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Case Study:
Toronto Transit Camp
Community-Driven Open Innovation or Focus Group 2.0?
Copyright Remarkk Consulting, 2007. Distributed under a Creative Commons license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/

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Online community
meets physical place.

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Timeline:
December, 2006: TTC’s web site RFP
January 1, 2007: Toronto blogs call for help
January 3, 2007: TTC Chair signals openness
January 10, 2007: Web geek brainstorm
February 4, 2007: Transit Camp event

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Toronto Transit Camp
“Not a complaints department,
a solutions playground”
Passion and fun meet practice
Diverse communities
Design Slam
Cultural change
Instantiating community
Modelling for replication

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Results for TTC
Noticeable shift in relationship: from combative to collaborative
A new model for community engagement and communication
New open-source projects: openttc.ca, opentransit.info
TTC received expertise unavailable in-house
New strategies for a web site RFP:
embraces community and peer-production concept
maximizes brand and service impact with limited resources

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Social Web
New tools and
online-enabled
communities are
signalling a new
paradigm of
knowledge
production.

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New Lenses:
Communities
Communities of Practice
Communities of Proximity
Communities of Interest
Communities of Values

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Open Creative Communities
Open: no artificial barriers to entry; membership comes from
creative citizenship, both professional and amateur
Creative: production of ideas and inventions that are personal,
original and meaningful
Community: any group of individuals who interact and share some
common characteristics

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Modeling TransitCamp
Discovery and play
passion
fun
practice
Intersections of communities
professional and amateur
interest groups and creators
Community leadership
values
self-interest

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Collaboration

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Co-Creation Rules
Yes, and... Love the 1%ers
Make an offer to do something Get vernacular
What you want me to do, and why? Make mistakes
Give me a platform Lower barriers
Create opportunity Let the mess show
Play Share your secrets
Understand the environment Be changed
Work at it Show the humanity
Adapted from J. Moore & J. Cherkoff, http://www.changethis.com/29.03.CoCreationRules,

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Commons-Based Peer-Production
Granular
Transparency
Modular
Monitoring
Integratable
Peer-review
Self-selected
Discipline
Fast/efficient communication
Fairness
Trust construction
Institutional sustainability
Norm creation
Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page

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What is compelling to me?

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Design for Energy
Communities are naturally occurring social systems
Social systems demonstrate emergent biological properties
Starts with passion and human desires
Intentional communities require design of a loose framework of rules/norms
Play is what happens in the space between the rules
Tapping emergence means activating passion and the play instinct

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What is the Opportunity?

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Social Computing Behaviour
Late Boomer Early Boomer
Gen Y (18-26) Gen X (27-40) Seniors (61+)
(41-50) (51-61)
30% 19% 12% 7% 5%
Creators
34% 25% 18% 15% 11%
Critics
18% 16% 15% 16% 11%
Collectors
57% 29% 15% 8% 6%
Joiners
54% 41% 31% 26% 19%
Spectators
21% 42% 54% 61% 70%
Inactives
Source: Charlene Li, “Social Technographics”; Forrester Research, 2007