Laws of Mass Action #1

Scope

So, I've been reading Boing Boing, which can be dangerous, but I've found that Cory Doctorow's new favorite philosophical/cultural chewtoy, Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, posits some really interesting principles that seem to be largely ignored by even those who are pioneering the mass action phenomenon. An introduction: Shirky's idea is that the internet, by making communication in groups easier, is opening up a new society in which things done en masse can also be done instantly. People of my age and younger tend to use Facebook to do that, but that's not entirely relevant.

This is what I've seen: our group (people who are familiar with the internet from childhood but haven't grown up with social networking or other instant mass-action-capable tools) will be the people that set the norms for engaging in mass action. Unfortunately, like all norms, these will partially be made up of good rules of thumb, but they will be primarily composed of "what everyone's doing". I think it would be for everyone's good if "what everyone's doing" were smart.

Today's comment: Scope.

I've found that a lot of people are making a lot of events with a lot of people. That's cool and all, but to use an example:

On facebook, Hopalong found an event for a bonfire at the same place our year-end bonfire is going to be. We invited 450-500 people (uninviting many of those who declined), and we have around 45 confirmed. Their event, a week and a half earlier, invited roughly 4000 people with an aggressive invite-your-friends campaign, and had a little under 500 confirmed. The park at which these bonfires are being held has maybe enough parking space for 80. Maybe. I wonder how that turned out and whether the local law enforcement officials got involved in any way.

Even some of our own parties have suffered from overcrowding in the winter months when activity can't spill out onto the balcony. Other times, no one's shown up.

I propose the following:

• Know your limits. Though you may have infinite advertising power now, you don't have infinite resources.
• Invite your friends. I know you know a lot more people on [your preferred social networking tool] than you know in real life, but try to keep invitations down to people you really want to come to the activity if there's limited space/resources.
• Potluck it up. Sometimes people just need to bring things.
• Say it twice. If your problem is not getting enough people, have contact with them other than the original invitation, maybe even in person.
• Invite at the right time. If you invite too early, people will forget, and won't want to commit. If you invite too late, people won't know until too late. For bigger deals, give it 1.5-2.5 weeks in advance, for less important matters, 3-10 days is great.