have we run out of things to debate?

[andy mulholland]

if so why?

my propositions are;

1) closed communities of a finite size lack the diversity for long term success
2) we cant find the answers to the challenges we recognize, or if you like debate with out resolution is boring
3) we have solved all the issues and have nothing more to consider

so whats the issue?

regards andy

[Denis LAfont]

There are some best practices in order for closed communities to work; Two of them is to implement the "Round-tripping pattern" (every piece posted on a media is available on other media) + the InContext pattern (let community member use the communication tool they want to interact with the community, in their context of us at the second they decide to answer). Ning is not implementing these patterns. Telligent, Drupal, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups are. I must check for Lotus Connection.

Based on my experience, using mail and web as core media for the community exhanges works very well. I am eager to see what we can do by extending this with micro blogging, blogging (that's for the media part) and social network context.

[andy mulholland]

Thanks Denis for a quick response and would like to get a practical step by step guide going on 'round tripping' but best of all the idea to extend teh medium sounds just the kind of thing that fits with the Mesh principle. again ow are we going to get this started?

andy

[Rick Mans]

I think it is a result of a less exclusive (and proposed open) community. When something becomes a commodity it is less attractive to participate. Or maybe we just ran out on topics here and is the discussion moved to other places. Most of the things I discuss (if any) are on Twitter, perhaps other may have chosen a different medium.

Closed communities have an infinite success although there might be a finite size. I still have the same rather closed community of best friends since 2000, this community is still a success and we do not ran out on topics. It is just a matter of a feeling that you are in it together. And perhaps the growth of themesh and the proposed openness (which did not occurred since the proposal) in the last few month just killed it.

Sometimes a communities ends, just because the people in the community have found something else that fulfill their needs in a better way.

[Rick Mans]

to get things started is easy: start with it. Lead by example and try to inspire others. However that is not a silver bullet. There should be common thing that adds value to the participants and to create this "thing" and to add the value that is something like the x-factor, it cannot be explained, however when it is there you notice it.

andy mulholland said:

Thanks Denis for a quick response and would like to get a practical step by step guide going on 'round tripping' but best of all the idea to extend teh medium sounds just the kind of thing that fits with the Mesh principle. again ow are we going to get this started?

andy

[andy mulholland]

Rick Mans said:

to get things started is easy: start with it. Lead by example and try to inspire others. However that is not a silver bullet. There should be common thing that adds value to the participants and to create this "thing" and to add the value that is something like the x-factor, it cannot be explained, however when it is there you notice it.

andy mulholland said:

Thanks Denis for a quick response and would like to get a practical step by step guide going on 'round tripping' but best of all the idea to extend teh medium sounds just the kind of thing that fits with the Mesh principle. again ow are we going to get this started?

andy

thats a good point - may be we should wind up the mesh and shift to other forms?

[Phil Dean]

An area which is starting to exercise my mind and many I speak to is how do you apply business metrics to the emerging IT services delivery model ? Assuming that the IT world will become increasingly mesh/SaaS/cloud oriented how do you define SLAs ? What security models define your posture ? Can you define data leakage (ref the latest Google story) ?

Phil

[andy mulholland]

Hi Phil

what seems to have happened is the major participants in the Mesh have shifted internally in CG on to Yammer and the external members are working through Twitter. for quick responses these two mediums do seem to be better. if you have not tried it go to Yammer.com to find out more and may be start a cisco enterprise group.

now back to the more meaty and philosophical questions that this medium perhaps supports better.

to me the questions in order are;
1) is the medium reliable and assuming that total reliability can not be guaranteed how does it fail, gracefully or catastrophically
2) if question 1 is answered then how does the security model work, is Jericho the answer or is something more needed
3) then comes the SLAs to select and manage based on the critical elements from questions 1 and 2.

Thats my engineers logic but i realize there may be an alternative path based on the art of the possible, may be around Cisco's view of a data centre as an example defining what can be measured and managed

andy

[Jason Maxham]

it's hard to gain momentum with online discussions. People have to be dedicated to checking it on a daily basis.

