I was not looking for Linda, Linda found me...

Delicious serendipity, the cocaine of discovery.

I was taking tea with Herd author Mark Earls in Camden on Friday (yes, we are in England, folks) when Mark spotted someone he knows. He called out and they had a brief conversation.
Turns out it was Pat Kane, lead singer of 80s pop sensation (I think that's the right phrase pop pickers!) Hue and Cry.
The delicious discovery? Pat is rather more than an ex-pop star. He, I discovered thanks to Mark, is a brilliant thinker and the author of the Play Ethic.

A quote from the blurb:

"The Play Ethic shows how play is fundamental to both society and to the individual, and how the work ethic that has dominated the last three centuries is ill-equipped to deal with the modern world."

Not a million miles from Stowe's high valuation of playfulness that he's been describing recently here at Reboot and here at WidgetWebExpo.

My takeaway so far (and I'm off to order The Play Ethic, by the way) is that people enjoy changing things, taking the mickey out of things, passing things around, playing with ideas, tools etc with a sense of joy. Being 'business serious' can be quite enough to kill ideas.

The gladiatorial my-idea-is-bigger-than-your-idea stuff that goes on in too many meetings is a fight to the death. The surviving idea doesn't come through better - it comes through with bits chopped off and toughened up so much that its now harder than ever to get it to trust a friendly hand when it reaches out (to collaborate, build on, share, co-create).

If the ideas were played with rather than fought over we'd find ways of making the game better, together. And this of course applies to the better digital tool sets groups are using to form with.

I like this very much. At least, I like the direction this chance encounter has prodded me in.

I was not looking for Linda, Linda found me? It's a Hue and Cry lyric. And a great description of how the Play Ethic discovered me...

Make things spread fast: With a smile (or a scream)

A smile is among the most rapidly transmitted things I know. Laugh and the world laughs with you... smile and people smile back (they can't help themselves, as Herdmeister would aver).
We're monkey-see-monkey-do critters. Homo Mimicus. Things spread because we copy the monkey next to us. So spread with a smile?
One example HERD brings us of human-to-human transmission is the roadside floral tributes to road crash victims we now see so many of. I spotted a varient in New York last month: The bicycle the victim died on chained to a post on Broadway (I took a picture, right).
Now I read that the idea is being copied by fellow apes across the UK. They have been dubbed, Ghost Bikes.
This kind of spreading is very easy to spot (it's hard to miss a bike chained to a lamppost, hence the reporting in the mainstream press).
The idea is being easily and relatively rapidly copied. It is easy to understand the idea, and easy to create our own versions of it. (nb: The moment the Government makes a standard white replica bike to distribute to local authorities to attach to lampposts at accident black spots, the idea will be finished).
But perhaps there is already a brake on the pace at which ghost bikes can spread.

There's nothing funny about them. Nothing at all.

The things that get rapidly shared are not only those which can be easily copied and adapted (co-created) to suit the community we each interact with, they are also funny.

Smiling spreads fast. Laughter too. It's why the watching-tv-at-home belly laugh is a rare thing but the laughs-out-loud are two-a-penny when you're in a comedy club audience.

So, I'll stick with the idea that we pass on things that we think those we are passing on to will think is cool. Stuff spreads this way.

Bit if I think it's cool and funny stuff spreads way faster.

Perhaps it is simply because there are now three possible groups you will share with:
1. those you define as likely to think what you pass on is cool,
2. those you define as likely to think what you pass on is funny and finally,
3. those you define as likely to find it both cool and funny.

I'm guessing group three are the most likely to pass it on?

There's a darker flip: Fear and panic spreads rapidly through groups, too...

Ghost Bikes?