http://inthefieldonline.net/blog

Around the world. Constantly. Something is happening. The snap of the moment. A flash. A picture. A video. A short text message. A reflection. In the flash of the moment this might seem insignificant. Non-important. Random. Often these reflections, perspectives, observations are the first evidence of an event. It is the whisper of the wind that something is on the horizon. Something is bubbling up. It is the glow before the fire starts… Something is about to happen or is happening as we speak. The importance may vary, but it’s the breaking moment of the event… Snap, snap…

It is the need for the open forum. The personal angles of any event. The human side of the event. The community.

It is the breaking events that appear all the time around us. All around the world. The impact varies, but the characteristics are the same. They matter to all of us. They influence us all.

These events are built up by people. The individuals. The participants. The observers. The influencers. The enforcers. The average Joes or Janes. The politicians. The police men. The demonstrants. They all play their part of the event. They weave the plot. They are the plot.

This is the need for the open forum. The people. The community around the event.

All these elements should be put together into the unique event experience. The user should be given all perspectives. The user should be given all the news stories. The user should be given all the blogs and opinions. The user should be given all the images. The user should be given all the videos. The user should be given all the relevant content of the event….

The users should be given the possibility – by the means that are available to them – to bring forward their message, shared globally for the benefit of mankind.

But… For any event…

The forum will need you - yes you - to tell your side of the event, whether it is a political event, business event, sports event. Yes, any event. The forum will need you to give your perspective. It will need you to share your feelings and emotions. It can be as short as a sentence. It can be the cellphone picture. The cellphone video. An article. A perspective. Yes, anything. It all weaves the mosaic of angles of the event. The human side of the event. It gives the “right” perspective.

Right now Pakistan is being impacted in every possible way by the death of Benazir Bhutto. Regardless of your political agenda you will have an opinion, an emotion or just a comment. This is why this forum is needed where you can express yourself - unedited, unmediated and in context of an event.

I woke up this morning with around 10 missed calls, 15 SMSs and a truck load of emails about the tragic death and assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan earlier today Pacific Time. I cannot say I know so much about Pakistani politics, but I do believe that violence is not the right way to go and that it never has been. We need to as a global society understand that only through dialogue we will be able to sustainable move forward into the future.

Too many global issues we have at hand - global warming, the war on terror, the global economy - are now being controlled and their solutions are being directed by a smaller number of people trying to obscure the path to the future. I have said this before that it is not a political statement but a human statement for the future. We all need to realize that the only sustainable way to walk into the future is to start to shape a global society and thereafter behave as such. This is truly not an original thought. Does United Nations and European Union ring a bell? The difference however is that we today via technology can build these borderless friendships if we only learn to embrace our differences and realize that we are very similar when it comes to it. When it comes down to it we want to live a peaceful life, work, eat, have kids sleep and most of all be with friends and family without feeling threatened. This is so simple.

Events such as the assassination of Benazir Bhutto makes me sad not only because of the death of a person, with significance whether you liked the political agenda of her or not, but it also makes me angry because we are letting the bad elements of this world to control and to some extent shape our future. Why do we let them? It shouldn’t be that way. It can change. Call me naive, but I will continue to believe this is the right way.

A friend said it so well: “Sitting here catching up in a pine and aspen grove on the slopes of the Jackson Hole ski resort. Bhutto’s death seems so far away, and so discouraging…”

I agree…

Sitting in the comfortable environment in Palo Alto is also a bit strange as you think back on what is happening around the world right now. However we should all try to find our role here and see how we should influence the future. I believe my role is here now.

Personally and all my friends knows this, I am such a profound believer of the open dialogue and the true freedom of speech. The first step is to embrace the differences with your enemy but you should also always, always look into yourself what you can do, what your part of the issue is. We are all part of a global society and we should start to realize that. Call it butter fly effect, the “pass it forward”-effect, but all our actions have some effect and the best way is to start to reflecting on how our behavior influences other people and if we have the right to do so. When it comes to violence I believe this is such an easy answer - violence never work.

In order for us to move forward here we need a global dialogue between all the world’s citizens about every issues - huge, small, big or just the average everyday issue we face. This is how we will progress as a society and this is what I sincerely believe we can do at http://www.allvoices.com.

Therefore, please help me spread the word as a sincerely believe the only way to move beyond this endless violence is to promote dialogue between citizens across the globe. The future lies in the unedited dialogue between the citizens of the world so let us start this dialogue now.

