Corporations are reliable but not authentic. Individuals are authentic but not reliable. Is it possible to work together as a team that is both authentic and reliable?

AndriusKulikauskas of MinciuSodas reflects on lessons learned from organizing and leading a global team for LeonBenjamin of TheLawFirmGroup (a London advertising agency) on behalf of Mornflake cereal and their online video contest.

Advertisers struggle to speak authentically. Minciu Sodas contributed the authenticity of its independent thinkers. Several organizing concepts helped us stay authentic by building in redundancy: our ownership of our work, our fractal team, our wiki metadata and our help room. Our team members grew reliable by reconceiving the idea of "deliverables", "motivation", "targets", "endorsement", "work ethic" and "promotion".

Minciu Sodas engaged UK online communities authentically by simply offering to help them, on behalf of Mornflake, rather than promote Mornflake. Online communities which responded positively are a reliable network to invest in. It makes sense to work together towards an "economy of dreams", a reliable economy of authentic dreams.

Opportunity: Authentic and Reliable

How might independent workers, working freely and openly, in the Public Domain, be useful for corporate work? Is it possible to for two cultures, corporate and free, to work together?

The open source software movement offers a variety of answers. Even so, it is rare for individuals to break through "the corporate wall" and get work from corporations, especially for working openly on shared endeavors.

Our case study is human-centric rather than computer-centric. It shows great promise in satisfying both the corporate need for reliability and the human need for authenticity. We can build on our results and develop an industry that grounds corporate advertisers' wish for authenticity and builds up a social infrastructure by which online communities reach out to each other reliably.

Business Opportunity: Mornflake Brand

Mornflake, a subsidiary of Morning Foods, is a large oat miller in the UK, but it sells many of its oats through generic brands. In 2009, it undertook a large branding campaign in order to sell more breakast cereal under its own brand and incline retailers to carry it. This included an online video contest to create videos celebrating Mornflake cereal. LeonBenjamin of TheLawFirm conceived a strategy of engaging UK online communities whose members might be interested to participate. He needed help to research the communities and then to engage them authentically.

Civic Opportunity: Online Community Outreach

Online communities are lucky to be thriving and they tend not to link up and work together. A brand such as Mornflake can serve as a by-word for discovering and affirming which online communities are interested to work together. LeonBenjamin supported AndriusKulikauskas's aspirations that MinciuSodas work as a team to discover and engage UK online communities.

Authenticity: A Voluntary Chain of Independent People

Minciu Sodas has organized global teams in the past, but this was the first such project for the corporate world.

It's very important for independent thinkers to find corporate work. Money accumulates in the corporate world. That's where it is available for strategic projects. It's difficult to compete with the corporate world head on, to deal with hundreds or thousands of customers, which is what corporations excel at. It's easier for an independent thinker (or a network of such thinkers) to serve a few clients with long term relationships. But there is a corporate wall. Corporations want to deal with each other, not with human beings.

Minciu Sodas organizes global teams of independent thinkers, each of whom wants to leverage the time and energy that they have invested in their own projects. We can all advance a client's interests by appreciating how, working openly, we might meet them halfway to build relevant public assets. However, this tremendous energy is untapped because institutions are afraid of individuals working freely, outside of any control.

In this particular case, it's important to note the individuals who made this work possible. Many of them are leaders of privately owned businesses.

Mornflake http://www.mornflake.com is a family-owned business founded by William Lea in 1675. John Lea is the Managing Director and dedicated to rebranding Mornflake.
At Mornflake, Alan Cullom is Retail Sales Director and Richard Jones is Marketing Manager and open to marketing through the online world.
AndyLaw is founder of TheLawFirmGroup, an advertising agency based on two ideas: a global nodal network and open source creativity.
LeonBenjamin is head of digital strategies at TheLawFirmGroup,author of WinningBySharing, and a social networking pioneer. Leon was head of business development for the Ecademy business network in 2002 when he and Andrius first met. Leon met twice with our MinciuSodas team in March 2009 and opened up this opportunity.
Andrius Kulikauskas founded Minciu Sodas in 1998 as an online laboratory for serving and organizing independent thinkers around the world. He has led global teams to collect food stories from around the world http://www.myfoodstory.com and to avert genocide in Kenya uring the post election turmoil there http://www.pyramidofpeace.net
We discuss our Minciu Sodas team members in a separate section...

Reliability: A Timeline of Work

Corporate work is like clock work. Each task must be completed as needed by other tasks which depend on it. Tasks are irrelevant if they aren't done on time. Many tasks may be unnecessary or counterproductive in the big picture. Yet they still must be done on time!

In contrast, humans work-in-parallel, like threads that are woven together, interacting unpredictably all along the way. Each thread is meaningful in its own right, and has its own sense of time, even as it shines or clashes with other threads.

In leveraging independent thinkers for corporate work, it's important to clarify the deadlines that are truly relevant so that we can share a rhythm.

Here's the timeline of our work. Andrius and the Minciu Sodas team managed to work within the time constraints well enough. They depended on Leon Benjamin's and Joanne Jacobs's good will and steady communications, and benefited from some unforeseen delays in the work overall.

