Professor Wayne Storm throws his students -- mostly C-level executives -- into a room with more than twenty homeless people.  Their instructions: teach them how to get a job.  And he grades them on the results.  Though unconventional, this method is testing a key soft skill for top leaders: emtional intelligence.  "The emotional side of leadership is where the power is. So many of our students tell us this is a breakthrough event for them," says Storm.

Storm's unconventional methods indicate that leadership has changed, and with it, the methods to prepare front-runners for an environment where rapid and discontinuous change is the only constant.

What makes an online "social network" successful?  According to Gina Bianchini, co-founder and CEO of Ning -- the software platform powering the largest number of social networks on the Internet, it's all about "Authenticity, interestingness, and/or a passionate base of members."  These are the only commonalities of the most popular networks in the more than 200,000 powered by the Ning platform.

Bianchini also points out the strength of smaller "niche" social networks.  Only 37% of Ning's traffic comes from the most popular 200 networks.  The greatest bulk (63%) of users and page views are  generated by medium size networks that appeal to a certain user group, interest, focus, or sub-culture.

::> An anthropological introduction to YouTube | 55:34 | YouTube

Dr. Michael Wesch, dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, is facinated by what's happening on YouTube and what it means for the human race.  He heads the Digital Ethnography project at Kansas State University, which tracks user behavior on YouTube and other forms of "new media".  Wesch points out that YouTube is doing more than providing a outlet for thousands of hours of otherwise useless home video.  It's adding fluidity to culture, establishing new global connections, starting movements, and redefining community.  Take an hour and dive into this facinating tour of the largest video community in the world and what it means.  It's well worth your time.

As Washington haggles over the Wall Street bailout this week, my conversations have focused on both the symbolic meaning of the crisis and the causes.  Among many of the people I talk to, this is a first concrete sign we're in real trouble and this might not blow over.  While everyone worries about Depression-sized recessions whenever the market turns down, the size and urgency of the bailout seems to indicate to most people that this might be "it".

As to causes, most people point to the GREED of lenders and Wall Street speculators, the first group who made questionable loans, and the second who created huge profit schemes by buying and selling this questionable debt.  Officially, Washington and financial institutions are having considerable trouble talking about whether a lapse in values is the cause of the problem because of the wide-spread and erronious idea that public life stays out of the business of values (which thought to be held privately) and because such a conversation inevitable leads to judging the institutions many would rather not scrutinize.