A post is just the start of a conversation; highlighting comments from still-simmering discussions.

I write in public because it helps me learn; the process of writing forces me to develop ideas a bit clearer, and publishing these thoughts in public helps me learn from variety of people and communities.

On that note, I wanted to highlight a couple of conversations still alive here:

• On The Passing of the Polymath, one of Matthew Ward’s comments:

  … business cycles don’t match generations anymore. If you only consider technology (and factor out globalization, restructuring, incentives hysteria, etc) you’ll see how it’s rewritten industries and occupations.

  Remember when the best/safest/highest earning jobs were to be a computer programmer/CPA/consultant and telecom/media/banking/consulting was enjoying healthy margins? No more; we’re on to a new cycle. As cycles get shorter so does the total value of a premium for specificity. Value comes from organization – a classic generalist skill. I think you could model it as NPV pretty easily – specificity requires a much steeper discount than generalization assuming the duration is really different. You’re right that opportunities arise during organizational shifts that command premiums (when the skill is scarce). But as these opportunities shorten and require more investment to master, I’m not sure they pay off.

  Both Fred and Matthew contributed some great thoughts on a couple different aspects of this post, leading to a couple different conversation streams.

• On How can we “shape serendipity”?, Ethan Bauley’s comment:
  

  …there’s two primary tech-mediated forms of serendipity I’ve been exposed to:

  1. clicking on links in blog posts/articles I’m reading (pre-Twitter era)
  2. surfing the “stream of stuff from people I’m subscribed to (Twitter era, also incl FB newsfeed of course)

  The primary function here is: trusting the sources enough, in aggregate, to allow them to waste a bit of your time as an investment. The return is finding something that you didn’t know you needed/wanted.

  So I think that this is getting at the same “attention economy”/info mgmt issues that have been discussed elsewhere, but from a different and useful perspective (“serendipity”).

  That is to say: I think it’s possible to have a stream of 100% serendipitously awesome stuff I wanna click on, with 0% “noise”. Or: serendipity doesn’t necessarily have to carry the cost of inefficiency. A combination of a reputation score (quality over time) and velocity (what content do most people like right now) would probably solve this.

  Sometimes the comments are better and clearer than the posts :)

• On Why I Love Communities, Erica Johansson’s comment:
  

  As I see it, cities around the world (and the online world) are made of communities. Without them, what would we have? They provide a sense of belongingness, build bridges between people of different backgrounds and let us exchange ideas and form valuable connections.

  The challenge, and the fun part, is to find the right communities (off- and online), where you’ll get the best value, can contribute the most, make a difference, find inspiration and, most of all, learn.

  On that note, definitely worth checking out: Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City and Creative Class websites and books.

A story about Florian Mueck and The Festival, an effort to build a pan-European social movement.

Full disclosure: I’ve known Florian since 2004 through mutual friends, I had the chance to hang with him again in Berlin a couple weeks ago and he’s bought me a couple beers over the years. Inherent biases aside, you’ve got to admit this is an audacious project.

Florian Mueck is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Festival (@thefestival2011), a bi-annual event in European metropolises to bring Europeans together and promote a pan-European social movement. The first Festival is slated for July 2011 in Berlin.

Conceived by Florian in 1997 in Barcelona and initiated in 2006, the vision behind the festival is that Europe grows together not by its linked economies, common currency or pan-national governmental institutions, but its people. The Festival aims to be the platform to link communities across Europe to help create a European identity.

How?
The Festival is built around six tracks of common social interests that define the pan-European competitions that will be the core “angles of attraction” and the method for bringing people together. Each competition will span a period before, during and after the event using online and offline mediums and methods to keep the interaction and interest alive.

The interesting part to me is how The Festival is built to be financially sustainable by using a mix of partners, sponsors and ambassadors to support and “host” the competitions. Some might shy away from the commercial involvement, but my key takeaways are how Florian is demonstrating a way to unify communities by:

• Creating a social movement that operates outside of the numerous pan-European political, business and sporting interests,
• Leveraging friendly competition and national pride to tap into shared interests and create sustainable interest and attention,
• Emphasizing “I am European” togetherness rather than individual national interests,
• Building a movement by using online tools and networks in parallel with offline events,
• Making the movement financially sustainable by providing natural ways for sponsors and companies to be involved.

