Catalyzing change is brutally hard work, busy part timers should plan decades ahead
Ana Burgos Ruiz @Ana_BurgosRuiz
We are launching a platform to connect researchers who are open to collaborate with others… (1/3)
Catalyzing change is brutally hard work, busy part timers should plan decades ahead
– There are many hundreds of millions of people making professional, investment, innovation, issue, topic, interest, financial, research and other kinds of connections online. Unless you are willing to invest decades in helping others you are not going to get much by sticking “yet another token collaboration site” online. For the last 26 years, every day, I review groups of all sizes trying to run sites on the Internet. [ to Ana Burgos Ruiz @Ana_BurgosRuiz ]
If you just want to advertise and say you are helping collaborators, go ahead, that is what most every one of the hundreds of thousands of colleges, universities, STEMC, incubators, cloud funding and other efforts say. And most of them stick a few programs there, get tired of trying to attract attention and catalyze “innovation” after a few months or years. And they start adding fees and services to try to make it pay. There are millions of National Science Foundations, associations, societies, and groups – all promoting something. And they mostly only serve themselves (the organization and staff) then find things to say “look what we did”. There are lots of Nobel Laureates available, you can hire as many as you can afford.
I am trying to be harsh on purpose. Helping others is mostly thankless. And, unless you have infinite patience, and lots of smarts, it does not pay for much. I know what works and what does not work. And if you are trying to do the equivalent of a research collaboration startup, that is no different than trying to sell a new product. Everyone is doing it, the standards are very low. Any library or passionate groups can do it. And most of the effort duplicates things already done, not worth doing, or that actually causes considerable harm.
Look at how much money X is spending to make an “open discussion forum”. It is not a good one, not well equipped, does not search and organize, and is closed in its operations and functioning. Maybe your PhD is about making websites. Rather than make one to play at doing it, review and index a few million out there and propose some standards. But first learn what people really need and what most humans do to survive. Tell Juan Tena to write more about what he wants to do, and for whom.
Filed as (Catalyzing change is brutally hard work, busy part timers should plan decades ahead)
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
