How Communities Can Run Leaner and Better

Rather than rely solely on outsiders and related funding and services, the authors suggest we band together with other locals to come up with our own solutions to problems – and ways to leverage the resources we each have in support of “our” community.

While the authors advocate “no more relying on institutions or systems to provide us with the good life”the community-building they intend should lead to wider adoption. Hopefully some of the ideas that evolve, from the grassroots up, will be honed (with ongoing public input) into systems and sometimes even institutions then adopted in other communities.

That’s part of the ebb and flow of community design.

Mutual Reliance Sparks Innovation

Another reviewer at Amazon notes that the authors advocate our striving toward greater compassion for each other rather than greater systems of efficiency. I believe however that, like natural systems and user-friendly design, collective useage inevitably leads to innovation and thus efficiency.  Yet isn’t that co-innovation an apt way for neighbors to care for each other in their community?

Not only do I feel compassion but usually genuine liking for those in my community who suggest a way to make our community better run and/or close-knit.

That’s compassion in action.

As a long admirer of Block’s ideas who believes that the U.S. economy will be bumpy at best for the decade I am heartened by the several specific ways that bottom-up community-building is happening – and that the models for such local efforts are spreading so leaders in different communities can learn from each other’s local experience.

The more specific and immediately useful the  ideas is  the more “spreadable” it becomes. Often community-building methods are, in fact, more efficient ways to be mutually supportive.

Own Less.  Share More. Get Closer.

Some examples are as seemingly mundane as Freecycle – which is elegantly moderated in my Marin County by “Nicole,” co-working spaces, and The Village Movement, started in Beacon Hill, to enable more people to age in place among tight-knit neighbors.  Shareable is doing a vivid job of covering the evolving ways we are working and playing better together and stretching resources.

When people do discover concrete ways they can be mutually-supportive they tend to adopt them, then modify them and to tell others.

Word naturally spreads.

From my work in forging partnerships to generate more value and visibility for individuals and organizations I’ve found that identifying the sweet spot of mutual interest between individuals and/or organizations is a crucial first step to exploring how to accomplish greater things together than one can alone.

Accomplish Greater Things Locally Together Than You Can Alone

When people collaborate around an explicit shared purpose they tend to bring out the better sides in each other so they inevitably get closer.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the co-authors use their influence to advocate the creation of an online community where we could exchange ideas about what is working to create “abundant communities”?

Some books that I’ve found helpful around the notion of helping each other and learn from each other include What’s Mine is Yours,  The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, Consequential Strangers: Turning Everyday Encounters Into Life-Changing Moments.

It is also gratifying to see the neighborhood-strengthening start-ups that are springing up like Patch and the community and town-wide businesses such as Steven Johnson’s outside.in and the smart phone apps like mycityway that will enable locals to share with other locals and visitors their knowledge of local history, architecture, food, sight seeing places, crafts and more.

But another reason is that you might be able to adapt the Trove approach to involve like-minded people in tackling a time-consuming yet worthy project that matters to you.

Here’s the story of The Trove.

The National Library of Australia invited citizens to join them an ambitious campaign to digitize out-of-copyright Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1954 that soon grew to include other Australian collections.

In Addition to a Catchy Title Give Your Project an Inspiring Label

The librarians described the project a “national online discovery service”, thus evoking national pride and a vivid reason to volunteer. And Debbie Campbell, the projects director of collaborative services, enthusiastically dubs her slideshare on the project “Explore Like Never Before ….”

Scale Your Project to Serve More People More Ways

Rose Holley, the librarian in charge of the Trove has been astounded by the wave of volunteer involvement. What began as a huge volunteer project has morphed into a search engine that now provides access to more than 90 million items about Australians and Australia. As of last month 4.3 million images from Picture Australia including all contributions from Flickr users can now be found in the new Trove service. Trove searches multiple types of resource, including photographs in Picture Australia and elsewhere.

From the beginning, the library wanted the results to be easily available and searchable by anyone. That’s why it opted for an open source platform that enables people to contribute, correct and find information.