March 30, 2009. Leon first alerts Andrius to the possibility of a research project at their meeting in London.
April 12. Leon asks Andrius if he might be interested. They talk by Skype for about an hour and agree on the approach, budget and deliverables.
April 14. Andrius submits a comprehensive proposal for 5,000 GBP to create a directory, in the Public Domain, of 500 UK online communities, and then to engage 100 of them http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?MornflakeResearch to learn what values they'd like Mornflake to stand for, and whether they might encourage participation in the Mornflake online video competition. All work to be completed by May 15. Andrius adds ideas that the videos be about people's values rather than the cereal's merits.
April 15. Leon approves Andrius's proposal and the first Minciu Sodas team members agree to participate.
April 16. The Law Firm wires the first payment of 3,333 GBP so that work might start as soon as possible.
April 21. Andrius sets up a UK online community directory, in the Public Domain, at the wiki and Fred Kayiwa and Sasha Mrkailo start putting up entries. http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?UKOnlineCommunities Sasha Mrkailo, Samwel Kongere, Tomas Chepaitis and Dennis Kimambo agree to be team leaders.
April 22. Leon introduces Andrius to Joanne Jacobs who was hired as a community manager with overall responsibility for seeding online communities.
April 23. Minciu Sodas discussion with Janet Feldman about "endorsing" vs. "promoting", whether approval is implied or not.
April 24. Leon, Joanne, Andrius discuss priorities.
April 25. Joanne asks us to focus on identifying local online communities, universities with programs in creative advertising, and new advertising startups.
April 30. Andrius codes a custom report with the 317 UK online communities we had collected so far. Andrius wires 1,500 USD to Samwel Kongere.
May 2. Joanne asks us to wait a few days to know which communities to engage.
May 5. Joanne marks the spreadsheet with instructions, which communities to engage. Andrius, encouraged by Leon, plans how to leverage Minciu Sodas's earlier work on My Food Story.
May 6. Andrius describes protocol for engaging UK online communities.
May 8. Andrius codes batch scripts to add to the directory (at the wiki) Joanne's instructions (which communities to engage).
May 14. Andrius is coaching Sasha Mrkailo, Thomas Chepaitis, Masimba Biriwasha, Dennis Kimambo, Fred Kayiwa, Ben de Vries and Jeremy Mason on how to engage communities. The directory includes 511 communities, but needs to be pruned.
May 15. Joanne ends her work on the project.
May 16. Competition rules about to be posted.
May 17. Andrius shares sample letter he wrote with Ben de Vries and Jeremy Mason.
May 18. Leon: "An authentic approach which is aligned to our *all* our values. This is great work and is exceeding my expectations."
May 19. Leon agrees to be the thinker around which we organize our working group Voiceful.
May 21. Leon asks that we work further until the middle of July. The Mornflake online video competition website goes up with the rules.
May 23. Andrius reports that we've engaged 38 communities.
May 28. Andrius reports that we've engaged 75 communities.
May 29. Andrius sends out second invoice for 1,667 GBP.
June 3. Stuart Oliver (working for Leon) and Andrius discuss additional work that Minciu Sodas will do for 1,000 GBP until July 10 to engage the most promising UK online communities, help them with their projects, and credit Mornflake when we help them.
June 15. Mornflake video competition is launched. http://www.mornflakecompetition.com
June 17. Andrius conceives of an "economy of dreams" where we support each other's dreams directly rather than through money or other currency.
June 25. Andrius shares results from the 5 communities which they've best engaged.
July 13. Mornflake engagements complete. Andrius continues some work free-of-charge to build on the idea.
August 2. Extended deadline for new videos.
August 16. Extended deadline for videos to get viewed and make the top ten.
August 24. Andrius asks, as part of Mornflake outreach, at London Kudocities about their dreams in life. The thread generates 108 posts.

The communications above took place openly, in the Public Domain, at Minciu Sodas working group

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/voiceful/

Challenges: Unauthentic and Unreliable

Corporate Culture is Reliable but Not Authentic

Corporations are externally driven, thus reliable but not authentic. They have no heart or soul. They assume a culture of unshared purposes, thus money and markets. Thus they seek to be reliable to each other.

Corporations are fictitious people. Originally, they were chartered to work within a specific scope (such as building and maintaining a bridge), but nowadays they work without scope (anything that can yield a profit).

Corporations are owned and managed by separate interests. Their owners (their shareholders) are external to it, and thus corporations are completely "responsible" to external interests. They are thus able to outperform individuals in their dedication to external purposes, but especially beyond the limits of human scale, in the service of masses of customers, providing sophisticated products for marginal amounts of money.

Corporations have no internal compass and thus no morality. When they have a clear scope or set purpose, then that may be used as a fixed reason-for-being, a vantage point for moral reflection. When they are unscoped, then they are free, like human beings, to act as they wish, but with no moral obligations. For example, they have freedom of speech but no responsiblity to tell the truth.

Corporations prefer to deal with other corporations because human beings can be internally driven and thus are unreliable and unpredictable. Corporations mangle people so that they would depend on the corporation and not leave. They shed people, where possible, by outsourcing work. They focus on their core competency and thus they don't have to foster a culture of inclusion and of wider concern. They typically segregate their strategic and philanthropic interests. They are successful at making money and accumulating resources, but poor at spending money and sharing resources.

Corporations don't have shared endeavors because they are focused on earning money. They are difficult to engage even regarding their own strategic interests. Most of the people who work for a corporation don't have any authority over such interests.

There are companies, such as Mornflake, which are privately owned and which may have internal motivations and even moral leadership. However, corporations are so tuned to serving "consumers" that it is difficult to compete with them without taking up their practices, which include limiting the scope of responsibility of each and every worker, and ignoring any motivation outside the market. The market, the serving of unshared purposes, manifested externally but not tested internally, is the framework for corporate culture.

Human Culture is Authentic but Not Reliable

Humans are internally driven, thus authentic but unreliable. The more genuine they are, the more personal problems they face, if not their own, then those of the people they care for. Humans assume a culture of shared purposes, so that people deep down inside are the same and can act on behalf of each other. Thus they care to be authentic to each other.

