Bainbridge Island Community Network

Elements of the Formula of Community

The Formula of Community
more soon 		The Hamster Effect

 
Early on in my quest for the "Formula of Community" (starting in 1992) I reached out to every aspect of my community that I could reach. I did this openly and with unveiled trust at first. There were two main objectives back then:
  • To educate leadership and demonstrate this new thing called the Internet and how using this wonderful communications device we could create better and stonger governments, businesses and commerce and social infrastructures. (What I called my three pillars of community)
  • I also wanted to know who they were, how they functioned (and didn't function), what assets they brought to the community with the objective of strengthening those assets and making them more effective at a lesser cost.
After many years of reaching out to every aspect of a community, endless presentations both to individuals and to groups and boards I saw very little results for the effort except what I implemented myself. It had now been years since I had started and was watching the world pass us by on the creation of the Internet knowing that Bainbridge Island could have been leaders in this advancement in the nation. I was starting to feel like Sisyphus, endlessly rolling a stone up hill.

I have long held to the philosophy that "if something doesn't work; do something else". I then started looking beneath the surface of the veneer we call community. Out of that effort grew a great revelation. Over time and the more I observed, the more I understood how comminutes really functioned or more importantly didn't function and to this day I am still working with the subtleties of what I would eventually call

"The Hamster Effect"

and it would become a fundamental building block in the Formula of Community.

It was the knowledge of this great force that allowed me to defeat the ISP Channel and their plans. It is what (when disclosed) to some Microsoft people (and they tested it) that convince them to abandon a community project they were looking at.

I like to have fun with things and I have now come to define the "Hamster Effect" as a Zen thing. I must become one with the hamster for that is how I and the hamster will evolve.

And the Hamsters must evolve

For some time I have been refining the "Hamster Effect" story and breaking it down into chapters around my direct experiences. It is actually a complex thing in it's nuances. I will reveal more soon. - Dave