The WSJ published an interesting article on Monday (September 29, 2008) about Preston Fosback, a 16-year old, who engaged people all over the world to monitor, via the Internet, the Obama-Biden sign outside his front yard to make sure it wasn’t stolen. The people who monitor the sign essentially form a virtual community or a virtual group who are unlikely to ever meet. They are monitoring without entering into any kind of transaction with Preston Fosback or with each other. Yet, they have come together to carry out an activity in a way that would make any firm’s team leaders proud.
In this post, I cover:
- Virtual communities on the Internet,
- Things we know about leading virtual communities, and
- Things we don’t know about leading virtual communities.
Virtual communities on the Internet
The article “In Sign of the Times, Global Village Gathers to Watch a Sign” describes how Preston Fosback asked for help watching the Obama-Biden sign in his front yard after two previous signs had been stolen. Fosback trained a video-camera, placed inside his house, on the sign and streamed the video via Ustream.tv. Within days hundreds of people, some from as far away as Australia, Sri Lanka, and Japan, were watching the video and participating in a chat that runs next to the video. According to the article, “Dozens of viewers now take shifts, based on their time zones, so as not to leave the sign unwatched at any time.” The viewers have given a name to their community, CHAOS or Citizens Hanging Around the Obama Sign, and are not only protective of the sign but also of the Fosbacks. They have even named the things in the video, including the rocks and the ceramic gnome near the signs. Some have offered to start a college fund for Fosback.
Today, much like Fosback, progressive business leaders are tapping into virtual communities of customers and interested people outside their immediate proximity or their company to carry out product design, creation, marketing, and maintenance. This phenomenon goes by several names, each representing a different nuance of stakeholder engagement, such as crowdsourcing, peer-production, and co-creation. However, business leaders don’t have much guidance that would help them lead such endeavors. What I want to do in the rest of this post is to identify the ideas I could glean from the article about leading virtual communities and then raise questions that virtual team leaders might ask about leading virtual communities. I hope this post is an opportunity for readers of this blog to join in and contribute on this nascent topic.
Things we know about leading virtual communities
A few ideas about engaging people via the Internet are clear from the article. First, there was an easy technology solution in the form Ustream.tv that made it possible for Fosback to develop a virtual group. Second, Fosback was willing to take the risk of seeing his plan fail. Third, he made the intent of his activity very clear (see the box ‘About Obama Sign CCTV 1’ here). Fourth, the viewers (participants in the virtual group) identified with what the sign stood for. They participated for instrinsic reasons, not for any extrinsic rewards, in exchange for their ‘monitoring’ services. Indeed, one viewer sees protecting the sign as protecting freedom of speech.
Things we don’t know about leading virtual communities
The article also stimulates questions that business leaders would like the answers to in order to better lead a crowdsourcing, peer-production, or co-creation activity. The questions that come to my mind are:
- How do we know that others would find an activity to be intrinsically motivating?
- How do we connect with others who are likely to find an activity to be intrinsically motivating?
- How do we increase the likelihood of a “viral” spread in participation in the activity?
- How do we ensure that participation remains within acceptable boundaries? (the article provides a brief example in which Fosback stopped the viewers from trashing his friend, Ben, when Ben appeared on the chat and Fosback introduced him as a McCain supporter.)
- What type of leadership should a business leader display in such communities?
What answers do you have to these questions? Are there other questions that business leaders interested in crowdsourcing, peer-production, or co-creation want answered? Or is it that we cannot do much except hang out a shingle on the Internet and hope that others would come and engage in an activity, much like I am trying to engage you?
Virtual communities are a dynamic art form: the membership and ambience of the community ebbs and flows, depeding on who is participating at any given time.
IMO, the best virtual communities are the ones with the fewest rules. Like any dynamic art form, the beauty of a virtual community is in the spontaneous interaction with the evironment. The freer it is, the more it has a chance to evolve and change, keeping the memberhip’s interests alive.
Attempting to box a spontaneous virtual comunity with rules is the surest way to suffocate the spontanaeity of the group.
ObamaSign has few rules. It is a PG room, and racist or other hate speech is not allowed. SignKid has made a rule about his friend, which has been well accepted and his friend has not abused the rule by antagonizing those who, honoring SignKid’s request, will not return fire.
So the room continues to flourish. Newcomers either get it or they don’t. It’s a quirky idea for a community, and it draws quirky members.
But the room has changed, and that is as it should be if it is going to live. When the media found the room, there was a big change which came like a wave, but then ebbed back to “normal” again.
I can’t see this successfully working in a business situation. There are so many regulation and policies that constrict businesses–constrictions that must be passed on to employees–that the virtual work community would soon be like the physical world work community.
Thank you for this article. It opened new windows of thought for me.