Principles for Group Dedicated Technologies and Services - the groupDNA Brief

I thought about publishing some ideas and concepts about "technologies, applications and services dedicated to groups and organisations" one by one. But it takes time to write and edit these things :-) Before this day ended, I wanted to publish something for groupDNA and I re-read the paper I wrote with the help of Andy back in spring 2008. We have come a long way, but the principles are just fine. I would and probably will re-phrase much of this paper and publish these thoughts on groupdna.org. Anyway that's my plan for 2011, meanwhile enjoy this only slightly edited paper. Happy holidays :-)

here is the link to the Google Doc http://shortlinks.tickertxt.org/groupdna2008 

groupDNA we are sequencing the DNA of groups to develop better tools the reference for group activities anchoring group actions

Problem Solution Business Model Where are we now [Spring 2008] Next steps groupDNA soundbites... A humerous and pretentious perspective

We are a project with an agenda, creating services and tools aimed at informal, unstructured groups. Treating "groups" as entities and customers analogous to organisations (B2C) opens untapped markets with very interesting business opportunities, which we call B2G. Informal groups are everywhere, in our family life, sports and hobbies, friends, assocations and our professional life.
groupDNA projects include tickerTXT, groupmark / groupmarker, twitter groups, twittAIR, twittUP, twitter reference sharing, grouplets and groupDNA Open Twitter Authentication (OTAM) Method (for third party twitter developers)[this paragraph has been slightly edited Dec 2010, see footnote] ^[1]

Problem

Most group activities are badly supported in our normal technology supported environments. The focus of IT-based solutions and services is on either the corporation or on the individual. Enterprise systems are designed top-down and are complex. Systems and applications for smaller companies tend to follow the structural approach and thereby inherent the same architectural deficiencies. These systems are inward-looking, functionally driven and by design formal and inflexible. These patterns can be rediscovered with social network services, which are similar data silos, albeit sexier and friendlier and more open.

The other extreme focus is on the user, the hardware design and the user-interface. The goal is to make the user interaction with the technology efficient, very little effort is spent on thinking what happens once the data is sent off to somewhere else. Many web-based widgets are aggregators designed to deliver to the user individually useful information services, such as location services, mapping etc.

This leaves an opportunity for services targeting groups. Most groups are informal, unstructured, though they might have different degrees of delegation. Members of groups have something in common, an interest, an event, an experience... the identity of the group, the reference. A design and process which supports the group as a whole is potentially enormous productivity gain for the individual.

Currently solutions are either "local" and technical/functional (forums, mailing lists, wikis...) or simply using standard communication technologies, such as voice, email, IM, SMS...

Solution

Developing frameworks, services and tools specifically designed with group in mind. The solutions should enable any group to create specific activities, which inherently include:

• a group reference - which allows to identify groups across services, sites, platforms and systems 
• the ability to fine tune the group principles - Basic tools for self-organising / management of the group (open, public, only members, only invitation, only specific sites, delegation) 
• A group action reference: allows to match the group and the activity action 
• The group footprint for the next action: Technical framework (Frame, widget window) - includes group reference, action reference and self-management tools, export / import, formats 
• Update or status notifications: of the initiator and the members - on status change via RSS, push communication and twitter 
• Prepackaged action samples: based on patterns of group activities- content/procedure samples or examples designed for frequently occurring group actions, such as coordinating / polling / data collection / resource management, transparency processes such as payment tracking. Can be customised, named and designed for every usage 
• Combination of function and data: use for one particular activity once, delete or archive it after finishing (Preparing the 2008 annual summer meeting, organising the common purchase of the rare vintage air-filter, listing the wish-list for the AppleFriends "my next Mac", coordinating the common action for the flower friends, sharing the cars for the ski trip) 
• Chameleon like infiltration: Variations of technology appearances (from rich AJAX/Flash to text based or image based app) - very low technology barrier