However, the technology itself won’t guarantee these results – it needs to be managed or curated effectively. Here are 20 subjective criteria I’ve used to help evaluate contributions to these networks:

1. Relevance to the stated objectives of the network
2. Poses questions to the group
3. Sparks discussion and comments
4. Enhances a lecture, discussion, debate or theme related to the purpose of the network
5. Makes a relevant statement
6. Responds to criticisms as well as compliments.
7. Builds on the ideas and contributions of others on the network.
8. Acknowledges the contributions of others.
9. Shares unexpected insights
10. Stories – especially from personal experience.
11. Recommendations to peers
12. Empathy – readability; humour; use of formatting; respect for other perspectives
13. Lists e.g. “Top 10…”, “Best ways to…”, “Our favourite”
14. Thought is given to topic before posting
15. Creativity or originality of ideas or the way they’re expressed
16. Clarity of expression.
17. Well structured arguments.
18. Mixes opinion and data.
19. Uses graphics to illustrate ideas
20. Contributes to the learning experience of others on the network

What you want to ultimately see is that the group is co-creating a knowledge ecosystem – so that if you want to explore any idea that catches your fancy further, you could find out who the contributors to it are.

In his book, “The Wisdom of Crowds”, James Surowieki reveals that the smartest groups are those that allow space for people to individually form and express ideas, independent of the group, which can then be “aggregated” into more cohesive solutions. This is one of  the key advantages of using the online network as opposed to discussing everything in person: it allows space for more ideas around a particular topic to be expressed simultaneously.

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So much of what drives social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook basically comes down to social gestures by people who want to connect with others, or add value to something bigger than themselves. From product reviews to wiki edits, millions of people are benefitting from this mass of small social gestures online.

It’s interesting for businesses to note that massively complex systems and information empires can be driven by something other than money. Very few social media sites pay people to participate. People use online platforms to build relationships and contribute to communities. Essentially this is a new form of economic production beyond the two classic pillars of economics, the firm and the market. Yochai Benkler calls it “Peer Production”.

I’ve noticed that my social gestures over the years – blogging, chatting, uploading, editing – have accumulated into a kind of Social Equity. The result is more exposure, higher trust, more business, and ultimately financial reward.
Thus each social gesture becomes an investment.

Many businesses are already benefitting from the social equity of their employees. I think it’s important for businesses to recognize these people within their ranks and enable them to continue rather than shutting them down.

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In the world of Marketing, there are many people willing to offer advice and opinion, but how do you know what’s actually worthwhile paying attention to? The answer is more about having an info-filtering and decision-making process than about knowing which guru’s blog to read.

I think that The 5 Principles of Evidence Based Management (via) could serve as a useful guideline for marketers and managers operating in fast-changing environments

1. Face the hard facts, and build a culture in which people are encouraged to tell the truth, even if it is unpleasant.
2. Be committed to “fact based” decision making — which means being committed to getting the best evidence and using it to guide actions.
3. Treat your organisation as an unfinished prototype — encourage experimentation and learning by doing.
4. Look for the risks and drawbacks in what people recommend — even the best medicine has side effects.
5. Avoid basing decisions on untested but strongly held beliefs, what you have done in the past, or on uncritical “benchmarking” of what winners do.

This approach also compliments the “Value Creation in a Wild Wired World” model, which favours an iterative, collaborative approach based on on-going engagement and application of  feedback and evidence.

Update: Jacques Rousseau, who convenes UCTs “Evidence Based Management” course, has just put up a blog post about the subject entitled “Teaching EBMgt: developing better managers, or educating critical thinkers?“.

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In theory it’s a great idea – 30 000 people each put forward $50 for a year’s membership in nvohk inc. For their $50 they get a “founders t-shirt”, get to vote on stuff like logo design and advertising decisions, get discounts on nvohk t-shirts, and split 35% of the profits between them. It works for the company because each t-shirt owner then has a vested interest in helping the brand succeed, and passing on work of its success.

Where I think the company could improve its offering is to start connecting members and create an online space, like a Ning social network, for them to discuss their investment in public with each other and the project founder, Brendan Lynch. This would increase trust and interest, and make it a bit more like the original concept, a proven success model, on which I believe it was based (probably unknowingly) – the South African Stokvel.

