No not pinocchio, this is Ponoko. What is Ponoko you ask? “…the world’s largest marketplace for product plans. Creators and consumers use these plans to share, buy, sell and make individualized goods.”
So people can make, share, sell and buy…well, stuff. Ponoko has started out making a framework, they have some guidelines (like materials, size restrictions and such) but you design it. When you tell the world via the Ponoko site. The you browse the site and buy stuff.
Now you may buy the plans, you may buy a kit. But it is all about collaboration and open sourced relationships. People can get what they want and others can sell what they have.
It’s like some people are good designers and some have cash in hand, ready to buy. Let’s let the designers do that on an open system and then let the people with money jump in and buy.
I’m not exactly sure what Microsoft has cooked up with Mesh yet. In fact, I have not even had time to work on testing silverlight yet…but I want to - now with Mesh…it just gets harder to keep up. Here’s a few links I have so far:
Untangling the Microsoft mesh - from zdnet.
“Mesh” was Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s word of the day last week at Microsoft’s Mix ‘08 conference. Ozzie waxed prolific on “social mesh,” “device mesh,” “seamless mesh” and more.
Mesh has the potential to be HUGE - from a cynergy systems post
The last time I was excited about a new technology was about a year and a half ago with Silverlight, it was so new and fresh and offered such promise. I can now say, personally speaking, that the same things can be said about Mesh. It will ultimately redefine how we exchange, use and sync data online. It has the potential to be HUGE!
Do you really get Live Mesh?
But how do you explain something as utterly complex as Live Mesh in that short of time? Well, you don’t really, which is why there are some who think Live Mesh is a souped up FolderShare or ‘just another service’. Live Mesh is a platform, one that spans devices and operating systems. To really get a sense of what Live Mesh is, you should watch this incredible video Charles Torre shot with Ori Amiga, Group PM of the Live Developer Platform. If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, at least watch the second half.
1. You can’t own a community.
2. Communities aren’t free.
3. Every community needs leadership.
4. A community dies if it is all about you.
5. At some point, organic communities need roots.
6. Community building is not all about the tools.
This is really great stuff - and the just of it all is online community building is hard. The best bet is just getting people involved who are passionate about the subject.
I caught this post today on 37signals with the “classic” all night coder may not be the idea person to hire if you are in need of some kung fu coding skills. They think we should “hire family people“
That’s where hiring the family man or woman comes in as a cold bath of reality. When people have other obligations outside of work that they actually care more about than your probably-not-so-world-changing idea, the crutches are not available as an easy way out, and you’ll have to walk by the power of your good ideas and execution or you’ll fall fast and early. That’s a good thing!
So I think the point is to find a group of people who can really code…then, find the person who really needs to succeed. But - those 20-year-olds can really hack and think way-way outside the norm. Geeze - maybe it is just a gut call! :)
Image by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ via Flickr
