Friday Spark!

[Area Light Online]

Welcome to Area Light Home! This group is intended to be a home base for new and established members alike.

We invite new members to join this group upon arrival in order to get oriented to our community and services. We think it is a great idea to introduce yourself and initiate any kind of discussion that reflects your interests and hopes for what this community can offer you. Additionally, we encourage established members to occasionaly return Home to discuss the community itself and engage eachother.

We want Area Light to be your online social network of choice. We put special care into creating a welcoming and active environment for our members. One of the challenges, especially given so many different online communities, has to be the potential lack of activity and interaction. We understand your life, work, or business can make finding time to be part of our community a lot to ask. Regardless, Area Light Member Services is here to help and to create activities/ discussions you won't want to miss out on.

So we've decided to create this discussion within Area Light Home called, "Friday Spark". Here we will try to fit in a weekly recap of what's been going on in Area Light from our perspective. We invite you to join us in the conversation when you can. Once a week would be great. You can share a little about your week, comment on the news, or simply check in to let the community know you are there paying attention.

Our goal is to spark some activity in Area Light for the weekend/ week ahead. We also want to remind you that we are at your service and open to discussing your experiences in our community and beyond. It should be a great way to engage eachother, particularly for the benefit of new members and for those of you who are extremely busy.

Yours, Area Light Member Services

[Nascent Dynamics ( )]

Well for some reason I couldn't log out to my Member Services account. For those of you who know me, it's no secret that I've been staffing that BETA function of this site anyways. So I have been immensely busy with school, development projects for my business, and new platform explorations such as LinkedIn. However, don't worry! I'm not planning on going anywhere and despite some inconsistency here, I've kept the site active and continuing. It's O.K. to step back when there is no activity here. I have learned to take some pride in having a quiet network. At least you can be assured interactions are more genuine and direct I think. However, my ambitions for it remain huge, and we need to continue getting ready for popularity if/ when it hits.

So transparent production is a value that is intentional in my own business of Nascent Dynamics ( ). I'm getting closer to integrating it here and actually formalizing the connections/ processes. Normally, you don't hear me talk about it so much because I want to feature a self-organizing social community where everyone can essentially use it the same way I am. We've got a lot of work yet to do to be functional in that respect. At the least, people can come on and try to do their own thing on their own initiative...like me. Anyways, I've got a project management system I'm developing and am just now starting to feed in my activities here. With some comprehensive analyses and adjustments, you should see me becoming more consistent and productive to some specific ends.

Right now, let's talk for a moment about this Friday Spark! feature. I was making an effort to do a weekly post in, but I want to change that into more of a concept to discuss at our convenience with less emhasis on supporting or otherwise executing it. The same thing goes for The Loop, the chat version of this session. A weekly kickoff into the weekend to help inspire people to enjoy their social networking on Area Light, right? Yes! And a mention of site activity for those who don't have the time except to check in on occasion. Special thanks to Pierre and Stephane for their recent contributions.

Now, I'd like to see others come in here and host or otherwise use these events with or without me. It's an activity for the community- not just me. I know I've got some more work to put into this. Here's some sample of my line of thinking on this.

Area Light End-User Experience blogs- wouldn't it be great to have a community of webloggers?
Area Light Explorer: Exploring the internet and other social networks right?!
The Next Big Ning: Let's talk about the network platform. Should be great for those looking to familiarize and create their own. Or good for other creators as a networking function.
Holonic Organization: Here's some research and development on a social networking methodology.
Area Light Collective: a wiki project to integrate intelligent search as a service/ application.

These kind of fit into the service methodology here, which you can also watch me develop as I go. What i am aiming at is optimizing end-user experiences. I've got a campaign i'm looking to develop and promote out of this Friday Spark! which will change the dynamics somewhat. On the mainn page I recommend F11 for the full-screen view. This is a principle change on web-browsing to remove those tool bars and navigate the internet through the environment you are residing in. We'd like to make Area Light a home page of choice, right?! Facebook has a neat browser extension for links where you can insert site reviews/ comments. However, i had a problem doing this on the Ning site. The same basic principle kind of implies what we'd do here with the F11 initiative. Let's encourage everybody to do that from here and post their own thoughts on sites and links to follow.

Maybe the idea is not entirely new, but I still think it is relatively innovative. i'm usually several steps ahead of the curve. That's where my consulting in modern business might come into play. However, here on Area Light, you essentially access much of that for free and can actually use it to your own ends. i only recommend following my lead. Not a lot of steam behind the campaign for now...mostly just an idea and a vision...by no means all inclusive of what i am going to be doing too. However, more project planning and development to go. So more to follow.

Hope you all enjoy a great weekend. please feel free to engage me on these ideas.

Best,

Anthony Reardon
Nascent Dynamics ( ) Modern Business for the Modern Environment

[Area Light Online]

Happy Friday Spark everyone! Today we would like to help you kick off your weekend with some hopefully motivating ideas.

Special thanks to Alvin for initiating his own Coffee With The Oracle group discussion, Coffee With Alvin. It has been really neat seeing him mention it as a social networking activitity with him here. When we first started the activity, we set up the discussions and made an effort to feature a new member every week. Take a look at some of our previous Coffee discussions and please don't be afraid to jump in and continue on some of the conversations even if they have been innactive for a while. We are adjusting the protocol for this activity to encourage members to set up their own Coffee discussions. The best thing other members can do is to look into those discussions and engage people.

