Pic-Nic Village founder Pete Lawrence was a speaker at last Saturday’s TEDx event in Cardiff. In front of an enthusiastic crowd at The Millennium Centre. Pete, making the most of a large and comfortable leather chair originally placed on stage as a prop to tell his story, ran through a customised slideshow based around the theme of ‘social glue’ a term which describes the sense of belonging and value in community membership. Pete talked about how his life has generally revolved around joining the dots and making connections – “bringing people together, and then stepping back and watching the sparks fly”, citing the original Big Chill forum as a good example of social media 1.0, a platform for new ideas and dialogue. He described how a festival, via its ethos, attention to detail and the involvement of its community on the journey, was able to engender a high degree of loyalty from Big Chillers.

Whilst The Big Chill has now passed into more corporate ownership, Pete evaluated his experiences over the previous fifteen years and went back to the drawing board, in order to draw up the ethos for a new initiative, based around the importance of community values and mutual support mechanisms. Pic-Nic Village is less about the hedonism and excess of festivals, and more about practical ways of empowering its members within a creative environment.

http://tedxcardiff.co.uk/

The crowd funding initiative undertaken by Pic-Nic Village earlier this year to raise finances for the development of a new type of social network has been closed without reaching its ambitious target of £750,000.

Despite a positive response to our proposition for an advertiser free and privacy aware social networking community owned by its members, we believe that a general reduction in spending during the recession has impacted people’s willingness to invest money by signing up as members and shareholders. For those people who did purchase shares, refunds will be issued this month.

We are now seeking alternative methods of funding to get this exciting venture off the ground, including speaking to progressive private investors. We are also planning to launch the Pic-Nic Village Developer’s Network, giving ambitious developers an opportunity to get involved in the community by starting to develop the social network in the New Year.

Pic-Nic Village offers a fresh vision for the next generation of social networking and we are passionate about creating a new type of community aimed at like-minded creative people. We remain committed to the ethos of the site, adopting a revenue model that is based on subscription rather than advertising.

Pete Lawrence , Founder of Pic-Nic Village

It would be fair to say that 2010 was the year that social networking became established as a key part of people’s lives. 2011 will herald an evolution of social networking. Here are 10 predictions for social networking in 2011 from Pete Lawrence, founder of Pic-Nic Village, an advertiser free, privacy aware social network for creatives.

1 – Self sufficient niche communities or one big society?

Cameron has tapped into at least one part of the zeitgeist – that people are becoming more community minded and organising themselves accordingly. The timing of ‘The Big Society’ is serendipitous and Cameron might learn something from looking at the way new online communities are setting up too, built on the premise of “We don’t need the government to lay down the parameters. We’re already doing it ourselves,.”

The essence of new model communities revolves around mutual support and co-operation rather than profit and competition, as well as offering a real financial involvement rather than the rather nebulous ‘stakeholdings for all’ offered by Cameron. My attempt to put on some live music, DJs and films for friends in the village received a sharp rebuke from the local council’s Environmental Health department which led to a cancellation. 1-0 for bureaucracy and petty regulation. People will surely want to know how they can make a living given all this voluntary time?

2 – The age of publicness

To quote Jeff Jarvis, “a new world order is coming into play, and within it we are re-organising the way we relate to each other.” There is a growing belief that we no longer need companies, institutions and government to organise us.

Nowadays, everything is available, knowable and recorded; we are all publishers now. But how comfortable are people with these rapid changes? We now live in the “reputation economy” – we stand or fall on the visibility of our indexed footprint or our googlejuice quotient rather than our CVs, in a world where personal and business streams are crossing more and more and boundaries are blurring and our identity is becoming centralised and consistent.

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t sit on the fence : “You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”

We are moving on from the idea that everyone needs a pseudonymn as well a real name identity. Do we need a degree of anonymity as a shield from employers, spouses, friends and bots or can we face up to a brave new era of getting real and being open? People use their real names on Linkedin and Facebook, so why not everywhere?

Wikileaks has raised some big questions about transparency and openness, and in many ways drawn lines in the sand for the freedom of the internet. Interesting times ahead…

3 – Ownership and profit for who?