Very much as I did for the events in Lebanon last summer I thought it would be good to get people around the world and in particular in Pakistan to share their views about what is happening there after the assassination of Bhutto. Please spread the word about the pages below where anyone can contribute their opinions, ask questions or just let the world know how you feel. We will not edit any content at the site so everything is unedited. It is a free, unedited, unmediated forum for everyone to give their side of the story and to tell the rest of the world about events that matter. If you choose to contribute via cellphone (SMS, MMS and email) use the following numbers: +45-609-91-0280; +61-427-22-9537; mms@allvoices.com (for images).

Here is the event page for the tragic death of Benazir where you will find news stories, blogs, first hand accounts, videos and images about the assassination showing you all the angles of the event, please give us yours.
http://www.allvoices.com/benazir-bhutto-is-dead

A page with any content related to Benazir Bhutto including other parts she was part of. Let us know what your feelings are about her and her work.
http://www.allvoices.com/people/Benazir-Bhutto

(A more general presentation of allvoices is found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAM1y_Qb9Do )

The title says it all. To add on to that: Community sites are tools for communities not the other way around. These are probably the biggest misconceptions I face when discussing social media, and community building. The later the paradox in itself as the community is formed by the community not by persons. A community is a collection of individuals, that can be guided by individuals but only with the consent of the community.

You can trigger community by pushing it along but you as a person, company cannot per se build it. Yeah I know it is a pretty bad deal. :-) “Igniting” an unstable community usually creates a really poor community if any, and most likely chaos will appear. This chaos can be pretty unpredictable and the community takes all possible twists and turns.

For instance look at dictatorships, even though they might not be considered as true communities as they are artificially created. What happens when the control over these are lost? Look at what happened to Balkan, the former Soviet Union and other examples throughout the world. The moment the stronghold dictators started to erode the community exploded. However in the vacuum of leadership and any kind of structure (which should not be mistaken for strict hierarchies) the chaos began, bad elements took the opportunity and it is only now when we see something good is happening.

I wrote 2005 a piece based on the blog “The Group is Its Own Worst Enemy” by Clay Shirky. I will take a quote from the blog to exemplify:

“Someone built the [social software] system, they assumed certain user behaviours. The users came on and exhibited different behaviours. And the people running the system discovered to their horror that the technological and social issues could not in fact be decoupled…. As a group commits to its existence as a group, and begins to think that the group is good or important, the chance that they will begin to call for additional structure, in order to defend themselves from themselves, gets very, very high.”

Even for the artificially created communities you will see this. The group accepts the boundaries, it forms from it but however tries to change and push them. (Some very funky, funny yet graspable analogies can be made with the entropy concept in chemistry and physics, but I will leave those out.) The change of the boundaries is the tricky part here. The community is constantly evolving, and is very fluid in its nature. Try to control it and you will most likely create a chain of reactions that you didn’t have the slightest clue could happen.

Maybe the best analogy here is to consider the power of the ocean. You can as a sailor only embrace the power of the ocean. You can sail the ocean but you can never control it. The sea is in command and you can but only just adapt to it. Still you will be able to take out a bearing and after you have accepted the power of the ocean you will be able to navigate over the ocean. Not always is the straight course the best way to go here. :-)

What can we learn from this?
A community site is driven by the community but the actual site is but yet only a way for the community to express itself. For the social media company, the site becomes what the ship is for the sailor/captain. A tool and only a tool. The ship can only be prepared for the ocean. Do not in your wildest imagine try to shape the ocean after the ship you built or the community after the site for that matter.

Remember that communities are built up by the dinner conversations. The disagreements The agreements. The issues. All emotions - happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, apathy. Every emotion out there. This is what the true citizen media should be about. It is the personal accounts. It is the mosaic of personal views. It is the emotional content. It is the view into the life of people, but not in the silly reality shows we see on TV but real life. It is the instant capture of emotions. The capture of the personal views in context is the key. Technology have now made it possible to capture this in real time and organize it. That is what is so cool.

For instance. I got an email as part of an email group by a person. (I will not go into the content of the email as it is not important. Basically it was a personal account of friend disappointed in one of his friends. Also I will not go into whether he should or shouldn’t have sent it as I do not think it is important and not a matter for me comment on.) Nevertheless I was struck by the personal nature of the note as so was I struck by the discussion that followed. The amazing part is that he by that email created a sub-community around that email which spread out throughout the relevant resources online. He for a brief moment of time built a content-based community around that particular topic or an event. The cool thing is that this can be replicated over and over again… I will soon tell you how.

