This excellent slide show demonstrates the growing importance of micro-blogging and makes a case for “social objects” rather than social networking, and then lays out 5 principles for building services around them. Engestrom argues that “sites that fail are just ’social networks’,” whereas sites that have succeeded have organized around social objects such as music, photos, favorite websites, and books. He contends that microblogging with such applications as Twitter are disruptive because they are simpler, cheaper, and only need a mobile device to work, making them also more convenient.

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Photo by Roland

Trying to stay hyper-aware of what’s hot and what’s not in the technology world I am constantly keeping my eyes open for new and interesting tools, technology and trends that are emerging. One of the events that serves as a coming out party for technology and generally puts it through its paces is SXSW. If you have a general recollection of last years event one of the big news makers was Twitter. All of the people in the know were using the application to find out who was where and where things were happening.

I came across this years hot application accidentally when I was reading the Chris Brogan’s blog. He had posted about attending SXSW and even went so far as to publish a rough draft of his schedule via an application that I had never heard about previously: Sched.org. What caught my attention more than anything else was the simplicity and utility that the site/app offered. Being in the association world my mind immediately gravitated to how we could use it organizationally and how our members could leverage it as well for the 4 annual conferences we hold.

Well it seems like sched.org exceeded even my own wild optimism for the service. Wired Magazine just published an article on the service, it’s founders (Chirag Mehta and Taylor McKnight) and how it’s being used at SXSW. It’s a big hit. Beyond the obvious cool factor and making easy what is normally drudgery what I found most interesting is how the founders were able to exploit a pain point and create something that many others found useful as well. It’s interesting how innovation often takes place at the junction of inconvenience and inspiration.

How often do you have to collaborate with others to think through a new or existing idea? Exploratree was designed to rapidly facilitate the idea iteration process. It’s essentially an interactive mind mapping tool with a few twists.

Using Flash as the engine, Exploratree allows users to create what they call “Thinking Guides” - tools or frameworks for thinking through an issue and considering different aspects or perspectives that can be useful for helping to develop thinking skills. You can use one of their 23 ready-made templates or simply work from a blank canvas to develop your own to add images, text, and shapes that help you develop and evolve your thoughts.

While the application was originally designed as part of the Enquiring Minds project - a three-year research and development program that is run by Futurelab and funded by Microsoft - working alongside teachers and students in two UK secondary schools the project to develop a distinctive approach to teaching and learning that takes the knowledge, ideas, interests and skills that students bring into schools more seriously and enables young people to take more responsibility for the content, processes, and outcomes of their learning, it is now available for more general use.

By using the power and functionality of the application you can create your document and then send it to a friend or group of friends for review/comment, or allow them to log-in to your Thinking Guide to edit and save changes.

I see a lot of relevance and applicability for this application, and others like it, in connecting distributed work teams and allowing them to rapidly iterate through ideas and projects they are working on/through. I can also see a lot of value in using it alone because it’s simplicity and ease of use allows a user to focus the creation or elaboration of an idea or brainstorm as opposed to being focused on the technology used to facilitate the ideation or brainstorming process. In other words it does what it’s supposed to without getting in your way.

If you are a visual thinking (like I am) who is looking for a light weight, web based tool that is feature rich but very easy to use for collaborating or brainstorming, I’d say that Exploratree is worth taking a look at. No download is required. You can try it without registering, or sign up to the service to get your work saved online, all for free. Exploratree: http://www.exploratree.org.uk