Welcome to GrowingPains

Welcome to my blog. It is finally there. Many friends and colleagues have urged me to start one. The initial occassional prod ("hey, check out this hot new tool") had turned into a deluge of increasingly urgent requests ("where are you? you can't stay behind. Everybody cool and with something to say has one!"). I don't know about the cool, but I definitely have something to say, so: here I am.

So, what is this blog with the strange name about? I am not going to use this blog (just) to talk about me. Instead, I would like to experiment with how it can be used to facilitate research. As a researcher, I am passionate about my main topic: the evolution of virtual communities.

Originally, the Internet was mainly used to support work and play by individuals. Important, but the real power of the Internet is in facilitating communities of people sharing ideas and working together on common goals. In an increasingly complex and chaotic world, virtual communities may turn out to be crucial in making sense of the many serious societal problems, and in providing timely and acceptable solutions.  Many kinds of virtual communities exist: globally distributed research communities working on a particular theory or real-world problem, e-business communities, political communities of concerned citizens, and so on. 

Although the importance of virtual communities is clear, much of their potential is not realized. Many never reach maturity, become paralyzed, or die before they have accomplished their goals. Virtual communities are living organisms: they have (or lack) energy, grow, and have a lifecycle. To make them successful, their evolution needs to be fully understood. Research on the evolutionary dynamics of virtual communities is still in its infancy. With this blog, I hope to contribute to a fascinating and much-needed research discussion on how to alleviate the growing pains of virtual communities.

Comments

[BSN]

Welcome to the blogosphere! You seem to be off to a painless start ;-) I look forward to checking back here early and often and participating in the discussion on virtual communities. Great time to start this now when we're not just using technology to shape community in real space but actually witnessing the rise of technologies that permit genuine community in virtual space. Congratulations!!!

[Ton Zijlstra]

Hoi Aldo,

Gefeliciteerd met je blog!
Overigens zit er een BlogWalk in de pen gewijd aan Communities of Practice en blogging. Wellicht iets voor jou?

groeten,

Ton

[Sebastian Fiedler]

Hello Aldo,

great to see that you got around starting a personal Weblog of your own. Enjoyed our conversation at BlogWalk 1.0 in Enschede... though there was definitely not enough time.

I am looking forward to read more about your work...

Cheers

Sebastian

[Andy Boyd]

Welcome Aldo to the odd world of blogging

Andy

[Elmine Wijnia]

Gefeliciteerd met je blog! Ik hoop dat deelname aan de 'blogosphere' voldoet aan de verwachtingen die door anderen zijn opgewekt ;)

[Carla Verwijs]

He Aldo,

Toch begonnen met je weblog! Ik hoop dat we je overtuigd hebben tijdens BlogWalk. Die naam (Growing Pains), was dat niet een tv-serie ofzo? Het komt me vaag bekend voor..

Carla

[Tom Munnecke]

Congratulations... from someone who hopes to find ways of taking the "pain" out of "growing."