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  Tiffany von Emmel 10:24 am on May 7, 2009 Permalink
  Tags: Ecosystem Effectiveness (2), network   

  Nets work with Mixedink and Verna Allee 

  A few days ago, Peter Kaminski and I went to Tedx in San Francisco.  I especially wanted to connect  with friend, Verna Allee, whose work is on Value Networks, and Vanessa and Dan Scanfeld, of Mixedink (read about Mixedink below).  

  At the event, Verna told a great story about how she and her partner started up a large-scale distributed network organization of independents as a response to economic hardship. This was a 1970′s forerunner to dreamfishing! This then led to her study of value networks.

  Ironically, the Tedx event design was far from enabling of the value network among event participants. Tedx is supposed to be a community-owned version of the TED conference. As an expert in social design, I found the event design to be sorely wanting, as the top-down TED format was maintained, and in a rigid way, despite the intention to deliver on high participation.

  However, as these things go, the people that the event attracted were fantastic. Speaking of high participation social design, meeting with Mixedink’s founder, Vanessa Scanfeld and Dan Scanfeld, her partner and lead developer was inspiring. I quickly became a Mixedink fan. Mixedink as a web service enables a group, from 10 people to 500 people or more to collaboratively create a shared document with a goal of consensus. Below is a video from Mixedink. For example, a good application of Mixedink would be for TED fans to use Mixedink to develop a design for Tedx. Wink.  Check out Mixedink.

  MixedInk Demo from MixedInk on Vimeo.

   

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  Tiffany von Emmel 11:16 am on May 2, 2009 Permalink
  Tags: business, Human Work (4), sustainability (5)   

  Coworking to Create Coworking Models 

  What enables coworking to grow in the economic downturn is that coworking exudes sustainability across all levels — from coworkers’ behaviors, work culture, offerings, business models, as well as the industry as a new force.

  Everyday, coworkers breathe in and breathe out practices of flexbility, openness, learning, collaboration, and sharing. These patterns that happen interpersonally among coworkers in a coworking community also show up in the larger system of the industry. Coworking entrepreneurs in the industry share openly how their business models work, what works, what doesn’t, and ask for help.
  

  Notably, with entrepreneurs spending cautiously, there is a trending towards models that support extreme flexibility for the coworking customer.  As a case in point, IndyHall, a coworking space in Philedelphia, which has generously shared its learnings with other community of coworking entrepreneurs, markets a flexible membership model. Above is their video, which nicely describes their version of coworking, their membership model, and how they operate as a membership organization, rather than a service or being about space. Nice job.