I’m only aware of the associations that serve my profession, the likes of PRSA, CPRS, and the organization to which I’ve belonged since 1977, IABC.

These associations have fulfilled several vital needs for a long time, primarily networking and professional development. However, practitioners don’t need associations for these activities any more. Social media have enabled self-organizing groups to satisfy these professional needs. Some examples:

• While the last Global PR Web Week was nearly two years ago, it shows what can hapen online when a group of volunteers throw their hats in the ring.
• CaseCamp is a self-organizing “unconference” focused on marketing, although anyone interested in any profession could use the same model to put together a similar unconference focused on their own field. In fact, CaseCamp is based on BarCamp, which focuses on web applications, and DemoCamp, a BarCamp offshoot that allows for more regular networking.
• PodCamp, another unconference based on the BarCamp/CaseCamp model, focuses on podcasting. I mention it separately because the recent New York PodCamp drew more than 1,000 participants (only about 400 shy of the typical attendance at an IABC international conference) and some heavyweight sponsors. Like all of these unconferences, the registration is free and the agenda is self-organized using a wiki.
• Third Thursday is a monthly meeting of Bay Area PR and marketing pros interested in learning more about the practical applications of new media in business. It’s currently jointly sponsored by The Social Media Club and The Society for New Communications Research, but was organized by four practitioners who saw a need and started Third Thursday to meet it. In Toronto, the effort has been duplicated with Third Tuesday, while Ottawa offers Third Monday.
• Social networks focused on communications offer individuals another cost-free alternative for networking and knowledge sharing. MyRagan has already attracted several thousand members.

The point is that, given the social network that allows individuals to self-organize for networking and professional development, these benefits of association membership—at a cost of several hundred dollars per year—may lose their appeal. That’s not to suggest these associations can’t provide genuine value that makes the dues worthwhile. And it’s not to suggest that the 14,000 members of IABC are ready to jump ship for online networking just yet. It’s still pretty much the early adopters who have figured out that the network itself can provide the benefits for which they used to rely on their associations. So IABC, PRSA, CPRS—and all those other associations in other professions—still have time to define that role that the social media space cannot play.

But they’d better get started now. Things move fast these days.

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 Last year I had a conversation with Jen Pahlka about having a Barcamp-style event in parallel to Web 2.0, calling it Web2Open.  Chris Messina and Tara Hunt were similarly lobbying.  With Jen’s effort, the good graces of Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle, some help from Brady Forrest — it’s all happening.

Free and open for you to participate:

• Sunday, April 15 – Ignite!Expo 7-9 pm
• Monday, April 16 – Community Roundtable 10am – 5pm
• Tuesday, April 17 – Web2Open 1pm – 7pm
• Wednesday, April 18 – Web2Open 1pm – 7pm

Throughout Web2Open, the Mashroom will be open for people to bring their APIs and do something together.

Web 2.0 Expo is going to be quite an event itself, of course.  We’re talking Moscone scale now.  I’m on a keynote panel about Enterprise 2.0 alongside Satish Dharmaraj, Dan Farber and Subrah Iyar. Later Wednesday afternoon holding a workshop with Rob Rueckert, Michael Lenz, David Meyer, Joe Schueller. 

There are also a couple of parties.

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I spent a lot of time with David Berlind before MashupCamp talking about open space methodology and how camps work. Note Hat Tips at the footer of the wiki homepage:

FooCamp, BarCamp, Ward Cunningham, Kwiki and the Open Space Method.

Ryan King voiced a concern for attribution and overt commercialization that had been grumbling in the community. I think conversation has settled any substantive issue. David pulled off an event, IMHO, with a good balance for commercialization. The best thing I heard him say was something like “With wikis and open space, why would people pay conference organizers to help figure out where to spend their money.” There was no cream sucked from the top that I know of.

MashupCamp did, however, extend the methodology with structure beyond open space. The SpeedGeeking rounds and mashup contest was explicitly organized, a methodology borrowed from InterOp. As a result, vendors big and small prepared demos for entry well in advance, instead of hacking happening between the start and end of open space. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, just a difference that needs to be noted.

David noted that for future MashupCamps the need for a CRM system beyond the wiki. As I explained over the phone to him last week, the reason he was overloaded with email and felt the need for traditional event management tools was how he didn’t offload enough responsbility to the group.

There is a general lesson here, the more you share control, the less cost to you and the greater value greated. Instead of having attendees confirm by both wiki and email so there is an “official” list on one guy’s hard drive — trust attendees to respect the wiki list and fall back on revision history as needed. The reason event registration systems exist is in part automation to get you a name tag, but mostly so attendees can be segmented, analyzed and marketed to. When event organizer gets out of the way and attendees are participants instead of marketing targets, the need for a transaction backbone and CRM system is eliminated.

Another illustration is how BarCamp and MashupCamp gained wifi. MashupCamp put out a call for donations, and David hesitated to include a PayPal button in the wiki (like many do, including the annual Supernova party). Not a bad approach. But with BarCamp you had a true barn raising. A couple of hours before the camp I started bitching in the IRC channel about how our DSL line wasn’t going to cut it and within minutes we had an in-kind sponsor show up to put a dish on the roof.

Jimmy Wales once pointed out that with Wikipedia people contribute more when they fail to be served. When there is goodwill to a common resource, it’s almost better to have that resource be slightly broken or unfinished. Then volunteers can direct their own contributions. As ad hoc organizations and businesses alike are learning to leverage social software — they are learning to work with volunteers. Practices that have more to do with running a non-profit organization than traditional community management for a portal. And practices that need to be shared.

When breaking down a campsite, proper ettiquite is to take only pictures and leave only footprints. Like an avalanche search party, you line people up with six feet of spacing between them and walk the ground for trash. Even if you know the next camper could be a car-camping hick replete with a power generator, camper and a cooler as big as his truck bed. The wilderness is a commons and the only tragedy is when people don’t respect it.

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Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.

He also writes Ross Mayfield’s Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.

Socialtext set up a Kwiki for the event, which will be at least one day between February 18th-25th around Palo Alto. Co-organizers David Berlind and Doug Gold are nailing down the location, but signups for a maximum of 250 developers and observers are open.

Using my supreme design skills, I whipped up a logo:

Which sucked, so Pete Kaminski made one:

Which is a trip. And Chris Radcliffe made one too:

Now the logos are in rotation on the wiki. You too can contribute one (expect modest fame, possibly T-shirts, no fortune), and people are voting on this wiki page.

Oh, and huge hat tips to FooCamp, BarCamp, Ward Cunningham, Kwiki and the Open Space Method.

Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.

He also writes Ross Mayfield’s Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.