It is all about the communities ...

This has been quite a day (actually quite a week and it is only Tuesday!) I will have a lot more to share by the weekend as we will have our detailed plans for V1.0 - the release that we will make in January as we go live!!

But for now - communities.

The key to our success is building and leveraging communities. Students who want to do a project or activity will likely not come to FreshBrain with that idea already flushed out and ready to go. They will more likely explore areas of interest through communities.

As an example, take gaming. We will not initially show the students the tools and technologies required to write a game. We will instead help them to understand what gaming is all about, the platforms that games can run on (games for a handset, PC, console, ...), the types of games that exist (sports, first person, multiplayer, etc.).

As they explore, they will interact with a gaming community. They will see projects that are being completed by others, the kinds of activities that are available and read the discussions that are taking place. They may chose to jump in and ask questions or comment on a discussions thread. They will have access to example projects and will be able to use the community to flush out what their ideas.

Once they jump in and start up a project, the community will continue to be there for input and advice. It can help them find similar games, answer technical questions or provide feedback in storyboarding their game. They will of course have an advisor that is there to help them - who is also a part of the community.

I could go on and on. But I hope that you can see how important and core to FreshBrain community is. And this is only one type of community, and one aspect to how that community will operate. Here are a couple of others.

• Communities can document and evolve best practices so that advisors have a big jump start in helping the students with their projects (wikipedia like repository ...)

• Communities of parents will provide valuable input into what they would like to see added or improved

• A community of educators will help us to understand how to best involve schools or motivate students
  

This is a very powerful concept. Communities together with our approach to allowing students to explore first and then use technology second makes FreshBrain unique.

If you have not read Wikinomics by Don Trapscott and Anthony D. Williams, I strongly recommend it. They were not the inspiration for FreshBrain, but they hit the nail on the head as to how business is being and will be done in the future.