Who Wants To Play?

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
 

Mostly I think of sCNN as a website development project. Mostly I think that it’s made easier because of blogging and blogger services. Mostly I’m wrong.

I had a good long first chat with Heather Sim, who’s developing something called Space Unlimited under the wing of Scottish Enterprise. She’s bringing groups of young people and business people together on real business projects. The learning and value being created are tremendous on both sides. In the course of conversation, I realized that sCNN is really a blog-based template for organizing wildly organic community development initiatives and movements. The weblog describes the project. But the blogroll is the project.

What we really want is to grow and share the blogroll, to fill it up with projects like Heather’s, and like the projects of her young people. If we can do that, especially the sharing of the blogroll, sCNN can blossom as a global brand name for active givers and gifted activists. A global community asset, beyond the control of any one person or organization.

Space Unlimited doesn’t have a website or blog of its own, yet. We talked about how the sCNN template could support much of what wants to happen in the next wave of their evolution. That journey begins with one weblog. Which made it clear to me that sCNN is not so much a weblog development project as it is an online community and organization and leadership and project development project.

Most days, it’s just easier to think of it all in terms of technical tasks to be completed. Global community development is a daunting task, especially for someone currently spending 40 hours a week as a resident volunteer. We could make it very technical. Search out project blogs. Mass mail them. Pile them up in the blogroll. But that seems to miss the point.

So I’m starting to realize that this might take longer than I thought. Or, as Chris Corrigan never tires of reminding me, I’m in deep here. Which is fine. This might just be some sort of business model emerging. A free and public asset that supports a professional business practice that helps leaders and groups move into an open, blogging, business-as-never-before working and living space. That’s a specific as I can name it just now. But stay tuned.

What we have for now is a name, a template, and a story that is resonating with all kinds of people. We have a good bit of experience bringing people together, getting work moving, and capturing the essence of it all in pixels, too. What we need is places and people, like Heather, to play.

UPDATE, October 2005: the tags are the project.

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