It's the question I've lately been getting asked the most, so I thought I'd publish a response.

First of all, to clarify in the simplest terms, a beta community is the future group of tenants/buyers/customers for a place to be, involving crowdsourcing it into a community numbering in the hundreds. But how does it all begin?

It may help to explain where the millions of people initially came from to establish eBay, Facebook and YouTube - by providing a unique valuable service and allowing people to realize that the service becomes even more valued the more people they include. That's the viral loop, and a viral loop network occurs when people spark their own related groups. For example:

- YouTube allowed videos to be easily shared like never before. Users formed groups based on certain video publishers and topics.
- Facebook established itself at a single university allowing students to easily network with their peers like never before. Users formed groups based on other universities and companies.
- eBay provided access to great deals that couldn't be found anywhere else. Users formed groups based on unique interests.

What's the unique valuable service that could be applied to crowdsourcing a place? Let's take a nightlife-oriented commercial district looking to improve on its sparse day scene - here are the benefits it could offer future 'customers':

- Meeting fellow dayworkers that provide social well being to overcome an isolated lifestyle.
- Gaining recognition for helping a local independent business, something people are very passionate about
- Making a real, tangible, measurable difference in one's neighborhood
- Identifying business opportunities that would otherwise not be utilized
- Feeling a true sense of community
- Having the ability to establish daytime groups of common interests that meet at daytime venues, and allow them to be open to other beta community members
Invitations to exclusive events
- Exclusive access to meet with the business owners (monthly fireside chats)
- Exclusive access to knowledge worker/cultural creative calendar of events
- Exclusive opportunity to win a free dinner for two to a designated restaurant each month, and receive neighborhood recognition for contributing 'the most' to a local independent Adams Morgan (priceless)

Once you have the valued service, you can even start the beta community with your own friends. The founders of Brewtopia did just that with 140 of their friends when crowdsourcing their beer selection, and wound up with a supporting community of 10,000 in a few weeks.

I get asked that a lot.

It's not easy to explain in words, so here's a visual map (larger one here) that can help provide a big picture answer. CoolTown Beta Communities is the implementation entity of CoolTown Studios, this 'weekdaily' newsite blog. The blog itself (and only the blog!) is a free public service (including all 1200+ archived entries) toward building better places to live/work/play. We're also establishing a joint venture with a change management and viral marketing firm to more effectively crowdsource cool places for creatives.

You can get a better look at and description of the illustrated triple loop diagrams here, which utilize beta communities to provide the blueprints and implementation programs for developing real places.

Note that the ultimate goal is the experience and enjoyment of natural cultural districts, filled with vibrant third places.

The diagram uses a couple of familiar icons, such as Keynote from Apple and Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, two resources with a lot of cooltown spirit.

Visual map of the beta community process in action

A picture is worth a thousand words, so maybe a diagram is worth at least 500. For those of you who have read about beta communities on this site, but don't quite understand how they work, maybe this visual map will help.

First of all, it's a snapshot of an actual project underway - the Elements green vegetarian restaurant and education center in Washington DC.

Notice where one starts! on the path. As each step is completed, the path (arrow) turns green, so you can instantly see how the project is progressing. The scale icon represents a stable, readjusting loop, while the snowball symbolizes a growing, reinforcing loop - this is where you ultimately want to be and where 'revenue happens'. Notice that the phases occur in loops, as few things really happen linearly in reality - it's a constant series of readjustments and fine tuning before moving on.

As you can see, Elements is presently at the phase where the beta community needs to design the Elements Program of menu items, events and programs, while the owner/partners need to secure a lease as they let rates fall in the desired district.

Numerous layers can be added, such as visuals of the desired result or the progress itself, or examples of dialogue that convey emotion and concern ("We love our logo! When are we getting the lease already? What organic farmers are we going with?")

Keep track of Elements' progress here.

Feel free to ask questions below under 'Comments'.

Crowdsourcing a NOLA network to a team to a building to a coffeehouse...

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

A few months ago NOLA's (New Orleans, LA) young urban rebuilding professionals (YURP) established a social network for the purpose of building a sustainable New Orleans, now at 1688 members.

Within a couple of months, a hundred of them established a beta community to identify development opportunities they could crowdsource into a model of what New Orleans could be, known as the NOLA Yurp Beta Community. Less than one month after their first meeting on September 26, 2007 they identified an interested building owner, Lee Stafford, located in the economically-challenged neighborhood of O.C. Haley near downtown).

On November 14, 2007 they held the first beta community meeting to rebuild 1618 O.C. Haley (pictured, center building) into a community-oriented, green, socially-conscious coffeehouse that will feature local talent, art and music, and in December launched the online beta community groupsite, aka Rebrew Orleans, which grew from 28 to 65 members this past week as design, environmental, branding and events teams began to form.

