Currently head of solutions architecture for AbeBooks in Victoria, BC, Canada. This company was recently acquired by Amazon.comFormer CEO of CyberTechnologies International, a pioneering ISP and web architecture firm with offices in Tokyo and Silicon Valley.
Craig: When did you get involved with online communities?
Nori: I got started with online communities when I was very young. Back in my youth I remember working all summer at some crappy job to save enough money to buy an Apple ][+ computer with a modem (300 baud!). I knew I wanted to explore this new computer thing, and I also knew that a modem was this wonderful mystic device that would allow me to connect to other places.
One day I was on a BBS called The Citadel. And in the middle of looking around, the screen went blank and I saw the words "Hey, what's up?" pop up. It took me a minute to figure out that this was a live human being on the other end, the sysop, talking to me. It was so unexpected and I was so surprised. That was the moment I became hooked.
Skip forward a year or so. I had convinced my parents to get me my own phone line (to stop those pesky connection drops when someone picked up the other phone...), and I had launched my own BBS using Wildcat (BBS software for the Apple). It soon became quite popular and I found myself at the center of a very vibrant but still very fringe community.
Craig: What was the original interest with online communities?
Nori: Back then the whole BBS scene was fringe and underground. Only a few people from each school around my hometown participated, but we formed a community of friends from around the state [of Alaska]. It was amazing that a group of people that would have never met in real life became a community of budding programmers, phone phreaks and hackers. It was the first clues to what the global internet would become in a few decades, but back then it was fighting through busy signals, auto-dialing your favorite BBS numbers hoping to get on and read messages and post. Interestingly, I became closest friends with those with whom I started out having the most intense flamewars.
Craig: What was your early vision about where online communities would head?
Nori: Back then the community seemed a lot more tight knit. We were not really global due to the barrier of long distance calls. Back then you dialed up local numbers and the communities were people that you could (and sometimes did) drive out and meet at a local Denny's or something for a face to face meeting. Today online communities are much more anonymous and less personal, though that is changing a bit with social networking sites that focus on friends and chains of friends instead of interacting with total strangers.
Many years later, I found myself in Tokyo and in the middle of the next wave - the Internet. That was a pretty exciting time being at the ground floor of the public Internet opening up in Japan. Back then it was really hard to explain to friends why I left a good job at Mitsubishi to start my own tiny company. No one knew what an ISP was, or a web page. Today, of course, everyone uses the Internet in Japan and it's an indispensable part of everyday life. But back then it was virtually unknown.
One thing that sticks out in my mind is co-founding the Tokyo Linux Users Group. My ISP was started up running on Linux. Back then it was something like kernel 0.98 patch level 12. Distributions still came out on floppy disks. Using this new operating system running a Unix-like environment was just as exciting as the Internet, and a few of us early adopters got together regularly to eat pizza, drink beer and talk about this wonderful operating system. We'd show each other tips and tricks and spend hours getting X-windows up and running. Good times. This was a community that bridged online and offline interactions and I really enjoyed participating.
Craig: How do you define an online community today?
Nori: Things continue to evolve and change, but an online community is any place in cyberspace where people with shared interests can come together to share ideas, exchange information and share.
Craig: Are you still involved in online communities?
Nori: I've gone pretty main stream. My primary community today is Facebook. I also run and maintain a forum for some friends who all met in an online massively multi player game called Everquest. We've long since stopped playing EQ, but we meet now and then on other games like WoW or Conan or Lord of the Rings Online. The forum is a place to keep in touch and let everyone know what game we're currently playing. It's amazing that the same group of people have been in touch for over 10 years just because of a game. Many of us have never even met face to face.
Craig: How do you organize the different types of online communities?
Nori: I think we're seeing that the best way to organize an online community is not to. Let the people in the community self organize and give them the tools to shape it in the ways that they find fits their needs. Like Gibson said, "The street always finds it's own use for things." Provide the tools and people will mash things up and make amazing derivative or even completely new things from it.
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4 comments:
"I think we're seeing that the best way to organize an online community is not to. Let the people in the community self organize and give them the tools to shape it in the ways that they find fits their needs."
I wonder if organizations looking to create communities need to understand the various tools and what their strengths/weaknesses are?
In my opinion there will be a big problem in the next few years with organizations not being able to deal with the various tools, not understanding which ones are strong and which ones are weak.
What Nori doesn't mention is that some communities fail to self-organize. There are usually people that work for the organization that must join the community and participate as a member of that community.
Well, this is my opinion. I believe that Nori took a slightly different path with Cyber Technologies International. My suggestion to organizations looking to build a community is to prepare to be a part of that community. Be active. They must psychologically commit themselves to the community and be emotionally invested. This is something that people are often hesitant to do for their jobs. They like to keep some emotional distance from the community and not make it personal.
IMO, a categorization of the tools is just the beginning, not too valuable of a service by itself.
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