Opening up the Mesh? what do you think?

[Niels van der Zeyst]

Hi Mesh Members. We're thinking of opening up the Mesh; i.e. removing the "invitation only" entry barrier. This will allow us to grow the network and make use of features such as RSS to monitor updates etc...

What do you think? Good idea? bad idea? Buts and ifs? Please not we can still create private groups for sensitive topics. This will also allow us to create groups for exmplae for client teams etc...

Let us know what you think!

[Richard Fahey]

Hi Niels,
I'm not really sure of the clear rational for The Mesh. I think it would be useful to outline the objectives of the Mesh and especially how we would interact with clients. While The Mesh has useful features I don't see any wiki capabilities, so I wonder is it just a talking shop for ideas? Where would be the real value for clients to participate?

Also, if it is an official Capgemini community would it not be better to run under capgemini.com e.g. like http://communities.intel.com/openport/index.jspa or something? It just seems semi unofficial as themesh.

rich


Also, if we were to open it up I would recommend removing the advertising.

[Anton de Gier]

Hi Niels,

Seems like a good plan, a community should be able to grow organically. On the other hand, it might be wise to control the growth in terms of the collective goals and themes of this community. In other words, a higher level of moderation might be required in order to make sure we adress the relevant topics and leave the chit-chat to twitter/yammer etc.

BR Anton

[Rick Mans]

agree with Richard.

Opening up is good thing. however we should scan if there is not any information shared within in the closed group that wouldn't be shared if the group was open (en perhaps remove this if people really do not want share this information out in the open.).

Richard Fahey said:

Hi Niels,
I'm not really sure of the clear rational for The Mesh. I think it would be useful to outline the objectives of the Mesh and especially how we would interact with clients. While The Mesh has useful features I don't see any wiki capabilities, so I wonder is it just a talking shop for ideas? Where would be the real value for clients to participate?

Also, if it is an official Capgemini community would it not be better to run under capgemini.com e.g. like http://communities.intel.com/openport/index.jspa or something? It just seems semi unofficial as themesh.

rich


Also, if we were to open it up I would recommend removing the advertising.

[Chris Yapp]

Niels,

I have been part of a succesful online network for 10 years Mirandanet. It has 1000 people in 50 countries and continues to grow. It is a network of people interested in IT in Education and has academics, teachers, policy wonks , publishers and IT folk so it's quite diverse.

We've found that purely open and purely closed both have sustainability problems. Our experience is that you need heavy moderation in the early days,and a good code of conduct for membership or the network tends to implode. A single bad thread can lose membership very fast!!!.

It took us 3 years to get to sustainable levels of traffic and value for members in coming back. It tends to burst to life around particular topics at particular times but after 5 years it got a loyal base and a minimum active community to ensure viability.

My advice, if we are to open up sort out moderation and codes of conduct for membership. We have only expelled a few members but it has been necessary to do son, for health of whole,

Regards

[andy mulholland]

I believe that in the spirit of 'try and see if it works' we should try this out

why? there are enough threads running now to allow genuine outsiders to find the site and the topics to contribute and it would be good to see if the logic of a small strongly focussed community will work in a larger less committed community

[Andy Heppelle]

Fantastic Idea to open the mesh. The power of all the social idea sites seems to be in the ease of access and the natural rise and fall of idea clusters based on interest. Of course there is the need to self select in some way. Perhaps it turns into a series of subgroups within the mesh based on interest in the topics that are presented? Further, if the Mesh were to become self regulating in the style of wikipedia, then the collaboration and quality of content would seem assured. This reporters view.

Collaboration for Success,
[e-mail]
Toronto, On, Canada

[Stacey Vail]

I think opening up is a good idea... let's get some fresh ideas! Our momentum has "leveled off" in some areas, and this may help keep us moving in the right direction.

[Katie Eldridge]

I agree that this should be opened up but i agree, who are we aiming at? Perhaps we could have one for client friendly conversations and one for internal conversations. The Mesh is a method of connecting people via an online medium to talk...that means we may share ideas but this is not the forum to capture those ideas, just to form them. We have a new salesforce tool to capture the ideas which is being trialled as we speak.

How does this tool connect into RSS feeds, KM2 google searches, GIMS, metasearch or our expert systems? Is there a way to reply to a posting via email?

Happy with the concept of opening it up as all these 2.0 things are community led, why restrict that. My only hesitation is to be careful how we do this and sell this to our fickle community at large.

[Mark Nankman]

Let me put it this way: I see no point in keeping this a closed community. It should have been open from the start. We are already being positively noticed for our openness on twitter (don't worry, no big secrets are lying around on twitter).

So, open the gates and let the community really grow and flourish.

Regards,
Mark

[Niels van der Zeyst]

We can remove advertising for a small fee and moderation of members is no problem, just let me know if anything "bad" happens. up to now, no moderation has been necessay so that's great!

Tim Kelly said:

Regarding advertising - this is what funds ning.com, and can't be removed AFAIK.

[Rick Mans]

are we already open? ;).

[Rik Laurens]

Niels, not a good idea. I think one of the nice things about The Mesh is that we are amongst colleagues. Colleagues that i would not have met without it. If i want to blog on the WWW, i have loads of blog sites to chose from; i do not need a new one.

What do you think yourself?

R.