B. Mann Consulting

If you read Lee LeFever's Common Craft website, I've been discussing a lot of things with him, as evidenced by a couple of nice "so I was talking to Boris the other day and..." links he's thrown my way.

If you're interested in or in any way intersect social software and/or online community, you should be subscribed to Common Craft.

What is it? They have a little note that says Common Craft "is a consulting practice and weblog operated by Lee and Sachi LeFever. The focus of Common Craft is Social Design for the Web." I like that phrase: Social Design for the Web. Which makes Lee and Sachi "Social Designers".

Most recently, we talked about Dell's IdeaStorm, which is a Salesforce AppExchange component made by CrispyIdeas. The big thing here is that the underlying technology of "social software" is being commoditized. Now comes the hard part: understanding and utilizing the technology in the context of engaging your community.

Before that I asked Lee if he felt he was a member of Flickr's community. I used to be a member of the Flickr community, waaay back in the old days when it was just getting started. But I don't think I can call myself that now: it's "just" a place to put pictures. I've moved out of the active 1% and in to the "just use it" 9%.

If you haven't already, go on over and check out Lee Lefever's The World Is Not Flat site, affectionately known as "TWINF". It's running on Bryght, and we had a hand in twiddling a few bits of the code -- specifically, Colin mucked with maps and is now an AJAX god (or so he tells us) and Richard wrestled with custom PHP snippets and blocks. The always powerful Mark Yuasa of Raincity Studios did the CSS-fu to keep the site looking daisy fresh.

Why should you care about TWINF? Well, number 1, Lee (of Common Craft fame) is a very cool guy who is going to be travelling around the world next year with his wife Sachi. It fits in the category of international travel blog, but Lee and Sachi don't just want you to be able to keep up with what they're doing...they want to hear from you. The idea is to gather people's experiences which will help them decide where to go and what to visit (and what not to visit).