Being online 
What you hear, you forget
What you see, you remember
What you do, you know
(I am not so wise- I think that it is an African saying)
Well, now it is the time
What for?
To say why, from 2006, I decided slowly, piece by piece, to go online 
After my experience in helping startups in my own country, and deciding in 2006 that I would move abroad indefinitely, I checked the options.
Option A: work where my network was already alive and kicking
Option B: work where it would make sense
Of course, you understand which option I took 
Memento audere semper
And part of that option was checking some ideas on XXI century privacy and relationships, as I was moving in a place where I had no history
The plan: testing the boundaries of XXI century privacy
It took some time to build a theoretical background, but then I was ready to go online
Still anonymous, using stage6 and travel+cooking movies as an excuse (my moniker? aleph123)…
…but building a nice 40+ karma and over 400 friends in few months, with plenty of repeat visitors and messages
Then, a friend from UK (thanks, Sata) invited me, as usual, in a new community she joined- facebook, right before it was open to everybody.
Then, in Summer 2007, after meeting some old friends (from mid-1990s, just out of Soviet Union!) again in Latvia…
…decided to start using an old membership there that I had activated long before, in a local social network called draugiem
In few months, I moved from about 10 to over 700 friends (now over 1000), with an 2nd level network covering over 190k members, out of an active community of over 2million members, scattered worldwide (mainly the former Soviet bloc diaspora)
Again- communication about travel, tourism, etc was the key. And some of my online friends became friends, in each community (sometimes also occasionally we were in the same place- also if not necessarily at the same time; but more about this later!)
Why did I do so? Because I wanted to explore the possibilities of
a) privacy when everybody can know more about you than you would ever say to them
b) having a transparent private life while still being in a profession that too often adopts business models from the XIX century
How is it going so far? Well, after sharing part of this cultural anthropology experience (hey, I studied also multicultural communication and management, and I was in active politics in Europe as a teen-ager ) with my personal and professional network, I started sharing with the unknown
Step by step: from invisibility to controlled transparency
First, through some local meetups in Brussels (where I decided to settle), on the technical (Information architecture) and business (open coffee) side
Then online, by de-facto re-activating my old e-zine that I created at the beginning of this decade
Again, why did I publish online material that usually is released as part of consulting activities?
To share ideas about critical issues with my customers and business partners, telling online “neutral” messages from my past experiences or knowledge from my network that they would not like to hear when talking on their specific issues
It is easier to read something that does not talk about you and finding some similarities and some differences, than accepting constructive criticism
Then, I started adding articles online (www.partnershipincubator.com).
Finally, when stage6 closed, started publishing online my own blog, disguised as a community- actually, because eventually other authors and creative will join me (I have already some volunteers)
[PS: From February 2009, CWCommunity.org is focused only on virtual and real travel; the blog is, of course, here]
Coaching: reading is not enough
In January 2008 I prepared the draft of a book on my social networking experiments (including both the theory and the practice, as I did from early 1990s), e.g. on how to manage shared resources, or other business and non-business social engineering stuff.
I also added the on-line parts that I first tested in late 1990s (offering for free to customers), and more recently with my own programming (yes, I still do some programming- PHP MySQL mainly, but I am toying with other technologies when needed)
And, finally, after testing few years ago an online community for my former Comshare colleagues (www.comsharenomore.com) by building it from scratch, also to test my own database encryption method and security/logging ideas , I started using Drupal and Joomla
[PS: From 2008, I also started using WordPress for test applications and review, as well as other software platforms before that, like OSCommerce, DotProject,etc; the first custom website used as a technology and business showcase was PRConsulting.Com, registered as a domain in 1998, but active few years earlier on shared websites]
Why? To identify lessons that I could share, and allow others to benefit- using as much open source (free) software, and possibly without any technicalities (the content is the king); of course, I tested other platforms, networks, technologies- but this is to keep the story (relatively) short
The next step? I started to discuss with interested parties my concepts: sometimes pro bono, sometime with a shared benefit in mind (for them, it is cheaper than re-inventing the wheel; for me, funding further research and recovering some costs…)
Stay tuned: if I will split in sections, most of the parties will be anyway interested in showing the concepts; if I will keep it as a unity, it will be published- albeit in a way that will require readers some work to get to the message- as the saying at the beginning of this article says
But if somebody is interested in further discussing my concepts or would like to ask me if I can “extract” a slice, drop me a line, using the contact form.
Tags: advertisement, content, google, online, presence, publish, web