANN". The purpose of a neural network is to learn to recognize patterns in data. Once the neural network has been trained on samples of the data, it can make predictions by detecting similar patterns in future data. A Neural network can be considered as a black box that is able to predict an output pattern when it recognizes a given input pattern. The neural network must first be "trained" by having it process a large number of input patterns and showing it what output resulted from each input pattern. Once trained, the neural network is able to recognize similarities when presented with a new input pattern, resulting in a predicted output pattern.
              An example of the use of a neural network in the finance industry could be in reference to the determination of giving out a bank loan. Imagine a highly experienced bank manager who must decide which customers will qualify for a loan. His decision is based on a completed application form that contains ten questions. Each question is answered by a number from 1 to 5 (some responses may be subjective in nature). The problem is that most real-life problems are non-linear in nature. Our ten question application has almost 10 million possible responses. The bank manager's brain contains a Neural Network that allows him to use "Intuition". Intuition will allow the bank manager to recognize certain similarities and patterns that his brain has become attuned to. He may never have seen this exact pattern before, but his intuition can detect similarities, as well as dealing with the non-linearities. If we had a large number of loan applications as input, along with the manager's decision as output, a neural network could be "trained" on these patterns. The inner workings of the neural network have enough mathematical sophistication to reasonably simulate the expert's intuition. This way a neural network application can go over loan applications faster and more efficiently.

Creating Inspired Collective Intelligence

The main goal of this video was to talk about how a company can move from producing work that is just "good enough" to "truly inspired." The term used to describe how companies separate themselves this way is called the margin of difference. The majority of the video discussed the five keys to establishing the margin of difference. The five steps include Social Networks, Social Capital, Conversations, Engagement Process , and Individual Thinking. Social networks and social capitol really fall into the same category. These topics are considered the "life blood" of your company. Establishing relationships and keeping a line of communication open with both employees and other companies is a great way of trading ideas and gaining insight and experience. Conversations and the engagement process covers how employees get ideas conveyed to one another and the type of activities that accomplish this. Individual thinking is the root of all the ideas and work that a company produces. Employees should be focused on their work, producing new ideas that may be improve efficiency and help open a totally new income stream. This video provided a step by step process for how to help improve a company to produce work that is inspired instead of what would be considered only good enough.