If you build it they will come

Said my friend. She’s clever like that, even if she is quoting Ray Kinsella in ‘Field of Dreams’. I’ve gone back to the notes I made during Leadbeaters lecture and amongst the scribbles are some wonderful anecdotal references such I Love Bees, the deeply fascinating 2004 campaign by 42 Entertainment. Or Funtwo in his teenage bedroom playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D from under his overexposed baseball cap, views to date on YouTube 59,916,716, almost 60 million times.

And lots of pithy snippets too. Fashion buttons from them for New Media Zealots (sic) like myself.

Design for this world in an intelligent way. Design for participation and organisation. Capacity for contribution and collaboration. Mobilise a community.

‘Here come’s everybody’ says Clay Shirky borrowing from James Joyce. He evaluates the effect of the internet on modern group dynamics and “what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures” And to quote CL

“..something new and potentially far reaching emerges: people can become organised in new ways, at low cost, without many of the paraphernalia of traditional, hierarchical organisations…capacity for collective self-expression and self-organisation creates new options for us to become organised, to get things done together in new ways”

Start talking

I blame Charles Leadbeater myself. We Think got me We-Thinking. He lectured at the Art College as part of the inaugural Belfast Book Festival a while back and I have to tell you I was transfixed.

We Think explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, ideas and information.

Chapter One proposes We Are What We Share. Then Leadbeater unleashes an unearthly garden of cyber-delights, and I grabbed my shovel and was off. Already chipping away at the coal face of business networking I set my sights on the Übernet. Before I know myself I’m twittering with the best of them and trying to run a house and a business whilst raising three blogs. And I’m just getting started.

I often idly muse on the perfect online networking vehicle. Construct my own ‘fantasy football’ interface with a catchy logo and easy lingo. I cherry pick the best parts of the rest of them and envision a professional forum for like-minded people to connect on a local level. Gather folk around the village well through the simplest common bond. We all live here. In Northern Ireland. Not Arizona or Uzbekistan. I think about it when I’m driving or waiting in a queue. And then I meet a rather clever chap called Andrew Cuthbert. And he’s a bit of a whizz at the old social networking sites. He’s got the smarts and I’ve got a certain vision. And we share a fascination for the subject. I turn up at his office with a packet of buns and he puts the kettle on. Now I’ve got four blogs to feed.