Back in the early net-days, about just-before-Netscape:
Our company had grown with 70 people within a year and we had to move to new premises. Tough times for property owners so we got a tremendous deal on some posh office space formerly populated with suits - thus having nicely appointed, and separate offices with doors along long corridors zig-zagging through half a floor.
We populated it with geeks, average age 20. And a microwave oven.
A few months later we started to hear rumours about a splinter group tinkering with business plans somewhere deep down in a corner of the labyrinth.
And sure, a confrontation with the supposed ring leader, eh, CEO-to-be, he simply said "yes, new company on its way!" Cheeky. Nothing else to do but to show him and a few others the door, locking up trade secrets and proprietary code.
We found their business plan on the server. Interesting reading.
Two weeks later, same thing. Then again a couple of months later, but this time no business plan to study, seems PGP was in use now. And 128 bits encryption was beyond our cracking capabilities.
Then it stopped. No more splinter groups, no more budding CEO's leaving with smug smiles.
Puzzling, but management was happy, although completely without a clue. We probably thought the new lunch menu was the tipping point.
A year later it dawned upon me.
The geeks, our trusted employees, had themselves implemented newsgroups on the internal network. Untouched by management, unknown by management. I know, I was the chairman, I did not have a clue. I could probably not even spell newsgroups.
Before the newsgroups: Five guys in a corner of the building did what one does, and should do, back-stabbing management orally, repeating how stupid we were and so forth. And being in close social contact one obviously joined in and in general agreed with one's buddies. Soon such banter grew into plans, and then into action. All our new in-house bred competitors came out of a corner at the time, physically a corner.
With newsgroup: One chap bitching about management and their stupid strategy in a newsgroup post created an eager following one day. But the next day, something unexpected happened, the chaps in intense agreement yesterday could suddenly disagree with his next statement. Hmm. Then another day, the lines of agreement changed again, and again.
No more solidifying of little groups, no more face-to-face peer pressure, no more nodding to-secure-membership of the little group. Just good old healthy discussions with agreement and disagreements as things moved on.
Naturally sensible human behaviour taking over and individuals remaining individuals. Helped by technology, some physical distance and unhampered by controlling managers, me included. Problem solved.
That's why I'm very fond of open, no limits, networking. Keep it up! And stay away ye control freaks, life is better at regulating itself than our dumb rules and regulations.
Just a short observation about discussions in newsgroups (and other types of online written communication): It only seems to work when the people involved know who the other participants are (some kinds of “trust” are established).
If those involved are anonymous to each other, the discussions very often go from being healthy arguments to more or less personal slander.
Posted by: Mike Andersen | March 15, 2005 at 23:53
Hi Mike!
Yep you're right - to a certain extent. Actually I would say it is more dependent on what I would call community-culture.
I see a tendency of what you describe in most old-fashioned newsgroups, flaming is not unheard of! But take the blogs and you do not see much of it, seems the community-culture is very different there. Perhaps having grown out of a different age group?
But within the walls of a company, even with an average age of 20, flaming was not that popular. After all you would meet the guy over lunch in an hour... :-)
Posted by: sig | March 16, 2005 at 08:13