Joe Merante's Blog

Here are recent entries I wrote on other sites: Fast and Far, Together This post on the Code for America (CfA) blog is a brief recap of the CfA Institute, the training program the Fellows completed before each team's February residency.  During my residency in Austin, the experiences of the Institute served as an invaluable reference during meetings, personal and team planning, responding to feedback, managing my own expectations and more.  Individually or as a team, there is a constant tension between competing visions of leadership and metrics of progress. Entrance to Austin Council Chambers "To go fast, go alone.  To go far, go together."  My default starting point is to work alone, developing and vetting ideas before getting others involved.  This approach can have the unintended consequence of being seen as myopic, uncompromising or apathetic to the concerns of others.  Or, as an inarticulate braindump in search of an audience.  The issue ...

In The Penguin and the Leviathan , Yochai Benkler does a terrific job of synthesizing a wealth of cross-disciplinary research in support of the idea that collaboration isn't just the new competition, it's the driver of progress we've been ignoring for too long.   In many ways, this book felt like The Starfish and the Spider meets The Tipping Point via a trip through the Harvard Business Review.  Which isn't a bad thing at all.  Despite being a first edition, I did notice a bunch of typos.  Anyways, the title derives from the symbol of Linux, Tux the Penguin, and Hobbes' Leviathian .  A more contemporary mashup might be The Penguins' Leviathan as a nod to the equal, if not enhanced, power of new collaborative enterprises over centralized. Benkler is able to follow his points through many fields of study and even examples like the 2008 Obama campaign don't seem quite so cliched given his mastery of the topic.  I enjoyed the historical references and chal...