Real people have real wishes which they want to fulfill. Minciu Sodas serves and organizes such "independent thinkers" and fosters a culture that allows for shared purposes. Several principles are key in working together:

Work openly Working openly encourages others to get included in the current work or future work, both for free and for pay. We worked for Mornflake through our public venues, including the mailing list Voiceful http://groups.yahoo.com/group/voiceful/, our chat room http://www.worknets.org/chat/ (see our archives: http://www.worknets.org/archive/index.pl?mon=3&mday=12&year=2009&numberofdays=90 ), and our wiki, where we organized our directory of UK online communities http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?UKOnlineCommunities We also openly engaged almost 100 online communities on behalf of Mornflake's online video contest.
Work in the Public Domain Are we investing our efforts in a commons that we can truly share, without restriction? Will our commons outlast any particular host? Can we use our best judgement to network on behalf of each other, without asking permission? Our work together at Minciu Sodas is in the Public Domain so that all might share freely. This includes all of our venues and our directory of UK online communities.
You can't pay people to care Money can bring people together, but you can't pay people to care. You can't discover a person's internal motivation by paying them money (an external motivation), but rather by taking money away from them. It's not right to pretend that we can or would genuinely care about a person because they will or might pay us money.
Co-invest: Meet people halfway We want everybody to succeed. We understand that money represents only a fraction of our relationships. Both sides are investing more, hopefully much more, than the money indicates. We are investing in long term relationships: Who do we want to work with? We encouraged our Minciu Sodas team members to leverage their personal interests and projects as they engaged UK online communities. We also got to know Stuart Oliver who was also working for Leon Benjamin, and who later gave our team work to collect content for his website, Clean Tech Scotland.
Expect workers to grow We organize independent thinkers who are self-directed workers and thus able to rise to new challenges, not simply redo what they have already proved they can do. We ask, what work is not too hard or too easy but would most help them grow?
Reach out to the hard to reach As we include others, we ask their help to reach out further. We train the trainers.
Don't rely on control We cultivate an expectation that our workers be self-directed. As much as possible, we pay our workers in advance, so that they can work as authentically as possible. In hiring the poor, this is especially important so that we don't fail them and abuse them, for whatever reason.

These principles are what let us work as disparate individuals, each true to our own values, questions, endeavors and dreams, so that our work for Mornflake and others contributes to a commons that benefits us all.

Our Team: Authentic and Unreliable

Our Minciu Sodas team brought together remarkably impressive individuals. As our leader, I think much about the experience, how many problems we had to deal with, how predictably unreliable we were as individuals. As a group, we performed well enough, but I think well under our true potential.

I examine our individual performances, noting how people are understandably "unreliable" without structure and pressure; how rewarding them for "performance" makes them more reliable, but less authentic; and wondering how to organize incentives for an economy of solidarity.

My original plan was to include many people, involving at least 30 participants. I dedicated half of our budget for our team: 5 team leaders at 250 GBP each and I intended another 1,250 GBP for the rest of our team. I hoped to reward help from those in wealthier countries with services from those in poorer countries. But I ended up sending money to people who were not able to contribute much to the deliverables. I ended up agreeing with others to pay them 1 GBP for each community they added to our directory, and 5 GBP or 20 USD for each community they engaged. At times, the energy and money that we spent to include people was much greater than the work we gained from them, yet I think strengthened our community. Also, none of our team leaders managed to include others to help. We need a vibrant internal economy that allows us to honor those who help in different ways: some with paid work, some with services, some with help for their groups or projects, so that we don't think primarily in terms of money, but more effectively, in terms of helping each other directly where possible.

Given a budget of 2500 GBP, we can assess our individual performance in meeting our deliverables by awarding 2 GBP for each of the 500 online communities we needed to collect and 15 GBP for each that we needed to engage. But this doesn't consider how effective our work is in generating interest, how authentic our workers are in engaging others and how committed they are to our own community, Minciu Sodas. Of the 83 communities that we tried to engage:

17 were inaccessible
10 rejected us and deleted our posts
37 ignored us
11 responded to us
8 embraced us and showed interest to work together

Our success at engaging them can be given by an average score where we assign 3 points if a community embraces us, 2 points if they respond, 1 point if they simply ignore us and 0 points otherwise.

Andrius dedicated half of the 9216 USD (6000 GBP) to the Minciu Sodas team to meet the deliverables and kept the other half for his work to get this work, set it up and lead and train our team.

Andrius reviews below each worker, how much money they received, the value of the work performed in achieving our deliverables, the number of communities they collected, the number they engaged, and their score as community engagers.

