Harold Jarche

I’ve mentioned before that I’m getting a lot of questions about creating “facebook-in-a-box” applications for industry niches or associations. Everyone wants a social network, but on their own terms.

I was commissioned to get a community going around the learning industry in our province in 2003, but that endeavour failed, for reasons I’ve noted. I also worked on a walled-garden healthcare community, and it was relatively successful, especially for the the mental health workers who took up wikis with a passion, and that was several years ago, before Wikipedia became a household name. I also helped develop the initial concept for a green building community, which is still a work in practice. Currently, I’m working with a collaborative community of senior public servants, who are taking a course over several months. It will remain to be seen if this walled-garden will continue as a venue once the course is over. One of the more resilient communities I know is the InternetTime Ning site. This is a grassroots initiative, based a lot on Jay’s personal and professional contacts.

All of these “communities” have been work or business focused. Some support existing organisational structures, while others are separate ecosystems. At OpenBusiness, a new world of guilds is seen as the future organising structure:

I see the emergence of a world of guilds of specialists, similar to the ecosystems that John Seely Brown describes in his book The Only Sustainable Edge. If this is where we are going, what else do we need to make the guilds system completely functional?

When I think of guilds, I see closed systems that control the knowledge of the discipline, with long apprenticeship periods and control of the labour supply. Is this where we are going? Will our online communities become closed, medieval-style guilds, or will the dominant model be more like the open source community with free movement in and out?

As there is more interest in supporting online business communities it will be important for those with experience (and a vision of the democratising and empowering opportunities) to help shape the conversation. If not, certain interests may hijack the conversation, much as e-learning turned into “shovelware” for the masses.

Richard Florida, author and blogger, will be presenting a lecture at Convocation Hall at Mount Allison University on 6 Feb ’08 at 7:30 PM.

The title of his lecture is “The Creative Class: The Role of the Artistic Community in Building Towns and Cities.” Everyone is welcome and there is no admission charge.

Given Sackville’s designation as a cultural capital this year, Florida’s presentation is timely. I may not be able to attend due to some client work, so perhaps some local blogger(s) will be able to get to Sackville and post a report.

I’ve been asked on several occasions over the past year to see if it’s possible to build a “facebook-in-a-box” for an organisation or association, so I’ve put some thoughts together here. It’s still a work in progress.

This is a follow up from a previous post, The Community Goldrush.

Implementing a Niche Business Network

The success of business-oriented online communities depends more on implementation and mobilization of its members than any inherent design. In the context of many business associations, two motivators are evident. The first is an organizational commitment to create the online community and act on the community’s input. This would be the high level perspective in order to advance the goals of the association. An example objective of this community could be to identify solutions to common problems faced by members. The second motivator would be incentives on an individual level so that there are rewards for members who contribute meaningfully to the goal of the community.

According to Jay Deragon some aspects of an online community that would be attractive to adult members of an online community include:

• The Learning Factor: With all the hype, craze and media coverage of social networking platforms, i.e. Facebook and Linkedin, many adults are drawn to the medium to learn what the hype is all about.
• The Connection Factor: Once adults enter networks and learn the tools of the trade many are amazed to find the presence of other adults they know and many they don’t already engaged with the medium.
• The Affinity Factor: Adults begin to find association with groups, causes, forums, media and other affinities which relate to their interest both personally and professionally.
• The Business Factor: The predominant business segment using social networks today is employment recruiters. However, as the medium and adult participation has grown there is an exponential growth of business opportunities that adults are learning to facilitate using social networks as the medium.
• The Creative Factor: Adults, and their businesses, are applying creative ways to use the technology behind social computing to extend its value to both personal and professional needs.
• The Expectation Factor: When you consider the creative possibilities of social networks adults expect to the formation of some economic and social value to be derived from their participation whether currently or in the future.

The business models behind online communities are varied. Large sites, like Facebook and MySpace generate advertising revenue and the founders may be looking at selling the community to a larger media company. However, for smaller, niche communities, others may be willing to pay for access. According to Ross Dawson, the Sermo site, which only allows access to registered medical doctors, attracts physicians with a need to confidentially discuss cases amongst their peers.

The business models can become far more pointed with a clear target audience. For example, Sermo charges $100,000+ for financial institutions and others to access the medical discussions, so they can assess doctor’s responses to new drugs or medical advances.

Implementation Factors

Fist we have to have a good idea that many members of the association/organisation would be interested in the concept. This can come from market research, informal interviews, anecdotal evidence or previous experience. A suggested action plan could be:

1. Have initial discussions with the association’s executives in order that they understand the concepts around the development of online communities.
2. Align with at least one of the association’s longer term goals.
3. Determine who will be the initial Mavens, Connectors & Salespeople (see graphic below) for this community.
4. Design the initial technology and support structure.
5. Start with a very soft launch and no announcements and work with the early members to grow the community.
6. Once the community reaches a determined size, start looking for targeted sponsors.
7. Continue to support the community with good conversations, technical support and whatever else motivates members.

Flickr has initiated The Commons, initially in collaboration with the US Library of Congress.

These beautiful, historic pictures from the Library represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It’s called “no known copyright restrictions.”

Hopefully, this pilot can be used as a model that other cultural institutions would pick up, to share and redistribute the myriad collections held by cultural heritage institutions all over the world.

Perhaps this idea will be embraced by Canadian cultural and archival agencies in order to share our common visual history, instead of letting these pictures gather dust.

The notion of putting these artifacts online for sharing may be an idea that’s ready for take off …

… or in other words, we should cooperate for the common good:

I would recommend that teachers covering US history in the periods of the 1910’s or 1930-49 [the two sets currently available], should get their students to check out these photos and contribute some tags to show that the community finds them useful.

Update: Stephen has picked this up and linked to some other comments on this initiative. The fact that these photos are on Flickr is important because it links them to a community that understands tagging and probably includes many people who would not normally visit the LoC site. Flickr may be a proprietary system but the photos are accessible to all.