Sue Gardner

The internet used to be a Wild West, in which corporations, well-funded start-ups, and amateurs competed for user attention, with the amateurs often winning. The net gave ordinary people access to the means of production—a billion blogs, self-hosted sites, and proto-social networking sites were born! That was great, Sue Gardner contends, because the internet should be like a city, with shoe stores and banks and restaurants, but also with parks and libraries and schools. Today, though, the internet has matured. It is increasingly corporatized and commercialized, and ordinary people’s open participation has declined. We participate in narrower, simpler ways than we used to, such as “liking” something on Facebook, or republishing other people’s posts on Tumblr. In this state-of-the-union talk, delivered at a crucial moment, Gardner looks to the future of the net, and examines the implications for democracy, journalism, education, free speech, creativity, openness—and much more. If we want an Internet that allows for healthy public spaces, she says, we are going to need to course-correct, including figuring out ways to pay for what we want. Otherwise, we risk ordinary people being flipped from creators into consumers, exactly like what happened with television 50 years ago. Bringing extraordinary insight to the net’s growth so far, Gardner paints a realistic (and hopeful) picture of the ways we can still positively shape the greatest communications phenomenon we've ever known. 

What can organizations and workplaces learn from the success of one of the world's most invaluable web communities? The fundamental premise of Wikipedia is that if you create a space where people are encouraged to share and help each other, they will do it. In the decade-plus since Wikipedia's launch, that's been proven to be true. In this talk, Sue Gardner looks at how the site’s model has many lessons that can be applied to the workplace, to increase collaboration and creativity. We’re moving from top-down, carefully controlled environments into more transparent organizations in which decentralized work groups have a high degree of autonomy, Gardner reminds us, and Wikipedia was a forerunner in this kind of participatory engagement. 

Work is changing, and Silicon Valley cultures are at the forefront. We’re moving from formal, command-and-control, bureaucratic organizations into workplaces that are agile, often decentralized, and in which teams have a high degree of autonomy and authority. In those contexts, Sue Gardner argues, leadership is changing too. Increasingly, in order to be effective, leaders are going to need to be flexible and collaborative, highly transparent, and non-authoritarian. Drawing on her years heading up the Wikimedia foundation—a period of substantial and much-heralded organizational growth—Gardner takes a look at the new leadership models that have emerged, and how they apply to your own company.