AndriusKulikauskas: received 371 USD, performed 482 USD, collected 37, engaged 16, score 1.8. Our work for Leon Benjamin was a milestone for Minciu Sodas, the first time we organized a global team for the corporate world. If we could get such work on a regular basis, then our lab and our many projects around the world would be viable. I was very concerned that we perform well. As it happened, the start of the project coincided with my first art exhibit that I was about to open thanks to encouragement from ThomasChepaitis and VygantasVejas of Uzhupis. I needed a week to prepare works for this exhibit ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/50525222@N00/3451209366/) and then two more weeks to create new works on site for a second exhibit ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/50525222@N00/3492830199/). I felt that I should cancel my exhibit, but upon checking with God, I realized that he did not require me, so I went ahead, a bit recklessly. I managed to stay a step ahead and ended up not working too earnestly at a time when that might have been counterproductive because of unrealistic targets for the project overall. I was able to work by wifi from the art gallery. Leon wrote "Love your art!" and indeed, it has opened up my life quite a lot. I also was much longer at writing this case study than I expected, which I had promised to write for Leon, but I wanted to be true to the awkward reality of this work. I'm very grateful to Leon's humanity in all of this.
MasimbaBiriwasha: received 545 USD, performed 889 USD, collected 193, engaged 13, score 1.0. Masimba is a children's writer, poet, playwright, journalist, social activist and publisher from Zimbabwe. He's a very authentic person, and wants to bring books to Africa, but we've never managed to work together on even a small project. At the time, he was working for UNESCO in Paris, and agreed to work at a piecework rate of 1 GBP for each community that he listed and 5 GBP for each community that he engaged. It was quite an effort to coach him to be authentic, not to promote Mornflake, but rather to promote his own projects and simply credit Mornflake. He wasn't able to work through our chat room because of his browser, so we had to chat separately through Skype. He was not able to work for several days because he had to leave one apartment for another. He writes well, but his letters had practically no impact in building long term relationships. Masimba was key in meeting our deliverables, but despite our interest in working with him, has not been active at our lab.
SashaMrkailo: received 648 USD, performed 728 USD, collected 132, engaged 14, score 1.4 Sasha lives with his family in Serbia, and is often unemployed, but has a wide variety of interests, including organic beekeeping. Sasha was key in our 2006-2007 work on My Food Story, where he collected 1,250 food stories online for 1,250 USD. Sasha is helpful as an online assistant, but I've not been able to organize around him as a leader, and thereby build social capital for our lab, because of his lack of ambition or direction. He was unable to work for several days because his bee hive was vandalized. This time I sent Sasha 250 GBP in advance as a "team leader", then 100 GBP to engage 20 communities, and 300 USD to help with volunteer work for the most interested communities. At our chat room, Sasha was able to train others such as William Wambura to add entries to our directory. He leveraged his personal interests and wrote letters that generated response. He is the person who best understood and supported my hopes for this work. He continues to invest himself by supporting activity at our chat room.
JeremyMason and BenDeVries: received 500 USD, performed 496 USD, collected 19, engaged 19, score 1.1 Jeremy and Ben lived and worked on FactorEFarm in Missouri, USA. This was a promising relationship because FactorEFarm, led by MarcinJakubowski, is a key center for developing open source global village technology, and I had had difficulty in working together with Marcin. Jeremy and Ben looked at this as just a way to earn some money by engaging 20 communities, but I coached them to see this as an opportunity to reach out and build connections in the UK, not to raise money, but to seek helpful partners. Together we wrote a letter which they posted at various communities they found without, however, tailoring it much to their interests. There wasn't much response, and they didn't follow through on any of it. Subsequently, and unfairly, Marcin threw them off the farm, and so not much came so far of that relationship, except that Ben is active at our working group Social Agriculture.
FredKayiwa: received 200 USD, performed 229 USD, collected 67, engaged 1. Fred is studying social work at a college in Uganda. He is an extremely effective online social networker and has raised money for projects with the youth, including for computers and a youth soccer team's travel to the Norway Cup. He was active at our chat room and also helped coach William Wambura how to add entries to our directory. Fred is able to find and add entries, and do many tasks at our wiki, but is not yet very able to engage arbitrary online communities, perhaps because of his youth. Fred works around his studies. I sent him money upfront because of his activity at Minciu Sodas. Fred stays active at our chat room.
ThomasChepaitis: received 914 USD, performed 138 USD, collected 30, engaged 2, score 1.0. Thomas is Foreign Minister of the Republic of Uzhupis, an artist neighborhood in Vilnius, Lithuania which declared independence and has the attributes of a country, including a good-spirited constitution which he co-authored. He has organized 200 Uzhupis ambassadors. Thomas received money upfront as a "team leader". His computer was impossibly slow because of lack of memory, so I installed Linux for him. Active drinking interfered with his work, especially as his mother had died just one month previously. He is a skilled writer, but as yet unable to write forthrightly and authentically. He tried to use humor, but was not understood and his post was deleted. He never keeps in touch. Minciu Sodas is based in Lituania and it's problematic to hire Lithuanians because we have to pay authorship tax (18% of the outlay) and social security (15% and increasing). However, the Uzhupis Republic was a fantastic inspiration in many of my online engagements, and perhaps the greatest motivator for working together, and I am personally grateful to him for opening up my future as an artist. We're also growing closer towards being able to work together practically.
WilliamWambura: received 100 USD, performed 46 USD, collected 15. William is a young man in Tanzania who has made much progress to apply himself in life. He was active at our wiki and so I sent him 100 USD to include him in our work. He was traveling in Kenya at the time and had trouble getting online. It was difficult to coach him by chat as his connection was very slow. He has stayed in touch.
DennisKimambo: received 384 USD, performed 25 USD, collected 8. Dennis leads the award-winning Repacted.org community activist theater in Nakuru, Kenya. He was a leader of our Pyramid of Peace to avert genocide and Kenya, where he demonstrated the highest integrity. I sent him money upfront as a "team leader" and we hoped that he could train a local team to help. Unfortunately, his connection was so slow that it was impossible to work together. Researching and engaging online communities, and being coached how to do that, all require a rather snappy connection. Dennis wasn't able to work for a few days because his girlfriend's mother had an operation. Dennis has agreed to do more work for the lab in the future, and stays in touch, although currently he's not working on any projects through the lab.
JosephatNdibalema: received 100 USD, performed 22 USD, collected 8. Josephat is a police officer who is a leader and mentor of UYOGA, a youth organization in Tanzania. I sent him 100 USD upfront and included him because of his activity at our lab and my hope that he might include others from UYOGA. Josephat was not able to be online very much. He worked independently. He's stayed active with a variety of projects, especially in Kiswahili.
SamwelKongere: received 830 USD, performed 0 USD. Samwel Kongere was a fisherman on Rusinga Island, Kenya and grew active as a community organizer. He was the first African to do projects for Minciu Sodas, first small ones for 100 USD each, and then later he was a team leader for our work on My Food Story. He was key for the growth of our network in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Locally, he was helping train 3,000 women in Internet skills. We met for the first time in March in London and were looking forward to his further leadership. He agreed to be a team leader for our Mornflake work. But I didn't realize that he no longer had Internet access! And I made the mistake of wiring him 1,500 USD to hold and distribute per my instruction, rather than me relying on Western Union. Unfortunately, he was not able to do any work, and made no effort to account for what he did with the money, which I imagine he invested in business. Sadly, this incident keeps us from working together.

Thank you to EdwardCherlin, JanetFeldman, BenoitCouture, MarkusPetz, KevinParcell, FranzNahrada and others who contributed ideas and contacts as we worked openly.

I hope this person-by-person account makes clear the remarkable group of people we've pulled together, all of who benefit significantly from this work, and who contribute enormous authenticity. I point explicitly to the kinds of unreliability inherent in such authentic people who are typically living on the edge, are responsible for the welfare of others, and are devoted to their own projects. Temporary part-time work may be well-paid or attractive, but it does not address their greater reality, and so they can't dedicate themselves to it without interruption in the way that corporate workers might. The typical solution is to create a corporate environment, but with Minciu Sodas we're instead developing a culture of redundancy, where we are there for each other in the long term, and can help as needed.