Here’s how it started.

in July 2008, the library got a grant to cover the overhead cost of this extensive OCR scanning project. It included the launch of a free online service for full-text searching of newspaper articles.  Then the library invited volunteers to help by searching and correcting the OCR-scanned text, as well as adding subject tags to articles. Old newspapers are difficult to scan so it helps to have humans correct the results.

Volunteers uploaded and classified photographs to the Picture Australia public-domain photo library. By June 2010, there were 12,000 active volunteers had corrected 50 million lines of text.

Holley was overjoyed: “It’s amazing to think that we have 20 million articles awaiting correction, and in a year we will have 40 million. It’s an impossible, crazy goal, but in many ways that seems to inspire people.”

Reward Your Most Diligent Crowdsourcing Volunteers

The top text correcting volunteers received Australia Day awards for their efforts.

Leverage the Ways Your Volunteers’ Work Can Help Others

Articles from the service have been harvested and are now available from the Google News Archive Search.

Also the searchable Trove has grown to include maps, music, diaries, books, journals and more. One result? The library more than doubled its web services traffic to reach more than 2.5 billion hits in 2009.

Librarian Holley offers a vital insight that applies to all crowdsourcing projects: “People don’t want to be taken advantage of, so they are much more motivated to help a non-profit organization.”

Sharing helpful tips with those who want them is more appreciated – and credibility-building – than self-promotion. In a time-starved world, the best way for people read your tips may be in a list they find online or via their smart phone. It helps people find you – and it’s a quick read.

The more specific the list the greater your chance of attracting the people you most want to reach.

Hint: Top Dog Breeds for People with Allergies. (I have yet to take my own advice here).

Your list can be a “best of” something such as books and sites on a topic or a David Letterman-style Top Ten countdown of relevant advice, or…?

For example, four of my interests are collaboration, connective conversation, human behavior and, as a paid speaker, conferences so I created a Twitter list of favorite people and organizations for each interest.

The bottom line is your list should catch the interest of the people you seek to reach.  They may be your peers, possible customers, or individuals who share your hobby, medical condition, belief, profession, industry or other interest.

Your list enables others to quickly:

•  Get ideas on a subject that interests them.

•  Know who you respect.

•  Understand a bit about your perspective and priorities.

•  Identify possible sweet spots of mutual interest.

•  Find you.

Once you’ve created your list you can share and update it online at several popular places where friends, kindred spirits and strangers are likely to find it:

• Your blog and/or web site.

• Twitter List – create several for the different parts of your life and find others who share your interests.

• Listiki – where you can invite others to add to your list.

• List of Bests – Make a list in one of three categories, personal, definitive or award.

• Posterous – where you can share your list without creating a blog.

• Facebook group page – see examples, Shareable and my Etsy where you can link to your list, first explaining why it is relevant to them.

• Linkedin group of people who have something in common – you can join or start a group, linking to your list as you would for your Facebook group.

• Ta-da – create and share “to do” lists for everything from organizations you respect to meeting agendas or famous quotes you don’t want to forget.

Yet, where are we heading with this growing capacity to actively share and co-create?

Towards extraordinarily satisfying and dangerous “opportunities” I’ve found.

Shirky covers the upside. Here are some points from his book, followed by the dangerous downside of the trends he cites that are covered in other books. These effects will touch all our lives so it’s vital to be aware of them.

The Benefits of More Free Time and Capacity to Share and to Organize

•  “The wiring of humanity lets us treat free time as a shared global resource, and lets us design new kinds of participation and sharing that take advantage of that resource.  Our cognitive surplus is only potential; it doesn’t mean anything or do anything by itself. To understand what we can make of these new resources, we have to understand, not just the kind of actions it makes possible but the hows and wheres of those actions.”

• “Back when coordinating group action was hard, most amateur groups stayed small and informal.  Now that we have the tools that let groups of people find each other and share their thoughts and actions, we are seeing a strange new hybrid: large, public amateur groups.  Individuals can make their interests public, more easily, and groups can balance amateur motivation and larger coordinated action more easily as well.”

