by Jim Cashel

Much of the research and conference activity of Basex
centers on online community.� We asked Jonathan Spira, Chairman and Chief
Analyst, about his current views on the sector.

Can you say a few words about Basex and your connection to online
community?

I first became interested in community after observing, in the late 80s and
early 90s, how people struggled to use computer-mediated tools to collaborate.
At first I looked at it more from the enterprise standpoint, but came to see how
community could be used to bring people together, for sharing interests,
exchanging viewpoints and news, learning, and even socializing. Now we see how
community tools can drive the extended enterprise, engaging customers, partners
as well as employees. Basex was the first (and remains the only) analyst firm to
have a standalone track in community. We also hold the only senior executive
level conferences for community executives, which we started in the mid-90s.

What sectors or initiatives have you found particularly noteworthy in the
last year?

IBM’s WorldJam was the most significant KM and community event, perhaps of
the decade. The very notion of inviting 320,000 co-workers to an online event -
and event is the key word here – was worthy of note. But the significance runs
deeper: WorldJam was the first of a new category, what we’ve named a Massively
Parallel Conference, where hundreds of simultaneous conversations take place, in
parallel, and are all funneling down to the same database container. It’s as if
you have 50,000 individuals in a large stadium, with one person – the host – in
the center. And via the MPC, the host can hear each of the simultaneous
conversations clearly and record them.

Another most noteworthy trend is that, what I call “From Toy to
Tool”, the recognition that community is a serious tool, for collaboration
at work, advancement of commerce, and the provision of technical support, has
moved from theory to reality. Corporate managers now recognize “it ain’t
just chat.” (For more information, see our report entitled “From
Toy to Tool” published this past spring.) Companies in the community
tool business should be heartened by this trend.

Related to this is the recognition of what we’ve been saying for years, that
knowledge management and community are inexorably intertwined: my keynote
address at our December 2001 conference was entitled “You can’t have one
without the other” and now the industry is getting on the bandwagon. Of
course, I first wrote about that five years ago, so I am glad I am a patient
soul. A great example of this principle at work is expertise software, which has
one foot in KM and one in community.

Can you say a few more words about IBM’s WorldJam?� Important
lessons?

Sure. It’s hard to fit 52,000+ people in a small room, let alone a small
browser. Actually, there are several lessons we can draw from WorldJam, which as
I mentioned was the first massively parallel conference, or MPC. MPCs are
perhaps the only truly effective tool to execute what we call a KM Core Dump.
This describes the process that can occur during an MPC of collecting the best
practices and thinking of the participants.

Very little in WJ was idle chitchat; people stuck to business, dispelling
once again the myth of the online community as big sandbox.

Especially given the tenor of the times nowadays, people don’t have to travel
to work together. And an activity that did this for 52,000 certainly proves the
viability of community-oriented tools. The MPC was conducted at a level of
interaction that would not even be possible in the physical world.

Who do you see these days connected to online community that is making
money?

Companies which learned their strengths and focus on them are doing well: one
example is Infostreet, which was also named an INC. 500 company this past year.
Companies which focus on easily understandable tools, such as “group
collaboration”, will do well. Community software companies were chagrined
when web sites starting dropping “community” sections from sites, but
this was the best thing that could have happened. Most of those so-called
communities didn’t belong there anyway; they were embarrassments. So this forced
companies into rethinking what their tools actually could provide, such as
self-help technical support and expertise location.

Which trends excite you most as you look out a couple of years?

I have a catchall phrase, “Embedded Community.” Embedded community
occurs when community tools are so tightly integrated into the fabric of
whatever it is you are doing (buying a book, shopping for a vacation package,
doing research for a report at work), that their use becomes second nature. With
embedded community, things just happen; you don’t have to plan for it or have
the user go to a special community section, which we know doesn’t’ really work.
Another concept we’ve developed is “Friction Free Knowledge
Management.” FFKM describes a similar integration of KM into the work
environment. As the user works, the environment stores the knowledge that is
built up. The user doesn’t have to post a document to the KM server, or
something like that.

One area we’ve recently started writing about is what I call the “People
Connector,” something my colleague Steven Morgan Friedman has been thinking
and writing about. The People Connector looks to the people your friends and
colleagues know – whom you might need to know. A kind of six degrees of
separation for the enterprise. The value of your colleagues’ Rolodex is
immeasurable; but you might never know that your friend Al knows Harry, who can
introduce you to your really big potential customer Jane.

What else is keeping you busy?

I recently completed a book, “The History of Photography,” of which
I am co-author with my father. The book was named a “best photo book of the
year” by the New York Times last week and has received many other accolades
as well. Information about the book, as well as several interesting online
photography exhibits, can be found at http://www.spira.com
. Photography is a powerful community tool and photographic technologies are now
starting to keep pace with our wired, wired world.