I joined Yammer and Twitter recently, but honestly do not see myself using it as much as I would like. I do not check the Mesh that often and feel it is because it is not part of my routine. Usually I visit forums for help with technology-related issues concerning a specific problem I am facing and I post to places that I know are active and can expect a quick response.

If enough people join and use the Mesh, it too can become a place for information and discussion. But it may take time, or a crazy marketing gimmick to get attention.

[Clement Toulemonde]

Wow!

I hadn't logged in for a while...symptomatic of the situation maybe...and was surprised to see the drop in activity. I had used The Mesh as a best practice example of an active community with some friends / colleagues.

Andy suggested that finite size created a lack of diversity for long term success...I have been wondering if on the other had the lack of focus (caused by too much openness) is not a problem (amongst others). Does it need more rules / facilitation?

Maybe it comes back to the good old adage: volume versus focus.
Open communities can survive thanks to their scale by single visit users who post one thing, and maybe a few multi visit users. The barrier here is getting over the critical mass hurdle.
Closed communities don't have this luxury. They must have users who come back repeatedly. What can generate this: new content (posted by other users or a facilitator), a new question / issue (they need to expect a fair chance of finding an answer or at least useful content), being seen...

I felt that the answers to the questions I asked exceeded my expectations. So not finding the answer was not necessarily a problem for me.

Other questions going through my mind:
- Could the crisis, and its impact on the reallocation of consultants' time, have anything to do with this?
- Did we just hit the emotional valley of death (disillusionment with the tool) and have not managed to get out of it?
- I noticed a polarisation in use...looked like 20% of users generated 80% of content. Is this a healthy / sustainable / normal result?
- Could technological bugs / barriers be involved? I had invited a handful of people who never managed to join.
- It too often fell at the bottom of my to do lit...H2 make if part of / integrate it with my core tools (essentially netvibes, podcasts, outlook, facebook in my case). As a result I found it difficult to make it part of my daily tasks and didn't stumble upon it when I had some time.

...

[Clement Toulemonde]

BTW, does anyone have a list of best practices to keep web2.0 communities alive?

[andy mulholland]

I think it may be all of these things plus during the last year the rise of some very practical social tools arriving to take over a lot of the traffic. www.yammer.com has become the widespread tool of choice across Capgemini at least with more than 2500 capgemini members.

andy



Clement Toulemonde said:

Wow!

I hadn't logged in for a while...symptomatic of the situation maybe...and was surprised to see the drop in activity. I had used The Mesh as a best practice example of an active community with some friends / colleagues.

Andy suggested that finite size created a lack of diversity for long term success...I have been wondering if on the other had the lack of focus (caused by too much openness) is not a problem (amongst others). Does it need more rules / facilitation?

Maybe it comes back to the good old adage: volume versus focus.
Open communities can survive thanks to their scale by single visit users who post one thing, and maybe a few multi visit users. The barrier here is getting over the critical mass hurdle.
Closed communities don't have this luxury. They must have users who come back repeatedly. What can generate this: new content (posted by other users or a facilitator), a new question / issue (they need to expect a fair chance of finding an answer or at least useful content), being seen...

I felt that the answers to the questions I asked exceeded my expectations. So not finding the answer was not necessarily a problem for me.

Other questions going through my mind:
- Could the crisis, and its impact on the reallocation of consultants' time, have anything to do with this?
- Did we just hit the emotional valley of death (disillusionment with the tool) and have not managed to get out of it?
- I noticed a polarisation in use...looked like 20% of users generated 80% of content. Is this a healthy / sustainable / normal result?
- Could technological bugs / barriers be involved? I had invited a handful of people who never managed to join.
- It too often fell at the bottom of my to do lit...H2 make if part of / integrate it with my core tools (essentially netvibes, podcasts, outlook, facebook in my case). As a result I found it difficult to make it part of my daily tasks and didn't stumble upon it when I had some time.

...