IGNITER

Image by cuellar via Flickr

I recently had an impromptu conversation on the nature of trust in my tumblog with my fellow ‘social catalysts’ (more info coming soon). I’m fairly new to exploring this topic in this way so really appreciated the depth of responses.

The insights I’m left with are that there are essentially 3 dimensions to trust in facilitating a connection. Each dimension is a range that might be expressed as follows.

• The person (from “they’re not a sociopathic stalker” to “they walk on water and you’ll want to be their best friend”)
• The subject (from “i don’t think it will hurt anyone” to “they’re going to save the world and I’m devoting my life to their work”)
• The fit (from “it won’t be a total waste of your xyz” to “it’ll be the best investment of xyz you’ve ever made”)

Of course the scale might be worded a little differently but I think you get the idea.

I wonder, if I received a LinkedIn request with 3 ‘sliders’ on each of these dimensions how would it change the process for me? Would I be able to make decisions much quicker? What if those sliders also came with histories from that recommending party – e.g. where do these slider positions relate to the average positions of their past recommendations? Where does this rank in relation to overall value/or value on each slider compared to other connections they’ve recommended? etc..

And how would it change in what went into making the connection before it got to me? Would there have been more thought? Would that help filter connections? Would I lose some valuable connections somehow?

It’s an interesting area that I’m looking forward to exploring and testing in practice through a project that I hope to announce soon. In the meantime – the more perspectives the merrier.

Expanding on my previous post on micro-funds and the social venture commons, here are few more pieces on what I see being the core elements of the Social Venture Commons.

First, I see the commons containing three interdependent realms:

• conversations
• connections
• accomplishments

Accomplishments are the product and desired outcomes of every venture. They are also a great catalyst of conversation. Conversation, in turn, is a great catalyst of connections – connections to ideas, resources, people etc. And connections, in turn, catalyze accomplishments – new resources to help get things done better, faster, etc. Of course it’s not that linear but I do sense a compelling interrelationship and even flow there.

From the participant perspective I see the main players are:

• ventures (those tackling issues directly, those that invest in those ventures, and those that serve them)
• individuals (those that are directly involved in the ventures, and those that are individually engaged or interested in ventures or their accomplishments)

A the center of this is this idea of portfolios. Ultimately, whether you are a venture or individual in any of the above category, you are building a portfolio of accomplishments. These can be accomplishments that you are interested in and those that are you are contributing to. It’s much more granular than the organizational level and if the connections and conversations link back to the accomplishments it could be a very interesting ‘portfolio’ incredibly rich with meaning and relevance to the ‘owner’.

The pracitcality of how this will unfold will emerge over time – from doing more than anything – but this seems like a good starting point.  There are also a couple of other core components that are operationally important to engage or nurture the connection between key players in the community. These include things like facilitating the creation of ‘forum groups’ – a central component of the Entrepreneur Commons and other networks like Enterpreneur’s Organization, Young President’s Organization, and World President’s Organization. And for investors (of all kinds) there is the ‘transaction commons’ with resources to support efficient and cost-effective investment transactions. While important I think they seem to be subsets of this overarching rationale – a rationale that seems new but comfortable for me.

I’ve been working with some fantastic colleagues (Duncan Work and Duncan Holmes) on ways to harness social capital (the relationship kind vs. financial kind). For me, the interest is applying it to ventures that are working toward a just and sustainable society – but, more generally, I believe it is our most underutilized form or capital and is becoming increasingly important in the current economic downturn and the new mode of organization that I see emerging.

I’ve also been playing with other ways of communicating in presentations and taking some cues from VizThink which I’ve recently been introduced to. The converegence of these two things has led to the presentation below. It’s pretty basic but I’m curious about how people respond.

Working with the building blocks for a new kind of venture capital I’ve been shaping a couple of core components – micro funds, and the social venture commons.

Micro-funds: making small, flexible, intuitive, low-cost, high-leverage investments. Features:

• Short life: fully invested within 3 years or less
• Small, high-leverage investments: invest financial (e.g. $25-50k) and social capital in high-leverage ways – core capacity, incremental engagement, financial seeding
• Low or no fee: offset with performance based incentives for financial and impact returns appropriate to the fund
• Light-weight and dynamic operations: led by individuals or organizations that have a unique position or perspective on the ‘frontiers’ – run as a ‘side-car’ to existing occupation
• Commons interdependent: fund and individual investments must spark and support a conversation and generally contribute to and engage community to mitigate risk, improve success, and demonstrate returns

Image via Wikipedia

Social venture commons: convening and catalyzing capital, community, conversation. Features:

• co-created infrastructre: enable self-service deal support, reporting, and portfolio tracking for micro-funds and their investees
• nurture conversations: technical and financial support for stimulating micro-fund and investee conversations
• harness social capital: help develop, weave, and harness social capital among funds and investees
• strengthen community: seed and support unique, focused community gatherings and capacity supports including ‘forum’ style monthly entrepreneur groups

The key in this lies in the interdependence between the micro-funds and the commons. The commons nutures and convenes community. Funds add some fuel and spark by investing and catlyzing conversations. The ventures serve themselves through supporting each other and participating in the commons.

I’m continuing to refine this as I move toward a working example and will continue to think out loud as I go. And if you haven’t checked it out – take a look at the Entrepreneur Commons being led by Marc Dangeard. He’s farther along and is tackling similar issues as he goes. The similarities and even more so, the differences, are interesting and good fodder for conversation.

My first impression of SoCap08 have as much to do with the excellence of the physical event as they do with the virtualization of it.

First the physical event. There are over 600 participants from the usual people but also from more mainstream financial players that are seriously starting to get their toes wet. I first heard about this a year ago when Kevin Jones of GoodCapital was just starting to pull it together and I must say they did an extraordinary job of convening the community in a big way.

Now for the virtualization. In addition to some on-site use of social networking tools which I’ve yet to try there is a twitter account and tag and live blogging stream.  I’ve put the feed streams of each below. They are great resources for getting a feel for what is happening during the session. It also is a great jumping point to explore who else is in this community and what they are doing and thinking. What maybe I find most interesting is that even though I’m at the event, I’m getting as much out of the twitter stream as I am from the sessions I’m actually attending. A much richer experience that’s helping me get a bigger picture than I would be able to otherwise.

Take a look and let me know what you think – if you aren’t here in person are these two stream helpful? Informative? Fun? Why/How?

Twitter Feed #SoCap08

Live Blog Feed