The energy continues to rise... there's now a motivated effort to establish a coworking site above the coffeehouse, and another building owner across the street has already proclaimed, "I'm next!"

Keep track of all the CoolTown beta communities here.

Beta community update Q4 2007

Gear Factory, Syracuse, NY
Developer Rick Destitio is renovating a historic 1910 five-story gear factory building into a artist-musician live-work center via a beta community now consisting of 170 of the city's most progressive creatives. They're now working on the floor plans for the 65,000 s.f. structure and will start taking reservations next month. If you live in Syracuse and want to be a future tenant or patron, join the effort here.

Elements, Washington DC
A VIBE-sponsored beta community crowdsourcing a green cafe/education center presently at 157 members. The business owner is looking to establish a partnership with the most successful green cafe in the city and is negotiating a lease for 3000 s.f. Read more in this Washington Business Journal article, and join the beta community if you live in the area.

O.C. Haley, New Orleans
With the concerted efforts of neighborhood leaders and young urban rebuilding professionals (aka NOLA YURP), a building owner is offering his building as a benchmark for revitalization in the economically-neglected neighborhood of O.C. Haley. The project, just a few blocks from downtown, commenced just last month, and they're looking at a March 1, 2008 (optimistic) opening date for a green, fair-trade, community-oriented coffeehouse. If you're a local, especially to the neighborhood, please do join the beta community.

Keep track of these beta communities by joining the nascent CoolTown social network.

Image: This scene in Buenos Aires captures the vibrancy being sought by these beta communities.

To recap the previous entry, Linus Torvalds galvanized an army of people to co-develop a superior 'program' called Linux, and Steve Jobs is able to interpret people's values, principles and stories into stunningly designed products like the iMac and iPod.

Now, what if you combined the efforts and applied it to creative real estate development? You'd get a community of profoundly satisfied people committed to, entirely proud of, and inhabiting the phenomenally-designed place they help build. If you followed Torvald's footsteps and crowdsourced a significant number of people to co-develop the 'program' of tenants and patrons for a business, building or block, then assimilated Steve Jobs' skills and were able to interpret that collective program of tenants, patrons and their stories... you'd be able to transform that body of knowledge and emotion into extraordinarily designed 'products', namely as business and residential interiors, building exteriors, public spaces and the user experiences that go with them.

There are such development and business leaders undergoing that process right now - to create in the emotionally-driven manner and prolific effectiveness as Torvalds and Jobs - as profiled here and here. They are crowdsourcing the most progressive talent to define the very kind of place that inspires them, and will then work with the best design talent to execute that in the built form.

Coincidentally, the Linux mascot's nickname is the same as mine. Hmmm.

I am speaking on a panel today at the Urban Land Institute's annual conference in Vegas, and the inevitable question will be, "What is it that you exactly do?" The tagline above says it pretty succinctly, crowdsourcing cool places for creatives, which after explanation comes, "How is this done?"

By training city, business and community leaders to become a figurative combination of Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux, and Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple. First, it's important to understand what makes these two entrepreneurs so extraordinary.

As the story goes, Torvalds was frustrated with existing computer operating systems and decided to write his own. However, rather than work independently, he asked for collaboration (see his original request here). This open call to his coding, known today as open source, resulted in a swarm of volunteers who sensed they were part of something significant.

Jobs on the other hand, as we all know, has a knack for interpreting people's values (beauty, elegance, simplicity) and principles (I shouldn't have to take ten minutes learning how to use each feature, it should fit comfortably in my pocket...) and designing inspiring new products that strike emotional chords. As this previous entry highlighted, you don't design by committee, you ask them for their stories by which the design is based on.

Next entry, what happens when you combine the two...

First beta community meets in New Orleans

A few weeks ago we profiled a group of young urban rebuilding professionals that wanted to make a difference in New Orleans. On September 26, 2007 they were invited to take more action as far as the rebuilding itself was literally concerned, at the first New Orleans beta community meeting at Tulane University.

