[P2P-F] ideal numbers for free associations

Thu Apr 14 15:26:30 CEST 2011

some of us may want to pay careful attention to this:

(it's a difficult but rewarding article refuting the 1000 fans strategy,
instead arguing that groups of 12 with 150 larger supporters is key for
achieving success

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/07/21/the-crucible-effect-and-the-scarcity-of-collective-attention/

sam, if you ever have the time, it would be great to introduce this to our
blog,

dear Sepp, you may also want to have a look at this funding mechanism, which
led to the venkat article above,

see
http://onthespiral.com/alternative-currency-ycombinator-creative-knowledge-worker

Michel

By carefully curating your Dunbar neighborhood of at most 150 (in practice,
likely much less), in collaboration with your crucible of 12 (each curating
their own 150-neighborhoods, with a good deal of overlap), through
*actual*personal attention, you create the foundation for your life as
a cultural
creative and information worker. Free agency is an important piece of this,
but don’t dismiss traditional economics: a good part of your 150 is likely
to remain inside the formal organizations you are part of.

The Kelly number, 1000, is important, but not in his sense. If you and your
crucible of 12 are creating value in a loose coalition, and each have a 150
circle with some high-value overlap, the total is probably near 1000. So
that’s 12 people sharing a community of 1000, each of whom gets personal
attention from at least 1 of the 12. The members of the 1000 get the
overhead savings of finding more than 1 useful, personally-attentive creator
in one place.

Count the 12 most valuable co-creators you work with. Now consider the
overlap in your Dunbar neighborhoods. If the average level of overlap isn’t
in the double digits (the actual set-theoretic math is tricky), you probably
haven’t reached critical mass yet. Guess where you can still find such
critical mass today? Inside large corporations. Any pair of people in my
immediate workgroup of around 12 can probably find 20-30 common
acquaintances. Our collective personalized-attention audience at is probably
around 1000. Large corporations still allocate collective attention pretty
badly (they hit the numbers, but get the composition wrong), but still do a
better job than say, the blogsphere. But the free-agent nation is catching
up rapidly. The wilderness is becoming more capable of sustaining
economics-without-borders-or-walls every day.

So how will you create and monetize your Dunbar neighborhood? By definition,
there are no one-size-fits-all answers, because the *point* of working this
way is that you’ll find opportunities through personalized attention. Not a
great answer, I know, but still easier for most of us than dreaming up ideas
that can net 100,000 regulars of whom 1000 turn into raving fans.

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