How to Stay Authentic and Be Reliable?

As suggested above, we can stay authentic yet be reliable through redundancy. We organize a culture where we are there for each other and our shared network. We achieve redundancy by ever reaching out to include others further out. We include people of different levels of experience within our network by structuring our work with redundancy in our personal assets, our team of workers, our web software and our online venues.

Redundant Assets: Owning the Work

Andrius asked, and Leon allowed, that we take ownership of as much of this work as possible, as stewards in the Public Domain. We set up the UK Online Community Directory at our own website http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?UKOnlineCommunities and we engaged UK online communities on behalf of our own endeavors as well as Mornflake. This means that we can invest ourselves more fully, knowing that we can return to this directory and these relationships as new opportunities come up, and invite others likewise.

Redundant Workers: A Fractal Team

We had two previous projects which illustrated the fractal team approach: MyFoodStory and PyramidOfPeace. The idea is to use money as effectively as possible to include as many workers as possible, leveraging their own personal interests, while supporting a client's strategic interest. For example, given a budget of $100,000, the project leader might get $25,000, and then manage 5 teams leaders who each receive $5,000, who manage 25 team leaders who each get $1,000, who manage 125 workers who get $200 each. The idea is that if the overall vision is maintained across each level, then each new level has greater impact. Imagine the impact of 125 workers each earning $200 and leveraging their personal interests. This arrangement also builds in a lot of redundancy so that as a group we are sure to meet our deliverables.

In our Mornflake work, I planned to proceed in this way, but the work was too sophisticated for us to include more than the 9 workers with whom I worked directly.

Redundant Websites: Wiki Metadata

We could have built a database for our directory. Instead, we use wiki metadata, which gives us much more flexiblity.

We used ProWiki because we're investing ourselves in it, both as a code base and as a skill set. Wiki is enormously difficult to learn because it is unstructured, like writing on a blank page. ProWiki does allow us to enter metadata on each page and generate reports that are lists of wiki pages. This approach allows us to rapidly evolve new projects and link them together.

We created a wiki page for each community which simply consisted of six metadata fields, for example:

UKOCWebsite = http://kudocities.com/cities/london
UKOCMornflakeVideoContest = Masimba Biriwasha approached this group and left a message online at: http://kudocities.com/cities/london/conversations/does-anyone-need-more-inanimate-objects-in-their-life#reply_128398. To post content, Masimba would need to upgrade his membership staus at a total cost of 24 pounds. But public messages and comments are free. Response was very warm. Andrius also replied. Andrius offered a 50 GBP credit: http://kudocities.com/cities/london/conversations/what-to-do-with-50-gbp-credit-thanks-to-mornflake and the response is good.
UKOCOutreachOutcome=5Embraced
UKOCGeographics=London
UKOCAddedBy =Masimba Biriwasha

We also had the fields UKOCMedia (the kind of venue - forum, mailing list, etc.), UKOCContact (how to contact the leaders), UKOCActivity (how active is the venue), UKOCDemographics (the kind of people who participate). We used these fields less and not always correctly.

I created additional tools for batch entry and pumped our data into a MySQL database using a cron routine. I also created several reports:

This overall approach has proven itself more practical then creating databases. Our wiki allows people of different skill levels to contribute in different ways. However, we need to create an optional structured interface for our wiki which one could fill out like a form. We also need to develop a community around ProWiki or migrate to a different platform. And we need to attract a pool of coders who are willing to work both for free and for pay, as needed.

Redundant Venues: Help Room

Our chat room http://www.worknets.org/chat/ was key for our Mornflake work because that is where we did much of our training. See our archives:

Our chat room has advantages over Skype in that it is clearly marked as public, and we archive our chats and they enter the Public Domain. We often share excerpts through mailing lists and at our wiki. Our chat room is a central gathering place where we can meet for scheduled chats and also engage all who come in for help on any matter. It's a place where people can improve their online skills and grow in awareness. It's a place where people can learn how to use our wiki and get drawn into our activity at our mailing lists and elsewhere.

We need to staff our chat room so that it is always active, always monitored and people who need help can get response. We also need to find, integrate and customize new software because our current software (ARSC) is no longer maintained.

How to Learn Reliability?

Corporate culture and human culture are very different. Those without corporate experience have a difficult time understanding how we can bridge the two cultures by fostering our integrity in each culture. Andrius made great efforts to coach team members on how to think of deliverables, targets, motivation, endorsement, work ethic, promotion.

Motivation

Minciu Sodas is a laboratory, network and culture of independent thinkers. We continuously serve and include people who it makes no business sense to include, such as refugees, alcoholics, the mentally ill, the inexperienced, the incompetent, the semi-literate, the poor. We do so because we value the widest variety of independent thinkers. Together we can learn to be family and establish a culture.

When we organize workers for paid work, it's quite difficult for them to appreciate, that their work for the client is less important than their contribution to our lab's culture. It's a great investment to include them, and it's pointless to do so for whatever typically small contribution they make. Their real contribution is to provide a deeper meaning to our network that comes from their own personal dreams, endeavors, questions, values. If they neglect this, then they are hurting our culture. They should not worry too much about our client, which is my concern.

In our work for Mornflake we had great liberty to organize ourselves as we thought best, to invest ourselves our content in the Public Domain, to pursue for our own purposes the relationships that we built with UK online communities. It was a great struggle, and hardly a successful one, to encourage our team members to make the most of this opportunity, for themselves and for our network.

The Mornflake online video contest was itself difficult for us to promote because it appealed to people's greed, the chance to win 15,000 GBP for the best video, or the chance to win 2,000 GBP in what was essentially a lottery. Leon responded favorably to Andrius's suggestion that the contest celebrate people's values (or as it came to be, Mornflake values) rather than promote the cereal. Our outreach approach could have helped the online video contest much more directly if there had been a non-greed dimension, for example, if each video was uploaded on behalf of an online community or charity, which would split the prize with the maker, and if there were more small prizes. Generally, it is harder for online communities to earn money than individuals, and so such money is worth more, and it impacts a wider group and has a better chance of going viral.

