What is your address?

A simple question, but gone are the days of a simple answer.

An address directs you to a particular space - to meet a friend, colleague or rarely seen aunt, where you can have a cup of coffee and discuss the latest boyfriend or girlfriend, the crashing stock market or the exploits of strange Uncle Stan. But we are now seeing a trend where this address begins with a ‘www’, not 15, 24 or 2/317, and ends with ‘.com’ instead of Rd, St or Cres. We are not being directed to a coffee shop, boardroom or a kitchen with red checked curtains, but to a virtual space where we assume an identity and engage in discussion.

Participation and engagement in online communities is seen as nothing special to us so called ‘digital natives’. When we wake up we check our MySpace and Facebook, and when writing an assignment our first port of call (whether we admit it or not) is generally Wikipedia. Our peers are no longer just those we are studying with, play sport with or live in the same city as. They are those who post on the same blogs and forums as us and those who tag things that interest us on del.icio.us.

It is easy to identify how we, digital natives, are travelling around new media landscapes in our personal lives, but as we mature and begin to engage in our professional communities, how do our personal habits and experiences impact on practices in our professional lives?

In a recent edition of UK graphic design magazine, Computer Arts, there was strong debate on the issue of online collaboration. In the design community, the words ‘design collective’ were generally synonymous with vague, directionless projects mounted by artists who were lacking in motivation and commitment. However, we are now beginning to see a change. Commercially viable collectives are now beginning to form around, and be facilitated by, online communities. Consisting of between 3 to 300 designers from all around the world, these groups collaborate to share skills, techniques, ideas and expertise, produce material of outstanding quality and originality and make their efforts financially rewarding. For example, the recent success of some international collectives:

PSYOP - produced campaigns for Coca-Cola and MTV
Peepshow - artwork displayed in London office of Saatchi & Saatchi
Rinzen - recently exhibited at the Louvre

Progressively, more professionals, even those in careers traditionally unpressured by technological advances, cannot escape the need to engage on new platforms. Recently, Queensland Minister for Youth, Lindy Nelson-Carr, conducted a discussion forum with six Queensland youths as a part of National Youth Week. The forum was conducted not in her office or even around a boardroom table, but on an island purchased by the Queensland Government in virtual world, Second Life. This was not a typical day at work for Lindy Nelson- Carr, but it clearly demonstrates how professionals are either being forced to or are willingly exploring the potential applications for online communities.

So as I begin to explore the realms of my professional life, I rarely stop to ponder how my actions are different to those in my position five, ten or fifteen years before. In my first job, as a teaching assistant, I plan the daily discussion topic for my class, whose responses are presented on our online forum. I email them all their logins and passwords, assess them on their abilities to demonstrate a balanced view point when writing a blog entry and converse with my colleagues to organise video link-ups between our students. In my second job as a research assistant I sit in my office, talking with my boss over Skype about a document we are collaborating on through Google Documents regarding the best ways to format an interactive online survey. I don’t think twice when she asks me my address. It starts with a www and ends with a .com.