Significance

The fairly simple concept of the paradox of exclusivity, the idea that “people are perverse; they want to be part of a group but they don’t want to be another face in the crowd” (Howard 168) flooded my brain with all sorts of examples. I couldn’t help but think of Google Wave. A bit over a year ago, Google launched Wave, an online collaboration tool. And you could only join if you were invited. Naturally, at least among my colleagues the information professionals, there was a certain cachet to having snagged a Wave invite. And once you were invited, you in turn had some invitations to give out and were therefore worthy of courting. This part of Google’s plan seemed to work, but Google stopped development in August of this year. Perhaps part of the problem, as stated in this Google Blog post, was that Google wasn’t “quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication.” I suspect that they developed a product that was exciting to the tech crowd but maybe a bit too much for the rest of the Google universe. They attempted to generate buzz using exclusivity tactics, but ultimately couldn’t reach enough committed users.  They had the influence and mined the sense of belonging, but didn’t quite make it on the remuneration and significance fronts. In this case, we are also reminded that “name recognition doesn’t equal significance” (173).

I also appreciated the mentions of Stanley Milgram’s “small-world phenomenon” study in both Design to Thrive and Web 2.0 (even though Web 2.0 continues to remind me of a word-problem-only math text). Now I know how the “six degrees of separation” were determined. While I don’t have any way to base this in fact, my gut feeling is that there are fewer degrees of separation within a community of practice, especially when specializations are factored in. As a library professional, I fall under a fairly broad category. I know the librarians who work at my institution and few from school. However, within library science, the specializations lead to roundtables within the large organizations (such as the American Library Association) and to smaller organizations, some national and most regional. Once we get to that level, I can say a name (like Chris Prom) or an acronym (like EAD) and everyone will know what or who I’m referring to. And if I need an introduction to Chris Prom, I am probably only a couple of degrees away (I tried testing my theory on LinkedIn but archivists seem to stay away from that network). I don’t think any of the networks for archivists are invitation-only, though many do require a registration process and/or a membership.

Perhaps a better small-community example is the ceramic arts community. This community is very active, often because the artists are small business owners which means that they need to hustle to survive. They have professional organizations with members-only benefits. Even better, this is a tightly-knit community that is also exceptionally open. They tend to share glaze recipes, firing methods, access, studio space, you name it. Introductions are fairly easy to come by and many of the best-known artists use a combination of the techniques Dr. Howard described on pages 184-186 of Design to Thrive. My husband’s current favorite is Ayumi Horie.

 He’d seen her work in journals but then he saw her speak at a regional conference. Not long after that, she was part of a “booth” (the Artstream gallery and library) at a national conference. He wanted one of her mugs but didn’t get one, so he signed up for her email list so he’d know when they were available. This week he spent about half of his grad assistant wages on a new coffee mug (hey, we celebrated our ten-year anniversary this year by going out for coffee and decided to blow the budget on this) because he got an email about new work. Most of her work sold within two days, taking advantage of limited supply and a fairly passionate fan base.

Horie also has a once-a-year contest for photos documenting “Pots in Action”, free downloads of past postcards and the expected artist’s statement, links, gallery and so on. If my husband ever wants to know Horie personally or get himself listed on her website, he can probably just call her, but he is also only two degrees away from her since she has collaborated with someone he assisted at a workshop. In other words, the ceramic arts community is heavy on connectors, mavens AND sales people, with a large number of people serving as all three.

Archivists also have connectors, mavens and a very few salesmen. As a community, we could probably do with more connectors and fewer mavens, but it was fun to read Malcolm Gladwell’s definitions in both Design to Thrive and Web 2.0. I couldn’t help but place people I know into categories. Like I said, I know a lot of mavens. They’re the ones who respond to listserv questions almost every time one crops up. They’re usually great on listservs and less endearing in person. The connectors are a bit harder to find, and they are mostly the people who are interested in digital information and Web 2.0 implementations. They’re the ones who know just who you should talk to for specific questions. They may lead to the mavens and they may also be mavens, but they are best known for making matches in the community.

All of this is making me think about creating and nurturing connections. There are so many ways to go about creating a community that I doubt I’ll ever have the brilliant idea that gets me a $240 million advertising deal, but maybe someday I’ll be part of what makes access and communication of archival content more user-friendly.