Rarely is one presented with a delicious opportunity to delve into the connections between stickers produced last week, a metaphysical poet from the early 17th Century and the concerns of enterprise social computing. Trampoline is the only workplace on earth I can imagine that occurring. An unhealthy obsession with correct spelling aside, this is the first time I have used my English degree in my career. You have been warned.

Let’s begin with stickers. Trampoline has a batch of them, rapidly depleting and strewn between London, Seattle and San Francisco; a gingerbread trail for wandering Tramponauts. They’ll mostly be encountered at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco this week. Find them and us at booth 629 where we’re being kindly hosted by Oracle. Perhaps you already have, and that’s why you’re here. In which case, make yourself at home.

We had to put something on our stickers. Various ideas were batted around, particularly single words relating to our technology and the world of enterprise social computing. Not bad, but nothing that would achieve our main aim of people liking or identifying with the stickers enough to put one on their laptop. In a flash of inspiration, spurred on by copious cups of tea, I remembered the phrase “no man is an island”. We went with it and a mutated version of our logo.

I was prompted to look at the origins of the phrase and found it belonged to John Donne, a favourite of mine in my late teens. (Don’t laugh, I just love poems.) Here’s the text:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Or, as Donne himself had it, and as I prefer:

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

In essence, every time a man dies, I am affected. Or, to turn it on its head: a group of men is something bigger than the constituent men are as individuals. Together, they are bonded, collective, and the loss of one is a loss of and to all. The text was originally prose, Meditation XVII: Devotions upon Emergent Occasions and IMNSHO this is far from Donne’s best verse. I was tickled by the occurrence of the word Emergent though. At Trampoline we often consider about the ways our technology can support and even identify emerging communities of interest. By this point, I was convinced Donne’s few lines had a good handle on what we’re trying to do at Trampoline, and why we’re doing it.

We believe that people aren’t alone at work. And if they are, they shouldn’t be. Groups and organisations succeed by being greater than the sum of their parts. The constituent parts need to work together to succeed. In Trampoline’s area of practice, large enterprises, that logic means that organisations should be encouraging people to work together, connect, collaborate and tap into each other’s knowledge. This often takes the form of giving people tools, perhaps software. In bringing people together to collaborate, you allow them to create something that wasn’t there before and couldn’t have existed without the fusing of their knowledge and ideas. This is particularly relevant to organisations full of knowledge workers whose main resource is in their employees’ heads, or organisations striving to succeed through innovation. Bunches of individuals working as hard as they can can’t produce new ideas and move them forward like groups of people working together can. We’re all in it together.

So there you have it: John Donne to Trampoline Systems, with stickers as my conceit. I’ll leave you to learn more about what Trampoline does and what Donne did. I recommend the ones about intelligent social networking for enterprises and persuading a lady into bed by ranting about fleas. The choice is yours.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Social networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.