John Lester of Harvard Medical School is presenting a paper on Integrating and Evolving a Mob: The Growth of a Smart Mob into a Wireless Community of Practice at a forthcoming (June 2003) conference, HCI International, 2003 in Crete. It’s a case study based on activities organized via HipTop Nation.
Based on experiences with Hiptop Nation, it appears that by having ubiquitous mobile data
communication devices and a successful communal blog, it is possible to create an ideal
environment within which a smart mob can grow into a goal-oriented mobile community of
practice. Communal blogs play a critical role in the creation of three essential elements of
community: the establishment of social capital, the creation of weak ties that foster creativity,
and the formation of a sense of “place” within which everything can happen. (3, 4, 5). The final
crucial ingredient is a complex goal.
In these special circumstances, a smart mob can not only quickly change into a mobile community
of practice, but once its goals have been achieved it can just as quickly “dissolve” back into a
smart mob. This is metaphorically similar to the way certain liquid solutions can quickly
crystallize, dissolve back into liquid, and then recrystallize based on external influences. By
adding an external influence, namely a specific shared goal, one can “precipitate” the
crystallization of these smart mobs into powerful mobile communities of practice. After the goals
have been achieved, during which participants have gained expertise in their particular domains,
the group can dissolve back into a smart mob and be ready to rapidly recrystallize whenever new
goals are introduced.
The increasing popularity of communal blogs, coupled with more sophisticated ubiquitous mobile
communication devices (9, 10, 11), will most likely make this interesting social phenomenon more
common in the future. A future opportunity will be the deliberate cultivation of this phenomenon,
as it has the ability to create incredibly effective and creative goal-oriented teams of mobile
individuals.
