Dan said it:
It is good to be an owner.
It is good to share.
The values you learned in pre-school and the values you learned in business school are no longer in conflict. With SmartCommons sharing and ownership go hand-in-hand.
Just as Flickr is about social photography and Judy's Book is about social commerce, SmartCommons is about social ownership: Labeling, managing and sharing what you have in common with the people you trust.
Like all social software tools, in SmartCommons value is created through the meaningful connections afforded by data. Getting the data into the system in the first place is the initial hurdle. This is often an incremental task. You upload a few photos into your Flickr account every week. You write a Judy's Book review on the amazing plumber or excellent child care you encounter every few months. Over time these entries build up with those entered by everyone else in the system and the value created is greater than the data itself. Getting relationally meaningful data into the social ecosystem is the first step to this place.</blockquote>
Now I'm going to depart from copying Dan's post verbatim and tell you the order I did things to get rolling with Smart Commons and Collection (although I'm still just getting started...and it's still the holidays...I'm not stressing it):
- Downloaded Collection. Either the EXE or the ZIP...only difference is the EXE takes care of everything for ya.
- Signed up for Smart Commons.
- Synced with Amazon (imported my Amazon purchases) on SC.com.
- Synced Collection with Smart Commons.
- In Collection, deleted the stuff I didn't have anymore and updated the metadata on what I did still have.
- Synced again with Smart Commons dot com.
Now I need to enter items by hand or get to installing the scanner Dan lent me. I'm in no rush...Smart Commons isn't about racing to see who can have the most friends, it certainly isn't about who has the most stuff. Quality over quantity. Yeah baby.
It is good to be an owner who shares.