Stokvels, according to The Beehive, “…have been around in South Africa for many years. They are a good way for people to help motivate each other to save, and many stokvel or savings clubs are like social clubs where members also help each other in ways other than with money. Regular stokvel meetings have become a social highlight in many communities”.

The internet can allow ad-hoc communities to form around virtually anything – the initial social object could be saving money, but then extend as people seek other ways to connect with and help each other. In the business case, such as with nvohk (or to quote a more familiar South African example, Verity), I believe that the investors want the project to succeed, and some of them would have at least enough interest in it to want to chat with other investors with the same interest via a convenient virtual platfrom like the official website of the project.

I think the concept of the digital stokvel has great potential to be applied to brand campaigns. Watch this space for more case studies to come.

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1. Mystery wine. “I sold a few thousand bottles without telling anyone what’s in the bottle. There were 10 cases up for grabs for the closest answer. Two months later I revealed what was in the bottle. 125 people wrote back with comments, guessed the cultivar, vintage etc”.

My comment: Good idea, this gives people who know their wine the opportunity to show off that knowledge by correctly guessing its characteristics. It also gives people something to discuss around the wine, which (at least in my case), would make me more likely to take it along to dinner parties.

2. BLANKbottle™ Premium white released without price: “Instead of setting its price, I decided to let my loyal clients decide. I sent out 20 cases of “Moment of Silence” without payment or price, leaving it up to them to pay me what they thought its worth! Pricing suggestions reached up to R70, and most were prepared to pay around R50/bottle. As BLANKbottle™ was created to over-deliver on quality; I set the final price at R40″. i.e. He crowdsourced the price:)

My Comment: Good idea, following the same principle that RadioHead successfully applied with In Rainbows. However, I think the execution was a bit half-hearted by limiting it to only 20 of his loyal customers. Perhaps Pieter should have left the price people chose to pay open to suggestion for a few more weeks, as this would have created more buzz around his product.

As with his previous wines, “Moment of Silence” leaves you in the dark about the cultivar and year of vintage. To uncover the lineage of “Moment of Silence” or any of his other wines, you need to go to his website where you will find the full story behind your BLANKbottle.

Pieter is sending me a bottle to try, I must admit that the small incentive did encourage me to write this blog post. I’m such a sucker for freebies sometimes. Aren’t most bloggers?

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The term “Web 2.0″ is derived from a naming convention in software, where upgrades that are released in the market get numbered (like Verstion 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 etc). This seems to suggest that the software of the internet has been upgraded, which isn’t entirely correct. However, the term is still useful if you look at it as a massive shift in the way the web is being used. Essentially, “Web 2.0″, refers to the functionality built into websites that allows people to more easily put their own information on them, to share it with others, and collaborate with them. These websites, then, shift from being simply “websites”, to being tools or “applications”.

The next “version” of the web (likely to be dubbed “Web 3.0) will allow these websites to integrate with each other even more effectively and naturally – so, for example, you will be able to incorporate many of the sites you regularly visit into one website, which also synchronizes your information, friends and updates so you don’t have to repeat yourself all over the place!

Social Media

Social Media, simply put, is a form of media created by people who post information (be that pictures, articles, videos, comments or votes) using Web 2.0 applications (such as blogs etc.). It is primarily driven by Amateurs, although big media companies have started integrating social media into their traditional offering too. This is part of what makes social-media special: it can incorporate other forms of media, increase it’s reach into niche communities of interest that are inter-connected on social-media platforms, and enhance it’s impact and effect by allowing interaction. So in social-media, the audience can become collaborators.

For this reason, the flow and process of creating Social-Media is often likened to a Conversation, which happens even if no-one actually speaks directly to any person in particular! Social Media depends on interactions between people as the discussion and integration of words, images, and sounds around a multitude of subjects and feelings builds shared-meaning around topics and experiences. For example, if a number of people who attend the same event post their own pictures, blog posts, and videos of it online, then by looking at the array of media around this event anyone will have a better understanding of it than if they just read one newspaper report on it.

Social Computing

Social computing a broader term, which incorporates Social Media. It refers specifically to the “sense-making” effect of all the interactions that are carried out by groups of people online. This is an idea that has been popularized in James Surowiecki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds. Examples of social computing in this sense include collaborative filtering(such as on Muti.co.za), online auctions, prediction markets, reputation systems, computational social choice, tagging, and verification games (A great example is Google’s Image Labeler game).