The very notion of ‘profit’ is under the microscope. The massive accumulation of wealth by the few at the ownership expense of the many undermines any claims to a truly free market. Horizontal prosperity rather than vertical ” top down serfdom” is surely the way forward and this thought process will will gather added momentum in 2011 as ideas are turned into businesses via crowd funding and more radical constitutional parameters which might address ownership, restrictions on big business buy outs, voting rights and election of board membership. In an age where any significant profits are expected to be accountable, the internet in general and newly formed online communities in particular are likely to lead on this…

4 – Paywall, freemium, freeconomics

Chris Anderson, writer and editor of Wired, coined the term Freeconomics a few years back, and this has been the prevailing wind in the formative era of social networks and one which the likes of Facebook and Myspace have found to be something of a millstone around their neck.

Freemium is an interesting model: roughly defined as a group of customers who benefit from free services supported by those who pay a premium for special use. Flickr (online storage of photos), Spotify (online music), and Skype (online communication) not only use this kind of cross-subsidization but also demonstrate the leveraging effect of networks—the greater the number of free users, the more valuable the service becomes for all customers.

Online, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. This notion is beginning to dawn on people.

5 – Cocreation

Web 2.0 is impacting  business management on various far-reaching levels. In the past few years, the coming together of organised communities of web participants to develop, market, and support products and services has become mainstream. Wikipedia and a handful of open-source software developers were the pioneers and it can now be seen in apps development. It’s clear that the more fluid, networked organizations of the future are organising work schedules and patterns around critical tasks rather than molding it to dictats imposed by corporate structures. The prevalence of apps is, in itself, dictating a move away from open ended browsing specifically on the worldwide web to pre-prescribed functions and interactions with goods and services on the internet. This will continue into 2011 and beyond.

6 – Viral semantics and island hopping.

We’ve all seen the fast growth of cross-platform buttons for like, retweet and facebooking news around the wires.

We are moving more and more towards the notion of Tim Berners-Lee’s ‘semantic web’ – the prevailing combination of data drawn from diverse sources, an agile ethos of not getting wedded to one platform or methodology, but allowing ‘open source’ to develop and adapt in its widest context, remaining open not only to the breakneck speed of developments in technology, but also in the needs and requirements of everyday users on a human and emotional level.

There will be ongoing issues relating to the ownership and copywriting of ideas, but with the rise of Creative Commons, we are seeing some major moves towards increased sharing and collaboration. Island (platform) hopping rather than an extended stay on the largest island is very much the future direction,

7 – Smart moves towards a sustainable world

Ever increasing demand for sustainable IT and cloud computing, the electricity to power the world’s data centres and server systems are placing more and more strain on our whole eco system. Distributed co-creation and smart assets are absorbing and transmitting swathes of information on a massive scale through the use of sensors and actuators which analyse and act on behavioural patterns, habits, performance and preference. We are having to look at every aspect of this rapidly changing infra structure which underlies our lives, and with it, a re-evaluation of our attitudes to data collection. All around us, smart cars, smart energy, smart buildings, smart technology and communications and smart cities will be our environment.

8 – Portable computing and the mobile office

The iPad has gone a long way towards heralding in a new era in portability of computer power. The current and future buzz isn’t clickable – it’s around voice, touch, gesture, collaboration-enabled, location-aware, multi-purpose, fast evolving symbiotic devices and apps. Virgin is the first to launch a high profile iPad only magazine, Project, amply demonstrating the device’s strengths as a flexible publication platform for consumption by those on the move.

Demand for cloud computing (accessing computer resources on networks as opposed to running software or storing data locally on computer) and SaaS (Software as a service) is growing fast, driven by the organisational requirement for fast access to critical business services. Companies are using Google Apps for e-mail and to create documents and spreadsheets, bypassing capital investments in servers and software licenses. These developments will ensure that portability and the mobile office are here to stay, requiring large hard disk space on the move as well as optimum capacity service providers and mobile networks.

9 – Privacy and places

The debate around privacy and data collection of day to day habits and lifestyle hides the underlying issue of  choice and control over what to publish and to whom.

