I have an old friend, Nick, who is somewhere close to finishing his first degree despite being only 16 (or something). We met on Wikinews where, with a whole lot of others, we would occasionally write big stories and otherwise quietly work on discussing and revolutionising how news was put together. Wikinews is still a great project with potential that has never been quite unleashed.
Nick had a nice little phrase that I remembered in passing the other day. When you asked the wikisphere for help with something he'd post "I'm on it". And off he would go to sort something out, or build a new thing.
In real life I try, and usually fail, to respond as swiftly when I'm asked to do something. After all, it's not the quizzical look or the discussion about whether that's the right thing to do that's useful, it's the doing it. Online, the thinkers and the doers have a more equal power relationship than has been the case in the last few decades of organisations and that's possibly what makes the collaborative web so effective.
It's even easier to help each other out now than it was in 2005, with little calls for help being swiftly answered on Twitter. I don't even think Nick is on Twitter, but I hope he'll be pursuaded one day.
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