Buzzword time. Forgive me. Let me explain.
I love to create stuff. It's an obsession. I derive great pleasure from putting ideas out, experimenting with them, and seeing if they take or not. For every success I have hundreds of failures, but fortunately people remember the successes...
So I've being considering some of the things I've been creating with people these last 18 months. One is my company, Cerebra, which has evolved out of well, not much in terms of planning or funding, into the beginnings of a very cool organisation (or at least I think so). Cerebra is a quantifiable commercial asset. It is worth something. Not a whole lot right now, but I can put a value to it.
Afrigator is another similar project. Although Afrigator's business model hasn't yet kicked into gear, I know it has direct commercial potential and can clearly envision it working. Right now, like Cerebra, it wouldn't fetch a mind-blowing price but is a quantifiable commercial asset.
But as I ponder the growth of the previous two projects, I'm also considering the role of things I've created with colleagues and friends, that have no quantifiable commercial value (in fact they INCUR expense, not generate profits), but have become immensely valuable to me.
The 27 Dinner brand / movement / meeting is one such thing. This blog is another. Both require time, energy and money to maintain and have cost me money. However, I wouldn't pursue either unless they had some sort of benefit, and they have an ENORMOUS INDIRECT benefit to me. Hugh MacLeod, marketing genius and prominent blogger, cites his blog (and any successful blog for that matter) as one of the best ways he knows how to make money indirectly.
I'm going to call 27 and my blog cybersocial assets. By that I mean assets that have a strong digital dependancy / affinity and a connected, powerful community linked to them. My blog is only as good, important and influential as the community that reads it. Same for 27. I can't put a value on either, because I have absolutely no idea just how far the perceptions of the networks tied to those sites influences my commercial interests.
Am I just rambling? Ok don't answer that, Sessa. Rather tell me if I'm on to something, or if I'm wrong. Improve on the theory too...
Tags: cybersocial, assets, blogging, 27dinner, 27 dinner, community, collaboration
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