I may be completely biased, but TransitCampBayArea totally, completely exceeded my own expectations for the event. And the way that I’m biased is that I quite often hate my own events. In fact, I’m disappointed in them about 75% of the time. (I clearly put too much pressure on myself and have too high of expectations, but that’s a whole other blogpost.)

So what was it that made me so ecstatic about this one?

#1. It built amazing bridges

As we went through the intros for Day 1, I was blown away at the diversity of the room. Men. Women. People from various backgrounds. Technologists. Elected officials. Transit representatives. Passionate riders. Green activists. There I stood in front of a room of ‘not the usual suspects’ to show up at a BarCamp. It was pretty astounding.

But even more astounding is how everyone adapted to the embrace-the-chaos model of BarCamp. People from all backgrounds took the initiative to pitch sessions, put them on the board, lead discussions, get involved and help out. There were very rare moments where I had to reiterate the DIY culture of BarCamp.

#2. It avoided the usual pitfalls of public services events: no complaints, only solutions

Oh, there were touch-and-go moments where I had to step in and be firm, stating, once again, “This is a solutions playground. Please keep it that way.” (borrowed heavily from the original TransitCamp) Transit is definitely a hot button issue and people get really passionate about it! And yes, there are lots of issues. Yep.

But this weekend quickly avoided getting bogged down in all of those issues and stuck with the exciting possibilities of using collaborative, open technologies to engage with riders and potential riders…and even thinking about doing this WITHOUT the use of technology and just purely being creative. We truly became a solutions playground! Some really awesome ideas that came out of TCBA:

• Awareness ideas:
1. Visual Route Cues. Creating symbols or colored lines on the roads to show people where the buses physically go. This way non-riders would start to notice that buses from their neighborhoods go to neighborhoods that they want to go to. (topic at Get Satisfaction here)
2. “If you build it, I would come” – the ability to vote for your route. Maybe you don’t currently ride the bus because it is just too inconvenient, but if you had a better bus system that could take you to and from work everyday, you would totally ride it. A simple clickable map with the ability to input the amount of time maximum you would tolerate (and the times you would travel) may bring in some good data for transit planners.
3. Share A Route! So, why can’t we help encourage our non-transit friends to take transit by planning out a good route for them and sharing it? Sounds like a pretty simple solution to me!
4. Transit Buddy System. This is a no-brainer as well. If you buy monthly Transit passes, you should be able to take 1-2 friends with you for free. You are promoting the system and encouraging ridership.
5. Welcome Wagon Transit Packets. I remember the nightmare of moving to the Bay Area and trying to figure out the transit system. BART? Muni? Caltrain? Etc.? There were so many to figure out! How about a packet with links and information for new people. Promote them to big companies in the area who are importing people in.
• Help Ideas:
1. The Priceline for Transportation. I want to go from A to B, so beyond 511.org, I get a couple of options back based on my preferences. Zipcar, City CarShare, Muni, BART, Caltrain, the ferry, cabs, walking, whatever, would show up in a table with: time, cost and transfers. I could make my choice from there. Vive le choice!
• Mashing Transit into my Lifestyle ideas:
1. Transit and Jobsearch. Mashup of job searches that limit the results to my preferable commute times on transit
2. Transit and Events. Mashup of Upcoming events with transit data, THEN the ability to set an SMS alert for ‘last call’ on the bus to get me home!

Lots of these ideas are being posted on our very new Get Satisfaction TransitCamp section. Keep them coming! In the next few months, we’ll be trying to get them built! One really great opportunity with be at GreenDevCamp coming up at GoogleHQ in April.

Oh…and btw…these all require proper data apis, really.

#3. It made an impact

Already, I’m feeling the impact of TCBA. We’ve seen coverage in a couple of places, I’ve received a couple dozen follow up emails asking ‘What’s next?’, Bryce from City CarShare has started a couple of Transit Data Google Groups, the folks at NextBus made a great case for a TransitCamp manifesto on opening data apis (which we will be working on in the next while), and we have tentative meetings scheduled with several of the transit organizations to help them implement the exciting ideas they heard over this weekend.

There was also a bit of a reverberation across Twitter re: TransitCamp the tag. Several people expressed their desire to throw their own in their area. I’ll do everything I can in my power to help them make it happen.

Some follow up items for me. After the crazy month of March, I’m going to schedule time for video interviews with reps from all of the TransitCamp attending Transit Organizations to get them on video saying “What I learnt at camp”. Hopefully this will help others around the world who want to do this demonstrate the potential impact of this type of event.

