What You've Been Missing Over At The Insight Community

from the virtualization-and-digital-nomads-oh-my dept

We've been pretty busy on a bunch of fronts and haven't had much of a chance to mention some of what's going on over at the Insight Community lately, and wanted to pass along some of the cool things that have come out of there recently. First up, we had a case sponsored by IBM and Intel all about virtualization that went amazingly well. Originally, the plan was to only take the three best insights and put them on the Virtualization Conversation blog, but they were so blown away by the content that they agreed to up the deal to take eight. Check out Stephen Foskett's post looking at where virtualization of data center infrastructure will take companies in the future. Then there's David Mould looking at three scenarios that benefit from virtualization. More posts will be going up soon.

Then, of course, the community's been doing some great work diving into all the various details of digital nomads for the crowdsourced whitepaper about digital nomads, sponsored by Dell. The community has already generated nearly one hundred different insightful thoughts on how the rise of digital nomads impacts everything from business decisions, workplace environments and IT decisions. From all that great content, a fantastic digital nomads wiki has been created, and some of the best output from that wiki has been turned into a downloadable whitepaper (pdf) if you're looking to understand things like how to determine the ROI on digital nomads in your business.

And, of course, there have been a variety of ongoing Insight Community insights showing up on American Express's Open Forum blog (including a post I did on what small businesses can learn from Tabasco sauce). There's plenty more going on in the Insight Community as well, we've got a bunch more lined up and coming soon, so if you're not already a member, why not?

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World's First Crowdsourced Whitepaper From The Insight Community

from the understanding-digital-nomads dept

Back in August we announced that, via the Insight Community, Dell was sponsoring a series of cases to create a crowdsourced whitepaper about the challenges, from a business and IT perspective, concerning the rise of so-called digital nomads. If you've been a member of the Insight Community, you've no doubt seen the cases. The best results from those cases have been running on a special blog on DigitalNomads.com, creating some really fascinating content. If you haven't been reading it, here's just a small sampling of some of the great posts we've seen:

• Tackling Three Key Issues In Balancing Work And Life by Zack Miller
• The CIA Model for Digital Nomads by Stephen Foskett
• Given Unfettered Liberty, Mobile Workers Will Excel by Matt Jansen
• The Five P's of the Digital Nomad Ethos by David Mould
• Mobility, Usability, and Disability by Michael Kramer
• Understanding The Difference Between Working Together And Interacting by Eric Samson
• How To Find Community As A Digital Nomad by Nate Westheimer
• Discovering The OFF Switch by Servaas Schrama

These are just a few of the examples of the content generated within the Insight Community and then used on the Digital Nomads blog. However, beyond just creating that content, the idea was to take it even further. This content has created a great compendium of knowledge -- building blocks -- for how to get the best out of being, managing or maintaining digital nomads. So, from that core content, we've begun crafting the world's first crowdsourced white paper.

We've been taking much of the early content, and have started to craft articles around it, and then place them in a wiki, to allow anyone to continue contributing and editing the product. The first of those articles, on What It Means To Be A Digital Nomad is now available, so please jump in and add your thoughts. We're also still running more cases on the topic to generate more content, and will be publishing more wiki articles for the whitepaper over the coming weeks. Once we feel the articles are somewhat stable, we'll try to put together a more finished version that can be downloaded as well. Thanks to everyone for participating and we look forward to doing similar projects in the future. If you're interested in sponsoring a similar endeavor, feel free to find out more and sign up to sponsor a case.

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Insight Community Participation Directly Through Techdirt

from the making-it-more-accessible-than-ever dept

As you hopefully read in my last post about our new branding, Floor64 has separated out the Insight Community brand from the Techdirt blog. However, that doesn't mean the two won't still work together happily. In fact, we're also launching a new effort today, that will allow Insight Community cases to appear directly within Techdirt. You will see the first such integrated Insight Community case on the site in a short while.

Starting a Real Conversation, Rather Than Advertising

The idea here is similar to what we started last week with American Express sponsoring an Insight Community case concerning how small businesses are responding to the current financial crisis, the results of which are starting to appear on American Express' Open Forum blog. In situations like that, where we believe the wider Techdirt community would be intrigued by, and benefit from, the wider conversation, we'll be placing those cases directly on the Techdirt blog. Thus, a selection of Insight Community cases that are relevant to the Techdirt community will start appearing directly on the blog, allowing members to jump right in to respond (and for non-members to join up and participate).

This evolution fits in nicely as one of the many ways that the new Insight Community can be used by companies to generate insight and engage with the broader community. Integrating Insight Community cases into Techdirt is based on our strong belief about content and its relationship to advertising. Traditional, annoying, intrusive advertising is a market that won't last -- especially in economically troubled times. It's based on the false belief that there are still captive audiences.