Promotion

Typically, advertising is ingenuine. Large doses are required even for minimal effects. Minciu Sodas offers a team of people with integrity and authenticity. However, we don't leverage this integrity if we don't act on it, if we try to hawk Mornflake cereal just as any salesperson might, only less professionally.

Andrius made great efforts to train our team members to apply their own integrity, not to sell Mornflake cereal or their video contest, but to engage UK online communities as themselves, and simply credit Mornflake.

There are many mental barriers to overcome. Our team members are generally know how to promote themselves within our network. They need to learn how to reach out to new communities, appreciate how they themselves and their own endeavors might benefit from a more or less arbitrary community, and likewise imagine and suggest how they might help and promote that community. They need to be upfront in acknowledging Mornflake's role as their sponsor, by including Mornflake in the title of their posts, and make clear their relationship, but not lose integrity by promoting Mornflake or their video contest beyond what is relevant to the community. It is important to invest towards long term relationships and make clear that "Mornflake" can serve as a by-word for this outreach, as can the name of any company which provides such significant support.

This type of marketing is in the spirit of "Market to others as you would have them market to you". It allows the Mornflake brand name to appear in a wide variety of communities which benefit from our energy spent in building bridges and helping with projects, rather than trying to spread information about the merits of Mornflake, which is to most people irrelevant or not credible.

Not Endorsement

Many of our team members suppposed that because we were promoting Mornflake and its online video contest, that we were endorsing it. This was considered problematic because it might hurt the integrity of our venues, especially if Mornflake lacked integrity. There was a desire to judge Mornflake, and to demand that it pass our judgement.

Andrius explained that it is not the role of Minciu Sodas to pass judgement on clients nor to endorse it. Piles of evidence would not convince Andrius that a company like Mornflake is ethical. It's simply not the purpose of businesses to be ethical. It's not the job of Minciu Sodas to pass judgement (and Minciu Sodas seeks to include and affect everybody, ethical or not) but rather to act ethically in every aspect of our own relationship with Mornflake. That means that we are not endorsing Mornflake - we are not qualified to do so - but simply promoting it, letting people know about it. This is in keeping with Mornflake's rebranding, which is about raising awareness, not making a sale. Marketing is often a multi-step approach and this is just one step.

We don't need to know the brand or like the brand. We are a channel that can help people connect with the brand so that information goes back and forth. For example, we forwarded complaints about uVizz's privacy policy and Leon responded. In the end, it may turn out that our efforts mean the Mornflake brand sells less, but in the big picture, that can be a good result, too, if Mornflake can be making and selling the right amount.

For us, it's simply enough that the company, Mornflake, is providing us money and allowing us to promote each other with that resource, for us to be grateful. If people are interested, or even if we're interested, then we can delve into Mornflake as a company and its products, and pursue and bring up any concerns that we have. Mornflake is welcome to build relationships with those who are genuinely interested. And having each other in mind might lead to future projects with Mornflake.

Minciu Sodas includes everybody - every individual - who supports our culture. We don't include groups, organizations, entities. Ultimately, our loyalty is to people, like Leon.

Work Ethic

One of the most destructive ideas that our team members have is "doing a good job". What this means, in practice, is that if they haven't done work to their own satisfaction, then they don't report, they go missing. Often they have no relevant understanding of what is actually satisfactory, and the client's real needs can change as well.

In organizing large teams, it is clear that the client's time and the leader's time is valuable compared to the other workers, or simply, that the leader can't be chasing workers, but rather the workers must steadily report to the leaders, how they are doing, so that likewise the leader can steadily report to the client, and the client doesn't have to come looking.

Thus, in practice, it is much better that a worker report in "I didn't do the work because I got drunk", so that the leader can report to the client "we're behind schedule but we're getting more workers", and they can report up the chain, than for a worker to do "a great job" but not report to the leader. Such a worker needs to learn this or be replaced with one who will report the news, good or bad, so that their leader doesn't need to go looking for them or stay on top of them, which is impossibly wasteful, and defeats the purpose of having self-directed workers. This is perhaps the most difficult point to teach.

Targets

It's also important not to get too involved in doing the impossible, at least not if a project is not grounded in any person. The integrity of Minciu Sodas depends on respecting people's efforts and not asking them to do what is pointless.

Leon included us through The Law Firm Group in this ground breaking work for Mornflake. There was one complication: They had told Mornflake that the online video contest would get 100,000 registered users. Leon also hoped for 1,000 videos.

Perhaps such numbers are possible. Andrius pointed out from the start that an online community with 100,000 members would be worth on the order of 10,000,000 USD (and similarly expensive to pull together) and this community would be wastefully underutilized, thus not one that could be promoted in good conscience.

Ultimately, after extending the deadline, the total number of videos uploaded was 58 or so. The winning video was viewed by 1,000 people and the total number of views for all of the videos was about 4,500. This does not reflect the entire impact of the online video contest, which included the value of the videos themselves and the outreach effort, but it does make clear how distracting the targets can be from the actual goal of rebranding Mornflake.

Joanne Jacobs appreciated the unreality of the challenge, and also that our engagements of the online communities would not yield the quick results desired.

There might have been hope for a viral response, but that would require a social incentive, not simply an appeal to greed, which keeps people from letting others know. Andrius sheltered our team from these targets and did not attempt to take any responsibility for them, but assumed that any benefits from our team's work would be separate from them.

Deliverables

"Deliverables" are the most problematic concept in linking corporate and human cultures. Humans want to help each other in spirit and are willing to shift activities if that makes sense for the purpose at hand. Corporations are true to the letter and it's impractical to renegotiate any terms with them.

It's therefore essential to work for people like Leon who are true humans and look to the bigger picture rather than fix onto the deliverables or specifications. We agreed to collect 500 UK online communities and our actual number was 511 but that is likely inflated with some irrelevant results. We agreed to engage 100 UK online communities, but we actually engaged 83. We were supposed to collect all kinds of information, including contact details, which we never did. Andrius was supposed to write this case study, which he is doing several months later than he had hoped to. All of these are points where Leon could have made life extremely difficult for Andrius and Minciu Sodas, although with no benefit to Mornflake.