Yet the arrival of Facebook Places has brought privacy back into the spotlight, through its use of geomapping for instant mass pinpointing of a potential opting in of 500 million users. As we enter an age where our habits become exploited by mass corporate data mining exercises and we start from a position having to ‘opt out’ rather than ‘opt in’ in the first place, we will start to rebel against this personal information data-trading.  As we enter this “dawning of the age of location-whores” (Bill Ray, The Register) the more cynical practitioners will be looking to exploit the mass of data mined by pinpointing individuals’ habits

This is the real invasion of privacy – the bombarding of the senses with unwanted communications and those who believe that they have a right to start from a position where we have to ‘opt out’ rather than inviting us to ‘opt in’ in the first place. Similarly, the dating sites and social networks which set your account details to automatic subscription renewal as a default. Give them an inch and they take a mile.

10 Evolution of social networking : a post-advertising world

There is an alternative to the advertising funded model of social networking. Advertising is a corrupting element in itself and the world would be a better place with less of it. People can play an important role in an environment which is conducive to collaborative work. With the cuts and the loss of many jobs, especially in the public sector, the importance of finding ways of making a living from the things you enjoy doing has never been more pertinent. Community focused sites like Pic-Nic Village intend to be at the forefront of this movement towards empowering individuals within a community.

Look out for a backlash against cynicism and more people believing in the power and potential of creating magic through community, collaboration, a common sense of purpose and the resulting spontaneous combustion that is likely to occur. A new age of optimism is possible and achievable.

There has been no shortage of recent discussion about the “death of free” on the interweb as well as the wider context. If the maxim “it’s always been free and therefore always will be” can be bolted onto the ‘social networking 1.0′ model which is arguably past its sell-by date, then it might be argued that it’s only a matter of time before those entrenched in that particular netview – the millions who demand quality services but expect not to have to pay for them -  wake up and realise that  they want an alternative to the faceless capitalism and shady data-trading which otherwise prevails out there.  In essence, ‘free’ is far from free, even when it calls itself free.

The noise around the impending launch of Diaspora as a privacy aware social network brings attention to the deeper problems of free. The band-aid solutions now available which are little more than cosmetic quick fixes. AdBlock may do what it says on the tin, but are we really now bowing down to the prospect of a world funded by advertising revenue and the compromises that puts on integrity and quality of life? Is there not a better way of going about our lives than submitting to being data pawns and fodder for social networks that, by accident or design, have become glorified sales tools, underpinned by scrobbling software which analyses our spending habits as its central remit? Once geomapping takes hold, -  and last week’s launch of Facebook Places is an important milestone in the next phase in monitoring personal habits - then Apple’s promise to share their user data with advertisers and publishers who use their platform,  Foursquare’s targeting of mega corporations such as Starbucks to work in tandem with, is only the beginning of an all encompassing movement to exploit user data that will have widespread implications for every user.

As a result, we’ve seen a number of challengers to Facebook’s ‘commercial over community’ ethos. Despite its privacy-aware banner, Diaspora  isn’t clear about whether it will join the crowd and follow the ad or even sales funded model that seems to be so popular.  The four techies behind this interesting venture made available the open source code that they spent the last few months creating after crowdfunding saw 6,500 people donate $200,000 in return for a CD, some stickers, and a t-shirt and the satisfaction of helping support a Facebook alternative.  Techy as it may seem,  with users required to virtually host their own data, we will see whether it has appeal enough to catch on with an audience beyond those concerned with privacy.

It seems social networking is really entering a new age where the focus is on commerciality rather than community. Diaspora’s challenge to Facebook was the tip of the social networking 2.0 iceberg really with its ‘wisdom of the crowds’ approach to funding and firm belief that people are fed up with having their data misused. While important, we think social networking 2.0 is more than privacy. It’s about letting people take a real stake in the operation of the community. Letting them make the decisions about advertising, sales, scrobbling and other issues that they deem important. My new venture, Pic-Nic Village, is a blueprint for a social network that is currently undergoing a crowdfunding initiative to raise finance for development. More of a modern-day co-operative than Diaspora, we’re offering membership and part-ownership of the community in return for investment (which we hope will be more compelling than a few CDs and lines of code). Unlike Diaspora we don’t want to be another Facebook. We do want to challenge the idea of free that is funded by sales, advertising and ultimately personal information data-trading.

