Web 3.0 and the Emergence of Creative Community Hubs

categories: Incubators and CoWorking Spaces, Inspiration, Trends

Published May 09, 2009 @ 10:15AM PT

The awesome logo for the Big Omaha conferece, which combines an icon rooted in the distinct history of the place with a suggestion of movement, daring, and exploration.

The most exciting emergent trend on the internet actually isn't on the internet; it's about place, and the explosion of offline community hubs supercharged by online discovery.

In the early days, the internet was "cyberspace," an alternative and parallel world where people remained largely anonymous. Web 1.0 was about distributing information at a scale and pace never before seen. As web 2.0 has grown up, the internet has become increasingly more social. When we think of the internet, today, we increasingly think of the tools that allow people to become one-person content creators and distributors, and to receive a constantly update stream of information and ideas from people they care about.

But there is a ground swell happening. Rather than just sharing interesting news articles and pictures of funny cats, the increasingly public timeline of activity we produce is making it easier and easier for us to discover kindred spirits. Creatives, entrepreneurs, moms, creative-entrepreneur-moms and all variety of others are weaving together digital communities of common passion and complementary need.

And more than ever before, they're taking it offline.

Writing about Virgance last week, ecofirm Max Gladwell advanced a new definition for Web 3.0 that's not about cloud computing and semantic web, but instead about a phenomenon of human use:

Web 3.0 might also encompass the merging of the digital world with the actual world through Web and mobile technologies. Web 3.0 might include applications that integrate or necessarily include the actual worldwide web—the one in which we live, the tangible web of homes, streets, businesses, and government offices. If Web 2.0 is the Internet as a platform, then Web 3.0 might be the World as a platform.

In the new internet there is an increasing fluency between online and offline, and the direction of discovery flows both ways. Social networking technologies are no longer just the place where your offline connections live, but a doorway for relationships with new friends and colleagues.

The creatives are translating this emergent energy by building community hubs, rooted in place and designed to unleash the power of relationships to inspire innovation and ideas.

In the for-profit world, this is taking the shape of incubators. Y-Combinator is just the best known of an array of institutions designed to accelerate young companies by lavishing them with mentorship and connections. VentureBeat wrote yesterday about a new group, SproutBox based out of Bloomington, Indiana, and gave a shout to the growing field "a list that includes TechStars in Boulder, Colo., Launchbox Digital in Washington, D.C., Start@Spark in Boston, Mass., and Capital Factory in Austin, Texas."

In the social sector, there is an explosion around co-working spaces for social innovators. The Hub's global network is one of the leaders (and poised to come to the US for the first time this fall), but there are many others, such as NEDSpace in Portland, Oregon. Both the incubators and the co-working spaces share a common sensibility in attempting to draw out the unique composition of the communities in which they're rooted.

And everywhere, conferences are popping up to build momentum around new sensibilities. This post was inspired by Big Omaha, a truly awesome looking event wrapping up in Nebraska today that is designed to converge brilliant entrepreneurs around the leading city of the Silicon Prarie.

The potential here is truly immense. Imagine a network where every city you went to, there was a community hub that you could check in with, each with a feel it's own, but all connected by a passion for unleashing people's capacity by allowing them to inspire and collaborate with one another.

I believe that's happening, and I think the new social internet provides the plumbing. And smart companies are going to be flocking to provide tools to help accelerate the movement.

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Comments (10)

Great post. Loved the Big Omaha conference, btw, which is where I was speaking yesterday.

Posted by Ben Rattray on 05/09/2009 @ 04:54PM PT
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Yes, I totally forgot to mention it but I googled "omaha" and "entrepreneurship" after seeing your tweet..Hope the presentation went well!

Posted by Nathaniel Whittemore on 05/10/2009 @ 07:24AM PT
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Great post. This conference worked so well precisely because the physical place gave so much context to a community that before was online, even in Web 2.0. In this case, a geographic region situates what are otherwise very broad topics (entrepreneurship, creativity, technology, design) that exist in many places online. Relevant contexts are what will push communities forward.