Note that the budget and these deliverables, which can cause so much needless grief, were hammered out in about five minutes of conversation. It's therefore very important to frame deliverables so that they are easy to do, and even more important to work for a person who looks beyond them.

Leon's kindness allowed us to devote our energy to genuinely trying to engage particular communities that were most promising, most responsive to our outreach. We continued with these engagements even after the contest was over. Leon won Andrius's gratefulness for his good will.

Resulting Assets

Our team achieved what was requested of us, more or less. We created a directory of UK online communities which Joanne Jacobs and others used for marketing. We also engaged 83 of these communities, some of them more intensely.

However, it's not clear whether our engagements led to the creation of a single video.

How did Mornflake, The Law Firm Group and others benefit from our approach? We helped Mornflake expand their presence on the web, we identified the most responsive UK online communities, we built some bridges to them, and we worked on the idea of an "economy of dreams".

Long Term Web Presence

In April 2009, a search for "Mornflake" at http://www.google.co.uk yielded many spurious results. This is no longer the case. Currently, the top 100 search results for "Mornflake" break down as follows:

33% food
23% video competition
12% rebranding
12% "Mornflake outreach"
6% official Mornflake
5% business reference
3% world record porridge
3% football sponsorship
3% other

Our Mornflake outreach yields a significant number of the links, and as desired, can be pursued further to convey a lasting commitment by Mornflake to honor authenticity and reach out to a wider community. In all, we posted about 100 links to

http://www.mornflake.com and

http://www.mornflakecompetition.com at various sites and our posts tend to rank high because we included "Mornflake" in the subjects of our posts, both to be upfront about our purposes and to make Mornflake visible to search engines. Of our results in the top 100, about half are from the Minciu Sodas network itself, and half from our posts at other communities. These links have a long term presence and we or others can build on them by engaging these same communities further.

Filtering of Communities

We created, in the Public Domain, a directory of UK online communities. http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?UKOnlineCommunities and then engaged many of them and noted their responsiveness http://www.worknets.org/software/ukocselect.php?group=outreachoutcome

We collected 511 communities and engaged 83 of them. Of these:

20% were inaccessible, we could not post
12% rejected us and deleted our posts
45% allowed us to post but ignored us
13% responded to us
10% showed interest to work together

This means that we could get response from only 4% of the communities. This may be the maximum number that we might reach out to and build bridges with. Why such a low number? Most "online communities" are practically inactive, they are set up but have no regular participation. Those that do have participation are usually very focused on some topic and not interested in other communities. They may have no active leadership, and thus nobody to respond to queries. Or they may be set up around a business that does not want competing agendas. A community may find suspect any or all commercial interests. It is a very rare "community" that has clear leaders, is able to think beyond its own focus, is not afraid of commercial activity, sees the benefit of working with other communities, and ultimately, appreciates support by Mornflake for such outreach.

It's therefore a great achievement to discover such communities and work with them further.

Network of Supportive Communities

The most promising communities that we found are an eclectic mix.

LondonKudocities They might be disappointed, but the most promising venue was London Kudocities, a social hang out where a mix of helpful answers and friendly chitter-chatter is rewarded by kudos, an inexpensive online currency. Masimba Biriwasha first engaged this community, and then I pursued that further with the help of Fred Kayiwa and Sasha Mrkailo. In all, we evoked more than 200 short posts which represented a wide range of emotions, mostly tongue-in-cheek. Andrius was understood to be obnoxious or delightful, generated suspicion or respect, all of which he (that is, I) believe make for very intense brand recognition. See: http://kudocities.com/cities/london/conversations/mornflake-outreach-what-do-you-want-to-do-with-your-life The greatest excitement was aroused by our connection with Thomas Chepaitis, Foreign Minister of the Republic of Uzhupis, and the opportunity of Babb doing an art show there. Andrius generated much good feeling by tipping participants' posts (1 kudo each) and lavish awards of 100 kudos (=1 GBP) for best answers. Editor Willster was supportive and published as an Editor's choice: willster says: "I dream of a world where breakfast products are free, where the people of Uzhupis welcome KCLers with open arms, and where most of my dreams are made into box-office smash hits. But not that dream, obviously. Christ, no." Mornflake achieved a status as a by-word. I note a post by Brave New Maiden ("The contributor of the best answer will win no fewer than 67 Kudos and perhaps a bowl of Mornflakes." http://kudocities.com/cities/london/conversations/which-is-the-best-pub-in-london That would be good to arrange.) (See also: "What will be the millionth word? ... Mornflake?" http://kudocities.com/cities/london/conversations/what-will-be-the-millionth-word )
UKSalesAndMarketingForums http://www.salesandmarketingforums.co.uk This is a forum for online marketing and search engine optimization. It's surprisingly active. Sasha Mrkailo engaged them and the administrators agreed that he try to do some volunteer work for them.
Elgrand http://elgrand.ning.com Clive leads the E50 & E51 Nissan Elgrand Club UK, an online Elgrand car club set up as a Ning networking site. He left a note at our wiki that he likes Mornflakes and he was keen that we participate, although it was a bit awkward to register and unclear how to pursue this further.
HarringayOnline http://www.harringayonline.com We also received a note at our wiki from Hugh of Harringay Online, an award winning hyper local Ning website serving the Harringay neighborhood of London. Thomas Chepaitis contributed a tongue-in-cheek post about Uzhupis and Mornflake which was deleted. Later our posts were not deleted and there's a chance to work together.
OpenKnowledgeFoundation http://www.okfn.org Jonathan Gray wrote to ask us for volunteers, as we had offered to help communities on behalf of Mornflake. He provide a good list of ways to volunteer. However, we weren't able to find activity that would be of benefit to both OKFN and the volunteers, that would meet them halfway, and Andrius didn't want to simply pay volunteers to do work that they otherwise would never do. As with many such hubs, the OKFN is self-centering and not thinking of a wider network of hubs.
GlobalSwadeshi http://globalswadeshi.ning.com/forum/topics/mornflake-project GlobalSwadeshi is a Ning website which Vinay Gupta set up as an "Open Sustainability Network". Vinay is a thinker, inventor, entrepreneur and organizer in the sustainability movement. He attracts many thinkers and doers. Vinay knows Andrius and they clashed over values when they recently met in London. Sasha Mrkailo wrote a post about our Mornflake outreach and Andrius tried to pursue this further with support a practical project, but nothing came of it, except that Wael al Saad of Jenin, Palestine learned of Minciu Sodas and became active there.
ScaryBirds http://www.scarybirds.com ScaryBirds is a social playground for creative people. Kerry Santo was once homeless and later the Ecademy networker with the most friends, as told by Leon in his book, http://www.winningbysharing.net Andrius worked for Kerry in 2005 to set up her Drupal website but that ended with a clash of culture and expectations. Our Mornflake work had us in touch again and Kerry was supportive that we participate through her website, but after she upgrades to Drupal 6, which is still to take place.
TransitionBlackIsle is a cluster of websites with an active Google group that care about sustainability in Black Isle, Scotland. Anne responded to Jeremy and Ben's introduction but they didn't follow through further and Andrius himself didn't succeed, either http://groups.google.com/group/transition-black-isle/browse_thread/thread/4e552c4c91a443f3?hl=en