• “The geographic range of collaborative efforts has spread dramatically.  When Linus Torvalds first asked or help creating what would become the Linus operating system, he received only a few replies, but they came from potential participants all over the globe.   Similarly, Julie Clarke, Valerie Sooky, and Meg Markus all lived in different places when they were forming Grobanites for Charity, but that didn’t stop them from creating a charity that’s raised a million dollars.”

• “Today people have new freedom to act in concert and in public. In personal satisfaction, this goal is fairly uncomplicated – even the banal uses of our creative capacity (posting YouTube videos of kittens on treadmills or writing bloviating blog posts) are still more creative and generous than watching TV.

• “Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.”

The Dangerous Downside to Most Anyone’s Increased Ability to Share and to Organize

Yes, people like sharing and collaborating, as Shirky suggests yet many are adept at both for illegal goals. There is a tragic and growing dark side in this increasingly connected world as Moses Naim points out in Illicit. From trading in women, guns and drugs, illegal activity has also grown more “creative” and “active” and connected groups of bandits, terrorists, pirates and self-described global businessmen in a more efficient, larger activity.

As Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have found there are now more enslaved and traded girls and women in than there were blacks at the height of slavery.

As well, we increasingly connect with people who share our beliefs, according to The Big Sort and Going to Extremes. A dangerous consequence of closer connections with like-minded people is not limited to terrorists.

As a group continues to bond it tends to take more extreme stances on the beliefs that brought them together – and to become more intense in those beliefs.

With our innate desire to belong, contribute and be known – and the greater capacity to connect, share and organize described by Clay Shirky, it behooves us to be aware of the downside tendencies of organizing groups as we enjoy the upsides.

Also as low-paid writers for eHow and LIVESTRONG, wine and other “content farm” workers have discovered, we’ll see other downsides to increased connectivity.

Recognizing which underlying feeling is being evoked helps you know how to resolve the conflict. So discovered psychology professor Keith Sanford.

Which one is your hot button? Find out here.

When one feels threatened he sees his partner as critical, blaming, hostile or controlling. When one feels neglected it is because she perceives her partner as failing to contribute sufficiently to the relationship.

Sanford’s research shows it helps to talk about neglect yet discussing a perceived threat may not be helpful.

Sanford’s advice for being happy in love also make sense for any successful partnership or other collaboration: “For the most part, successful couples avoid letting fights get too heated. Specifically, they go easy on the four classic negative fighting tactics:

1. Criticism
2. Stonewalling
3. Contempt
4. Defensiveness

The famed marriage researcher John Gottman calls them the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,’ because they can spell doom for a marriage when used too frequently.”

I can’t help but add that Gottman, “found one factor that was the best predictor of all. This was a positive predictor, one that predicted long-term success rather than failure in marriage.

Gottman found that marriages are likely to thrive when the man was willing to be influenced by his wife.” (Gentlemen – want to win points with the women in your life? Comment positively about this finding.)

Sanford’s further advice for couples also seems helpful for non—romantic relationships: “Happy couples resort to negative tactics too, Sanford says, but only sparingly.

When they do bring up hurt, anger, and other negative emotions, they often balance them out with a constructive approach. In the best-case scenarios, couples use conflicts as a time to express concerns and share emotions. Instead of telling his partner ‘you make me sick,’ a man could try saying something like ‘It hurt me when you called me lazy.’

Shifting the conversation away from the partner’s faults and towards one’s own feelings is a tried-and-true way to defuse even the most intense conflicts.”

Want to savor food (or fashion) slowly  but grow your career or business faster? Try a Speed Coaching event. From Hong Kong to Anaheim, this wildly popular format is being adopted to serve diverse crowds quickly.  They range from those who got pink slips to food and beverage folks,  non-profit staffers, journalists, executives, students, government staffers, indie business owners and, well, even coaches. It may be your next business – or way to attract clients.

• Picture the scene. People “are lined up outside an exhibit hall in a Manhattan hotel. The doors open, and they rush to tables set up around the room. They grab a number for each of the experts they wish to consult.

When it is their turn, they get five minutes to blurt out their questions above the din. A small digital clock on each table tracks the fleeting minutes.” Speed Coaching session times can vary from five to 20 or 30 minutes. Depending on your coach, that will seem too brief or too long, of course.  And when time is short coaches can be blunt (I mean direct).