Posted by Daniel Gilbert on 05/10/2009 @ 06:05PM PT
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Hi Daniel, I think your phrase "relevant context" is the key. Relevant contexts are what get us to share (or not) more of ourselves, and one of the reasons a good conference can be so transformative - it provides a relative context that is fundamentally different, and there is power there.

Posted by Nathaniel Whittemore on 05/11/2009 @ 11:14AM PT
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Nathaniel,
Great post. The last time I had a conversation about Web 3.0 (a few months ago) the consensus was that it was all going to be about vertical social networks; mini facebooks for specific interest groups/communities. While I think there is some truth in this, it's exciting to hear a prediction of something a bit more dynamic than 'just another facebook'... I hope that we at ClearlySo can generate an offline community of meetings, phonecalls, contracts and deals as well as all the online stuff. It reminds me of those animations where you see the words or ilustrations of a book lifitng off the page!
All the best
Julia

Posted by Julia Meek on 05/11/2009 @ 02:16AM PT
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Hi Julia!

Thanks for your thoughts and it's great to have you on the blog. I think it's terrific that you're working to build the infrastructure - both online and offline for more horizontal partnerships - keep up the great work!

Posted by Nathaniel Whittemore on 05/11/2009 @ 11:16AM PT
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Just wanted to mention a relevant thesis from Kevin Jones of Good Capital. Doesn't relate to Web 3.0 per se, but it does concern co-working/incubators. (I wrote about it recently in Not Only for Profit).

He thinks that nonprofit and for-profit enterprises that help people share increasingly-scarce resources will be particularly successful and in particular demand. That includes co-working/incubators like the Hub, as well as, say, Zipcar.

You can read my post: http://trueslant.com/annefield/2009/04/10/scarce-resources-the-new-new-economy-and-the-hub/.

Or check out his article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review http://www.ssireview.org/opinion/entry/when_more_mission_equals_more_money/

Posted by Anne Field on 05/11/2009 @ 08:21AM PT
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Ben's talk at the Big Omaha conference was inspiring! Whether applied to a purely social improvement issue or a business issue, finding the biggest problem that you can take on will bring much more satisfaction than going through the motions for 20 years hoping to save up enough to donate to others making change. Non-profits are not necessarily unprofitable and many executives take very healthy salaries out of non-profit businesses. I also think your observation about non-profits being slow to embrace the internet is also telling of the advances that need to come in this area of the economy. If any sector could benefit from free publicity and online communities, I would think an important cause could.

Posted by Shane Eloe on 05/11/2009 @ 09:42AM PT
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Thanks for this great post, Nathaniel. I agree with you in that we may be seeing a new wave of such centers and I argue that it all comes own to one simple matter: better connectors are needed, and these centers can play a big part in that role. What will be interesting will be to see these centers connect with each other, entrepreneurs neatly profiled so they can be easily "found" and ultimately the enterprise development organizations (for lack of a better name) like investment funds, tech assistance providers and the like be part of this equation. A revolution may be coming this way and your post is right on.

Best

Francisco

Posted by Francisco Noguera on 05/11/2009 @ 06:59PM PT
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Thanks Nathaniel: relevant as usual!

This movement to the offline world is so meaningful for us, social entrepreneurs. It brings us to use the web as a tool, rather than as an end. Not that I believe in a difference between the "online" and the "offline" world: it's still our lives that are affected by a great blog post, our perceptions modified by a comment on Twitter and our brains reflecting on a great chat session while eating lunch. Relationships are relationship, and an offline meeting isn't necessarily the only beneficial end to a new encounter.

But some stuff just works better when you get your hands dirty. Someone has to plant that tree. Someone has to give that vaccine. Someone has to sit down in front of a coffee and ask you what's wrong. That's where the movement toward an offline web-generated community is so meaningful: because sometimes, change needs some hands to get dirty. Tons of hands.

Posted by Christine Renaud on 06/13/2009 @ 03:06PM PT
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Author

Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.