Zeitgeist

In a previous post I wrote about TAGs, internet-oriented temporary groups based on a transversal mix of skills, based on agile coordination and action oriented. Every TAG lives to deliver something and it is action/task oriented rather than ideology oriented.

I would like to see TAGs spontaneously emerge through the internet, and in a sense they do already, but I would like to work more on the specific social format that I outlined. Open Source is similar to a tag, but it is longer lived. A TAG is a bit like the inception phase of an open source project, except that it lives *only* through its inception. It is not meant to continue, even if it can later regroup for another purpose.

A <TAG> is a social Spike. You do it to push some kind of boundary, either personal or social. You do it to gather knowledge and to give it back to the larger community. A TAG lives through the time of a single Spike, then disbands.

I have just found out about about Ning, a software platform to build social software and I want to see if I can use it to build a platform supporting TAGs. In Ning you can clone an application that you like and then expand on that. While looking for something matching the TAG concept I found find-a-developer, composed by Jonathan Aquino, the renaissance man that also brought us YubNub.

I was glad to see that Aquino was working on something with a structure similar to TAGs, and I have no doubt that I have found a very good shortcut cloning Aquino's social app. I'll post more on TAGs as I develop and change the tagpod meeting place.