Coworking as a Form of Groundswell

My friend recently alerted me to a place called IndyHall. He sent me a link to their Twitter profile, which has almost 600 followers. IndyHall is an organization in Philadelphia built around the notion of coworking – which is still fairly new to me. According to Wikipedia, coworking is defined as the following:

“…an emerging trend for a new pattern for working. Typically work-at-home professionals or independent contractors or people who travel frequently end up working in relative isolation. Coworking is the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space.”

Although some coworking facilities are paid for by the organizers, there is a charge to use the facilities at Independent’s Hall. The fee ranges from $25/month to $275/month, depending on frequency and duration of visits as well as workspace and equipment needed. For those who can afford this, it seems like a promising deal. Coworking taps into the concept of Groundswell, which is basically the idea of people using technologies to get what they need from each other instead of from traditional institutions. It involves participation, collaboration, and the use of social technologies to create a network of minds that is collaboratively greater than the sum of its parts.

If and when I do become a freelancer, I would love to be involved in a community like IndyHall. Until then, I plan to use both Twitter and Indy Hall's web site (which has a blog as well as a wiki) to become more familiar with the coworker lifestyle.

Reaching Out to Healthcare Consumers

I’ve been reading Groundswell lately, and have really been enjoying it. There’s so much I can relate to from an Internet Marketing perspective. I recently completed Part I, which did a great job of summarizing how consumers are using social technologies in a way that is greatly impacting, and in a sense controlling, organizations. I especially liked reading about the social technographics profiles businesses can create to target their users, and what social technologies would best suit each profile.

One of the observations the authors make is the strict regulatory compliance healthcare companies face when it comes to using these social technologies. As someone who’s worked with many pharmaceutical clients (during my work at Razorfish), I’ve experience firsthand what a challenge this can be. From a web content standpoint, pharmaceutical companies are already restricted to what claims they can make regarding their products – for example, one company I worked with had a requirement that stated it could only use the phrase “prevent” if it was preceded by “helps.” As far as making their sites more interactive, many of these companies are forced to use “unidirectional” interactive features like videos, questionnaires and stories of satisfied users sharing their experiences. I think it’s great that sites like MyAlli.com and Dailystrength.com have recently started to break that mold by including discussion forums on their sites. Nevertheless, the forums must still be very closely monitored for medical recommendations posted by users, negative feedback, etc.

A great outlet for companies who are not able to utilize “bidirectional” features like blogs and forums – due to government regulations, lack of human resources, or for other reasons – is the microsite. A microsite is essentially an extension of a company’s main web site, branded or unbranded, dedicated to a related cause and designed for community appeal. For example, www.inyourcorner.com was designed by AstraZeneca as a support site for women with breast cancer; at the same time, it clearly promotes the drug Arimidex.

Some related thoughts are posted in the article I wrote for Ad News/Philly Ad Club.