Another format has “you and a group move one at a time through the coaching stations.”

Some Speed coaching events are free, others include keynoters, workshops and meals for up to $350.

• At the Samuel Adams Brewery in Boston, sixty microentrepreurs “jumped on the opportunity to rotate through 20-minute  discipline specific stations with 26 coaches — many of them Sam Adams employees — to get advice in business consulting, marketing, sales, people management, financing, legal advice and more.”

“Some brought their food, others came with logos and package concepts, yet others had a specific business problem they needed help solving,” said marketing expert, Risa Sherman who coached on behalf of her client, Sam Adams.

Thinking of hosting a Speed Coaching event? Involve sponsors and coaches that serve the same niche

This Speed Coaching event, part of the American Dream program, targeted entrepreneurs in the food, beverage and hospitality business.  Thus the lead sponsor, The Boston Beer Company partnered with a non-profit that trains microentrepreurs - ACCION USA.

To spotlight Boston Beer, founder Jim Koch gave a talk as did the president of another sponsor, Carol Coutrier, with the Massachusetts Specialty Foods Association. The danger is if keynoters are boring and sour attendees on the event. In this case, coach Risa Sherman wrote, “for many, the highlight of the event was listening to their talks.”

Sherman dubbed this approach by Sam Adams as “strategic skills based volunteerism.” Another participant, Erika labeled it “engaged philanthropy.”  Whatever you call these partner-based Speed Coaching events, they can leverage value and efficiency for all participants.

That’s a good thing in a bad economy. (The format proved so popular that the partners chose to host another in Providence.)

• And on the west coast over 200 entrepreneurs showed up last month in Anaheim (it was free) for the “Small Business Speed Coaching Test Drive.”  It’s part of a cross-country tour co-sponsored by SCORE (experienced, often retired business folks) and American Express’ Open Forum group dedicating to supporting small business.

Their format includes, not only 30-minute speed coaching sessions, but a keynoter, panel discussions, workshops and a mixer. Topics include strategic business planning, marketing and business finances.

• Women’s Leadership Exchange promotes their popular Speed Coaching events as an opportunity to have private coaching from experts, “many of their coaching services typically run as much as $500 per hour.” (That might be a stretch.)

• Here’s still another format. “A Speed Coaching & Networking Lunch.” Just $27. Aspiring local government leaders in Northern California can connect one-on-one with senior managers from cities, counties and special districts this month.

• To help their women students learn how to brand themselves (and to build the sponsors’ brand visibility) Wharton forged a partnership with their alumnae group and others S.F. Bay area partners -  Financial Women’s Association and Ascend - to jointly offer a Speed Coaching day. Deloitte, Clorox and other supporting organizations recruited volunteer coaches.

As you consider the role you might want to play in Speed  Coaching, consider the benefits to participants in this event. It managed to:

- Raise the positive, public visibility of all sponsoring organizations.

- Enable students and alumni to get to know each other and, in some cases form friendships and mentoring relationships.

-  Strengthened ties with alumni involved, which can payoff in future fund raising other volunteer needs.

- Help the college forge local corporate partnerships “with organizations that share values like development and diversity”  - and, of course, raise Wharton brand visibility and credibility.

- Provide sponsoring companies with a first-hand look at rising stars as potential employees.

• Software firm, Siveco, is such a fan of Speed Coaching it supports its customer/users by providing them in two-hour sessions.  Could your company or membership-based club or association offer it as a service?   If you did, your organization might enjoy …

-  Better, happier customer/member performance.

-  Loyalty to your firm or other organization.

-  Appreciation from participants because you facilitated their collaboration  with each other after meeting at your Speed Coaching event.

• What next?  Virtual Speech Coaching. That seems to dilute the purpose of getting fast but in-person advice.

Some hints if you choose to attend a Speed Coaching event:

• Carefully review the list of experts, if provided in advance, to choose your top two to meet.

• Use old-fashioned 3×5 cards to write your questions out ahead of time, one set per coach.  On the backside of the card or in a notebook take notes on the answers you get.

