In this episode of the Cohere podcast, I speak with Will Roberts, a data scientist at IBM, about the implications of data science and AI for online communities. Will and I talk through: A definition of AI / ML How machine learning is being applied in the enterprise More specifically, how ML & AI are / might be applied to customer experience generally, and community experiences specifically How we might use community data for models (and analytics) What the key opportunities and risks are for leveraging ML Will's advice on how the community team might approach and partner with a data scientist in their organization This episode is a complimentary conversation to our ongoing research at Structure3C. You can find Will online: Last, but not least, more info about the awesome Ian Banks Culture series Will mentions: (overview on Wikipedia) (Open Library)

Cohere Podcast

Data Science and Online Communities with Will Roberts

Vincent Boon is a giant in the community space. A natural community leader, Vincent initially saw the power of community when hundreds of people began to show up to learn to play poker at his meetup. From there Vince went on to build pioneering communities in the gaming space, and create a fundamentally new model of community-powered business at GiffGaff.  In this episode, Vince talks about his early days in the community space, what it was like to develop the GiffGaff model and his work as Co-Founder of Standing on Giants. We learn about Vincen't new company, Giants Technology. The second half of the podcast is devoted to a discussion about his recent article "Six Key Principles to Building Healthy & Positive Communities"  Key Quotes: Learning About Virtual Communities from In-Person Communities "In my spare time, I set up the London poker meetup. That was to basically teach people the basics of playing poker. It started off with three other guys and eventually had about a hundred thousand people joining it. We were taking over complete pubs in London. Literally incredible and it was really fun. As I was doing this I was also the working on a (video) game. I said to the team "look guys, we have a whole bunch of fans out there that I'm sure would be love to see early versions of our games. It was so long ago that they'd never done this before. So I convinced the team to say look, let's just do a closed beta. Test and get our customers to test the games. We started off with a couple of hundred people eventually that grew to about 20,000 people testing this one game. We started a bit of a community as well. And these guys started building a lot off the leagues and the letters and newsletters and, you know, newspaper articles that could all be used within the game. So all of a sudden the game became a lot richer than it originally was intended. And, you know, when it launched, it was obviously an instant success because it already had a user base." Building GiffGaff With the Customer Community"We announced to the world "We're setting up this little MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator)and here is an idea of what we want to do. We want to run it with a community. We want to hear from people. We want to see what you guys have to say about what we're doing. And it started super simple. We were also being very open about the fact that it's just a couple of people here and we're just setting up this service. If you've got any ideas, let us know obviously. When we were launching, as we were starting and plenty of things went wrong and we would just talk about that and you put that out there. My view was always like, look, it's infinitely interesting.  Whatever it is that we're doing. That's why they're showing up." The Current View of Customer Experience At the moment I think customer experience is incredibly flat. I don't have any experience with a website and how I go through that. I understand the whole route and the need to make it easier for me to buy stuff. But it's not really an experience with the company. It's an experience of how I experienced that product. That's cool, but it's not an emotional experience. For me, an emotional experience happens on a basis where I actually am in contact with the company. And that's not at the moment I have a problem." Resources From This Episode Find Vincent online: Articles:  

Co-creating Business With Your Community Vincent Boon

Today the term "disruption" is commonly used in business to signal a wide range of disparate concepts - from new business initiatives to an individual or team pursuing seemingly innovative strategies. The concept of disruption comes from Clayton Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation, which he explored in his first book, "The Innovators Dilemma" in 1997.   On this episode of the Cohere podcast my guest is Karen Dillon,  former editor of Harvard Business Review and a coauthor of three books with Clayton Christensen, including the New York Times best-seller "How Will You Measure Your Life?" All three books extended the theory of disruptive innovation and explored various contexts in which the theory could be a useful lens. In our conversation, Karen shares her experiences editing both Inc. and Harvard Business Review, how she met and began collaborating with Clayton Christensen, and how she continues to carry their work forward today.

