… getting past the cult of expertise, moving instead to a view of knowledge as social.

That means showing work in progress and capturing the discussion during and after publication.

We need way more of this in the Philippine energy advisory sector. 

Way down in the last paragraph of this brilliant piece that I pointed to on Mamutong, Jeff Jarvis notes:

Smart opinions are not delivered fully formed; they are enriched by the conversation.

In these pieces Jarvis and Weinberger are both talking about more blogging (both behind and beyond the firewall) - linking, listening, entering into conversations - by professionals; putting ideas out there and seeing how they and your own opinions stand up or change under scrutiny, feedback, and the benefit of more information.

In solving our power sector problems, the fundamental issues we must focus on are social, not technical. And this practice (Asian Energy) is hacking away at it.

This morning I read a good post by Robert Patterson who makes the case that Community is going to be “the organization of the future.” Wow!

He talks about differences among Simple, Complicated, and Complex problems. Here’s just a starting sample.

Five years after EPIRA we’re having the same conversations as we were having five years before EPIRA. We (myself included previously and the World Bank, USAID, ADB and others still today) have approached the problem with a tool set designed for the “Complicated”.

But we should be using the rules of Complexity. We cope with Complexity by searching for Emergence. Emergence is a Pattern and you can only see a Pattern with a lot of data. As Robert further says:

This is why Community is going to be the organization of the future where the Many talk to the Many.

Conversation between the Many and the Many is the Darwinian Creative Process that delivers Emergence.

For the right Conversations to happen - you need a Trusted Space. A Trusted Space must be Peer to Peer. Extreme power differences prevent conversation and hence emergence. Hence traditional bureaucracies have profound challenges in coping unless they find ways of opening up the space safely inside to allow for peer to peer.

Collaborative workshops in Manila (or Cebu or Davao) a just too exclusive to cut it. We have to eliminate the dark spots. The team is assembled but we have to realize it’s a process that requires a new ethic.

Here’s one more place: Asian Energy Discussion Community. It’s basically a discussion forum. Anybody can create categories and topics. I tried Google Groups but it didn’t really appeal to me.

You can subscribe to either RSS feeds or e-mail alerts of new activity on either the whole forum or a particular category or discussion topic. Have it your way.

Simply by signing in - anonymously or not - you have immediate write access and can create categories.

I was going to seed it with categories - but let’s see how it develops … if at all.

Underwriting is not sponsorship or advertising - though I’m sure funds will come out of your media budgets. The aim of underwriting external sites, in the words of Christopher Locke, should be to establish strong personal relationships between a company and emerging web micro-markets in which the company has a perceived future stake and in whose subject matter company employees have a preexisting personal interest.

I haven’t yet been able to distill the purpose of my web activities down to a single phrase, but the following is certainly a facet of it:

Philippine utilities are tired of playing the clueless bad guy. And people are tired of working for and paying for electricity from clueless bad-guy businesses. Commerce and culture don’t need to be at war, as Locke says. They need to be re-integrated.

Asian Energy Advisors strives to be a way that companies and government and internet communities can work together in a genuine partnership.

If that strikes a chord with you, contact me. Any level of underwriting is of interest.

Robert Scoble, who knows a bit about this having worked for the oft-hated Microsoft Corporation as it’s de facto chief technology evangelist, has some recommendations here for Facebook, a company that is currently facing a community storm.

Telling you to listen, quite frankly, isn’t so helpful. But to tell you in very practical terms one very concrete way to demonstrate to the public that you’re listening IS hugely helpful.

Listen. Listen. Listen. If you don’t know what I mean by that, open up Google Blog Search or Technorati. Type “Facebook” into there. Then start writing on your blog where you link to EVERYONE who has something nasty to say about you and answer their questions honestly and openly.

Of course, don’t wait for the brouhaha to break out before you start a weblog. Start that now! Or people (particularly influencers) won’t know where to turn to at the critical moment for you.