Bernard Hill, playing a loveable grandfather in the BBC TV drama Sunshine, when asked by his grandson "what was the best football match ever?" gives an unexpected and poignant answer: The Christmas Truce..

Hunter New England Health in New South Wales, Australia, have completed a major Pandemic Influenza Simulation Exercise using Swarmteams, a bioteams-based multi-channel community engagement system, to manage the communications of an Emergency Operations Centre.

Robin Good of MasterNewMedia.org has published a short video clip series where he interviews me (Ken Thompson) about the Bioteaming approach to virtual/mobile teams, networks and communities.

Is leadership superfluous in a self-managing team? Aren't self-managing teams supposed to be self-sustaining and self-sufficient? Associate Professor Paul Tesluk, writing for INSEAD Knowledge, wants to correct this misconception in a short article with supporting video clip.

Robin Good of MasterNewMedia.org has just published an excellent 6-part short video interview with me (Ken Thompson) talking about Swarmteams and its music derivative SwarmTribes. These are two bioteams-inspired technology ventures for interacting with mobile and virtual communities.

A study at Loughborough University, UK, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email, so people who check their email every five minutes waste 8.5 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.

The NLab Social Networks Conference took place in the summer at De Montfort University (in Leicester, UK) featuring a number of speakers including Steve Clayton (Microsoft), Roland Harwood (NESTA), Andrea Saveri (IFTF), Jim Benson, David Asch and myself (Ken Thompson). The conference videos are now available online.

One of the papers I re-read lately is Clay Shirky's landmark speech at ETech in 2003 "A group is its own worst enemy" where he identifies 4 principles for social software/social network design. These principles are every bit as relevant today as they were 5 years ago.

The Delphi Technique is a proven way to harness collective group intelligence (popularly known as "the wisdom of crowds") in a wide range of applications. It is also non-proprietary and supported by a number of excellent free resources.

When Father Ted finds himself trapped with 7 other priests in Ireland's largest lingerie department he does not panic but appoints himself leader to rescue his colleagues from embarrassment. Enjoy leadership without formal authority in this short video clip (6 mins).