Diane Cuniff, for example, of cageless doggy daycare The Bone Adventure, wanted advice on whether to buy or lease property for a second location. And Monica Herrera and Ronald Brown are starting a biofuels project so they want to know how to get government contracts.

• Take a digital recorder, say an Olympus and, with their permission, tape sessions.

• Later, thank every coach with whom you met –  preferably by email. It’s the polite thing to do.  Plus your coach and/or the sponsoring groups may use your well-crafted “thank you” as a testimonial – thus boosting your visibility.

What If …

• Your group hosted a Speed Coaching event? Some member-based groups, like National Tour Association are ideal for speedcoaching at their annual meeting – or as a pre-conference afternoon.

After I spoke at NTA I was fascinated watching the long rows of tables at which locale promoters leaned forward over their photo-filled spiral notebooks, alert and ready for the precious ten minutes to show each bus tour operator why he should stop at their sight to see. In my Sausalito, whenever I see tour buses open and tourists spill onto our main street I wonder. What was the pitch that sealed the deal to drop them off here?

• You organized a Speed Coaching event for your profession or industry – as a service and/or to make money? You know, first-hand, the issues and opportunities your peers experience. What experts have the skill, interest and credibility to coach them? How would you make it worth their while to volunteer?

Beyond the obvious joy in sharing knowledge with people who really want it, how does the way you design the event, its promotion and online visibility afterwards help them attract clients or boost their career in their corporation?

What companies and associations also want exposure to that niche?  They could be sponsors, recruit coaches and other volunteers  - or survey attendees where the results would be helpful to them, the respondents and other people like them.

• You offered to recruit volunteers to cover a Speed Coaching event? Other than the private coaching, be sure that other parts of the day are videoed so that the learning and visibility for all participants continues.

Volunteer citizen reporters can use a Flip to video:

1.  Sessions: keynote(s), panel(s) and workshop(s) if you have them

2.  Coaches, and those in #1 in short two to three minute interviews:

“What are two of your best tips for these attendees?”

“What one or two books do you recommend for our attendees and why?

3.  Attendees, also in brief interviews, roving the event, asking:

“What is your favorite bit of advice so far – from whom?”

“What will you do differently after today?”

See more at Elevate your Value and Visibility by Jointly Offering a Speed Coaching Event

Since then I’ve discovered that motion evokes emotion, for good and for bad. Walking helped my parents re-connect at the end of each day.

Act how You Want to Feel and How You Want Other To Feel About You

How you turn, walk and gesture affects your emotions and other around you – and how they feel about you. We are startled, for example, then wary when we see a quick, unexpected movement especially when caught out of the corner of the eye. Conversely we are more deeply drawn to a singer who sweeps her arms above her head as she belts out that exultant line in her song.

Sometimes we even mimic an entertainer’s gestures. Whatever emotion they act out on stage, we feel and sometimes act out. That’s our mirror neurons at work, catching the emotions in the people around us just like we catch a cold.

Motion Intensify Our Emotions

The extra magic is that motions – yours and others – make emotions catch faster and more intensely.  When you smile I instinctively smile back – even if you are on TV and I am sitting on the couch – and we both feel better.

Now there are fresh insights into how gestures attract or repel others. Winning Body Language author, Mark Bowden studied the work of two remarkable men. One was a mime, physiotherapist and acting guru, Jacques Lecoq.

The other was an Iraeli spy, nuclear physicist and Judo expert Moshé Feldenkrais whose insights into how our movements affect our thoughts and emotions was revelatory for me.

Gesture to Get Along

1. To appear honest, factual and sincere hold your hands at the height of your navel. That’s what Bowden dubs the TruthPlane.

2. To avoid appear disinteresting and depressing do not gesture below your waist. That’s the GrotesquePlane.

3. To convey excitement or that you are offering a big idea, bring your gestures up to chest level. That’s the PassionPlane.

Connect With Your Gestures and Your Voice

Here’s a way to remember what to practice to look comfortable with yourself and to connect with others:

1. Lower

2. Slower

3. Less

These three tips refer to the level of your gestures and their speed and amount of motion. Alternatively, for example, quick, jabbing finger gestures pushes us away as you can see in this video.

