Zee Germans of Web 2.0: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

On and off for the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about two big German words that I used to know for a short time in university, forgot, then recently rediscovered: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Longer definitions than this are advised if you want to be able to use the terms in cocktail conversation, but here’s what they mean to me right now and why they’ve been on my mind.

Both words try to describe the way humans work in a social setting. Both are unreal in that they describe an idealized situation that has never and (likely) will never exist. But they’re useful for understanding many common traits, approaches and responses to online communities.

In short, the differences:

Gemeinschaft

• individuals oriented to their group interests more than their self interests
• common mores of accepted behaviour among the group
• based on shared beliefs and values
• strength of the group derived from the strength of agreement of beliefs and values
• controlled mostly by internal agreement with minimal enforcement

Gesellschaft

• individual self interest trumps shared interest
• no common mores of accepted behaviour
• groups that serve individual self interest thrive
• groups can be fragmented and aligned against each other
• controlled mostly by external pressures and necessary enforcement

In the differences we can find many of the common discussion points we see today in online communities. What’s good for the community? How to create and enforce rules? How to reward behaviour? What behaviour to reward?

I like thinking about this tall-forehead stuff because it lets me see the roots of the different approaches to communities - more communal, group-oriented, internally enforced policies or more individual-oriented, top-down policies - and their sociological lineage. Many folks are taking about the unbundling of the corporation, the migration on value outside the company, and Gesellschaft is the German word for company.

I don’t really have a point to all of this, other than to see a continuity to the discussions we’re having. We’re not tackling new problems, we’re just seeing new ways of expressing the existing conflicts of humans in groups.

And I guess that is my point. This whole Web 2.0 handle is describing a time when the technology has gotten easy enough that it’s not longer the thing we’re talking about. Now we’re on to the human problems, the human concerns.

Northern Voice 2007: Be there!

Interpret this as you will: blind nepotism or an authetic endorsement.

Northern Voice is on for 2007 and I’m excited about it. A bunch of good folks I know are organizing and I want to support them. I attended Northern Voice 2006 and Northern Voice 2005 and both events were easily the best value I’ve experienced for my conference-going dollar.

If I’m available to go to the UBC Forestry Science Centre (photos) on February 23 and 24, I’ll be there. Especially for February 23, Moose Camp, which is a more intimate, in-depth, loosely organized affair.

Heck, I may even throw my hat on the antler and present on something or other. And I recommend you go too if you’re at all interested in the crossroads of technology, society, culture and media.

Let the voting commence!

Think Salmon at Social Tech Brewing

Just a quick note to thank the folks at Social Tech Brewing for last night’s gathering where I presented our experience developing and launching Think Salmon.

To the organizers, thanks for letting me present and running a fun event. To the attendees, thanks for letting me present and contributing some great questions to the discussion.

If anyone’s interested in seeing the photos from the salmon story I told, Darren has the slideshow.

5 HTML tags for successful web copywriting

To some of you, the following post will be classified as Dead Simple. To others, I hope it can be classified as Very Helpful.

One of the things we often do for clients is teach them how to write for the web. Beyond the style and tone that’s suitable for the web, we often help them with simple HTML for formatting their text. This isn’t HTML that will let you design a full webpage. It’s simple HTML that will let you write into a blogging or CMS system with some style.

As a result the copy will be better layed out and easier for people to read on a screen. To help our clients we’ve developed a simple HTML codes cheat sheet that we pass out. Clients have found it very helpful for referencing while they’re writing. We’ve found it very helpful because it means clients can teach themselves.

Many of our clients print out a copy of this quick guide and have it pinned up beside their computer for reference. I remember seeing a client who had colour coded the cheat sheet so it was easier to read. It didn’t make sense to me, but it made sense to him, which is what matters.

So in the interest of sharing what we’ve created, here it is, the Work Industries simple HTML codes cheat sheet. I hope you find it useful. If not, let me know.

I’m interested in feedback. Did I miss anything? Is anything not clear? What improvements could be made? Please leave a comment, we’ll collect our wisdom, and I’ll revise the text file as needed.

If you find the file helpful, please use it liberally and pass it on, with some kind of attribution to James Sherrett and link to Work Industries, please.

Update: Thanks to some quick fine work by Derek Miller, we now have a PDF version of the HTML cheat sheet (PDF, 56k).

Update 2: Thanks to some more fine work by Allyson McGrane, we now have a Word version of the HTML cheat sheet (.doc, 32k) too. Awesome, possum.

Aquent update: me, my big mouth and our conversations

Late last week I received a phone call from Mark at Aquent’s Vancouver office. He was very pleasant on the phone and told me a story about how my post on Aquent (Aquent whiffs on making connections) had travelled through the email inboxes of a number of folks at Aquent that resulted in him calling me.

It sounded to me like I’d touched on a bit of a sensitive nerve. It also sounded to me, and here I’m just guessing, not repeating any of what Mark and I discussed, that the problems I pointed out were recognized internally and a source of frustration. They knew the experience they were presenting wasn’t very good and wanted to do better.

So what was holding them back? I don’t know. That’s their real opportunity, because if they can sort that out and improve how they get from knowing something can be improved to doing something about improving it, then they’ve created a culture with feedback loops and ongoing improvement will follow. How to do that? Well, they could think about hiring me to help them. Call it web strategy and we’ll identify and remove the barriers.

Mark made sure to tell me in our conversation that Aquent have a new website coming and it will improve the user experience of people searching for their jobs. Excellent! Now show me the easyness.

Mark also mentioned that ‘aquent’ is a real word and means roughly ‘not a follower.’ I can’t corroborate this with any of my own sources (online and reference here at Work Industries’ remote office) yet it seems plausible because I got the same definition from Jenny of Aquent when she called this morning wanting to know if I’d been able to apply on job m-01470-tm-27009, if I was interested. (I wasn’t because the job was too presciptive.)

So overall, kudos to Aquent for following up, taking action and being human. And good luck with the new website!

Why I don’t subscribe to the Saturday Globe and Mail

Every now and then I get asked to subscribe to the Globe and Mail. And I’m interested in subscribing, but, well, it’s like this.

I like the Globe and Mail. I read it almost every Saturday. I walk down to the corner store or make a trip to shop somewhere to pick it up. I like the paper. The columnists are excellent and I use it as a once-a-week synopsis of the news of the world. So I’m a very receptive audience for their marketing pitches, but I never bite. Here’s why.

I once received a year-long subscription to the Saturday Globe and Mail as a gift. I liked that - the paper arrived in the lobby of our building so when I got up it was there. Some weekends the paper disappeared and some weekends we were out of town, but generally I liked getting it. A one-year subscription costs $123, or $10.25 a month.

So here’s the rub. My habit of walking to the corner store, maybe getting a coffee too, some bagels and some fresh air, costs me $117 a year for the Globe and Mail, or $9.75 a month. It’s more expensive for me to give the Globe and Mail my money up front, guaranteed for the Saturday paper, than it is for me to get it when it suits me, where it suits me.

That makes no sense to me, so I don’t subscribe. Every time I get the pitch to subscribe I tell them this exact story. So far I’m still getting the same pitch.