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Social networking and spreading the Integral message

Posted August 12th, 2008 by Grey Drane in Social networking

I've been doing a lot of "playing around" in various social networks lately, so tha The Integral Pod @ Gaia.com t seems like a good topic to get my blog here started off with. And there are a couple of somewhat related issues that I had in mind, in particular.

First, over at Gaia.com, I'm the current cultivator of the Integral Pod (what used to be known as "I-I+Zaadz"). I mention on my profile page here that I think the Integral Pod is a good complement to Integral Life not so much because Integral Life lacks a discussion forum (there's still the 'plex for now, after all, and some form of groups function is apparently coming here in the future), but because of the type of community that there is over at Gaia.com.

That site is good at attracting spiritually-minded people, a great many of whom are likely at or around a Greenish sort of altitude. That means that a fair number of those will be "ready to pop" into second-tier. And there are likely others already at or around a second-tier altitude who just don't "know" it yet (in the sense that they don't know anything -- or very little -- about Integral Theory). So it seems like a great place to get the Integral "message" out to a fairly receptive audience. And in the same way, it's a great place to grow from the great many different perspectives that can be found throughout the community, regardless of what altitude the others in the community are at.

So come check it out if you haven't already!

On a related note, then, I've been wondering about how the community here is going to grow. I suppose the marketing, the content, and the membership process will ensure that the most active members are at least deeply interested in Integral, given that they're willing to pay the membership fee, but will there be any sort of more active "quality control" beyond that?

There's also the content rating system, which I imagine will help point to the higher quality community content over time, but... [I think I'm losing my train of thought here... time to go to bed....] ... I guess all I'm wondering is how much Integral Life is going to be a sort of integral sanctuary and how that sanctuary is going to be protected and nurtured. And beyond that, how is the Integral Life community then going to interact with the rest of the broader online (and off) community?

That's why I'm so anxious to see the social networking features that are planned for the future. In other words, I'm wondering how Integral Life is going to be for the rest of cyberspace (and beyond) what the Integral Pod is for Gaia.com.

OK, time for bed! Nite all!

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Integral Life is not about social networking

Posted August 13th, 2008 by Robb Smith

Hi Grey - Integral Life is about awareness and growth networking, not social networking. The ends are different, so presumably the means are too. If any Web 2.0 community were designed to achieve what Integral Life is being designed to achieve, than they might begin to look similar. But because they are not, it would be unwise for IL to blindly adopt the feature set of a wildly proliferating pluralistic techno-economic mode. Because we are aiming at perspectival depth and awareness, we knew that there would be two outcomes from proceeding down the path we have chosen: 1) until we have free community forums or until someone wants to use free blogging as a discussion vehicle, there will be dissent as people mind-map us against current market offerings, not recognizing the inherent vertical limitations of that which they seek, and 2) to build real perspectival significance can take time and bowing to flatland means is a short-term but ultimately unfulfilling path to our goal to create a perspectival catalog of an adequate community.

And this may all turn out to be not systemically functional, too, and it’s easy to change something down the line. Robb

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OK, but...

Posted August 13th, 2008 by Grey Drane in response to Integral Life is not about social networking

Hi Robb,

Thanks for stopping by, but to be honest, I'm not quite sure what to make of your reply here. Maybe you're misunderstanding me or I'm misunderstanding you, or we're just otherwise talking past each other, because I get the feeling that your reply doesn't have a whole lot to do with my blog post, and it also feels a tad aggressive for some reason (but I could very well just be projecting for that last impression).

I realize that Integral Life isn't a social network exactly, and I guess I was using the term in a broader sense than you are. I meant it in the sense of "connecting a community", whereas I get the impression you're using it to mean the modern, online form of mere "socializing".

As far as I can see, my analogy comparing the Integral Pod and Gaia.com to Integral Life and the broader community of which it is a part still holds, since the main purpose of the Pod is for its members to grow together, not just to socialize. So I'm not sure where this line is coming from:

"...it would be unwise for IL to blindly adopt the feature set of a wildly proliferating pluralistic techno-economic mode."

