Dopp Juice Archive

Four years ago, on a hot summer day, I was bored and decided to start a new website. This particular website was intended to be a community space and publishing venue for writers. I gathered up a few friends to help me sculpt it and get the word out, and together, we named it The Writ.

The Writ had massive ambitions and zero budget. For the first four months, it survived entirely on coffee, cigarettes, insomnia, optimism, and keg party marketing. When its membership jumped from 4 to 100, we were beside ourselves with shock. When we secured a $1200 grant to help with the web programming, we felt like we’d won the lottery. When we found a guy in Romania who promised to build us every web feature we ever dreamed of for $1200, we were certain that literary world domination was well within reach.

And then, when we all burned out from volunteer hours and discovered that Mr. Romania wasn’t the programmer of our dreams, we quietly admitted failure, gave up on the project, and moved on. It would die, we figured, without us — but hey, it was fun while it lasted.

So when the damned thing refused to die, we didn’t quite know what to do about it. There it was, living on without leadership or maintenance, with broken features and mysterious glitches, with ugly designs and spam-bloated forums, and with a passion and force that made absolutely no sense to us at all. New members were signing up. People were posting writing. People were commenting on each others’ work. People were creating community.

And that’s how I know I didn’t get it. In all my pride and ambition, I had missed the point entirely. It wasn’t about making things bigger and better. It wasn’t about creating a sustainable revenue model, or establishing a fancy brand, or extending deeper into the community. And it most certainly wasn’t about us.

The Writ now has over 5,500 members. People post new writing every day, and most pieces receive constructive feedback from readers. Over the last four years, several people have stepped up to take the leadership reigns and in doing so sparked new life into the community. But that role is too taxing to sustain long-term as a volunteer without a programming staff, and its presence is usually short-lived.

Does that matter? Not as much as we thought it would. The community members don’t really care if they have a leader or not. All they care about is being able to show up, share their stuff, and connect.

That’s it.

I got a ride home from the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) from a VP at a Fortune 500 company, and we talked about the complicated natures of our love lives. It felt a little bit like driving home after summer camp, especially since I was on Day 2 with my jeans and underwear. Fortunately, though, I was sporting a nice clean IIW schwag t-shirt, which was neatly ironed for me by the astrophysicist who let me crash on his fold-out hotel suite couch the night before. This, of course, happened after I sang and danced to Abba’s “Dancing Queen” with the conference organizer during karaoke.

The last session I attended at IIW was called “Newbies4Newbies.” Five of us conference first-timers sat around a table with one of the community’s longtime members and talked about our experience. We were all pretty much on the same page with observations:

• The sparse conference website and jargon-heavy materials provided beforehand gave us the impression that this was a self-contained community. We felt like we were crashing someone else’s party.
• We ended up in some conversations that were way over our heads, and felt a moment of panic that were very, very much in the wrong place.
• We took some initiative to figure out what was going on, and started to notice how passionate and productive this community was.
• We began to feel like we were being heartily welcomed by everyone we talked to, and saw people going out of their way to make sure we were able to engaged in the conversations.
• We connected with great thinkers and leaders who made themselves available for our questions and ideas, and who took the time to explain complex ideas to us in language we could understand.
• People recognized that we, as newcomers, had a valuable perspective to offer on what they were doing, and they asked us to share it.
• We felt like we had become an integral part of the community, and we were sad to see the conference end.

“Workshop” is a fitting term for the event. It really was about getting stuff done. Before I realized what was happening, I found myself helping to spearhead two new working groups which now have clear missions for ongoing roles in the community. The first is called Inclusive Initiatives, and its plan is to coordinate events and identify research studies that will help bring to light a wide range of perspectives on what the public needs from identity solutions. Somehow, I became the Stewards Council Representative for this group (go figure).

The second group sprung out of the “Newbies4Newbies” conversation. We’re rallying together to help bridge the gap between this brilliant community and the people who could join it but don’t know how. Our hope is that by making the website more accessible, developing clear introduction materials, and identifying people who can serve as mentors within the community, Identity Commons will broaden its reach, its influence, and its pool of resources for being effective.

This community is pulling the Internet into an arena where our information is safe and manageable by us, the users. Its projects include things that will take our passwords out of the hands of people we don’t trust, and take our consumer experiences out of the hands of marketers. It’s “the good fight” for our rights on the web.

Listen to me. I’m on a soapbox already. These people got under my skin.

tag: iiw2007b, iiw

I love Tara Hunt’s post today about Social Capital and Community Freeloaders. She dives into the nature of “favors from friends,” and writes:

“Now, I don’t want to reduce every interaction we human beings have with another person to being a transaction, but, in effect, it is. If I ask a friend for a favor, she is bound oblige. However, if I ask that same friend for ten favors, she may start to feel like I’ve depleted my “allowance” on my account with her. Of course, with different people, we have more leeway. With our close friends and family we have loads of Social Capital to withdraw from and as our relationships get more casual, the less influence and favor we carry with others.”

Basically, you have a bank account. The more Social Capital you’ve accumulated in that bank account, the more of a safety net you have when things get rough and you need help.

Tara breaks Social Capital transactions into a very nice table of deposits and withdrawals. “Performing a favor,” for example, is a deposit. ” Expecting that people come to your events when you don’t go to theirs,” on the other hand, is a clear example of a withdrawal.

I appreciate that she lists all of these deposits:

• Asking for the first favor
• Asking for a lateral introduction
• Encouraging people to get involved in your projects.
• Requesting simple advice.

It’s the second favor, the prestigious introductions, the unsolicited sales pitches, and the extensive advice that send hits to your Social Capital resources. But simple and friendly “I could use your help” shoulder-taps can actually strengthen a connection. They show someone that they’re important to you, and that you value what they have to offer.

Another fun read on this subject is Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time.