Communities of Passion

All of last week, I was deeply engrossed in reading "Here comes everybody" by Clay Shirky. I have had the book for a while now, and it just had not made it to the top of the heap, with all the others that seemed to want my attention. Like in most cases, it was a series of minor coincidences, which led me to finally picking it up and I was happy I did. A friend of mine had heard Shirky speak on NPR recently, and mentioned it to me. A couple of days later someone posted a talk of his on a blog somewhere. I got to listen to that talk and was very impressed. One of the things that caught my attention then was the notion of "Cognitive Surplus"

In the context of the media industry, where he comes from, he talks about the impact that productivity improvements had on available time. The TV and entertainment industry consumed that surplus. His argument is that, people spent their spare time watching TV because there were no better alternatives to use that surplus.

One can argue with the details of that line of thinking, however, it brings to attention an interesting concept. All kinds of change, in our case, those driven by technology, create surpluses (assuming they improve some aspect of things). The questions we should then perhaps ponder about are, can we anticipate that surplus, and proactively put forth ways of redirecting that surplus in creative ways. In his talk Shirky argues, that the new web environment does precisely that, which is why we are experiencing the exponential growth in that space. Computed across the entire population of internet users, it is indeed a humongous resource.

I would strongly recommend the book for those interested in also developing a deeper understanding of the social web phenomenon. He provides several interesting frameworks for the creation of successful communities, for example. I like the one which talks about the three essential elements for success - Promise, Tools and Bargain.

Being technologists, it is easy for us to focus primarily on the 'tools' aspect of this equation. However, like Shirky correctly argues, all three are critical for success. That would be no different from including Business and People in addition to technology in a holistic transformation effort.

Thinking about "promise" led me to the realization that the correct formulation of the 'promise', releases a tremendous amount of spontaneous latent energy. It serves as the 'attractor' around which the community coalesces. The energy that sustains it, is something akin to passion. In that sense, the most successful communities, are not just communities of interest, but truly, "Communities of Passion". Innovation is often transformational, since it brings forth new paradigms, new ways of thinking and being, and passion is essential for making it over all the barriers to change.

So, there you go, to the language of communities, we have another term now, something to distinguish the energy that seeds, forms and sustains effective collective action.