Revisiting the Theory of Disruptive Innovation with Karen Dillon

In the developed world, the promise of social media (including Facebook) to create positive change has fallen well short of the mark. Mass social media is becoming increasingly manipulative and toxic.  In the developing world, mass social media's negative effects are even more dangerous, as manipulation and misinformation can quickly lead to real-world violence.  Meena Palaniappan, CEO and Founder of Atma Connect wants to change this. Atma Connect's goal is to connect over a billion people around the world living in vulnerable communities in order for them to take collective action, advocate with governments and lead the way to the future we need. In this episode of the Cohere Podcast, Meena and I discuss the circumstances that led her to found Atma Connect, the positive impact her products like AtmaGo are making, and her vision for social networks like AtmaGo to help create more equitable and resilient communities, both online and in the real world.  Meena on Her Journey to Founding Atma Connect "I became an environmental engineer because I really wanted to develop scalable solutions to the challenges that we're facing globally. In doing this work there, it became clear that we, as a global community, need to focus more attention on building power in vulnerable communities to lead the way. One thing that just became apparent in my work, domestically and around the world was the fact that people who consume the least and have the least to do with environmental problems were the ones that were facing the biggest challenges, suffering the most, and had the least resources to overcome these challenges." Meena on Social Networks for Community Resilience  "It became apparent to me in working internationally on water and sanitation that the same communities that didn't have water and sanitation increasingly had mobile phones. This started me on a journey of asking how could we use this ubiquitous technology to make visible the invisible and put people on the map in unignorable ways to get their needs addressed. Virtual communities are incredible because they give people a way to more rapidly spread solutions to aggregate and amplify their voices to take collective action and to advocate with governments. I think that that's really fundamentally what the goal is, is to create these connections and build this power online that leads to real improvements in people's lives and where they live." Meena on the Impact of AtmaGo "People are sharing a lot of information about COVID, government resources, government restrictions, they're offering help and they're asking for help. People come to AtmaGo daily to find jobs, to build up entrepreneurship, to have community discussions about local needs, or to report problems to the government. Because of that, it becomes all the more powerful in disaster. So in a disaster, people are receiving early warnings on AtmaGo that are leading them to take early action. An independent evaluation found that people receiving early warnings on AtmaGo move valuables, they evacuated, they warn their neighbors. Quantified at a scale of a million users this is $106 million in avoided economic losses and over 6,000 years of healthy life saved and they're using it in the entire cycle of building resilience." Get involved: Atma Connect is always looking for volunteers and advisors to work on product design and management challenges, as well as network business models. Atma Connect is an international non-profit. You can make a .  Resources & Links Mentioned in the Episode: Atma Connect's Atma Connect on Atma Connect on

Building a Human-Centered Social Network with Meena Palaniappan

I spoke with Randy Farmer about the recent increase in virtual community participation triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this bonus episode (~15 min), I speak with virtual community pioneer Randy Farmer about this influx of new participants, how they are likely different from your current community cohort, how to understand their needs and engage them in helpful ways.  Highlights from our conversation: "We've got a bunch of people who otherwise probably would not have come to our communities. What we usually do is count engagement or number of posts. We have these various metrics (which) may no longer be telling the entire story. Are we asking the right questions?" "(Now) when you get a new member, you really need to understand a little more than just how active they are. Like how did they find you in the first place? What is it that got them to come to you. How can we serve their needs? How are they different than the existing community member base?" "I'm saying that depending upon the application you have, it's important to understand the new users are highly valuable. Make sure they don't bounce off just because they can't find the thing that you already have that they need. I applaud all efforts to capture the contexts that are important to new users and make them feel like they're welcome." You can find Randy online: Twitter: LinkedIn: Wikipedia: Clay Shirky's

