Have You Tapped into the Culture of Generosity?

I’m sure you’re aware of the increasingly collaborative nature of the Internet (see this Wikipedia explanation of Web 2.0).  Ministry sites have hopefully left behind passive websites and are moving ahead to involve others in ministry using the Internet.  If you want to change the world using volunteers and/or disciples who are freely contributing to a project, whether or not you plan to use technology to do it, then I recommend you watch this excellent thirteen-minute Ted talk by Clay Shirky, an expert on the social, cultural, and economic effects of technology.

Highlights

Some highlights from the talk are:

• People are generous with their time, wanting to share and create,
• The Internet allows them to freely contribute content, not just consume,
• People are motivated to add communal and/or civic value to a project,
• The number of people who are able to contribute to projects will grow as more people use technology, and
• We can change the world by supporting and rewarding these people as they work together with us.

Clay Shirky concludes: “Organizations designed around a culture of generosity can achieve incredible effects without an enormous amount of contractual overhead.”

NOTES:

• Clay Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)and the author of Here Comes Everybody.
• Some examples you’re familiar with of “the culture of generosity”:
  • articles on Wikipedia
  • reviews on Amazon.com, TripAdvisor, Yelp, …
  • 100 hours of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute
• The chart from Clay Shirky’s talk illustrates behavioral change in parents using a day care after a late-pick-up fee was imposed. If you think you can guess what happened, find out what did happen and what Clay concludes from this behavioral study.