These are communities that Mornflake might work with or sponsor in the future, either directly or through Minciu Sodas or another network. What they suggest is that a few dozen such mindful communities might work together as a very effective network, reaching and linking very disparate interests, and fueled by Mornflake and other companies.

We need to work further, over several projects, to develop the culture and the value of such networking. Already, our Mornflake work has brought us closer together within our own Minciu Sodas network. Our participants came to understand that our work to promote Mornflake was a valuable opportunity for our own networks to work together, including Franz Nahrada's Global Villages and Thomas Chepaitis's ambassadors of the Uzhupis Republic. We improved the relationships of Andirus Kulikauskas's Minciu Sodas with Marcin Jakubowski's Factor E Farm, Vinay Gupta's Global Swadeshi and Kerry Santo's ScaryBirds. We were able to work more intensely with Masimba Biriwasha and Sasha Mrkailo.

We also had missed opportunities. Andrius was unable to communicate this opportunity in a way that would interest Pamela McLean of Dadamac in London, who might have been a key worker or organizer. His relationship with Samwel Kongere imploded. And there were communities which did not want to see the relevance of this outreach and simply thought of it as spam (Keimform) or pushy (MichelBauwens). This outreach is also a way to filter out those people who don't want to develop such a culture.

Economy of Dreams and Tasks

Our reliance on piecework is counter to the spirit of our work. It is the simplest way to meet our deliverables, but it works against our culture and our network. Instead, we need an internal economy that would reward those who help, yet not directly with money, but with resources that would encourage them to participate authentically and openly advance their own projects.

John Rogers http://www.valueforpeople.co.uk leads our Minciu Sodas working group on community currencies, alternative economy, participatory society http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyfranogi/ Andrius has thought a lot about community currencies, but often they work not that differently than money, in that they often encourage tit-for-tat thinking, rather than a concern for the commons.

Our Mornflake work led to the idea of "an economy of dreams". If we know each other's dreams-in-life and make them explicit, then we can address them directly with our resources instead of with money. We can reward our workers by supporting their dreams rather than by paying them money, which is much less efficient, as people tend not to spend money on their dreams, and their dreams don't depend solely on money. So far, we've collected 32 dreams in English http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams and 25 in Lithuanian http://www.ms.lt/lt/wiki.cgi?Svajonės

Another part of this economy is to have a list of tasks http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Tasks and encouraging our participants to ask for help with tasks, to provide that help, to practice working together and as a team. We're organizing a "help room", a chat room http://www.worknets.org/chat/ where anybody can get help on any matter at any time. Andrius intends to develop metrics of our activity in our mailing lists, wiki, chat room, to note those who help with our tasks, and award them by organizing support for their dreams, providing them with paid work or awarding them money for their projects or as cash. Another way to support this system is to loan money to participants as needed and allow them to pay it off in the form of points they earn by helping others who give them the points they all earn through their activity.

It makes sense to continue such outreach as we did on behalf of Mornflake and seek more such paid work. Two networks to work with are Suresh Fernando's Open Kollab http://groups.google.com/group/openkollab and their Pooled Fund Initiative and Tiffany Von Emmel and Dreamfish http://www.dreamfish.com In general, it makes sense for Minciu Sodas to work with global networks rather than focus particularly on the UK.

In terms of paid work, we need to discover and engage leaders of businesses who are independent thinkers, who care about our culture and who we might work for or with, such as LeonBenjamin, StuartOliver, JohnCaswell, DaveGray, JerryMichalski.

Conclusion: Redundancy

Andrius Kulikauskas's and Minciu Sodas's work for Leon Benjamin and The Law Firm Group on behalf of Mornflake's online video contest was a milestone in working openly for the corporate world.

The Minciu Sodas team was able to meet the deliverables to Leon's satisfaction, but also inject authenticity into Mornflake's branding campaign that went beyond his expectations.

We are able to stay authentic as individuals yet be reliable as a team because within our network we are redundant in our motivations, our leadership, our tools and our venues. We apply ourselves in our paid work with the same feelings that we foster and the same resources that we develop for our individual endeavors.

Author: AndriusKulikauskas

Andrius Kulikauskas is the founder of Minciu Sodas, an online laboratory for serving and organizing independent thinkers. He lives in the Lithuanian countryside.

http://www.ms.lt, ms@ms.lt, +370 699 30003, skype:minciusodas

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WhyReadThis=AndriusKulikauskas wrote a case study of how we organized a global team in 2009 for Leon Benjamin on behalf of Mornflake cereal and their online video contest.

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Case Study: Mornflake Outreach: Redundancy yields Authenticity and Reliability.