Here Comes Everybody (Else) with Randy Farmer

This week, I sat down (virtually, of course) with Joi Podgorny, Founder of Good People Solutions.  Joi has had a very impressive and wide-ranging career, including developing and launching successful community business models for the wildly popular children's brands Animal Jam and Chuggington. In her work with Good People Solutions, she focuses on corporate diversity and inclusion training in VR. In this session of the Cohere podcast, Joi shares hard-won wisdom she has acquired from her impressive career, her guidance on building communities for children and families, and her point of view on the state of VR (hint: winter is not coming). She was also kind enough to council me on my son's excessive Roblox usage. Highlights from our conversation: On launching one of the first virtual worlds for children: "One of my favorite, diversions on that crazy roller coaster that is my career was working with a company called  Ludorum and launching the preschool cartoon Chuggington. I was able to build a virtual world, from the 3D models that the animation team were building. We built one of the very first virtual worlds inside of Unity back in 2007.  I was able to not only build one of those virtual worlds with really cool, beautifully made 3d models from the actual cartoon. I got to be part of the launch of a very successful, preschool cartoon series. I also got to manage a team out in China at the time, and learn about the globalization of teams." On including the community in product development: "A big part of community management is giving up the idea that you have all the answers. You're more of a guide and a facilitator. You're like a camp counselor who's like, "Hey, what are we going to do today? Oh, that doesn't sound exactly right. How about we rethink that a little bit" - (you take) feedback from the community itself and have that help guide you. I've been on so many teams, amazing, brilliant developers, and programmers working on those teams and had to gently, over the course of many months and sometimes years, guide them to the place where the community should be able to have some feedback into how this game or community is going to look. (It's about) really letting go of the idea that you as the company are the only person who can figure this out." On the hype around a "VR Winter": "if the only measure of success is whether you have mass-market penetration and dominance, that's a depressing world to live in and especially as a community person.  The idea that I can't get an Oculus Go or an Oculus Quest right now (is absurd). They have been sold out, and right when they get them back in stock, they sell out again. So this whole concept of like, no one's buying them - everyone's buying them! Doing diversity, equity, and inclusion training, and leveraging the research in academia that says immersive environments and the phenomena of presence within virtual reality, where your mind actually remembers the experiences that you have in virtual reality as a memory. You have a 75 to 90% higher retention rate rather than just reading something or watching a movie because you're remembering it as a lived experience. Leveraging that possible." Resources mentioned in the podcast:   

Developing Expansive Community Business Models with Joi Podgorny

Leaders often use the word "transformation" to describe a small or incremental change, but the definition is "a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance". When using the phrase "Transformational Communities", my intention is to define these communities as having a profound and thorough change effect on participating stakeholders. One of the most interesting examples I've encountered is the hybrid online & real-world community development model that uses for its UpTogether program. To date, families participating in FII's community-powered program have experienced a 27% lift in income, have established an average of $1,000 in personal savings, and have collectively established $2.5 million in home equity. Jorge Blandon, Executive Vice President at FII, joins me on the Cohere Podcast to talk about the mission of FII, to discuss their community model in detail, and to talk about the stories of some of the families who have collectively walked out of poverty together. Key Quotes From the Episode: "FII really is aiming for all people in the United States to be seen and invested in for their strengths and that they're able to build their social and financial assets. I think until today, there are systemic barriers that prevent a lot of low-income families from leveraging their assets, their strengths, and even community. FII wants to remove those barriers and really create a new environment where families are trusted as change agents and communities are collectively addressing the challenges that prevent them from pursuing their, their wellbeing." "FII's approach is really anchored in historic models of just how communities and families would come together to support each other from barn raisings to examples of the Chinatowns throughout the country, the Black wall street and in Tulsa, or the fact that there are over 1500 donut shops owned and run by Cambodians. These are people, that are coming together, leading the way, showing a path forward. This country has a rich history of, of people just pooling their resources, their money, their time, and collective strength and, and, and wisdom." "So UpTogether is an online community-building platform. It's a place where low-income families can take their offline conversations and bring them online to connect with other UpTogether members. They may live in their same neighborhood, in the same city, or connect with other families, experiencing similar challenges across, across the country. It's really the place where social and financial capital is exchanged and ultimately accelerated. On UpTogether families can, can share news around accomplishments, like paying off debt, buying a home, sending their kids to college, eating healthier. They can curate groups to share ideas around parenting, children with special needs, starting a business, or even being civically engaged. It's really a platform that recognizes that we all bring something to the table." Key Resources From This Episode Lastly, low-income families have been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Please consider making a donation to , a campaign that FII families benefit directly from.

