It’s been exactly two years since we launched dotherightthing.com to connect people with the companies they care about. This time has gone by quickly but looking back now it was all part of the journey that made this latest re-launch possible. Once again I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by extremely talented people most of whom went above and beyond to make the impossible possible… isn’t that always the case? (particularly Loren Baxter, Ryan Daigle, Ryan Mickle, Carsten Lindstedt, Peyman Pakzad, Robert Hoekman Jr., Jarkko Laine, all our clients and partners, and support from the original dotherightthing.com community)

Here are some key “notes to self” I discovered personally and professionally the last two years, I will undoubtedly refer to and stay mindful of these going forward:

1. Passion and momentum are the only requirements – when the unknowns mount and things get out of hand (which is standard for most entrepreneurial endeavors) it is key to continually communicate passion for what you are trying to solve or deliver and encourage the same from those around you, this builds the momentum required to stay motivated and stay in motion; it’s not enough to set goals, product requirements, and agendas (although these are important) but rather to keep telling yourself and the world around you what you are driving toward regardless of the perceived risks at the time
2. Help others take on new responsibilities and be true to your own – when taking on an audacious project it’s important to let those around you step up and be accountable for things outside their comfort zones, of course you should do the same but always stay accountable and get it done, experiment and draw outside the lines but always find a way to deliver
3. When you think it’s easy enough make it easier – creating good products is about solving real-world problems in innovative and elegant ways. The original dotherightthing.com for example was innovative but intimidating for companies and the community at large… the expectations were tough to overcome for most people, making it difficult to get started let alone get engaged; stripping everything to the core components not only ensures a solid user experience but it can also be very empowering and the more empowering it is the more engaging it will be (twitter is a good example of simple yet empowering)
4. Stay lean but not mean – stay lean but, more importantly, stay compassionate; things will likely unfold naturally and there will be many tough decisions that need to be made but do this without being shrewd or losing focus
5. Cultivate patience and persistence, it’s best done together – things will never get done fast enough but staying persistent ensures that things will happen and there will be movement toward the objectives, don’t sweat the small stuff but push on and remember it’s all small stuff (from this great book)
6. Engage the world openly and transparently – in many ways this is what dotherightthing.com is all about, transparent and genuine discussions with the companies/organizations you care about

New changes that are worth noting:

1. more empowerment with less of that activist edge – dotherightthing.com now focuses on what can and should be done, not on the good or bad; this new focus creates an environment that encourages action from the community and participation from companies/organizations; the flower metaphor helps visualize this
2. the community can engage directly – we’ve added a basic follow feature that allows community members to follow the activities of others (thanks Robert; there is also mention of it in his new book)
3. smart email notifications – you will now be notified of activities on the site through email notifications that are delivered more or less frequently based on your clicks and interest, you can disable these anytime but we think you will find them useful
4. new extra usable and sexy design – as always we did a good deal of research, prototyping, and design to ensure that this latest release is both functional and extra sexy

We look forward to implementing your ideas too. Please don’t hesitate to post them here. We would like to empower the community to help shape dotherightthing.com’s future. What do you think?

Go post an idea!

This comes as no surprise for those who have followed the Obama campaign with its “appropriate” use of Internet and mobile technologies throughout. The thinking behind each of these efforts has always been “appropriate” (IMHO) and not a hasty combination of buzzword “web 2.0″ and mobile tools but efforts with an objective well suited for the use of that particular tool or technology. It is apparent that serious thought has gone into how best to leverage new tools and technologies, in a similar way to what psychologists, HCI and user-centered design professionals refer to as “affordances“, instead of trying to bring together all the latest trends without consideration of the underlying purpose and overall usefulness to accomplish the task at hand. The Obama “social network” (if you can call it that) for example was used to mobilize both young and old to support local (and distant) campaign and fund raising efforts not to connect people around their interests or create a social platform like Facebook or MySpace. Undoubtedly, mistakes will be made by our new administration in leveraging new tools and technologies in the future but the foundations for the thinking behind this latest announcement is very promising.

But what strikes me about this latest announcement in particular is the promise to highlight participation. According to the post, the President and his administration “will publish all non-emergency legislation” to allow the American people time to review and comment before the President signs anything.

I have signed up for updates (in hopes they don’t become as excessive as they once were during the campaign) and I encourage others to do the same and, more importantly, try to actively engage with what might be the best new media experiment of our time.

For the first time ever I feel a government, the largest and most powerful of its kind no doubt, is innovating faster and more effectively than most modern businesses. Why are companies and other organizations still fearful of this kind of communication, transparency and participation? What do you think?

Yes, I hate “Web X.X” terminology just as much as you do. In this case it was too hard to resist in order to make this point clear: the announcement of the Facebook Platform and web application framework will significantly change the online community world.

Over the last few months, 4 friends from different industries (at least) have contacted me on separate occasions to brainstorm their latest web community ideas. Almost always they ask me “What Internet technologies should I use to get started?” or “How do I build my community right now?”. And without delay, I get right into what’s out there in terms of web application frameworks, prototyping, scalable infrastructure, virtualization, user-centered and interaction design techniques, etc…

But after a little more discussion, it turns out their real question is: “How do I build a thriving web community about this or that as quickly as possible?”. Not surprisingly, this happens to be the single biggest challenge for all new online communities and the simple yet disappointing answer is: it just takes time and a lot of work.

Things are changing fast however. Today it’s easier than ever to build a thriving web community or, more accurately, meta-community by building your applications atop existing communities like Facebook. This is particularly true for web communities that target Generations X and Y. Many of the third-party applications that will be coming to Facebook using this new platform could have been built in-house but opening everything up this way is such a smarter move it’s ridiculous.

Here are 5 advantages of using a platform like Facebook to build your next web application (and this is just the tip of the iceberg):

1. Tap into an existing and thriving online community with deep integration which provides you with all the essential social networking functionality.
2. Explore and prototype all your provocative web community ideas before committing any serious time or money.
3. Extend the reach of your existing web applications.
4. Ride a wave of explosive growth that is slowly gaining ground on giant incumbent MySpace.
5. Most importantly, with instant traffic you have the potential for monetizing your application immediately.

I can’t speak for my peers but here is how it sums up for me.

Generation Y lives and works differently. This generation has an intuitive sense for technology. It takes work-life balance seriously. It demands non-traditional work environments and it “speaks out” often. There are many potential advantages these and other generational differences can afford, acknowledging and understanding them is the first step. Personally, when all of the above conditions have been met, I am likely to experience “flow” and perform optimally.

Convincing myself to actively start maintaining a “weblog” (blog) was far more difficult than it needed to be. As a passionate early adopter of technology, this site should have been live years ago. I have used and implemented professional blog and wiki technology for many years, it was just never the right time to get mine online; well, that time is now.

For those of you at the tipping point, you are not alone.

Here are 5 reasons that kept me from getting started:

1. not enough time
   
2. lack of interesting material, who would read it?
   
3. fear of presenting an inaccurate professional and personal image
4. I am not a “writer”
5. I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon now, its too late

With all that behind me, let’s rock…