Wikinomics- Group F

I created a page for us since we didn't have one yet!

Tonights meeting at 9pm. in the library.
Have your powerpoints & paragraphs started/done.

CHAPTER 9: (my chapter)

Beginning Part pages 239-253-

- This section was mainly about The Geek Squad and how they use Group Collaboration to work in teams and become more productive and effective.

- This chapter also discussed "The Wiki Workplace" and how imporant wikis, blogs, chat rooms, and instant messaging have become in the workplace.

- This last part I read about discussed Best Buy, and Sociatext, two companies that have benefited greatly from group colloboration and computers/technology.

Here are some video links that I found interesting and informative:

The Geek Squad Commercial:

Wikinomics Author (Don Tapscott):

Another Wikinomics Video:

Some written articles I found:

Platforms for neighborhood knowledge
Neighborhood knowledge California is empowering residents to improve their communities. This project integrates databases containing information about the city, county, state federal and private activities that can be tracked at the neighborhood level to develop an interactive Neighborhood electronic monitoring system. This has helped citizens and community organizations use the database to look for properties with tan problems, code violations, or other difficulties. The purpose of this system is for residents to monitor Los Angeles’s responses to housing-code complaints and violations similar to the way online customers track their FedEx packages.

My section of the paper edited/corrected:

The Geek Squad uses collaboration and practices effective use of teamwork everyday on the job. Today The Geek Squad has grown to 12,000 service agents and generates nearly $1 billion in services from over 700 locations across the United States (Tapscott & Williams, 2006, pp. 239). They are shifting from closed hierarchical workplaces and increasing their collaborative human capital networks.
The Geek Squad has a unique style of dress on the job and resemble “The James Bond, Ghost Busters” correlation. Geek Squad agents have been stationed in almost every Best Buy store across the United States and Canada. They pride themselves on a fun and friendly workplace that uses a collaboration of ideas to work together and bounce new ideas off each other. They are also well known for their unique sense of “agent culture,” something only a Geek Squad agent would know about.
The ‘wiki workplace’ is changing the nature of work itself. It has become a way for employees to work together and collaborate on ideas as a team. Many workplaces have become very team-based and are more collaborative as a group. Tools such as blogs, wikis, chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks, and personal broadcasting are making workplaces collaborate more productively.
Many workplaces refer to this era as “The New Gen Era.” Best Buy is a good example of a company that uses many different forms of group collaboration. Since acquiring The Geek Squad in 2002 they have seen their sales rise and have also learned new and exciting ways to collaborate. They started a Retail Leadership Forum that helps employees know what their target customers are buying. This helps them to figure out how they can create more services to help them when they come into the store.
Socialtext is a perfect example of a company today that is very successful because of their collaboration efforts. They have a total of 10 employees, zero overhead, and everybody works out of their homes. They spend no money on traditional marketing practices, and believe that 90% of all collaboration exists in e-mails. They pride themselves on having over 400 customers, 30 of which are Fortune 500 firms. CEO and founder of Socialtext, Ross Mayfield believes that e-mail, instant messaging, and now wikis are becoming more mainstream in workplaces across America. He credits wiki’s as being “a bottom-up phenomenon.”
This relates to fashion because in the fashion industry many companies use group collaboration. The fashion industry as a whole relies on groupthink and teams to come with many creative campaigns and designers often work in groups to collaborate on new designs and ideas. Group collaboration in the fashion industry is very popular because it allows designers to bounce ideas off on one another and to get positive and negative feedback from each other. Companies have come to realize that employees work better in teams and groups and collaborating on ideas has really helped companies grow.

ALSO- did we figure out what we are going to do for the class activities?
Did we get ahold of The Geek Squad at Best Buy and confirm that they could come and talk to the class?
What about the Gingerbread House activity? Supplies?! Just checking on everything!

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