I’m also going to continue to push on the awesome ideas that rolled out of this. A couple of cool follow up places to go:

• Joe Hughes (Google Transit) awesome Headway Blog and Wiki, where we should be contributing much of the work for these projects.
• The TCBA Google Group that we will continue for this project
• The Get Satisfaction TransitCamp page where you can submit awesome ideas and feedback (at some point, we’ll feed the api into a more cohesive site)
• Of course, the original wiki page where I’m hoping lots of people will be posting their notes and presentations for you to enjoy (I gave one of my government 2.0 presos)

#4. It exceeded many people’s expectations

I had several people approach me throughout the event and afterwards to tell me that they were not only blown away by this event, but that they couldn’t wait for the next one and they would bring several people with them. That’s the keystone of a great event, imo. Would you tell others? If no, it was disappointing. If maybe, it was okay. If yes, it was awesome. If, as one guy told me, you would drag many people even if they were kicking and screaming, it was kickass.

During the opening talk, I looked around the room to see many skeptics. Those same skeptics were those still hanging around at 5:00 pm today, talking excitedly about possibilities. What an amazing sight that was to see!

+++++

I am not going to do reviews of each of the speakers…hopefully there will be summaries of each session, but needless to say, there was alot of amazing information going back and forth. Everyone learnt at least one thing and met a great number of people they didn’t know before who they can now do amazing things with.

Thanks to those who came out and those of you who watched or participated from afar! And thanks to the original pioneers of TransitCamp, Mark Kuznicki, Eli Singer, David Crow, Jay Goldman and the many others who were crazy enough the first time to apply this unique approach to a very traditional industry and inspire us all!

Someone once asked me if reputation is interchangeable with Social Capital. Yes and no. To me, reputation is merely a dimension of Social Capital, not truly interchangeable. Social Capital is much more complex and includes:

• connections
• reputation
• influence
• bridging capital – the number of connections you have across to different industries, social strata, etc.
• bonding capital – the depth of your close connections (how close and how much you could ask of your connections)
• access to ideas and talent through your connections
• access to resources through your connections
• “potential” access to further resources (more distant, but very legitimate)
• saved up favors (reciprocity is huge – which is why doing good stuff matter alot with social capital)
• accomplishments (slightly different from reputation, it is the more fungible form of SC – resumes, awards, etc.)
• and the Social Capital of those who you have relationships with (Bordieu’s ideas on the French elite talk about this)

The social networks I use are merely tools to achieving the above, it is the connections — the people — within them that matter. If most of them were to go away tomorrow, I would shift my efforts to the other networks where my connections are (although I would feel a great loss with Twitter as I love hearing from people ambiently).

I not only use these social networks to interact, I use these networks to leverage and continue to build my Social Capital. As I build the Capital, I’m able to build on my network more easily. The success of the network is directly correlated to the amount of Social Capital it can help it’s members build. If people are seeing success building their connections, reputation, influence, bridging capital, access to ideas, etc., they will return to the social network more often than for those networks that don’t offer the same level of benefit.

At the same time, social networks that have highly influential people with loads of Social Capital within them, benefit from this presence. This is why certain networks will pay celebrities to be part of their community. The celebrity pays back into the social network with Social Capital, however, the flow needs to eventually benefit the celebrity in order to have a long term effect on the influence of the social network community. It really is a symbiotic relationship.

Networks like Facebook are interesting cases. The network, itself, holds a great deal of influence. They truly do have a key to the social graph. There has been alot of talk about data portability lately, but what some people don’t understand is that my data outside of the context of Facebook may not be worth as much. The network itself holds a great deal of Capital. The members receive benefits from being part of it through the tools provided…benefits they could not receive as easily in the broader online space. They can be freer to express themselves and connect because there are filters to who gets to participate and how. It is also an ‘active’ rather than ‘passive’ space, where messaging comes in many forms. As everyone leverages the tools within the context of Facebook (writing on people’s walls, poking them, inviting them to events, etc.), they grow their network and, thus, their influence, reputation, access, etc. In turn, Facebook benefits from my activity because as I grow my own Social Capital, they have examples of success in their network and end up attracting more people to it who want to achieve the same.

Of course, a smart way to circumvent the sheer influence of Facebook is through distributing those powerful social network tools, however, though most of my personal Social Capital IS fungible (that is, able to be transferred between Social Networks), there would be a certain amount of it lost if abandoning Facebook suddenly. This, MORE THAN the pain of sign ups and new logins and MORE THAN network lock-in, is truly what keeps people from jumping ship. But as soon as the potential of increased Social Capital appears in another network, people will, and do, jump ship.