The first order of business was for the group to establish a manifesto by which the businesses, buildings and communities they were investing in would be defined. Three writers were selected, and here are the destinations of inspiration the group identified to serve as the foundation:

Andrew - The markets of Honk Kong
Joel - The streets of Salzburg, Austria
Ritchie - Atlanta's bike paths
John - Atlanta's mixed-use, greenbelts, Serenby village
Victoria - Seattle's urban grocery stores
Shercole - Urban groceries of Houston and Dallas
John G - Holyoke, MA's urban agriculture
Jessica - Bangkok's peaceful courtyards
Emily - Madrid's communal public spaces
Kenny - Pedestrian promenades of Santa Monica, Burlington and Quincy Market in Boston
Hampton - University City and its coffeehouses, St. Louis
Morgan - The mix of old and new buildings in Seattle
Ben M - Charlottesville, VA's pedestrian mall
Ben - The squares of Savannah, GA
Katelyn - The streets and local shops of Beaumont, Paris
Rachel - Iowa City's pedestrian street
Zach K - The pedestrian-oriented life of Florence, Italy despite no mass transit
Victoria - Walkable neighborhoods of Atlanta
Allie - Venice, CA's amenities open day to midnight; Chicago's neigborhoody North Side
Jeff - The mix of modern renovations with old warehouses in Georgetown, DC
Casey - Munich's Hofbrau House (German beer gardens); Amsterdam's beauty
Julia - The fresh markets, free bikes, pedestrian streets of Rue de Rivoli, Paris
Seth - Block parties, historic homes in The Heights of New Orleans
Lauren J - The personality, character, bars, cafes of Old Town Square, Krakow, Poland
Lauren - The homes of Lisbon, Portugal
Editha - The green selection at Eastern Market, DC
Zach Y - The young population and convenience in Brooklyn, Park Slope, NYC
Miji - Creative redevelopment of historic buildings in Philly
Henesi - The new buildings, concerts and carnivals of Long Island City, NY
Gill - The bike paths, character, joyful life in Barcelona, Spain
Jess G - Inhabiting the river and walking long distances without feeling like it in Paris
Vika - Waterfront park in Schenectady, NY
Ross - The walkable nature of Asheville, NC and Lincoln Road, Miami

The first beta community meeting in Syracuse

What kind of space do artists and musicians want in the city of Syracuse? The simplest way to find out is to ask them, which is what developer Rick Destito formally began doing Tuesday night last week on the first floor of his 5-story, 65,000 s.f. warehouse (pictured), which Rick (brown shirt, hand in motion) is committed to transforming into an artist/musician live-work community (see rendering here).

Here are a few key discussion points from the beta community meeting:

The status of the building: There are 17 artist studios, 3 of which are available (175, 130, and 250 s.f. at $1/sf/mo. that take up a fraction of the of the building, the rest of which is raw unused space, as you can see.

Naming the building: Based on discussion at the project's beta community site, Rick announced it would be called The Gear Factory, with website to come at http://www.gearfactorysyr.com, being designed by building member, Michael Heagerty.

Compensation for participation: The group began exploring the idea of profit-sharing based on individual sweat equity, initiated by Rick.



Building program: The group discussed what amenities the building would offer in order to ensure their involvement as either tenants, buyers or patrons. Community rooms, classrooms, musician practice rooms and studios, rooftop garden, rooftop cafe, first floor restaurant/brewery, Big Wheel space (left image), studio-fronting residences, and retail-fronting studios were brought up.

The vision: The members discussed on what the building will be known for - a reputed art center, collaboration, community. They also brainstormed on a slogan for the building, which is continuing online.

Manifesto/charter/declaration: The group began defining the principles the building will stand for via a document that Rick will use to maintain the building community's integrity.

Keep track of all beta communities by signing up here.

Image by Colleen Woolpert, a photographer tenant at The Gear Factory.

Beta communities seeding in many cities (Part 2)

Continuing our look from yesterday at where Beta Communities are being formed...

Syracuse
Where will the creatives go in Syracuse when places begin to gentrify? That won't be a problem at 200 South Geddes, where developer Rick Destitio is transforming a 5-story historic factory building into a artist-musician live-work center. Not only that, but he's sponsoring a Beta Community that will eventually consist of 500 of the city's most progressive, culturally creative, entrepreneurial and/or passionate people who want to co-design, co-develop, and eventually co-habitate the place. The group of 18 core members are currently narrowing down the name... will it be the Brown-Lipe Gear Building, GearWorks, or the Gear Factory? If you live in Syracuse and want to be a part of it, you can join the effort here.

New Orleans
The city is rebuilding. However, just what is it rebuilding into? New Orleans already has a reputation of being one of the most authentic cities in the country, and the next generation of young urban rebuilding professionals (aka YURP) want to keep it that way, yet raise its quality of life, 24/7 experiences, and knowledge-based economy to rival that of Austin, Silicon Valley and NYC. YURP, 700+ members and counting, is just about to launch a Beta Community to begin identifying key buildings in targeted neighborhoods (The Warehouse District?). Get involved with the base group here.

Keep track of these Beta Communities as well as the ones mentioned yesterday here.

Image source: Chris Camargo