We are going to continue featuring this as an event. Perhaps we will go to the Event page and leave a comment stating who the featured member discussion is. Contact us or set up a discussion if you would like to be a featured member for a week.

One of the benefits to using a discussion as the place you know you can always interact with a member is the option to follow or not. For one, the discussion creator can opt out of following their own thread thereby keeping their e-mail inbox clean and allowing them to visit it at their own convenience. Furthermore, other members can choose to follow a particular discussion or check in when they are interested.

We think it is terrific to see discussions and content that demonstrate the quality of social networking on Area Light. We also would like to feature a new even we are developing called The Loop. See the sub-tab under Members. this is a live chat feature of Area Light we hope to become known for. When you stop by the site, take a look at the bottom of the page for the Area Light Chat Bar. It will tell you how many members are online and you also have the option to select your status as offline. Simply click where it says "Online" to expand the chat window and see who specifically is online. You also have a few buttons that include an option for a pop out chat window- which is great if you want to keep a chat session going as you navigate away from the site. Otherwise, the chat is consistent across every page you navigate on Area Light.

Check it out! If you see us online, don't be afraid to message us in chat. We check it periodically and like to use it to sign in and out with a little greeting or note that will usually remain for several hours.

Friday Spark! is an event/ activity we have been redesigning. The main idea remains the same: Use this discussion to share how your week was, what you are looking forward to this weekend, and what you are thinking of doing in the upcoming week...particularly with respect to Area Light.

We have been very busy entering a new phase of development and entertaining an influx of new members. We are working on how to approach members to welcome them onsite and look forward to giving some one-on-one tours of all Area Light has to offer. Contact us if you are interested. We may reach out to some of our new members and offer some assistance in setting up profile pages to get started. Contact us directly or message us on our comment wall if you are interested.

Have a fantastic weekend and enjoy networking!

Yours, Area Light Member Services

[Area Light Online]

Happy Friday Everyone!

"Friday Spark!" is a thread on our group Area Light Home we have worked on as a sort of newsletter about what is going on with Area Light as a community. You can choose to participate by commenting on the thread, and also selecting the option to follow (at the bottom) if you like. The basic idea is to offer some news about what you have been working on over the week, what you have in mind for the upcoming week, and to kick off the weekend by sparking up some social networking activity on Area Light.

We would like to thank Alvin for participating in our first one-on-one tour of Area Light. This is a BETA version of Area Light Personal Social Networking Services we offer- an interactive and customizable exploration of all that Area Light has to offer and is working on. Thanks again for your suggestion to include birthdays (on the right navigation column. Also, make sure to extend your best wishes to Dr. Yusef if you like. Alvin has become a terrific addition to the community, even though we are still in the process of building out our concept. It is really refreshing to find someone willing to work with us and find out what we are about!

Also special thanks to Gerald for encouraging support of Anthony and his interview segment Modern Business Exploration on Sta.rtUp.Biz. This is a great way for people to see what comprehensive social networking can be, and how Area Light is extended across different social networks on Ning. At the moment, we are doing an expose on Gerald's business projects and online activities. On Area Light, we have a corresponding activity called Coffee With The Oracle. Like Friday Spark!, we are in the process of modifying this activity to make it more usable, sustainable, and a value to our members. Stay tuned for more information!

If you have not done so, we highly encourage you to join our group Area Light Home and to be an active participant. this is the first place we suggest new members go to introduce themselves and meet people, engage the community and Area Light Member Services without worry of format, and to discuss what it is you want out of the community. We have some interesting conversations you are welcome to join in on, and we would love to see some of your interests represented as well. Stay tuned as Area Light Member Services becomes more proactive from this home base within our community. Just consider it our community welcome center. Another feature you are welcomed to be a part of is our discussion thread "Hi There!" which is perfect for checking in and letting people know you are paying attention (especially when you are just stopping by for a moment, and don't have much time to engage anyone or do anything).

O.K., we have a lot going on! Check out our project Area Light Explorer, because we are right in the middle of turning Area Light into an online social networking magazine! You should notice we are also starting to feed in a lot more media content, particularly as it pertains to personal interests. Note the recent personal focus by us on the U.S. Soccer theme. Soccer is an international interest medium and a world-class content theme that can help us materialize our vision. Keep this in mind as we look ahead to celebrating the 2010 World Cup as a community.

Also keep an eye on our geographic networking theme. If you take a look at our group NorCal, you will find a view into our project extending Area Light Member Services into an actual community based social network. As we close in on the content and activities that are going to be of interest to a local geographic market, you will notice us phasing the same topics into Area Light to help improve our constituent mix of content. No need to join if you are not from the area. That's just part of the benefit of being a part of Area Light, because our concept canvasses the world culture and encourages exploration and development on those themes within the unifying organizing idea of our online social networking community.

Finally, if you would like to show your support to what we are doing, please take our suggestion to start a blog called Area Light Social Networking Experience. Use that blog to "think out loud" about your experience here on Area Light, with Area Light Member Services, and other members. We will be paying attention, and hope to work with members to develop an online social networking profile. As a social network that promotes the idea of creating your own social network on Ning, how great would it be to see a community of socially aware people thinking about their environment, activities, and experiences. we think it would add a lot of value for new members coming in and wondering just who they are dealing with and what they prefer in terms of interaction.

All these things are works in progress. As we close in on one year of research, development, and experimentation, we hope we are showing the vision we have for this community materializing to a new level. More to follow!

So, what are you up to? Have a great weekend!

Yours, Area Light Member Services