I believe that people are ready not only to pay for a social network that provides value and engenders trust but to be a part-owner too.  Pic-Nic Village is based on the premise that  there is real value in being able to connect and empower a community of who are looking for a degree of independence and want to approach things differently.   I believe that we’re ahead of the curve with focus on specific communities of interest and purpose where members play an active role in our development and success.

The stakeholders in this new age of social networking 2.0 will be doing more than playing at social networking, they will be taking a fundamental role in the evolution of 21st century art, which will be all about connections through culture and community.

Pete Lawrence 2010

There’s a revolution in company ownership and community control happening around us, and it’s permeating way beyond modern co-operative thinking into the murky waters of big business. When companies announce that they want to make their supporters feel “active and engaged, valued and nurtured, not exploited” and to give them “a role in governance” then it’s worth looking at the underlying cause.

Ivan Gazidis, chief executive of Arsenal football club, this week seemingly endorsed a fans’ scheme to offer the chance to buy 1/100th of an actual share in the club for £100, with the intention that supporter activism will stave off the debt-funded ownership models that have provided so much grief for supporters of Manchester United and Liverpool. He even talks about scheme being good for the club’s “soul”, a word which, like “creativity” has been firmly out of bounds for several generations of high flying besuited money moguls, but now it appears that the board are having reservations about a 100-1 split for reasons related to administrative costs. They are promising to “revisit the issue.”

Hugh Robertson, the Sports Minister cites the Arsenal move as “enlightened and forward looking” and is hoping it will be adopted by other football clubs, but who is to doubt that this model might just take hold across a whole variety of initiatives in the coming months. The plates are moving and as a future business model, crowd funding is as on the money (literally) as any other current trend, as it cuts deep into the heart of business rationale and ethics.

I have no doubt that the result of the mutual lack of confidence between banks and the general public combined with hopelessly out of touch old school business models still preferred by most private investors, will create a revolution in future business operandi. I think we’ll see a renewed appreciation in ethical business and the common good with, refreshingly, a complete revision on the way profit accumulation is regarded. Wealth maximisation for the few, a notion that sits at the heart of capitalist philosophy is now being supplanted by a move towards communities and initiatives which aim to create wealth for all.  In essence, we’re at the beginning of a huge and exciting move towards a more radical, ethical and socially inclusive business model which looks likely to include more crowdfunding and community ownership and control initiatives.

Pete Lawrence 2010

There’s a revolution in company ownership and community control happening around us, and it’s permeating way beyond modern co-operative thinking into the murky waters of big business. When companies announce that they want to make their supporters feel “active and engaged, valued and nurtured, not exploited” and to give them “a role in governance” then it’s worth looking at the underlying cause.

Ivan Gazidis, chief executive of Arsenal football club, this week seemingly endorsed a fans’ scheme to offer the chance to buy 1/100th of an actual share in the club for £100, with the intention that supporter activism will stave off the debt-funded ownership models that have provided so much grief for supporters of Manchester United and Liverpool. He even talks about scheme being good for the club’s “soul”, a word which, like “creativity” has been firmly out of bounds for several generations of high flying besuited money moguls, but now it appears that the board are having reservations about a 100-1 split for reasons related to administrative costs. They are promising to “revisit the issue.”

Hugh Robertson, the Sports Minister cites the Arsenal move as “enlightened and forward looking” and is hoping it will be adopted by other football clubs, but who is to doubt that this model might just take hold across a whole variety of initiatives in the coming months. The plates are moving and as a future business model, crowd funding is as on the money (literally) as any other current trend, as it cuts deep into the heart of business rationale and ethics.

I have no doubt that the result of the mutual lack of confidence between banks and the general public combined with hopelessly out of touch old school business models still preferred by most private investors, will create a revolution in future business operandi. I think we’ll see a renewed appreciation in ethical business and the common good with, refreshingly, a complete revision on the way profit accumulation is regarded. Wealth maximisation for the few, a notion that sits at the heart of capitalist philosophy is now being supplanted by a move towards communities and initiatives which aim to create wealth for all. In essence, we’re at the beginning of a huge and exciting move towards a more radical, ethical and socially inclusive business model which looks likely to include more crowdfunding and community ownership and control initiatives.

