The Pond, an Octopz blog on communication, collaboration and coworking online.

Playing For Change is a both remarkable film and a global multimedia movement to connect the world through music.

The film, Playing for Change - Peace Through Music, is a documentary about music and its inherent ability to unite people. It began with a single recording of street performer Roger Ridley in Santa Monica, California singing “Stand By Me”. From there it snowballed into a year-long journey around the world by one of the directors, Mark Johnson, to record over 100 musicians at street corners, small clubs and homes in places like New Orleans, Moscow, South Africa, and Tibet, using small and portable sound and video equipment.

The critical acclaim and positive momentum of this and the directors’ first film (Playing for Change, released in 2003) led to the creation of Playing For Change Foundation. The Foundation provides support and resources to musicians and communities around the world by building music schools in places like South Africa, helping students to create and share their music and enabling collaboration between students of their schools and students from established schools around the world.

Playing For Change will release a CD and DVD of their music and videos in the spring of 2009. Some of the audio and video content is also available at their website playingforchange.com

Related Pond post: Jimmy Wales on internet collaboration and video

CNBC’s five part TV series on collaboration has concluded with a look at the future of collaboration. At the close of the show, host Donnie Deutsch asks one of his special guests, professor Richard Florida, to sum things up with a big takeaway on the future of collaboration.

In response, Florida offers up the 3 Ts (talent, technology and tolerance), from his best-selling book The Rise of the Creative Class, as key to effective collaboration. You can watch the full episode here or download it as a podcast through Apple’s iTunes Store.

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This presentation, delivered by Bryan Mason and Sarah Nelson of Adaptive Path at SXSW Interactive and Web 2.0 Expo, is full of great insights and tips on how to get great results from creative professionals working in groups.

To prepare for the presentation, Mason and Nelson interviewed several creative teams, including theatre groups, an orchestra, a writing collective and an Adaptive Path colleague who had worked in the kitchen of a Michelin-rated restaurant in San Francisco.

According to Nelson, what the chosen groups have in common is that:

They, like design teams, create as groups, are schedule-focused and are trying to do something different with the creative process.

The ten tips shared by Mason and Nelson in the presentation are:

1. Cross train the team
2. Rotate creative leadership
3. Actively turn the corner
4. Know your roles
5. Practice, practice, practice
6. Make your mission explicit
7. Kill your darlings softly
8. Leadership is a service
9. Generate projects around creative interests
10. Remember your audience

In the audio portion of the presentation, Mason and Nelson take turns providing the details on each of their tips, and close with a bonus eleventh tip: celebrate failure! The recording also an interesting Q&A with the audience at SXSW.

Related post: Warren Bennis on great groups and creative collaboration