The Power of Community is a presentation I did at our users' conference, CONNECT 2012 and discusses the power around our new Tyler Community. A complete copy of the PowerPoint note pages can be found at http://hrhiring.wordpress.com/

1. Please note, if you are reading these notes, and/or you attended my presentation. I travel
light. That’s to say give me enough warning and purchase a plane ticket, decent hotel room
and a steak dinner—expenses, and I’d be happy to travel about anywhere for about any size
audience, so contact me in the new amazing Tyler Community, or via email
rex.castle@tylertech.com. “Power of Community” is a presentation we do in the non‐
software realm. My coworker Bryan Thompson has some exceptional stuff, I do a deal on
motivation, one on hiring and a deal on presentation (Why Not WOW!), and other stuff
related to Human Resources, management and leadership. So, if Bryan or I can help…holler
(that’s West Texan for contact us). Contact our President, Brett Cate, if you want to avoid us
having to “ask permission.” Request us and tell him “we’ll pay expenses.” I bet we’ll be
there shortly.
Also please note, the following notes will not be exact. They’re notes I wrote and then I did
the presentation. Sometimes the notes and the presentation don’t exactly mesh, but I
didn’t go back and mesh them.
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2. The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was
the largest and most significant[1] great library of the ancient world. It flourished under the
patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship from
its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The
library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (323–283 BC)
or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II (283–246 BC).
4 possible reasons for its destruction. One seems a bit implausible as it suggests Julius
Caesar accidentally destroyed the library when he ordered his own ships burned to thwart
Achilles’ attempts to communicate by sea. The ensuing fire ignited and destroyed the
library. The other 3 reasons all point to ignorance and the destruction of temples and
symbols.
Whatever the cause the world lost the greatest collection of knowledge ever assembled.
It also is seen as a catalytic event in sparking what is known as the Migration Era which is
the transformational period between the relative age of enlightenment evidenced by thing
like the Royal Library of Alexandria and the Dark Ages.
What is important about this story and what does it have to do with the Power of
Community?
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3. I began to realize the power of this community thing when my daughter graduated from
the University of Missouri at Columbia.
She called me and said “Dad, I graduated yesterday.” I said “yep, I noticed the bank account
didn’t go down today.”
She laughed. I had actually noticed.
She said “so, what do you think I should do now.
I’ve always been involved in politics, always loved the debate, the work, watching the
candidates and enjoyed the process of knowing I get a say in who represents me, so I said
“you know there’s this big election thing coming up in a year or so and there are a whole
bunch of exceptional people running for president. Why don’t you choose one and go to
work for him or her.
I had worked a presidential campaign when I was a kid and knew what candidate she chose
didn’t matter as the experience would be just phenomenal.
She called me a few days later…”Dad, she began…”
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4. Dave Carroll’s video, this one of like 6, has been viewed by almost 12 million people.
It has become the poster child of the power of community.
United has made a number of too little, too late offers to Mr. Carroll.
Harvard Business School has a case study in ways not to handle similar things.
Mass collaboration has changed not the rules to the game; it has changed the game.
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5. Discussion of a Tyler Community success story.
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6. Who would have thought that the outrage expressed in social media could be responsible for causing Bank of America to
rescind their debit card fees; Netflix deciding not to implement a price increase; how about reversing Susan G Komen’s
decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood thereby causing a number of Komen board members to resign; or causing
CNN to suspend commentator Roland Martin for posting tweets that offended the gay and lesbian community; in Los
Angeles Radio Station KFI suspended John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou for making irreverent remarks that travelled every
pillar and post on the internet about the late Whitney Houston; and the latest social media takedown resulted in ESPN
firing an employee and suspending an anchor after outrage about their online and broadcast comments about Asian‐
American Knicks basketball player Jeremy Lin that were deemed offensive and inappropriate.
1 of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.
It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million users; for television, it took 13 years; for the internet 4 years; for the iPod, 3
years; Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months; iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months; if
Facebook were a country it would be the world’s fourth largest behind China, India and the U.S.
Generation Y & Z consider email passé; in 2009 Boston College even stopped distributing email addresses to their
incoming freshmen.