These are the conversations and personal reflections that are completely lost in traditional media which still struggles to adapt to the new distributions channels we have at hand not to mention the mechanisms to cover events around the world. The moment they have bubbled up into the news story they have been filtered by a selected set of eyes (often too influenced by their biasses and backgrounds as so am I) and too often the context is totally lost.

I met Marko Ahtisaari, former manager for Design Strategy at Nokia but now part of Blyk, in early October 2005 as he was a guest speaker at my fellowship at Stanford. He had written a blog about Blogging over Las Vegas which brings up the future challenges for the next generation of cellphone technology. The blog is still very much well-worth reading. Interesting enough I stumbled upon a blog entry by Justin Oberman. The blog entry points to a Forbes article “Can you hear me now?”.

My personal opinion is torn here. I do believe technology can solve a lot of issues and be an incredible tool when executed well. I however do believe that we sometimes rush into the solutions and do not well enough specify the problem we aim to solve. I daily see a lot of startups here in the valley with solutions that I cannot imagine we need. I see people who get almost obsessed by Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and the very much over-hyped Twitter. In Sweden, there has been reports of teenagers showing signs of depression and stress symptoms because of social communities.

Is this really sane? Not at all. Who is to blame? We all are. We let the technology control our lives. I can just look at myself. I spend way too much time in front of the computer (even though there are obvious reasons for it). I have begun to more frequently call the person up rather than to email or IM him or her. I very early wrote two longer pieces on the subject in October 2005  - Going offline with future cellphones and Romeo and Juliet - the virtual version :).

I think we all should try our best to take the control back from our technology intense society.

One of Sweden’s biggest blogger – Linda Skugge – has decided she is fed up with the trolls and all the negative, offensive and rude comments she has gotten from her “readers”, so she will stop blogging. I do think it is sad that people choose that option. I got me thinking of the issues with the web of today and the social patterns it nurtures and emphasizes. Yet too many people forget that the web only will enhance the social patterns and structures of the web. Trolls on the web are not a product of the web, instead they are a product of our society. However harshly put, the ease in which you can broadcast your message on the web will make bad things worse and good things better. I think it is ironic even though very logical.

The key to remember about the regular internet user is the feeling of anonymity. You are sitting at home reading someone else’s blog, site or profiles. You see more of the person than the person of you (or at least so you think). You can easily broadcast to a much bigger audience than in any other commonly available and “freely” accessible distribution channel and thus you reach a bigger fraction of your wanted audience but also a bigger fraction of your unwanted audience. You just cannot separate them as the broadcast method is very much blind to the audience. Surprisingly many people forget this when discussing trolls and how to deal with them. This is a problem with the structure of our society, but not really the medium or technology.

What happens in for instance the blogosphere is very simple. The trolls submit posts/comments to which the blog owner reacts and write back to them. The trolls respond. The blog owner responds. More people join the discussing and very quickly a feeling of us against them is created and an intense and very often infected discussion is created. This behavior is very much destructive and doesn’t solve much.

What about enabling various authentication methods before submitting comments or moderation? Well, we haven’t really solved the issue as we only create an obstacle for people to submit. The problem still exists. What about shutting down the commenting function? I prefer to call it the real ostrich tactic. If we don’t see the problem, it doesn’t exist. I have news for you. Just like in the real world it doesn’t. Trolls will just find other channels and ways to get the message through. It is evident that technology can help to solve the flow of rude and offensive comments, but not really solve the real problem.

Basically the only way to solve the problem is to… solve it. Yee wiz!

Let us start to behave with respect to one another always, and try to understand each other. Yes I know it is a very, very optimistic idea, but it is the only sustainable solution so we might as well start now. In the meanwhile, don’t let the trolls get the space they want to have. I know it is the hardest possible way and I never said the solution was easy. Naturally we will always have the right to feel down and hurt by mean comments, but are we really solving the problem by being too confrontational with the trolls? I still don’t think so, but again I completely understand those who so choose to. We can only take so much as individuals and sometimes we need to fight back. Yet for me we need to always remember that it is a social problem. The road to the solution is to acknowledge that and we will find the solution – on the web and outside. Unfortunately there is no easy and convenient truth/solution to trolls. What we need to do is to over time controlling the anger, harnessing the frustration and channel it towards the right goal that is to solve the problem not cure the symptoms.

The solution is still and always will be openness, regardless of how hard it is to deal with the openness.