In a press release to promote their upcoming Content and Collaboration Summit 2010 (London, UK, September 15-16) Gartner Research forecast 10 key changes in the nature of work through to 2020 centering around bioteams, swarming and connectivity.

The Chicago Sun-Times 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.

Swarms 101 is a short interactive web-based presentation which introduces the basic concept of a Swarm, the key Swarm characteristics (Open v Closed, Star v Peer...) and how Swarms can be combined into powerful "Swarm Communities" through the ability to exist in mulltiple swarms (as Swarm Owner and/or Swarm Users). Includes examples of Swarm Communities in Music, Brands and Public Health.

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.

Mobile teams, who spend much of their day on the road, face communication challenges that cannot be solved by web-connected laptops alone. This case study shows how the Intermediate Care Team at DaisyHill Hospital addressed these challenges with a Bioteams approach supported by integrated mobile phone and web "swarm" technology.

Ken Thompson presented on the topic: "Bioteams: what can we learn from natures social networks" at the NLab Social Networks Conference (19th June 2008) at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

New Scientist reports on new research at the Harvard Medical School which suggests that targeting anti-smoking campaigns at social networks, rather than individuals, is a more effective way to reduce smoking rates.

Our old friend the spider gets a lot of bad press. For example he/she has been used as an example of the weakness of centralised leadership models versus so-called "leaderless organisations" in The Starfish and The Spider. However spiders can teach teams, enterprises and networks two very important lessons: Strategic Readiness and Appropriate Response.

This little video from Paul Kedrosky's blog shows that in the right conditions and with the right players "self-organisation" can be the best solution to a group problem.

Kare Anderson, journalist and author, has just published an excellent bioteams podcast, Be an Alpha Swarmer? Attract fans. Start movements, on her very popular collaboration blog. The podcast features a 35 minute wide-ranging discussion of practical bioteaming techniques and their real-world applications in various groups.

By studying swarming behaviour in ants, locusts and crickets there is much we can learn about robot communications, how cancer tumours spread and even how our neurons swarm to produce thoughts.

Sometimes the Bee-team is the A-team: the importance of an automatic team swarm response to threats and opportunities.

In this article I suggest that organizational teams, networks and communities who can adapt and adopt the "stop trying to control them" principle exemplified by nature's teams can achieve huge gains in agility and collective intelligence.

During spring in Denmark, just before sunset, flocks of more than a million European Starlings gather from all corners to create an incredible phenomenon known as The Black Sun. The Black Sun principles of flocking and mass collaboration can also be applied to organisational teams.

Those who don’t believe that humans can swarm and flock must not have been watching the World Cup in Germany. The Mexican Wave, or La Ola, is a spontaneous activity involving very simple individual behaviors which produces an amazing collective result.

In a previous article, Seven 'model behaviours' for bioteam members, I discussed the work of Craig Reynolds and the three critical autonomous behaviours which enable birds to flock. Here I propose that human bioteam members need just seven autonomous behaviours to enable them to swarm.

If you want to play with PC-based simulations which introduce key bioteams concepts then its worth a visit to the MIT Starlogo site where under the PROJECTS section you can simulate the behaviour of bees, fireflies, slime, termites, rabbits, ants and boids (birdoids).