socialwiki.org and wikisocial.org was launched with this post on Dec. 13, 2008
as “The Open Source Directory of Social Media and Communities”
The Mission Statement and Site/Org structure presentation is available on Slideshare.
Why the two domains, isn’t that confusing?
Yes, it was confusing when we registered socialwiki.org yet titled this first page wikisocial.org. So, to keep things straight (not necessarily less confusing, at least not immediately) we registered both domains. So feel free to remember our address in any order. But .NETs and .COMS are NOT associated with this project in any way.
Why isn’t this page a wiki?
Because the night I was setting this page up, I tried editing in MediaWiki (the platform for the wiki) and messed things up royally. Thus, I put up the Wordpress placeholder to save the destination.
Who is behind this nutty idea?
Jmacofearth, or John McElhenney, was inspired to register the domain socialwiki.org late one night after too much coffee or too much tweeting. At the light of day the idea was still percolating and I made the word reversal and thus wikisocial.org was also registered. And lastly, after “talking” about it with a couple of people I realized that without taking the big-dream step and “launching” I might not think it was such a good idea later.
But a launch is really nothing more than posting a page and trying to get smart friends involved. And today, Dec, 13, 2008, rather than jumping into the content/taxonomy and stuff; AND rather than sending out a cool URL and 3-D logo and try to get my buddies to start building with me… I have seen and been a part of too many of those type of “launches.” In fact, I’m probably in the middle of several more of that kind right now.
So, today, I wrote the mission statement. (Always a good start.) And Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research fame says it’s the first step you take before launching a new social media project.
And without further ado about nothing, here is the mission statement in txt format. ;-)
The socialwiki.org Mission Statement v. 0.1
- Provide an open wiki platform and community tools to dialogue, collect, annotate and educate ourselves
- Create, track, and share thought leadership
- Provide access to the social media tools without advertising, marketing or corporate sponsorship
- Total transparency – no hidden elite
- Shake up the status quo
Anything else?
I am looking for my next day gig. And as part of my first AGILE team my friend Tracy used to always say, “That would be a great thing to put on the wiki.” And rather than putting all the stuff I find into delicious or friendfeed or diggmixx or , I wanted a place to think aloud AND build the one thing I have been seeking since that team at Axiomfire collapsed under the loss of our main client Dell. And that thing is trust. That most elusive of qualities in social media and consequently of a team.
With that I will close the editor, turn off my effort for a minute and pause.
If something happens here, it is the team of all of us that will do it.
The other tidbit that came out of writing the mission statement. A slogan or motto:
“Through leadership we all become leaders.”
Namaste,
@Jmacofearth
tags: social media, socialmedia, socialwiki.org, wikisocial.org, wikisocial, socialwiki, social media wiki, john mcelhenney,
