The Chicago Sun-Times just reported a 52-minute delay in the Houston Astros versus San Diego Padres baseball game when a swarm of bees took over part of left field at Petco Park - it took a beekeeper to sort it all out.

I recently had the privilege of being invited to speak to a NASA audience at their Research Centre in Langley (Virginia) on the topics of Bioteams and The Networked Enterprise. My talk was very nicely reported for NASA News by Jim Hodges.

Bizeazia have pulled together a number of my articles on Virtual Business Networks from www.bioteams.com into a neat 10-page guide within their Online Business Library of 700 articles. You can download it free here.

A bioteam is an organizational structure in which peers share power and responsibility and each member of the team is a both a leader and a follower. The structure is modeled after a fluid leadership structure found in nature....... read the full article from Whatis?com the IT encyclopedia and learning center.

Swarmteams (www.swarmteams.com), the Bioteams-based multi-channel group messaging system, is now ready to raise its first external investment. The Swarmteams executive team are looking for strategic investment partners (individuals and enterprises) who can add real value to the mission of turning crowds into communities.

Alex Lin (CEO of ChinaValue Business New Media) has just conducted a major interview with me (Ken Thompson) where we explore in detail the concept of The Networked Enterprise for Chinavalue.net. Here are the full interviews in both English and Chinese.

David Wilcox (Social Reporter) chats with me (Ken Thompson (Bioteams)) on his video phone about how best to engage people, and whether you could "sell" them social media (knowing you can't really).

Will the 21st Century witness the end of Management as we know it? Can bioteams succeed in creating a competitive advantage where top-down management organizations have failed? Business Process Guru, Peter Fingar addresses these questions in his column in BUSINESS PROCESS TRENDS this month.

What do killer bees, locusts, field mice, mayflies, starlings, cicadas, cuban land crabs, driver ants, redflies, locust birds, silver carp and honey bees all have in common? The "Wisdom of Crowds" or in other words the ability to Swarm in huge groups.

I just received a Christmas Card from the Monitor 360 group which identified 14 "Consequential Ideas for 2009". The ability to collaborate effectively in large groups is fundamental to (at least) 3 of them: Resilient Communities, Guerilla Journalism and Crowdsourcing.