True enough, but I can't see how that (or your two points that follow) relates to what I said in my blog post. The social networking features I refer to are just the ones you say are "Features in Development" in the "Integral Life Site Features" presentation, so I assume that isn't part of the pluralistic feature set you're thinking of above.

Long story short, could you explain yourself a little better? 'Cause I'm not sure what it is you're trying to say.

Cheers,

Grey

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You're right

Posted August 14th, 2008 by Robb Smith in response to OK, but...

Grey, you're right to be confused. I wrote the reply in a hurry and after re-reading your post I realize that I was off topic. I didn't mean to sound aggressive because I wasn't trying to be. Anyway, your basic inquiry is the one we're holding, which is how does a real integral community develop online and what does it look like (and how might it differ from others)? As I mention, at this point we're privileging awareness, growth, perspectival complexity and integration, and not trying to merely duplicate the features of existing communities. Having said that, we will soon have a blog post outlining the features we are developing, many of which are pretty basic S/N capabilities, like a professional directory, robust groups, and a discussion forum. But on top of that we are keeping an eye on how to instantiate actual developmental communication logics into the social fabric of the community itself. Thanks for the participation. Robb

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Sounds good!

Posted August 14th, 2008 by Grey Drane in response to You're right

Robb, yeah, after posting my reply, I figured you were probably just in a hurry. But thanks for coming back and clarifying. Sounds like you've got things moving in the right direction.

Cheers,

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the 'Purpose/Product' Fit

Posted September 15th, 2008 by Kerry Dugan in response to You're right

Thanks Grey, Robb, Annie, Eric,

What a challenge this endeavor is! As I see it now the purpose of the portal may be more aligned with being needs, whereas a S/N site seems to readily accommodate an array of pre-being need ways of relating. Yet this portal is a very public face and a LR(social quad) footprint of IntegralLife. The challenge is complicated by the difficulty of how to tweak and tease a tealness and beyond into this green leaning medium of the web.

Considering how a business attracts and retains the staff that it does, or how a spiritual teacher draws and keeps the students that they do, we can see a qualitative, watershed difference in the collectives motivated primarily by being needs rather than by, primarily, social needs which may often tend to express and compensate for deficiencies or inadequacies. I say this having established surprisingly supportive friendships (given the limits of the medium) through the I-I forums, and having the privilege of 'cultivating' the Integral Men's Group over on GAIA.com. Julius Ko's recent IL post, "Friendship", points to this value. And a great service that is, to provide simple kindred communion.

In a round of emails to I-I a few years ago I wrote about "nested privacies" as a means of accommodating levels of purpose as are active at any moment in the life of a diverse community. The Outstanding Voices column is a decent answer to the need for weighting merit and designing for the cream to rise to the fore.

I look forward to this space, the IL portal, being as deliniated by purposeful, functional usage as any of our most beautiful cities. (a metaphor reflective of the task!)

Be well,

Kerry

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not about social....

Posted August 18th, 2008 by Eric Giesbrecht in response to Integral Life is not about social networking

Robb,

Thanks for posting this. I as well carried with me some notion of being able to "find people" once I came through the doors of this portal. I am not sure exactly what informed that impression, but there you have it, my expectational baggage. I can now see how this site is going to take some time to build, develop and establish itself as a learning community. That said, I will do my part in this process and contribute as much as I can in responding to and building upon the various assets here as well as keeping a blog rolling. I am sure that there are many others who are looking to offer up some 'depth-charges' here and there, keeping the flatland u-boats/submarines(?) at bay.....It just so happens that I am looking to re-story/objectify my self recently via the written word and this space could provide the perfect vehicle to do just that. I need to write more - it is not enough anymore to simply consume material offered.

Serendipitously enough, I am going to be applying (read: hopefully enrolling) to participate in a distance learning masters program through Royal Roads University, in the faculty of Leadership and Training. I think that spending time here at iLife will be an interesting lead-in to the on-line academic community that I am about to become a part of through the Uni. It is a model that I am not entirely familiar with but am keen to feel around/into and, somewhat out of need, adapt to.

let's go,

~chef

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