“Asmaa Mahfouz has been credited with having sparked the protests that began the uprising in January 2011 in Cairo. In
a video blog posted to Facebook on 18 January, she called on Egyptians to demand their human rights and to voice their
disapproval of the regime of Hosni Mubarak. The video was uploaded to YouTube and, within days, went "viral".[9] In an
interview with al‐Mihwar TV, she said that a week before 25 January, she posted a video to Facebook announcing that
she would be going to Tahrir Square to protest. Mahfouz said that four other young Egyptians joined her, and that the
internal security services quickly surrounded and moved the group away from the square.”
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7. Community purpose and social media are the indispensable components that together
produce mass collaboration.
Community is the people who collaborate. Social media is where they collaborate. And
purpose is why they collaborate.”
But what does all that mean? What can you do with Community, with mass collaboration?
Goldcorp is a company.
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8. This is not a story about Wikipedia. This is a story of a response to a tragedy.
On July 7 2005 at 8:50 am, the city of London came to a standstill as 4 synchronized bombs
exploded in its transportation system. At 9:08, 18 minutes later, while news media was
scrambling to try and get a story out, Morwen, a Wikipedia enthusiast, posted the first
entry regarding the explosions: “On July 7 2005, explosions or other incidents were
reported at various London Underground stations in central London, specifically Aldgate,
Edgware Road, Kings Cross St Pancras, Old Street and Russell Square tube station. They
have been attributed to power surges.”
Within minutes other wiki users jumped into the conversation. Hundreds of users were
posting and editing by the time North Americans were waking up. By the end of the day,
over 2,500 users had created a comprehensive, 14‐page account of the event that was
much more detailed than the information provided by any single news outlet.
In doing this, they provided a potent example of the power of Wikipedia, while
demonstrating that thousands of dispersed volunteers can create fast, fluid, and innovative
projects that outperform those of the largest and best‐financial enterprises.
Who has ever run a report out of our software? How nice would it be to be able to post a
question regarding this activity and , almost instantaneously, have other users jump in with
solutions? Where to from here?
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9. The fundamental Community collaboration cycle will be guiding, even if people don’t
realize it, everything in Community.
All Community starts with Purpose
Purpose leads to Contribution
Contribution receives Feedback
Feedback builds Judgment
Judgment creates Change
An interesting thing happens here. There are two paths that are separate but are not
separable.
We take Results out of the process and the process Encourages additional contribution.
Think about this for a moment as the power of Community lies in this mass collaboration
that leads to continuous improvement and constant learning cycle. What’s an example of
this power. Have any of you heard of Wikipedia?
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10. Discussion of Joseph Kony and the Kony 2012 video and movement of Invisible Children.
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11. in Toronto. As their name suggests they mine gold.
A few years ago they were struggling. They knew they had gold in “them thar hills,” but
their geologists were at a loss as to where to find it. There was too much data and too little
time.
They were involved with labor strife in the form of strikes, debts were mounting, and, have
you ever hired a geologist? There’s a very high cost of mining. In a nutshell they faced an
uncertain future.
Their new CEO went to a session at a conference and the session was on Linux and it’s
open source and he thought “hey, maybe there’s someone out there who can find gold, so
he returned with a radical plan:
Goldcorp posted 50 years of proprietary geological data and offered a prize for anyone who
could find the gold. Proposals came from around the world. 50% were from sites
GoldCorp’s geologists would not have suggested. 80% of the sites yielded substantial gold.
What happened:
Goldcorp extracted 8 million ounces of gold catapulting the company
from a $100 million company to a $9 Billion juggernaut. They’re now regarded as being one
of the most innovated and profitable companies in the mining industry.
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12. Tyler Community discussion of success story.
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13. I’m not suggesting we all do cartwheels. I am suggesting we jump in in.
You know Google’s approach of ‘less is more,’ and that’s been our approach with the
Community.
Substantial power lies behind a simple interface.
This should be the primary design consideration for all things related to Community.
Steve Jobs seemed to do pretty good with this concept for Apple.
If a Community environment requires training, it may not be as simple as is required. How
many people are Facebook‐certified? Who has gone to a Wikipedia class or attended
Craigslist workshops? These environments manage to attract hundreds of millions of
participants without a single minute of training.
At the same time the Community has a number of training videos. Most have been put
together or directed by Lauri Travis. She’s going to take a few minutes and talk with us a bit
further about what we’re seeing people use Community for.
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