Think of your voice in the same way. Lower your voice; do not race through your sentences and say less to invite other into the conversation.

Get in Body Sync With Others to Get Along Better

Whether you are around loved ones, strangers or colleagues, to connect better literally get in body sync with them. That means your heart rate, skin temperature and other vital signs become more alike.  The more alike “we” are the more we like each other. From five researchers I follow here are some ways to get in body sync:

Get in motion together, the more similar the motion, the more likely it will be that you like each other.

• For example, eating across the table from each other, while you wouldn’t want to replicate another’s exact movements you will instinctively become more alike in the speed and amount of movement of your body and your hands as you eat.

• Always take the opportunity to shake hands. You are in exact sync with each other.

• When you walk together you are more likely to match each other’s pace and arm movement and thus strongly mirror each other.  At a client company I suggested that teams walk together across the open quad to the other building where they would meet, and talk about the agenda along the way.

They noticed that they often accomplished more when walking to and from the meeting than while sitting still around the conference table. Sometimes, now team leaders call for Walking Meetings in which they “meet” by walking, grouped together, on the sidewalk around the quad.  I enjoy walkabouts with friends up and down the steps here in Sausalito and along the water front.  Sometimes this is the way I meet with clients.

By the way I disagree with the first phrase in the sub-title of Bowden’s book yet found many helpful parts: Control the Conversation, Command Attention, and Convey the Right Message Without Saying a Word.

In fact it’s surprising that so few businesses and other organizations see the power of memory-making rituals that we keep talking about the few that do. And instead of creating a new ritual a sister hotel simply imitated the duck walk. You can do better.

1. Think quirky

As all actors know, a cute kid or animal almost always steals the show.  For example the annual ritual that raised $120,000 this year in a town of just 2,404 is the weiner dog race.  That’s right. Long, cute dogs. People and their pets came from all over the country for the chance to compete.

2. Create community around your ritual

The race is a great example of what the beneficiary of the race, the Lions Club calls a “core belief – community is what we make it.” It has been an annual tradition around which dog owners (and their families and friends) meet to compare notes and catch-up. Hint: the more fervent the community the more valuable your participation can be for your organization.

3. Offer the unexpected

Instead of “just” offering a loaner car like the one you are getting serviced a British Volvo dealership also offers bikes as loaners. The dealership enjoys two benefits  – deepening the loyalty of its eco-minded customers and attracting worldwide media coverage.

4. Reduce your cost of providing that ritual by partnering

Volvo’s ritual was then topped by Fiat in Spain. By partnering with electric bicycle maker Trek it could make the same offer yet without the cost of buying and maintaining the bikes. Trek benefits by getting a warmed-up introduction to possible customers.

The bonus benefits are that many of the people who saw the cyclists heard also saw the message on the bike and many of the cyclists told their friends about their experience.

5. Give a souvenir sample whenever people have to wait – or even pause

For a client years ago I set up an experiment in which those waiting in a movie theater line were greeted by smiling, good-looking college students and offered a free ice cream bon bon on a silver tray. One each. The students simply walked down the line, saying, “Like a tasty bon bon while you’re waiting? If you like it there are more inside.”

The results of that study were so positive the theater chain intermittently continued the practice. (Intermittent rewards create more happiness, perhaps because of the hedonic treadmill effect yet we crave the certainty of constancy – “the ducks will walk across at 11″). When bon bons are offered movie theatre snacks go up an average of 26 percent.

For the owner of seven upscale restaurants in London we did a similar experiment with wine.  Per customer sales went up as average of 23 percent.

Then we suggested that the restauranteur approach his wine distributers to offer them the opportunity to provide their wine, at cost.  Several agreed so he could rotate the kinds of wine he gave waiting guests.

For this sampling ritual, the wait staff, while offering the tray with the glasses of wine, showed the bottle and said the vinter’s name.   That was so successful that wine makers now vie for the opportunity to give their wine for such samplings. They also began offering samplings to delighted diners during their meal.

That way more customers get free wine and often wind up ordering more wine.

The participating vintners get their wines introduced in a relaxed, convivial atmosphere.

