The Power of Online Communities

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West: Pool Studio and Kitchen
Originally uploaded by TimDD

Every once in a while, the stars align and something occurs that affirms what you envision right here right now. Vision becomes reality. And you just have to sit back and sigh.

I have written about how I used my avocation, photography, to sharpen my knowledge in my vocation, marketing and go-to-market strategy.  It started with this post.  It evolved into a conviction that online communities are going to become absolutely critical forces driving market creation in the future.

In pursuit of my vocation, I took a trip to Scottsdale, Arizona recently to meet with my friends at Pragmatic Marketing.  I have also written about the high regard in which I hold them and their business mission.

I arrived a bit early, and of course brought my camera.  I did some research in advance, and discovered that tours of Frank Lloyd Wright's home and school of architecture, Taliesin West, were readily available.  As the Michelin Guide would say, "worth a journey."

We had a beautiful desert afternoon; I grabbed loads of frames with my trusty Nikon.  When I got back to Boston I worked on a couple of them using a processing technique known as "High Dynamic Range," or HDR.  As a contribution to the photo sharing community (mine is Flickr), I wrote up a tutorial on this favorite technique using the photo of Taliesin above as my subject.

As I have postulated in the past, one of the key attributes and drivers of successul online communities is the generosity of members -- their contributions of learning and experience to the community at large.  Just like in real-world communities, it establishes a hierarchy with respect for elders, aspiration by youth.

The tutorial generated a great deal of interest and traffic for my "stream" on Flickr.

Among those who visited my photographs of Taliesin West was a group working on a graphics design project at Arizona State University (ASU) in conjunction with a new commercial building project, SkySong.  Their mission is well articulated here.

The student project involves the interior design of an area in the Center with images representing innovation and technology -- in Scottsdale.  When they found my image on Flickr (all of that traffic had given it a high "interestingness" score), they chose it to be the first of nine images to be mounted in extremely large format as part of the SkySong Center for the next three to five years.

Not only am I flattered and a bit flustered by the compliment, I am amazed at the power of online communities, and the validation of my vision that they will transform how we think and operate in business.

Comments

[Phil Myers]

Tim,

I'll have to check out your work at SkySong. Congrats. The power of 'new rules' is really catching on. It's always amazing when you do something for the right reasons and just publish how frequently it connects you to opportunities you weren't even thinking about. Maybe Taliesin will open up a Dempsey room now too!

Phil