Pete Lawrence 2010

The headline that I supposedly uttered on Beehive City last week ”the Big Chill is now one big corporate bore”  took me as much by surprise as it did some of its outspoken commentators. Headlines that are masterfully placed together in this way (in this instance by a webzine reknowned for its journalistic excellence) can often stir up a hornet’s nest that was never entirely intended! I thought it would be useful to add a little context …

Corporate? It’s no secret that my preference these days is for smaller more intimate gatherings and I recognise that The Big Chill operates in a completely different ball park. From the comments of most of the guests I spoke to at this year’s festival, no one disputes this from a company who, rather like a large efficient machine, specialises in rolling out many large festivals throughout the UK summer months. I think that anyone who knows anything about The Big Chill would have been surprised if it hadn’t lurched towards being a more corporate event.

Bore? Well, now the main stages don’t start til 3pm many remarked that there wasn’t a lot to do until then, but that made for a relaxed start to the day for late rises and a build up of expectation. Didn’t it?

Big? Sure and this is the topical debating point of the three. Ironically The Big Chill was 150 people when it first happened so the ‘Big’ element was at the time little more than a tongue in cheek exercise, more indicative of a bigness of its desire to chill than a precursor to any impending behemoth status.

Jeff Jarvis, in his inspirational tome ‘What Would Google Do?” controversially declares that “small is the new big”, the mass market is dead, and long live the mass of niches (Chris Anderson’s era defining ‘The Long Tail discusses this phenomenon in more detail). Jarvis notes that ‘big’ is having muscle to dictate prices, deciding when (if) to pay the small contractor, maximising rather than optimising – usually in hand with the word ‘profits’. As Jarvis says, it’s about the tipping point – when is big “big enough” and in some ways, this is the central thread that Big Chillers have addressed year after year.

Conversely, today’s vital trajectory is more about making the transition from mass to niche and how to make it work as a sustainable economic model in a rapidly changing world. As Jarvis goes on to say “growth will come less from owning assets inside one company and amassing risk there and more from enabling others in a network to build their own value, reducing their cost and spreading their risk”

This logic has filtered through into Pic-Nic Village‘s central aim of building a vibrant dynamic platform to help others prosper. Whereas Google created a new way for advertisers to reach highly targetted audiences as they search for and read relevant content, there is an alternative way of viewing this - that formal advertising is outmoded, intrusive and even corrupting in the context of community networks. The same results can be achieved via nurturing personal relationships, dialogue, interaction and endorsement, empowering others by giving them a collaborative platform from which to do business.

Meanwhile, I won’t be giving up attending festivals, especially the small spontaneous portable ones. As one member of Pic-Nic Village suggested on the forum “musical camping picnics are definitely the way forward, bring your own food/drink, a laptop full of tunes, a small and very portable sound system in the back of a van, and most importantly no money changing hands.”

Pete Lawrence 2010

Last week I talked about abbreviations. This week I’m going to talk about pseudonyms. With the recent kerfuffle about the initiative promoted by Blizzard (publishers of popular online game World Of Warcraft) to get their members to use their real names, and the subsequent rescinding of the plea, it brought into sharp focus the whole debate about online personas, privacy and the sharing of ones’ interests and activities to online communities.

“Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before,” was the rallying cry, and the company even set a date from which would happen. Blizzard said the intention was to cut down on “flame wars” and argued that heated online arguments started to cause trouble.

The online community responded quickly, with more than a thousand replies in less than 24 hours; mostly expressing their displeasure at the move. Three days later it had backed down, with one Blizzard employee who has posted his real name and contact details being bombarded with users who had got hold of his phone number, home address and photos. Was this U turn predominantly because of the rallying call to preserve the cloak of anonymity that surrounds gamers or was it a more genuine heartfelt cry from those who suspected they could get into trouble with employers, spouses, lovers if their real life identity was revealed? Does being typecast as a “gamer” really affect employment possibilities? And are there grounds for exception on forum topics to do with personal issues?