Cost-saving Hint: Make your ritual so popular that you can attract partners that want to participate in it.  That way you can offer your customers that ritual more often yet at a lower cost to you.

Conclusion

Most any consumer-serving place can create a small, simple-to-execute ritual that:

• Gives an unexpected experience to customers, one they can brag about – and others can see them enjoying.

• Increases sales.

• Attracts media coverage.

• Demonstrates the value of partners participating so the cost of offering that ritual go down.

See more ways to profitably partner and then create your own, unique, customer-attracting ritual – with the right partners.

That’s what TED has done and we can too by taking three collaborative steps over time:

1. Offer a single major conference  – as most associations already do, of course. Involve the members in choosing topics, speakers and formats, base on core guidelines, chosen by member vote. Create a format that enables members to participate in reach a single – and singular goal.

2. Encourage the launch of local conferences yet don’t try to control them. Instead create ground rules for local leaders to succeed while maintaining the quality of the “brand.”

3. Co-brand a fresh version of your national conference with another respected organization on vital topic that matters to the members of both organizations. Allow the founders of your local conferences to co-sponsor that new conference by enabling their members to view it together in their area.

The team at the TED conference announced this third step today.  See how you could adapt these steps to the member group that most matters to you.

Step One

The national TED conference has grown increasingly popular throughout the past 22 years, with the biggest community of members becoming those who avidly watch the videos of speakers.

Step Two

Building on the strength of that largely online community, TED launched, just last April, local events dubbed TEDx. Rather, in true collaborative fashion, they announced guidelines for these local events and invited people to co-host, design and run them. In just one year local leaders stepped up and hosted over 600 such events around the globe.

Hint: To encourage local events, the guidelines start with the benefits for the local organizers and provides an easy-to-follow toolkit: “In the spirit of ‘Ideas Worth Spreading,’ TEDx is a program that enables schools, businesses, libraries or just groups of friends to enjoy a TED-like experience through events they themselves organize, design and host.

We’re supporting approved organizers by offering a free toolkit that includes detailed advice, the right to use recorded TEDTalks, promotion on our site, connection to other organizers, and a little piece of our brand in the form of the TEDx label.”

In so doing, local communities bonded, learning together and created other local collaborations.  Imagine! In over 25 languages were spoken at these talks with opportunities for translation to spread the messages farther – and make speakers more well-known, thus spurring participation by great speakers.

Hint: the more popular your events become the more people you attract to donate their services.

This is the path to peace – and savoring your life with others. Diverse individuals meeting to learn and share best ideas with each other – and, in conversations during the event and afterwards, to find ways they can accomplish greater things together, than they can alone.

Step Three

Today the third step was announced. A new event is linking local groups to the mother ship of the national group – around a new topic area, yet connected to the underlying TED brand of innovation, new ideas – and solving a problem together.  Local groups will get to meet and share this new event live – with other local chapters around the world.  The announcement was that “On September 20, 2010, more than 150 of the world’s leading thinkers and doers will come together in New York for TEDxChange, convened by Melinda French Gates … and hosted by TED founder Chris Anderson.”

With such member loyalty, interest and clout accumulated by TED it can attract a big-time partner – the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Also together they share a Sweet Spot of mutual interest – bringing bright minds together to address a big problem: how to improve health around the world.

Plus smart partners tie their collaboration to as many meaning goals and events as they credibly can.  For example, this conference is tied to the 10th anniversary of the famous Millennium Development Goals.

This is a three- stage template that you could use to grow the value and visibility of your profession association – and make it more meaningful for your members.

In fact any member-based club or special interest group could adapt it to their needs to grow its capacity to make powerful changes while imbuing its members with a sense of meaning in their participation.

Think what the Rotary Clubs have accomplished over 20 years with their single goal, bottom-up approach to wiping out polio.  Imagine local Rotary clubs have rallied around this single cause and have raised about $127.4 million for this cause – plus personally worked on projects to make it happen. That gives their lives meaning and builds extraordinary bonds between members and with those they selflessly serve. That dedication and progress towards a singular goal (key to great collaboration) attracted the Gates foundation as a partner.

