Over the past several years, the social media space has provided the means for collaboration despite geographical location. Wikipedia is a perfect example of this. This site has not only created an expansive and free encyclopedia, but has also launched Wikiversity – a site dedicated to the dissemination of free learning modules. The best part of this wikiverse is that it is organic – continuously changing and growing, all fueled by unsolicited and unpaid input from people around the world.

Similarly, the introduction of unconferences helped to bridge the gap between the virtual and real world. Like-minded people were given the means to connect in the virtual world and then share their ideas and perspectives in an offline environment.

An interesting evolution has taken place where this real world get together has been linked to a specific objective. In 2007, Startup Weekend was founded, and it posed a very simple objective – in 54 hours, create a company or project. These types of initiatives bring together people of varying skill sets to create something substantial that will have an impact on the world we live in. Collaboration is key.

Most recently, an organization in Ottawa has just completed their first version of a weekend with an objective. Ottawa Web Weekend ran from May 9^th to 11^th. During this weekend, participants were challenged to create a web-based company. Programmers, designers, marketers and otherwise interested participants came together to take on this open challenge. After numerous hours – and no doubt equivalent pizzas – they arrived at reBookMe.com. If professionals can enter a collaborative environment and launch a business in less than three days, it begs the question: what could be done in a week’s time? What would happen if it lasted even longer? More importantly, it is now possible for you to leverage this approach for your business or community.

We‘ve tried a few different things with varying levels of success. How have you changed the way your organization works in order to better develop a forum for ideas?