While the online advertising market is still a big one, it's going to need to change. It's entirely focused on a one way push. Companies that buy advertising are pushing a message to an audience. The site is just the one-way pathway to get to that audience -- and that audience often doesn't care about the message being pushed. That's simply not that effective for the advertiser. And yes, before people point it out, we do include some advertising on Techdirt, though we think that the companies buying those ads could spend their money more effectively by actually engaging the community here.

Engage the Community, Reward the Community and Get Value Back

So, rather than focus on that one-way street of merely pushing "message" at an audience, we believe strongly that the concept of "advertising" needs to diminish, and in its place, the focus should be on providing good content that provides real value to all participants. That means not just viewing things as a one way street, but actually engaging the community of folks a company is trying to reach by getting back insight from them and then rewarding those in the community who provide that insight. This is much more of a win-win situation than advertising. It's about actually creating value -- about building an insightful discussion that everyone benefits from, and then making sure that those who participate can be rewarded both monetarily and through reputation, rather than just being seen as a "target" market.

Thus, rather than focusing on "advertising's" one way street to pushing a message on our community, we're asking companies who are interested in the Techdirt community to actually engage with them via the Insight Community, where not only can they start a real dialogue, they can learn from the community, gain valuable insights that can be used elsewhere, and reward the community for participating. That seems a lot more effective and valuable than "advertising." It's about good content and a real conversation where everyone benefits.

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Techdirt Moves On Up To The 64th Floor: Some Changes Around Here

from the pardon-our-dust dept

We've got a bunch of announcements today (and a few more coming up as well), but I wanted to start off with the big one: Techdirt, the company, is becoming Floor64, the company -- while Techdirt, the blog, will remain Techdirt. The blog began back in 1997 as a fun side project by me. Over the years it grew into much more, and in 2000 it became a business, also called Techdirt. In 2006, we launched the Techdirt Insight Community as our main line of business and the natural evolution of what we'd been doing as a company. However, there was growing confusion over the Techdirt brand, as people weren't clear whether it meant the blog, the company or the community -- so we felt it was time to clarify. Specifically, there are now three brands related to this site:

• Floor64 becomes our new parent brand. That's the brand under which all of our products will now reside. It's a brand we've used for years internally (though some have noticed), and now it represents our overall outward brand.



• Insight Community is one of Floor64's two main offerings. This rebranding of the Techdirt Insight Community will allow us to expand beyond the community we've built around Techdirt, to cover much more than just technology and business. The Insight Community is totally redesigned to reflect where the business has been headed over the past few months. If you're already a member, go check out the totally redesigned system. If you're not yet a member, go sign up and start participating (and earning money). If you're interested in sponsoring a case there, go check out how it works and learn about the value of sponsoring a case and engaging with the community.
  
  The Insight Community is all about generating insights for companies, recognizing, as we often talk about here on Techdirt, that there's value in the creation of insightful content. The Insight Community is a platform that makes it possible for companies to generate insightful expertise on demand for use in a variety of different ways.



• Techdirt is our other main offering, and is now solely focused on the blog itself. This should help us avoid some confusion over our different properties and the services that we, as Floor64, offer. Techdirt will remain the same great blog it's been all along, but we'll have some cool new features which we'll be posting about shortly as well. As always, Techdirt, the blog will be focused on providing timely and insightful analysis of technology and business news, with a focus on how technology relates to innovation, public policy and economics.

We've been hard at work on this effort, and there's a lot more to come -- some of which we'll announce today, and much more will be coming in the near future. All of our efforts are, of course, made possible by the great, vibrant, often brilliant and always opinionated community that was built up through this site. So, we're excited to open this new chapter of the business and the site, as we look forward to doing plenty more in the future to continue to give back to this community.

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Getting Insight Into The Challenges Created By Digital Nomads

from the join-in dept

If you haven't been paying attention to the Techdirt Insight Community lately, I wanted to let you know of a fun new project that's taking place there. It's new series of expert discussions in the Insight Community, sponsored by Dell, about the various challenges created by the rise of "digital nomads." With a growing number of people being able to work from anywhere with just a computing device and an internet connection, both companies and individuals are finding a variety of new challenges -- from how to strike that work/life balance, to keeping a team on the same page, to dealing with security issues, to just dealing with the basic challenges of carrying stuff around and finding connectivity. We're putting the best content together and creating something of a living digital whitepaper with input from a variety of folks. If you're a member of the community, log in and contribute. If you're not a member, join now and contribute your insight (and maybe earn some money for your efforts).

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