Considering the maze of political, commercial and social interests across Europe and the disparate feelings about a European identity”, it’s an audacious project; but then I like audacious projects.

What parallels to The Festival or other examples of cross-national community-building have you seen?

In addition to running the strategic and marketing sides of The Festival, Florian also writes theme songs for The Festival; check out his latest song, “I am European”.

Click here to read more stories from my recent trip through Japan and Europe.

Just one of the many stories people will be sharing at TribeCon; why do you love communities?

Why I Love Communities from Taylor Davidson on Vimeo.

Why do I love communities? Honestly, I love communities because they are the only things I have.

And that’s why I’m looking forward to TribeCon in New Orleans, Oct 29-30, a conference *about* the power of communities.

Want to learn more about TribeCon? Check out:

• The details about the event,
• The list of speakers,
• Seven reasons why your boss should send you to TribeCon,
• Follow TribeCon on Twitter and Facebook,
• And check out why communities matter to Sloane.

And of course, tell your communities and buy tickets to come to TribeCon. I’ll see you there.

And, when you buy tickets, get a 25% discount by using the code “Starnes” to support TeamStarnes or by using the code “Schultz” to support Team Schultz; just a little friendly competition…

Stringing together a couple notes about communities of purpose, flash mobs, the context of time and pull-based institutions.

Kicking it off,

• David Cushman, Communities of purpose are the business units of the 21st Century:

  Self-forming non-directed groups coming together with a common purpose are able to achieve great things.

• Jan Chipchase, Flashier Mobs:
  

  Fast forward to a world of rich profiles and location awareness. At what point does the cost of identifying and bringing together like-minds in a crowd become so low as to be deemed trivial? In what contexts will the process be sufficiently automated/rapid that a significant % of ‘mobsters will be unsure what they’re mobbing about? The equivalent of joining a Soviet era queue without knowing what’s at the end of the queue. Yup – with a bit of time-warp magic there’d be an app for that. And in a world of limited attention spans and a long list of causes – what are the tools that will allow Mob C to lo-jack Mob B to lo-jack Mob A?

  Where is the app for that? Where is the white-label Ning and Facebook Connect for action groups? Where is the Foursquare for rallies, events, demonstrations? Where is the Kickstarter for causes?

• Reminding me of an old thought, Is the context of time the untapped issue in social media development?
  

  … Can we create “temporary networks” that allow us to create temporary strong ties with people? Can we layer temporary networks [into] our stronger, more important “permanent” networks?

  How could this be valuable? Think of social environments where ties tend to be strong but short-lived: conferences, parties, events, reunions, trips; environments where we connect closely with people but may or may not want to continue the connection after the event is over.

  … Can I find a way to find people to connect to temporarily? How does a social web service help me find like-minded people that I want to interact with right here, right now?

  … How can thinking about the context of time improve the value of our online social networks?

• Leading me to think about how it applies to companies, and to John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, The Case for Institutional Innovation:
  

  Pull-based institutions are those that bring the force of attraction to bear on tens or even hundreds of thousands of participants around a common platform.

  … Pull institutions unleash the forces of attraction through:

  A galvanizing view of the opportunity unfolding as technology and policy changes disrupt a market or industry for a wide range of players. This helps clarify and make sense of an uncertain world, drawing participation and creating buy-in or influence.

  A set of positive incentives that share the value among all who helped create it. Incentives can help catalyze collaborative action.

  A platform that supports and organizes the activities and interactions of participants.

  … Pull institutions … tend toward the decentralized, the modular and loosely coupled, and the emergent. Their prevailing dispositions are far more collaborative than controlling. Pull-oriented executives recognize that the most powerful forms of collaboration are highly scalable, mobilizing large numbers of participants with diverse and deep specializations.

  If you’re interested in more about pull platforms and institutions, read their follow-up Four Ways to Use “Pull” to Increase Your Success. Seriously worth a deep read and thought.

See the link? What else fits in this thread?