Monday, July 16, 2018
Collective mind or community boost
Collective mind or community boost
In Szeged, Hungary we have a very new IT (and childcare, yeah ...) complex - called Agora - near to our office. Basically its going to be a hub for professionals. We really needed this. It hosts events such as SzegedTech, the monthly web development meetup, Szeged Startup Meetup or Szeged UX / Design meetups. I think the local Drupal user group will be there soon too.
This weekend Ive attended on the (almost) regular creative coding day. And we have the Drupal code sprints as well. So many events. Few years ago we had one or two of them. Its so great to see growing these events like pimples on a teenager. What Id like to say today is how grateful I am about the people Im surrounded here (and on the internet - yes, time to accept internet is real, not digital).
Topics on collective mind go crazy. Its an amazing territory. Do you know what is an organism? For me an even more interesting thing is that single functional entities aim to cooperate to others in order to aim higher goals, like survival or spread. At this moment I think that experimenting with variations, mutations just a way it works and nothing sophistical. For me collective mind is the same. People tend to cooperate when they want to achieve.
Many times when I observe my environment I see certain patterns doing their things. Its really not an only-human behavior, its random, its physical and emotional. But the thing is, these things acting as triggers, or small puzzle pieces. You have problems in your mind and often dont find the solution. Not because youre dumb (at least not all the time) - rather you just cannot see the pattern of how the initial state can be transformed to a solution. Like in Lego - when I was a kid I was playing Lego all the time. I had pieces that had to connect, I knew where they belong to, I know how it will look - I just didnt know whats between them - whats the connector look like. So you knee down and crawl your ass off till you find something that works. Thats all you need.
Funny when you steer your mind to the right way by telling it loud. I may wrong - but I think its a little bit of the fictional friendship syndrome. Mastering this skill helped me so many times I couldnt count.
But then when its about problems you have community. The collective mind. See StackOverflow. See your workplace. Remember all the events youve been. Nobody has the luxury to be the smartest alone. Listening is poor mans creativity. And creativity is everything. Im grateful to work with astonishingly smart guys. Im grateful to meet genius minds on our meetups. And having internet - no words.
On the Singularity podcast (which I love so much) they told people in technology doubts everything - by nature. And I think thats the key when you listen. Doubt yourself. Our company culture embrace brainstorming and I like it a lot. Its hilarious what phases an initial idea goes through sometimes. But its a natural mutation.
My advice: be there, be loud, contribute, merge. The superorganism is waiting for you ;)
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If you have anything to say about collective mind, please, leave a comment.
Peter