Developing a Transformational Community to Lift Families Out of Poverty with Jorge Blandón

Too often the deployment of digital strategies and tools begins humans conforming to technology limitations instead of technology being deployed intentionally in the service of human needs and opportunities - a human-centered approach. Dr. Lauren Vargas joins me on the Cohere podcast to discuss bringing humans back into the center of the "digital transformation" conversation and provides the CALM framework and specific examples for leaders to draw from. Lauren is particularly well suited to give guidance here, as she is one of the most experienced and widely practiced digital strategists I know. She's had an impressive range of experiences in both the public and private sectors, including senior roles at Radian6, Aetna, and Fidelity. In private practice now, she’s most recently been focused on helping museums around the globe with digital transformation. We recently reconnected in London where I also got to walk through the AMAZING at the Museum of London with her to see some of her work first hand. Key Quotes: "it's talking like technology with heart, right. So it's, it's when we talk about it being embedded in, in an organization, and we talk about being embedded in an ecosystem, in the DNA, it's how do we have technology with a pulse? How do, how are we having conversations and using and understanding, managing and creating digital, and technology in a way that is, is human-centered." On Culture as Terroir "I think culture is having a common language. It's having a shared belief and value system, implicit and explicit practices. You know, those conditions, those contexts are different for every single organization. Every organization has its own terrior. Each, each organization has its own unique fingerprint, contextual characteristics unique to that certain place that can influence and shape its character. So when we think about terroir, an agricultural and an ecological term, it's the soil. It's the topography. It's the climate that collectively gives and produces a particular characteristic. For organizations, terroir might be attributed to the type and size of the organization and the industry it is anchored in, it's visitor or customer demographics. It's physical locations and all forms of media that terroir, it's complex and it is comprised of internal and external forces that are unique to the organization. And, those forces ebb and flow. They adapt and adopt over time." The CALM Approach to Digital Leadership "Taking a CALM approach to digital leadership, to digital transformation, is incredibly powerful. And when I say calm, it's an acronym. C — Collaborative A — Anticipatory L — Letting go of Command and Control Leadership and Embracing Collective Leadership M — Mindful How do we, how do we think about a collaborative first environment? How do we embed, an anticipatory rhythm of practice and ritual? How do we let go of command and control leadership and how do we create the space to reflect?" Resources From This Episode Find Lauren online:   Articles mentioned in this episode:   Books Lauren mentioned in this episode: "Anything by Ursula K Le Guin" - by NK Jemisin ASU's Project Hieroglyph - & .  

A Human-Centered Approach to Digital Leadership with Lauren Vargas, PhD

During the COVID19 crisis, digital networks have played a critical part in keep humanity connected and informed. The adoption of networked experiences has scaled exponentially, seemingly overnight. In most cases, these designed experiences were crafted for very different contexts than what they are being used for. In our new, digitally connected yet physically isolated future, we will need new design mindsets and methods to account for hyper-connectivity, data-enriched experiences, and participation by non-human actors in the network.  joins me on this episode of the Cohere podcast to discuss the history of experience design, the opportunities for a more holistic method of design, and what the near-term future of our designed world might look like. Patrick is an expert on design methodologies and implementation, the Co-Founder of Method, and the author of the book "".   Key quotes from the episode: "I think in design, a lot of times the education focuses more on what I call kind of the formal aspects of design. So it is more of the components and the aesthetics and the way in which design can communicate and evoke a kind of emotion and response.  One of the things that I read early on in my research into what design was about was the history of the Bauhaus. (I) was really struck by two things:  number one, the general sense of removing the artifice and the subjectivity of design as a goal of the movement;  the other was thinking about people like Jan Tschichold and the approach to book design which was really predicated on both economic efficiency as well as aesthetic value." "As I practice today, I look at design from three different different perspectives: 1. Pragmatic Design: What are the requirements of kind of the product or the service definition? What are the, what are the goals that the designer is being asked to solve for? What are the kinds of formal aspects of design that you play with? What is the strategy around how to do this efficiently? 2. System / Reference Design: Design for the business has to address a lot of things that may not be product or services. Any single product or service is probably part of an overall ecosystem of value that is being delivered to the customer. So you take a different view on the stages of relationships, the touchpoints that are used, how they cohere together, where those flexibility needed in thinking about how you're really trying to help design. 3. Strategic Design: Which is really looking at what is changing for a business. Why will tomorrow be different? How do, trends in emerging technology and trends in economics or social-cultural context. Change the kinds of products and services or even business models that the business will need to have in the future." "I think we should realize that everything that we're doing right now and everything that we're thinking about right now is really very early-stage and naive in terms of thinking about what is possible with designing technology. There's been so much change in the past two decades that it's really difficult to kind of keep in mind that there's not enough history yet for us to understand what really are best practices and what makes the most sense in terms of design in business, and that as we look at the arc of technology things are going to continue to change and whatever we think now next decade, we're going to look back and say, "Oh, that was a little naive. We didn't anticipate this coming." What excites me about things in general though is I think the ability for us to actually begin to think more in terms of data and information, because I think data and information are key to the design process. If we begin to think "where can we create value or, better resiliency, better ability to have things be regenerative in terms of value creation, specifically around things like climate change or, or health care?" To date, we've largely looked at a lot of these solutions or approach these problems from an economic perspective as opposed to a systems perspective." Resources:

The Connected Future of Design with Patrick Newbery

The primary purpose of the Cohere Project (and podcast) is to explore the future of human networks, especially tools that increase human and group agency in a network. I believe Nilofer Merchant's concept of "Onlyness' is one such tool. We discuss Onlyness, and much more, in one of the most fun, informative and unfiltered conversations we've had on the Cohere podcast. Nilofer Merchant is a pioneer in the use of social technologies and has written extensively about how businesses can leverage social networks and communities to shape strategy, improve performance and become more purposeful. In her new book "The Power of Onlyness", Nilofer brings forward the idea of Onlyness as a means of claiming your distinct place in the world and using networks as a catalyst for actualizing your purpose.   In this episode of the Cohere Podcast, Nilofer and I discuss: The evolution of social media Managing corporate innovation and the role of communities The concept of Onlyness, as it relates to "you, us and together" How your network shapes your self-image, role, and personal agency The natural reaction of hierarchies to resist networks The benefits of taking a radically different path Resources: - Book - Book - Book

Realizing Power of "Onlyness" Through Networks with Nilofer Merchant

In this short (~15 min) bonus episode, we speak with facilitator and community builder extraordinaire Nancy White of Full Circle Associates about creating and maintaining connections online during a crisis.  Specifically, we talk through: Advice for taking offline events online (and if you should) Planning for a near-term future of limited face to face gatherings Drawing from pre-social media community building techniques to create connections How facilitators and community builders can practice self-care and help others during this challenging time Links / sources mentioned in the episode: Nancy's bio (google doc) The Ecocycle Diagram that Nancy mentions in the episode:  

Creating Connection in the Time of COVID-19 with Nancy White

It’s human nature to seek connection, meaning, and knowledge through community. Thanks to the smartphones in our pockets (and the near-global access to broadband), “community” now is very much a digital construct, and the way we find and participate in such gathering places is radically changing.  As online communities and human networks have evolved, algorithms have played an increasingly prominent role in the experience, from rudimentary personalization to shaping and segmenting entire communities. In the future, AI and related technologies will become central to our shared digital and real-world experience.  In this episode of the Cohere Podcast, Venessa Paech and I discuss the future role of AI in online communities - both the tremendous opportunities and potential threats AI & related technologies pose. In this episode, Venessa and I discuss: AI in the context of the digital community experience - 21:15 The specific ways AI can enhance community experience - 33:54 Potential risks of emerging technologies - 39:37 Machine culture - 43:30 Advice for organizations as they began to prepare for the changes that out AI will bring to community experiences - 46:59 Guest Bio Venessa is a co-founder of the Australian Community Managers Network, a PhD candidate studying the intersection of AI and community, and a global authority on communities and community management. She has led Community for realestate.com.au, Lonely Planet, Envato and Australia Post among others. She founded the Australian Community Manager Roundtables (ACM) in 2009, and created Swarm in 2011 with Alison Michalk. She also runs the annual Australian Community Manager Career Survey and with ACM, authored the first code of ethics for the region.  Find Venessa on the web at , her website , and on Twitter @VenessaPaech. Sources Discussed

