With a Little Help From My Friends

What Goes Around Comes Around

The idea of community is not a new one, of course.  For as long as any form of social mobility has been possible, I suppose, people have been choosing to associate with others with whom they have something in common.  For the purpose of companionship, support, sharing and leveraging knowledge and skills and resources.

I'm not even sure that the term is gaining currency today.  Thirty years ago I was the editor of the "Golden Bay Community News".

There are people like Sean O'Driscoll very actively talking about community, within the specific context of online communities.  It is certainly exciting, and challenging, to see how modern technology is facilitating the formation of, and participation in, certain types of communities.  The blogosphere is an example of this.

It is also interesting to me, to see the growth of technical user groups, and other examples of people seeking face-to-face community participation.  Another example, from my own experience, being the MVP Summit meeting I wrote about here last week, where many people said the main attraction was the personal contact with others in their special communities.

Today I have been reflecting on another way in which community is important, in the context of the micro-ISV business.  It is no secret that it is becoming more and more difficult to maintain a broad range of technical skills and knowledge, and people are becoming more specialised.

Fair enough.  If you work as part of a large team, or within an organisation, it is more likely that you will have access to people who can fill in the gaps or complement your own skills.  However, if you work on your own, or in a small organisation, you sometimes need to call for help within your informal network of communities.

Maybe this is increasingly so.  A couple of idiosynchratic examples, give and take, just today:

• I was able to help someone I know through the WOUG community.  This person runs a micro-ISV business, and is skilled with developing Microsoft Office applications, but needed some advice regarding some specific Microsoft Access functionality.
• I was able to call upon help from an ASP expert that I know via the MVP community in Australia and New Zealand, to solve a problem I was having with one of my websites (web development is decidedly not one of my strengths).

I reckon it is becoming less likely that these sort of problems can be routinely solved, by either acquiring the expertise yourself, or engaging the paid professional services of an expert.  Those certainly are appropriate approaches in some circumstances.  But so is asking for a little help from your friends, on the basis of "what goes around, comes around".  I personally find something very appealing in this type of process.

Tags: micro-ISV, Microsoft+Access, community, GTD

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