How can you turn a leaderless communications swarm into a collaborative online community that achieves results? That’s the zillion dollar question for 2012. As my runner up for January 2012 video clip of the month below shows (and anybody who has been following the news knows), self-directed communications swarms fueled many of the top news events of 2011.
While my runner up for video clip of the month above is inspiring, especially on the New Year, my main pick is enlightening. It features Roan Yong, a social collaboration expert from Singapore, on why online collaboration fails and how gamification can help.
Yong argues a leaderless communications swarm is a great starting point, but a leaderless swarm can’t think strategically to solve a problem. To turn collective action into productive collaboration, he says you need to tap and connect the tribal leaders: the 1 percent. To empower them to lead the communications swarm, he argues you need to gamify collaboration. In a blog post Yong wrote about his presentation, he explained:
“To gamify collaboration, we need to make collaborative task visible so that people can have the freedom to choose the task that suits their ability, time, or interest. We need to make collaborators’ strengths and weaknesses visible so that people can form collaboration team with complimentary skill set. And we need to give fair incentives based on contributions.”
Yong also shared his PowerPoint from his presentation online, which (along with his blog post) is also a great read if you don’t have a half hour to absorb the must know information in the video.
Fascinating stuff. Does Yong have “the answer” to leading online communities? Time will tell. Either way, 2012 definitely belongs to organizations and causes that can tap online communities to solve problems.
What do you think of using gamification to make online collaboration work? Do you think communications swarms need a leader to produce results? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
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I really like your picks, especially Yong, its a bit like diffusion of innovations model- trying to look for the tipping point, where collaboration will take hold. but it can be passive and spontaneous diffusion or planned/strategic and planned dissemination. Both are important way to bring about social change. As far as gamification with incentives, yes I think that what is called in social marketing "Exchange" or in Anthropology - reciprocity, it is vital to know the needs, wants and desires of the target group and meet those with more than the competition, can hence the incentives.
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