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In lugnet.events, Brian Davis wrote:
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The company, by the way, is LEGO. The product is the NXT, and I’ve been
working on the MUP or MDP for months and months. Why?
Because It’s Fun. PERIOD.
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As someone would has built a career on trying to understand why
consumers/users/fans volunteer to help out the brands they love, this is a
fascinating discussion!
In order for the process of collaboration to work,
what has to happen? Everbody say it with me now...
“Everybody goes home happy”
Finding the balance is the key to making this happen. When the balance is off,
there’s problem for both sides. As others have mentioned, there’s a ton of
examples where both non-profits and for-profits have excited their
consumers/users/fans into working together with them, much to the success and
excitement of both sides of the fence. There are entire books and http://www.churchofthecustomer.com that highlight examples of this. There’s
even a term for it: Citizen Marketing.
Anthony, I can understand your core
point (as I understand it) - that you believe that corporate entities that use
volunteers to help them build a business are doing something wrong.
But this
isn’t an issue of whether such a thing is right or wrong. It’s about whether the
balance for both sides is correct. When the balance is off, the relationship is
problematic for both sides. If volunteers are getting an emotional connection
from volunteering that makes them feel emotionally satisified, who cares what
the business effect is? Personally, I happily give my time away to companies to
help them make money. That’s not why I volunteer, of course, but it’s the side
effect. Some examples:
- I beta test software because I want to help make a
better product for myself and for others. I’ve been beta testing the latest
Battlefield 2142 build, for free, happily, because I’d like to do my part to
help Dice/EA create something wonderful for me and my friends to play.
- I
help offer ideas to the Battlefield 2 Combat gaming system (a paid in process,
run by a company) because I know that the more I pitch in, the more fun the
system will be. There’s a company running the overall system, not something I
can or want to do, which makes me willing to pay for the service. But I pitch in
where I can because I can, and because I want to.
- I’ve spoken for free at a
number of large conferences run by companies or conference companies, simply
because I wanted to help out, to spread a message. I knew full well that the
conference organizers were making a pretty penny on the event. I knew that my
name (or more specifically the LEGO name) on the marquee might help pull in a
few extra people and in turn earn extra money.
Or how about a few
non-personal examples:
* The Fiskar Ambassadors
or Adobe Community Experts
* The
501st Legion (Sure they’re volunteering, but they’re
also helping Lucas directly
* Snakes on a Plane - how much volunteering was
done to help spread the word about this movie?
* Homemade Apple commercials
* SXSW conference - every year there’s a ton of volunteers who help the paid
support staff run the event.
All of these activities and
many more are undertaken by normal people,
not associated with those corporate entities because that’s how they enjoy
spending their free time. As Kelly put it earlier, what’s the value you get out
of what you’re putting in (time, money, etc.)? If you’re happy with the value
exchange, what’s the problem?
On a related note, personally, I’d LOVE to see
someone/some group take on BrickFest as a full-time gig. The BrickFest team over
the years has done an amazing job, especially considering all of them have day
jobs. At the end of the day, however, trying to run a large scale event in your
free time hours is a governor on the overall potential of the event. When the
event gets to a point where venue size grows dramatically, who handles the extra
logistics? How do insurance issues get resolved? Who is finding larger sponsors?
It’s a bit unfair and unrealistic to place that kind of burden on volunteers
alone, or to expect/require that the key person/people should be inherently
restricted from being able make a full-time gig out of the process.
Now, that
said, if a future BrickFest full-timer is, to Kelly’s point, driving up in a
Ferrari and skipping management duties that are then passed down to the
volunteers, then there’s a problem. But this is a balance problem - everbody is
NOT going home happy. And guess what! The balance will be achieve through
complaints, or the system will crash and/or rebuild somewhere else.
In some
ways, isn’t that what we’re all searching for - some job that is so amazing and
fun to do, that we can’t believe we’re actually able to do it and put food on
the table at the same time? I’d absolutely LOVE to see Christina be able to get
to a point where she could do nothing but plan BrickFest for a living. Imagine
the possibilities!
Anthony, I know you said you wouldn’t change your mind, but I think the
coversation overall is one worthy of trying to start a in-depth discussion.
Jake
---
Jake McKee
Webmaster - BIP
Private Citizen
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