So, the key to attracting and keeping members of a community is to offer them heaps of ways to accrue Social Capital within it. That is, to offer them more connections, more influence, more of a chance to grow their reputation, more bridging capital, more bonding capital, more access and potential access to ideas, talent and resources, more ways to display their accomplishments, more ways to do nice things for others (to build up those favors) and more access to those with loads of Social Capital of their own.

Or, as Kathy Sierra puts it, help your customers “kick ass”.

Social Capital really is the key to understanding what makes online communities work. It’s the key to understanding what motivates people. Having Social Capital keeps us warm at night, thinking of the many friends and contacts we have to help us overcome any situation and/or reach true self-actualization. I can tie it very tightly to the idea of Happiness as well (but that’s for another blogpost).

I quite like it. I thought I would want another pineapple shot, but it turns out that I don’t.

This past month and a half has been a little rocky for me. In the future, I’m sure that I will refer to it as a blip on the positive momentum of my life, but today, it still feels a little overwhelming.

But the positive part of all of this is what I have learnt from my involvement in online communities: ‘friends’ on social networks sometimes REALLY ARE friends.

Don’t listen to the naysayers who will scoff at the idea that anyone can find intimacy through their online connections. I’ve known more than one social network addict that has received ample support, including late night phonecalls, offers of dinners, shoulders to cry on and generally helpful feedback when feeling blue, angry or otherwise down in the dumps. One of these social network addicts is me. The outpouring of support from my friends on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and this blog has been overwhelming. Of course, many of my friends are people I already knew offline or have met in person since meeting online. But I also have a good number of friends I have never met in person, but where incredibly supportive and helpful when I really felt alone.

And, even more heartening is the fact that my messy emotional tweeting, blogging, facebooking and Flickring has brought me closer to people in general. Sure, there may be some that were turned off or felt uncomfortable with the raw emotion I was putting out there, but those I heard from were incredibly touched, inspired and even impressed that I was so open and honest about my pain. I had comments like:

“Keep it up. It’s helping me come to terms with my own divorce.”

“My daughter just went through a sad breakup. I’ve been showing her your tweets to help her through. It’s working.”

“Your bravery makes me love your work even more.”

I may have been previously apprehensive to tweet something as personal as: “We were supposed to be forever. How could he stop loving me and fall in love with her so quickly?” txt out to the world, lest I lose my professional luster, as I had previously posted that I would be maturely going forward with this breakup. And it wasn’t a lie or a PR spin, but I truly didn’t know how hard it would be, especially with twists in the events such as Chris starting a new relationship within weeks of the split. At that moment, I let down professional boundaries and let my fully human side splash all over the internet.

And who knows? Perhaps I have lost some professional luster to some. But for those who responded, I was someone they trusted just a little bit more. My vulnerability seemed to make me more qualified to be a community consultant. Citizen Agency had more inquiries, not fewer. I’ve had endless lunches, dinners, coffees, etc. with people who are all interested in working with me…and us.

And what of that Transition statement Chris and I made?

I am still committed to it. I believe in and love our work too much to throw it away. That being said, we no longer hold the naive view that it is going to be an easy transition. It’s going to take work and patience…and we are going to go to a couples counselor to work through this stuff (this time as a business ‘couple’, not romantic couple). Both of us are raw on many levels, but we will try our best not to let it hurt our work. We will also forgive one another if it does.

In the meantime, I keep reaching out to my old and new friends online who have provided me with a great outlet as well as a great deal of support. They may be icons and avatars on the screen, but there are real, breathing, feeling people behind them.

my broken heart broadcasted, blogged, blasted
on the internet
my wreckage for all to view, favorite and bookmark
and the pain still lives in my stomache
in the body
no text characters or media files could fill that void
my emotions are not emoticons
a may be ironic
but it will never replace my memory of smiling while I was in his presence
and :-* won’t replace the taste of his mouth
stupid feeling messy complicated flesh world
my 2000 friends aren’t really here to open their arms and pull me close and tell me everything is going to be okay
he won’t post a sign
when did he link to her instead?
yet I continue to publish my shattered ego over and over again
read in several continents
i’m sure they’ll love me more for it
but he won’t
his flesh and blood self is tangled in her real arms
while I send my messages off to be read from afar
I just want to be touched again
really touched
not poked or messaged or emailed
touched
I want those arms to be mine and the tangles to wrap me up

he said he wanted his freedom, but gave me mine instead
his freedom was only from me
the man who related more to his machine than my body is using his body to heal
and i’m left with my machine

[tara hunt feb 17 08]

Did I say something funny? by Capn Madd Matt on Flickr

Chris and I presented a workshop at Web Directions North this week we had originally titled, “The Enterprise and Government in the 2.0 Era: What’s Next?”