Tip: When people bring out each other’s best talents in collaboration around a sweet spot of mutual interest they accomplish greater things together than they ever could on their own – and they savor the experience along the way.

To make your member-based organization a member-attracting tool for major change and a source of meaning in the life of your members what singular goal would you suggest they achieve?  For your organization, how would you adapt this three-step approach that has been wildly successful for TED?

“The bottom-up world is to be the great theme of this century,” predicts Matt Ridley in his controversial new book Rational Optimist.

“Doctors are having to get used to well-informed patients who have researched their own illnesses. Journalists are adjusting to readers and viewers who select and assemble their news on demand. Engineers are sharing problems to find solutions…. Politicians are increasingly corks tossed on the waves of public opinion. Dictators are learning that their citizens can organize riots by text message. `Here comes everybody‘ says author Clay Shirky.”

In this bottom-up world individual specialization and free exchange of goods are vital to improving more lives according to Ridley. Human intelligence is becoming collective, not individual – thanks to these two inventions. We can generate more value and options with for each other.

As proof, he recaps the course of economic progress in this way. When humans invented specialization and trade, I could make something and you could make a different object, crafts we each excel at. Each of us trades our best products rather than making them all ourselves.

Then I can focus on making mine better and faster. As others do likewise we trade and sell better products and have more choices, thus spurring further innovation – both in making and trading goods.

Thus consumption could grow more diversified (making life better), while production grew more specialized. William Easterly counters Ridley’s premise: “Specialists often have the most to lose from new technologies that displace the old ones they know so well, and may want to block innovation.” Yet it seems that the power of the marketplace in a networked world to hear about that innovation would eventually push aside such stonewalling specialists’ attempt to block access to the new, new thing.

Our opportunities multiply as human intelligence becomes “collective” and we generate more value with for each other.

Near the end of the book Ridley pulls together many threads of his argument for an optimistic future with these bold forecasts:• “Large corporations, political parties and government bureaucracies will crumble and fragment as central planning agencies did before them.”

• “Monolithic behemoths, whether private or nationalized, are vulnerable as never before to this Lilliputian assault. They are steadily being driven extinct not just by small firms, but ephemeral aggregations of people that form and reform continuously. The big firms that survive will do so by turning themselves into bottom-up evolvers.”

• “People will more and more freely find ways to exchange their specialized production for diversified consumption.”

• “‘The online masses have an incredible willingness to share’ says Kevin Kelly. Instead of money, `peer producers who create the stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction and experience.’”

• Among the pitfalls we face, predators and parasites can piggyback on the work of others as freeloaders and worse. They can spark terror or spread a false belief: “The integrated nature of the world means that it may soon be possible to capture the entire world on behalf of a foolish idea, where before you could only capture a country, or perhaps if you were lucky an empire.

• “It will be hard to snuff out the flame of innovation because it is such an evolutionary, bottom-up phenomenon in such a networked world. However reactionary and cautious Europe and the Islamic world and perhaps even America become, China will surely now keep the torch of catallaxy alight, and India, and maybe Brazil, not to mention a host of smaller free cities and states….”

I’m surprised that Ridley ignored the role that language played in the evolution of human progress especially as it is vital to specialization and trade.

Another area that Ridley does not explore and that Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan raises is that the rise of the collective brain that Ridely cites may, in fact, be collective brains – people who band together around their common interests.

While the upside is the sense of belonging that engenders, the downside is, as Ridley has suggested is “generally speaking the more cooperative a species is within groups, the more hostility there is between groups.”  If this future scenario does happen then we may have more and more kinds of tribes and more kinds of intense disagreements amongst them – and worse.

Also, while I, like Ridley, think “open” markets aid innovation I have this caveat. To be truly open there must be a level playing field for competition and a true accounting for all costs to the public in the price of that product – that means no hidden subsidies, protections or costs of clean-up, etc. by government. That base line role of government regulation will always be hotly contested and arduous to craft and to enforce yet it is a vital role of a government of the people – for the people.

Three ways you can thrive in a bottom-up world are to be quotable, forge profitable partnerships and turn strangers into allies.