The Role of AI in Online Communities and Networks with Venessa Paech

Over the past 25 years, the Internet has become a central part of our everyday lives. Even so, there are still over three billion people in the world who don't have access to broadband internet. Thanks to a combination of new technologies, this will change rapidly over the next 5 years. This change will open a wide range of potential opportunities and vulnerabilities as the Internet experiences its largest, and final, population boom. In this episode, Jim and I discuss key aspects of the Great Connecting, including ways to prepare for, and participate in, this transformative event. The technologies that will allow the parts of the world who don’t have internet currently to have it in the next two to three years - 5:59 What potential benefits and vulnerabilities the internet will bring to areas that previously didn’t have it - 10:33 Why the benefits of the internet and social platforms outweigh the negatives - 20:53 How companies can prepare for and participate in this great connection - 25:01 What roles AI will play in this future state of connectivity - 30:02 Guest Bio Jim Cashel is the co-founder and chairman of Forum One Communications. As Forum One's Chairman, he works with the senior management team on strategic and leadership issues, helping to support a continuing mission of applying new and promising technologies to address societal problems of importance. He has a bachelor’s degree in human biology from Stanford, a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School, and a medical degree from Harvard Medical.  In 2018-2019 Jim was a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. He also recently published the book . Find Jim on Twitter @cashel as well as at ForumOne.com. Sources

Navigating the Global Broadband Internet’s Opportunities & Vulnerabilities with Jim Cashel

Episode 1: Broadband and wireless Internet connectivity are now commonplace in the developed world, but this wasn’t always the case. At the beginning of the 21st century, just over 300 million people (roughly 5% of the globe )had Internet access. The number of participants, and the type of participation has evolved rapidly over the last 20 years. In today’s episode, Open EXO’s Chief Science Officer Kent Langley and I discuss this evolution in three eras: Dawn of the Internet & PCs, Introduction of the Web 2.0 & Mobile, and Spread of the Exponential Technologies of Now (Global Connectivity). We explore what each of previous eras looked like, and what we can expect from the global human network as we move forward. Overview In this episode, Kent Langley and I discuss: When the commercial internet gained mass adoption- 7:00 Evolution of web technology and community platforms - 14:52 Understanding exponential technologies and the concept of exponential organizations - 18:53 The role AI (and related technologies) will play in the global human network - 26:19 Guest Bio Kent Langley is a leader and technology visionary with a background in Technology Operations, Cloud Computing, AI, Exponential Organizations, Data Science, and Blockchain. He works on projects that educate, feed, clothe, and empower people as the co-founder of OpenExO Inc., and as a six-year faculty member at Singularity University.  To find Kent on the web, visit his website KentLangley.com and follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook @KentLangley.

Exponential Technologies and Online Communities with Kent Langley, CSO of Open EXO

Cohere will go beyond discussions of online community, social networks and social media and look at the bigger picture - perhaps the biggest picture: the complex, digitally augmented global community we now all belong to, whether we like it or not! The Cohere podcast will: Feature expert guests with deep knowledge and experience with the combinatorial effects of exponential technology and human networks Highlight key trends in community ecosystem development Discuss case studies/success stories of leading human-network brands (i.e., Salesforce)  Examine the emerging business value of networks, communities, and collaboration Analyze previous eras of community and social networking (think: bulletin boards and product support forums) as a framework for future community & network development Provide practical information and guidance for managing human network transformation at scale

The Cohere Podcast Trailer

Cohere will go beyond discussions of online community, social networks and social media and look at the bigger picture - perhaps the biggest picture: the complex, digitally augmented global community we now all belong to, whether we like it or not! The Big Idea: Complex human networks have sprung up globally, driven in large part by exponential technologies such as AI, automation, and space-based internet. Imagine what will happen when three billion more people come online in the next five years! For organizations, a planet-wide network of logged-on human beings brings both limitless opportunities and unprecedented threats. As we increasingly use social technologies to augment human experiences, the Cohere podcast asks, what’s the best path forward? How should we navigate, evaluate, and administrate a complex technological landscape so we can protect, promote, and empower our human networks? How will we ensure that digital communities deliver on the promise of enhancing our lives, both individually and collectively? And what steps must we take to ensure our approach to community development is sustainable, democratic, and morally sound?

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Cohere Podcast

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