Boring, eh? Well, we thought so. So, we sat down a couple of weeks ago to restructure the information we had into what we thought was a much more compelling way to look at things. We came up with this:

Part 1: citizen happiness defined

oh and this…

Part 2: the building blocks of citizen happiness

And, although I think the workshop went well and we exchanged loads of great ideas, the question was still asked, “What does government or enterprise have to do with Citizen Happiness?”

I have always taken it for granted that it should be my right, not my privilege to be happy. If I am a good person and a good community member, even moreso. But others disagree. Why? Well, it’s mainly because we have a different view on what happiness means.

So, what does happiness mean? Some thing it means that you get what you want, you have all of the material things you desire and you have ultimate freedom. But I don’t think that is happiness. There are multiple studies that prove that people who ostensibly have everything their hearts desire aren’t any more happy than those who don’t and who have to work hard to get a fraction of that.

The clarity came for me when I found a press release from the American Psychological Association on what actually makes people happy. And what did they find?

Attaining popularity or influence and money or luxury is not what makes people the happiest and is at the bottom of the list of psychological needs, according to a new study. Topping the list of needs that appear to bring happiness are autonomy (feeling that your activities are self-chosen and self-endorsed), competence (feeling that you are effective in your activities), relatedness (feeling a sense of closeness with others) and self-esteem.

These, to me, all seem like reasonable things to be happy about. Of course, self-esteem is that one piece you can’t control (it’s your set-point…what you are born with. It can be worked on with drugs, therapy and meditation), but the rest of them are very easily controllable. And there are many companies that I could look at today that I would say fit the profile of delivering the tools of happiness: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Companies that give you tools of autonomy, like Wordpress for raising your voice. Companies that give you the feeling of competence through their really intuitive interfaces that gradually get more challenging, helping you learn. Companies that raise your relatedness by connecting you with others in significant ways.

In fact, I feel that these also line up beautifully to the core values I attribute to what we call Web 2.0:

• Openness
• Collaboration
• Community

Openness, I map to autonomy and competence because more clear information leads to people feeling like they can make better decisions…Collaboration, I map to competence and relatedness because you feel more assured on a team…and Community, I map to relatedness, but also autonomy, because it brings us closer together while breeding independence. In a big way, all of the best parts of the world around me are what causes alot of happiness. So much happiness, in fact, that people that ‘get it’ start to really reach that self-actualization part of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which is the ultimate in human growth can lead to double happiness, or euphoria.

It isn’t perfect, but I know it has certainly helped me and hundreds around me reach deep into our potential.

So, why is it that government or business can’t see their roles in this? Sure, it isn’t anyone’s job to ‘deliver’ happiness to you…but why not play a role in enabling it? There are two ways in which you can help people with becoming happier:

1. Create tools or deliver services that help people proactively pursue happiness
2. Create tools or deliver services that reduce the barriers to happiness

And what are those barriers? Fear, confusion, loneliness, feeling disempowered and out of control of one’s life and the basic struggle for survival (not being able to fulfill basic needs like hunger, security and sociality).

To me it seems pretty obvious that it would be simple to build a business around helping people achieve autonomy, a feeling of competence and relatedness. In fact, every web company that has been successful thusfar has their business build solidly on one or all of these. And I believe that as people discover that these things are within their reach, they will gravitate more and more towards companies that offer tools to helping them achieve happiness.

And governments? Sure, they don’t have any real competition…or do they? According to The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent, there is a competition. Some countries call it the ‘brain drain’ (sounds awful). People are going to where they will be more happy, and it isn’t necessarily for money. I believe it is for where they can build the most Social Capital and reach their ultimate self-actualization. The US protects its borders for a good reason. It’s written right into the Declaration of Independence that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are inalienable rights to man. That’s pretty powerful and though a good look around the US will show that those rights are, in fact, alienated all of the time, it is still part of the promise of the American Dream AND, I should add, within the grasp of just enough people to keep that dream alive.

But what would happen if we committed to it? What would happen if happiness was within the grasp of everyone and business and government delivered those tools instead of the tools of misery and insecurity? Wouldn’t it be nice to have ample access to autonomy, competence and relatedness for everyone…not to mention the tools to get us climbing up Maslow’s pyramid? I’d like to see this and what could come of it. I’d like to see more businesses built on a model of happiness.