I presented ‘Counting New Media: Blogs, WIKIs, Prodcasts and Second Life’ at the Functional Size Summit in
Vancouver in late April, as part of the presentation I asked the room whether any of the attendees blogged, podcasted or were a resident of Second Life.  The goal was to precipitate a sharing of information and to cross pollinate those that were active in the social medias.  The responses were so overwhelming that crickets in the presentation room were not drowned out.  While I am never shocked by an individual that that doesn’t participate in larger virtual metrics community (and by definition isn’t a content creator), I was shocked that an entire room wasn’t participating in generating content at a community level knowledge.  After the presentation I was given two unsolicited rationalizations, first that the lack of response was a reflection level of interest in extending the intellectual capital of the community and secondly that the audience was older therefore less apt to leverage new technology.   

I’m hard pressed to give any significant credence to either suggestion but that could be my own outlook getting in the way.  A community that cannot grow unless a sizable portion of the community is actively creating and sharing a body of knowledge.  Knowledge being the currency of viability for any community.  I would suggest that the software measurement community is yet to reach its zenith (even if the practice was merely acting symbiotically with software development and project management).  Growth should be inexorable.   

Blaming lack of engagement on the age of community is at either short sighted or an excuse for lack of engagement (depending on which side of the age gap is lobbing the statement).  The members of the metrics community are like any other group within the mainstream of IT; it is a mixture of those that passionate about technology and those that are not.  The more important question to ask is about the pass the majority of the metrics community has about the profession.  There are those that are just doing a job and those that have are real passion for processes, numbers, techniques and theories.  These are the people that wake up at nigh to leave a message on a WIKI, blog or bulletin board because they have no real choice.  The metrics bug makes them get involved.   

Why is this important?  It is important because involvement is critical for any community (metrics, process improvement or methodology) to develop the new content, to engage in a conversation about how things really work and to create content to extend the body of knowledge.  Some say content is king perhaps the better description is the combination of involvement and content is the fountain of youth for a profession.