This is about an amazing idea of a 23-year young big thinker who created a fantastic community on-line and almost by accident stumbled upon a new platform for on-line communication that could change our world.

I stumbled upon this absolutely great video of a speech given by Vanessa Miemis in NYC during the Social Business Edge Conference on 19 April 2010.

I am a big fan of Mrs. Miemis and fervent reader of her blog “Emergent by Design”.

It’s the first time I see and hear her speak. It’s adds a different dimension. It’s a different type of engagement, and that different type of engagement is exactly what “Junto” is a about: a conversational platform between “real” people (see later on this blog).

She has roughly 4 supporting slides, and talks from the heart, with only a small sheet of paper with probably a couple of keywords and key statements. That’s how really super keynoters do their thing.

In this video she talks in an almost shy way about what drives her, and makes one after the other bold statement about the way this society does (not) work anymore.

The story is in essence about

the old game and the new game

 

As my friend, coach and mentor Andre Pelgrims used to say:

 

our (mental) software has evolved, but our hardware did not (our value systems, our hierarchies, our corporate models)

 

Vanessa’s speech in in 3 chapters:

• We are shaped by our tools
• We learn by modeling behavior
• We align around a shared vision

I was mainly blown away by the section on Modeling behavior, some elements in the vision alignment, and definitely by her description of Junto.

 

Modeling behavior

 

Some real deep thinking here:

 

This is how children learn. It makes interactions transparent

Encourage a culture of collaboration, there is a certain type of behavior that we are modeling, and one that is based on a value system that is predominantly different than the one that exists in society and business today.

And its difficult to expect a paradigm shift when the current model rewards selfishness, and hording of information and exploitative behavior.

This virtual space is actually like some kind of training ground to build trust and to have a different behavior where the outcome is more than the zero-sum (in the existing model)

We align around a shared vision

 

There is this new way. For the greater good. A new global conversation and collaboration platform. that would sit on top of the web and that would accelerate the rate of taking an idea to action. And we are calling it JUNTO.

Enter Junto’s vision: a 3D space, where it’s live-streaming video, with video streams of us human beings.

 

It’s actually you,

who you really are

 

On top of that a profile system, automatically generated by the conversations you are having. It’s a different kind of transparency on who your really are. On top of this this reputation system that would be build into these trust networks, and virtual currencies, … and it goes on.

It’s like 5 people having a public conversation about a topic that interests them, and 500 people sitting in the back-channel. It’s all open source. They don’t want to monetize the tool.

 

They co-create value

by what they do with each other

 

It’s sounds a lot like our “enabling collaborative innovation” theme of Innotribe. It sounds a lot like the “advancing critical dialogue” tag-line of Sibos.

I truly believe that this tool could bee the basis from which a new global economy and a new global society can emerge from.

Wouldn’t it be cool to address this a a theme at Sibos. In front of 8,000 bankers ? Wouldn’t it be cool to experiment with Junto – yes, live i mean – during Innotribe at Sibos ? We plan other cool remote interactive stuff anyway this year. Just have to keep you curious here, as we have not yet fully worked out the concept, but if we pull it off, it will be really cool. Sort of first off.

Her final idea to consider:

Technology is the tool, but not the builder. We are the builders.

 

I challenge you and ask how we get better use to tools to connect and to inspire, so that collectively we can become better builders.

I need to discuss with the Sibos team, but I’d like to invite Vanessa to our Innotribe @ Sibos 2010 in Amsterdam to be part of the keynotes on “the big tectonic shifts” and in our Gen-Y stream.