Marc Smith (Microsoft Research) on the word community, during the opening key-note at 2nd International Symposium in Media Informatics:

… let’s shelve the word ‘community’ and use and study the term collective action instead.
There are over 150 definitions of community by social scientists. If we (the social scientists) are not able to decide what it is, maybe everybody else should not be using the word either…

I like the focus on collective action. It echos the gist of my working definition of knowledge: the ability to act.

I like the subtitle of this conference: Cowpaths, agency in social software. Cowpaths has the right ring for me, it connects to my notion of how social software helps you create and follow traces that coalesce into patterns to help you navigate the information abundance we find ourselves in in this digital age.

[UPDATE] Interestingly enough Marc’s group is called the Microsoft ResearchCommunity Technology Group as Sebastian Fiedler just pointed out to me 🙂