If there ever was a time, surely it is now that we should be throwing down the gauntlet and using our real names, engendering a new level of confidence, trust and openness? Things started to go downhill when Thatcher erected the gates in Downing Street and hid behind them, ushering in a new era of suspicion, self interest, paranoia, Daily Mail moral scaremongering, watching one’s back and insurance claims. I’m no great fan of David Cameron, but I did admire one of his first moves – to reject the cavalcade of motorcyclist security alongside his car, much to the chagrin of Scotland Yard.

Pete Lawrence 2010

The online movers and shakers’ cosy up to Government over the past week reminded me of Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’. However, given the turmoil of the music business at the moment, it’s not hard to reach the conclusion that social networks and online community building is the not only the new rock’n'roll but where the real action is.

It was rather amusing to watch the ingratiating conference call between our Prime Minister David Cameron and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. For those who missed it, Cameron was PRing his new ‘Spending Challenge‘ initiative on Facebook, whereby the public get to suggest ways to stop money being spent (yawn). Recognising the “enormous civic spirit” whereby UK citizens can take control of their own lives, his gesture has no doubt been prompted by the realisation that hitching up to Facebook in an official capacity rather than building another grey and tedious government web site will actually enable “public engagement for free”, “engage the public for social change”, and last but not least save “millions, if not billions”.

Quids in for Cameron then, but at what cost for Zuckerberg, who after being “happy to support you guys in any way we can” swiftly found the love-in hitting the rocks when Cameron denounced Facebook in parliament last week for not censoring the ‘RIP Raoul Moat You Legend’ page. Facebook had refused to do anything much about the page, saying that it doesn’t actually violate Facebook’s terms of use, and in the event, it’s founder took it down in any case.

Zuckerberg is no doubt sanguine at the prospects of getting many more users’ personal data, which always goes down well with potential advertisers. However, I wonder whether Facebook’s use of members’ personal data shares the same transparency that Zuckerberg professed to love about our new Government. At the end of the day, chasing the dollar is a must now for Facebook, a company that seems to have grown despite its apparent lack of a sound commercial business model, and now has to depend upon advertising, as does Google (with Apple shortly to follow as it moves towards Google’s targeted advertising territory.)

Whilst there is much to be said for dealing with governmental matters online, which could be much easier than through traditional channels. It is perhaps more prescient that we advance at pace towards a more direct form of political involvement from the community at large. The move from two party tribal politics into coalition government has, for some, arguably marked a theoretical first step to a more direct people politics, in wrestling at least some of the initiative away from civil servants, albeit at the risk of a major upset over mass redundancies. The debacle of voters queueing only to be denied their democratic rights in the general election may have put the voting methods on the agenda for a while at least but I would still wager that we’ll be lucky to see online elections in my lifetime.

Meanwhile, entrepreneur and .com boom / bust icon Martha Lane Fox is also in league with Cameron and cohorts and has just published her 65 page government commissioned  ’Manifesto For a Networked Nation‘ which focuses getting older people online, creating digital champions throughout society. It makes an interesting point that “creating and supporting social networks through the internet creates a stronger society and reduces isolation”, something that would normally go without saying, but I guess she has to say something in her report, and if that helps tilt things back to social cohesion, then it can’t be a bad thing.

Whilst the digital infrastructure of the country is mentioned in the report, it has now become a pressing issue, which is holding back the country’s productivity. I am still unable to access a mobile signal on any network in my house, located at the centre of a 2,000 population village, located in the heart of central England and fifteen minutes from the M1. Given that mobile phones and PDAs are increasingly the tools we use to access the internet and will become more so, this doesn’t fill me with optimism. My internet runs at snail pace, compared to the speeds I get at hidden away corners of small Greek islands, where my mobile also gives me uninterrupted 5 bar signal.

I was recently in the small town of Tavira in Portugal where free wi-fi is available in and around the town square, where I spent a couple of relaxed hours on a bench catching up with e mails, which felt very civilised. The Networked Nation report fails to address the potential of mobile and wi-fi. Surely it wouldn’t cost the Government too much to start rolling out some free wi-fi networks, initially in city centres?

Pete Lawrence