Connect with Fast Company

I still find Bruce Mau's incomplete manifesto a refreshing checklist a decade since it was first published, because that is the essence of design, especially Manifesto # 26 "Don't enter award competitions". A community is not about design IMHO and if FC is going to compare itself with Facebook, then this is the wrong community for me and so it does not do me any good being a part of anything that does not represent my core values, I am not saying that I am against Facebook, it just does not represent people like me. A smart community to me is about resonance and reciprocation. Resonance can be viewed as Col John Boyd's OODA Loop. Mau was featured in FC magazine #39 and Boyd in magazine #59. It is therefore obviously so easy to get caught up in the expert voice because recency is hard to ignore. Yet dig the gold at FC and you can find gems such as the Incomplete Manifesto and the meaning of Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. How do you observe? You watch who is coming in, you do a quick Google to see if the people coming to your site have some interesting ideas or blogs or websites they maintain and that they would like to share. How do you orientate, you can facilitate conversations rather than engage conversations, welcome new people rather than assume presence, and develop a meaningful bushido that defines and clarifies core values, so no one as to question what FC at its heart best represents. How do you decide? Some of that has been mentioned in your post but it is the stuff that only has resonance so long as it is constantly followed through. How do you act? You keep going through the OODA loop and watch things improve and by your fruits you will be known and plus FC could easily scale offline like the Toastmasters have done, it just needs a little bit of OODA minded thought and you can become a bigger meetup than MeetUp. If you published great thinking in your magazine (and some of it for over a decade) then learn to use and apply it. Henry Ford became successful because he focused on value driven activity and he was one of the first enterpreneurs who recognized that one does not learn from the expert voice - I would strongly recommend you read "Today and Tomorrow" in that regard, though of course all of this is simply my own opinion. McKinsey recently ran an interview about Pixar's Brad Bird called "Innovation lessons from Pixar" - in it Bird demonstrated he has the very instinct by his answer to the question "What kind of leaders inhibit innovation". He also said "If you’re dealing with a storytelling medium, which is a mechanized means of producing and presenting a dream that you’re inviting people to share, you’d better believe your dream or else it’s going to come off as patronizing." - so Brad Bird, is the kind of person I have resonance with and I do think that many people would have genuine resonance with. This online article is a good step but it isn't a really a conversation, for those things are more OODA and emergent and the new FC on that score is whole lot more "emergent" than the old FC, so long as quality isn't sacrificed. Of course when it comes to good or bad comments Bruce Mau had a prescription for that also in Manifesto # 2 "Forget about Good". So I guess if you find your resonance (simply apply what FC has already written about) and a develop sense of reciprocation - apply OODA, go out into the web, visit blogs, create smart aggregator connections, and take more interest in those people who live below the line, rather than blog above the line - but far more importantly - those that log in and lurk. As for me, don't put any stock in what I say because all I am doing here is thinking online, not actually talking to you. I utilize OODA for my own personal online journey and I am simply finishing off what it is I began many years ago, so this is not reflective of the FC community, but it is those new voices that come here that do deserve the most attention and what's more they actually would feel honored by such a level of genuine observation and reciprocity......M.