Author: bill johnston
-
Exiting the Social Boom and the Entering the Era of Transformational Communities
I feel very fortunate to have established a career developing communities (both on and offline) over the last 20+ years. During this time, I’ve seen a steady series of boom and bust cycles for “community” – large waves of investment and development followed by retreat and divestment. During the transition times between the cycles, one…
-
Community & Re-emergence
It’s March (again). Congratulations on what is likely your pandemic lockdown anniversary month. Humanity’s re-emergence into whatever new normal awaits us has been on my mind for the last few weeks. Looking back on the last year, the closest analogy I can come up with is the concept of a singularity — the hypothetical point…
-
Visual highlights from SWARM 2020 – Australia’s largest community conference
SWARM is one of my favorite community conferences. Lead organizer Venessa Paech does an amazing job of curating a timely and diverse set of topics and speakers year over year. COVID19 necessitated a shift to an online-only conference this year, which allowed Venessa and team to design a program that spanned 9 days and 30+…
-
Developing a Transformational Community to Lift Families Out of Poverty with Jorge Blandón
Leaders often use the word “transformation” to describe a small or incremental change, but the definition is “a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance”. When using the phrase “Transformational Communities”, my intention is to define these communities as having a profound and thorough change effect on participating stakeholders. One of the most interesting…
-
A Human-Centered Approach to Digital Leadership with Lauren Vargas, PhD
Too often the deployment of digital strategies and tools begins humans conforming to technology limitations instead of technology being deployed intentionally in the service of human needs and opportunities – a human-centered approach. Dr. Lauren Vargas joins me on the Cohere podcast to discuss bringing humans back into the center of the “digital transformation” conversation…
-
Expert Interviews From the Customer Community 1.0 Era (’07-’09)
It’s clear that the Corvid-19 Pandemic will drive the global economy into a recession. Periods of economic turbulence tend to have a catalytic effect on the role of online communities and related social and network-based experiences. In particular, it seems public participation increases, followed by corporate investment. We saw this play out with the investment…
-
The Connected Future of Design with Patrick Newbery
During the COVID19 crisis, digital networks have played a critical part in keep humanity connected and informed. The adoption of networked experiences has scaled exponentially, seemingly overnight. In most cases, these designed experiences were crafted for very different contexts than what they are being used for. In our new, digitally connected yet physically isolated future,…
-
Realizing Power of Your “Onlyness” Through Networks with Nilofer Merchant
The primary purpose of the Cohere Project (and podcast) is to explore the future of human networks, especially tools that increase human and group agency in a network. I believe Nilofer Merchant’s concept of “Onlyness’ is one such tool. We discuss Onlyness, and much more, in one of the most fun, informative and unfiltered conversations…
-
The Cohere Podcast: Bonus Episode – Creating Connection in the Time of COVID-19 with Nancy White
In this short (~15 min) bonus episode, we speak with facilitator and community builder extraordinaire Nancy White of Full Circle Associates about creating and maintaining connections online during a crisis. Specifically, we talk through: Advice for taking offline events online (and if you should) Planning for a near-term future of limited face to face gatherings…
Bill Johnston 