A paper on Social Computing by market research company Forrester Research states:

Easy connections brought about by cheap devices, modular content, and shared computing resources are having a profound impact on our global economy and social structure. Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.

Although these applications are easy to engage with and use, they can be potentially destructive, and costly to organizations and individuals who don’t have a strategy and an understanding about what they hope to achieve by engaging with other people on the web in this way.

The term “Social Computing” is often used interchangeably with the term “Web 2.0“, although as the Forrester report points out:

Web 2.0 is about specific technologies (blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc) that are relatively easy to adopt and master. Social Computing is about the new relationships and power structures that will result. Think of it another way: Web 2.0 is the building of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s; Social Computing is everything that resulted next (for better or worse): suburban sprawl, energy dependency, efficient commerce, Americans’ lust for cheap and easy travel.

The following short video, produced by Prof. Michael Wesch as part of the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas University, demonstrates these concepts well:

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I’m up against Mike Stopforth (with his design called “Fit-Shan“) in the first round. The design I submitted was done my my talented illustrator friend, Ryno Van Niekerk. It’s called “The Amazing Marketing Machine“.

The story that goes with the design is as follows:

A mashup of potent technological innovations, The Amazing Marketing Machine will help any marketer be more intelligent, more playful, more out-of-this world! But if you didn’t know that you might just think it was a pile of junk. Ironic huh?

If you dig it, please go and vote it up on Springleap HERE (note, you need to register). Some lucky people might even get the opportunity to wear this awesome design if we win.

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During the dinner he wanted to give someone a signed a copy of his just-released book called “Join the Conversation” (which he’d brought to SA for his mom!), but has instead dedicated it to the Cape Town blogging and podcasting community to be passed around.
The inscription says:

“To the wonderful Cape Town community, I’m proud to represent you in the big US of A and I hope this book inspires, motivates and reflects the power of us“.

I’m almost done reading it, so if you’d like to get it next (and you’re in Cape Town) then just write a blog post mentioning the words “Join the Conversation” and then let’s meet for coffee and I’ll pass it on to you:)

One of the cool things about the book is that Chapter 10 was written by a bunch of people interested in the subject using a wiki. Interestingly, if you feel compelled to write more about it, you can become a contributor on the official blog by registering yourself there.

Glen from the ZA show has posted a video of the dinner here.

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At the iCommons Innovation Series last week in Joburg, Jimmy Wales stated that any business that was dependent on people not copying its products or services was doomed, whereas those that embrace the culture of sharing, and that build in systems to facilitate and benefit from sharing would thrive. This is most obvious in the music industry, where even Madonna has left her old record label which was dependent on DRM and record sales and moved to a label that prioritizes alternative revenue streams such as her brand, her live performance revenues, and merchandising.

In the Attention Economy, having the goodwill of a community can make you rich, and power comes as your ideas, products and services circulate through that community. In this new economy, participation is key, since it is the highest form of Attention that a person can give. It must be pointed out though, that simply creating a platform for participation (such as a Wiki or a video-channel) is not enough to get people involved. You need to help them connect with people that have shared interests.

How do you think Wikipedia maintains the level of quality participation it has? The answer is that behind each article there are little communities of people who are connecting with each other through a shared interest in the subject matter they are compiling – each contribution, discussion and edit is a form of social currency that can escalate their status in the community. People blog for much the same reason. So perhaps the human need for recognition and connection is really the driver of the new web economy.

My advice is to do whatever you can to help reduce people’s sense of separation from each other and your brand. As a participant in one of last-week’s workshops pointed out: A relationship is an ongoing conversation. So I leave you with a question to consider: How will you start facilitating ongoing conversations through your company, with your company, and through your products, services, portals and communications?

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The idea is that different people or agencies book their week to do the cartoon, pay a minimum donation of R1000 and use it as a show case to demonstrate their prowess as creative thinkers.

Ryno Van Niekerk, a brilliant illustrator who I happen to share an office with submitted his strip below on behalf of Kreatif. I think it’s classic. You’ll get it if you’re a Mac user:

Click HERE to enlarge.

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