Actionable Sense

December 3, 2003

in Blogging, Conversational Blogging, COP's Communities of Practice, Knowledge Innovation

There is a little trepidation when a troupe starts exploring whether it can really collaborate and how it can make money. I was serious about both conversational blogging and jazz communities. I reread and reread new posts from overnight, spent time Skyping with Ton and Dina and then resorting to the phone with Ross Mayfield. In the meantime I’ve sent out yet more messages spoke to Gary this morning and it continues.

Ross Mayfield made the emerging Actionable Sense Troupe a very generous offer yesterday to aid in community building by offering a SocialText workspace get things started. Having read many thoughtful posts I’m going to start inviting those in that have said they want to participate later today. We will be starting with a blank sheet and that will presents some challenges. I think we all understand the difficulty and the desire not to waste effort. Time is money..

We need to articulate a process, but it has to be a process that scratches some itch sufficiently that someone will give us their itch to scratch, and thus I think we should begin our sweep-out radar project pitch by identifying who it is we need to ask who might have such an itch and back that offer with a budget and a deadline, Gary

My own thinking on this at the moment is that the money will come from the consulting work that is generated by the community, not from access to the community itself. John

The business model is the direct concern, and as Gary says needs to be underpinned by an identifiable need and itch to make it stick. Ton

Currently I think very much along the lines John, does where hiring one independent actually means hiring the community and thus money will flow from the individual consulting jobs to the community. In recent e-mail conversations with Lilia Efimova and Martin Roell I formulated it that it would be like having part-time colleagues, i.e. on certain topics with certain clients, the community gelling around specific themes and points in time. Ton

We all make decisions (often subconsciously) about what to blog and what not to blog. For many people (myself included) the most potent area of such decisions is around our relationship to our employer (or clients for the self-employed) Julian

Where to begin?
Let’s take this discussion into the SocialText workspace. Let’s build our thoughts together rather than independently. I jotted down the following based on the comments above. However, realize it is better all stared in the Workspace.

  • The first is formalizing the reference points in a little more detail. These are the strong and weaker ties we carry within the blogosphere. (We have others, however I’m limiting my definition for now to other bloggers I know personally – have ties to etc.). My reference begins with “MAKING ACTIONABLE SENSE OF BLOGGING”. It provides a useful preliminary context from my perspective. Independently we can sell leveraging our bloggiing networks however independents seldom manage to achieve the same dollars that the “structured organization” manages for providing less.
  • The second opportunity is to go beyond the listing stage and actually collaborate on resources that enable the collaborators to increase dollars. For Example, separately I’d bet many in this group have both selling materials and presentation components for a “One Day Course on Blogging”. Similarly presentations to industry groups etc. Together collaboratively we can create better materials and save time. That provides an edge that many of us currently don’t have. The customer pays for results. Large investments in development are hard to recoup individually. Each individual will customize with their own stories and with those of the collective.
  • Taking it to the next level would move us beyond a best practices collaboratory to creating a networked brand. The brand would help us achieve a price premium for the collective capability and reduce risk for others engaging us on a large collective project. An example would be a more complex multi-client that is facilitated by a core group and had commitments from both industry leaders and topic experts. I can imagine a couple of examples in the blogging social software space that would combine research, best practices and planning for the “future”. We have to think through our target companies. We might be surprised by what we turn up when the proposition is ready to sell. This might also form a “collective intelligence” at your fingertips type capability. (And that was where my membership type model suggestion was coming from). Such a service might be a GLOBAL “tec chair” type approach which demonstrates a successful business model in this regard.

    Actually to get anywhere we have to start with an exploratory form of one above making some specific commitments in terms of both time, expected rewards and what we are each prepared to commit to. We also need those quick ideas on “ITCH” and “TARGETS”. The key consumable is “time”. Forming, storming and norming still have to take place.

    I’m taking Ross up on his suggestion and activating the “Actionable Sense” Network (working name for now). If you haven’t already and are interested e-mail me. It will prove to be a more effective environment for developing this thread further.

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