‘Where good ideas come from’ and Comments4Kids

I watched this powerful promotional video for Steven Johnson’s upcoming book – Where good ideas come from.  (thanks to @cbetcher and twitter for this link).  Aside from the interesting presentation, the ideas were clear and it made me want to read the book when it comes out.  One point Johnson raised is that great ideas take time to evolve – developing from a ‘slow hunch’ and they come from collaboration with others.

It got me thinking – over the past few months I have become aware of the value of certain hashtags in Twitter.   I have written about these before, but more recently I have discovered the  use for very specific purposes, such as promoting student blogs and encouraging comments such as #comments4kids.

I have seen first hand the power of a tweet with this tag – enormous responses (48 comments to one class post) are achievable via the advertising that Twitter can supply.

From my understanding, the concept of this hashtag came from @wmchamberlain through a series of tweets and a Wiki developed that has now been extended in the new Comments4Kids Blog.  It was an extension on the #FF idea, created to fill a need.  From my reading of the history of this hashtag, it seems to me to be a good example (in a small way) of Steven Johnson’s theory.  Okay, it didn’t take years to create but it was a ‘collision of hunches’.

‘Chance favours the Connected Mind’
S Johnson

I am grateful to these ‘connected minds’ and I believe that some of the ‘spaces of creativity’ that Johnson refers to are blogs and Twitter.  There are certainly many connected minds here – the coffee house of today’s thinkers ?