Much of this is old hat to those of us who already grok collaborative systems, but exciting to see so many real-world examples and most exciting of all- that some day soon we (the people) may truly, not just figuratively or by proxy, rule ourselves. Government, corporations, services.

This film does a great job of driving some of these concepts home. Share!

Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

Small coincidence for me: during the community football management story, they reference Wrexham where I used to live.

So, Google CEO, Eric Schmidt has some words to announce and is summed up in this eWeek article.

What I find fascinating as we all try to deal with the current economic situation is how different people react. So much of the problems are fundamental failings of the system, but it’s amazing how much of it is fueled by our collective attitudes about it.

You can’t be Pollyanna and pretend there’s no problem, but what a lot of folks don’t realize is that our reaction to dealing with the problems can correct them. We’ll shift our consumer focus and technology will continue to offer new opportunities for growth.

Especially encouraging is the continued emergence of mobile devices as our new personal center of computing. As we move away from desktops, our new, and only slightly more powerful handheld computers will harness the power of the cloud for storage and processing. All the pieces are in place and the weak points (like battery life, transmission speeds and security) are improving rapidly.

As with any paradigm shift, there will be winners and some losers (though history shows us the only real losers are those who fail to adapt) but in the move there is opportunity!

Exciting stuff… and yes, I’m an optimist at heart (under a light, candy shell of cynicism) but I’m no Pollyanna. Tough times confront us- but that only means you have to work harder to reap the rewards.

Though I was cut, I don’t consider myself a victim of any larger trend. I believe my former employer failed to more aggressively capture a growing segment in the market still hungry for professional services like I provide.

News of all the layoffs in many industries grabs all the headlines and to be sure, there’s a lot of scaling back being done. Fortunately, there are segments who will weather the storm and some who are actually growing right now. To be fair, some of these are growing not in spite of the downturn but because of it. However, there are other areas that are just not as affected by large labor cutbacks or dips in stock values.

One area that continues to grow is that of companies trying to improve their business efficiencies. Even those who must cut jobs to appease investors, need more efficient back-office tools to get work done even more efficiently since they now have fewer staff.

We’ll start to see the economy turning around once the media has had its fill of doom-and-gloom… or some new distraction surfaces to get consumers spending again.

Since I’m doing freelance work but keeping one eye on the job market at the same time, I’m seeing more and more confirmation of my hunch that there are places to go where you can contribute value and be compensated for it, you just have to look a little harder.

Indeed article here.