Success rarely reveals its secrets to us even when we attain it. Failure
is more generous -- it shares its lessons with us, if we just listen. In
his
Letter to the Bayosphere Community earlier this week,
Dan Gillmor underwent the rite
of self-examination as he looked back on the short history of
Bayosphere. (See
Amy Gahran's
earlier item about that here.)
Reports of Bayosphere's demise have been greatly exaggerated. It's not
being shut down. But its future is far from clear or secure, and in its
failure to achieve its lofty goals there is much to be learned. We'll
all be drawing wisdom from this well in coming weeks.
I've had difficulty getting a feel for exactly what Bayosphere is
about. It's an experiment in citizen journalism, but that's not
its subject matter.
In his
introductory note last April, Gillmor talked about the process, which is
clearly his passion, but left the topical focus to the community: "Let's
build a space where people can find news and opinion they can trust, and
information that helps us in our daily lives. I don't know everything
that's going on the Bay Area. And I don't know everything about citizen
journalism. But you and I, together, know a lot. The Bayosphere team
will offer ideas and assistance. In the end, though, we'll all figure
this out together."
Perhaps one of the first lessons to take away is the importance of
focus. As it unfolded, Bayosphere turned out not to be about the Bay
Area at all, and instead became dominated by blog postings about U.S.
and world politics. The postings are civil, which is a plus, but there's
no shortage of conversation about those topics on the Internet. It's
difficult to see a way to add value.
Another might be the importance of managing a core group of social
trendsetters. Bayosphere managed to establish a culture fairly free of
abuse, but it didn't evolve the atmosphere of topical passion that
powers the most successful online communities. Getting there requires
leadership -- not individual or directive leadership, but group
leadership. If Bayosphere had launched with a cluster of eloquent
bloggers dedicated to the proposition that there's something important
and compelling about living in the Bay Area, I think it would have
unfolded quite differently.
Undoubtedly there are many other lessons having to do with such issues
as the importance of promotion and marketing. That lesson is being
learned right now by a number of independent "citJ" sites.
Bayosphere has inspired me to do some more thinking about our own
failures, and to try harder to find the failures hidden in our
successes. No one should be deterred from experimenting in this space
by the Bayosphere outcomes. We all need to try more, to fail more, and
to fail forward.
