Web 3.0 and the Emergence of Creative Community Hubs

The awesome logo for the Big Omaha conferece, which combines an icon rooted in the distinct history of the place with a suggestion of movement, daring, and exploration.

The most exciting emergent trend on the internet actually isn't on the internet; it's about place, and the explosion of offline community hubs supercharged by online discovery.

In the early days, the internet was "cyberspace," an alternative and parallel world where people remained largely anonymous. Web 1.0 was about distributing information at a scale and pace never before seen. As web 2.0 has grown up, the internet has become increasingly more social. When we think of the internet, today, we increasingly think of the tools that allow people to become one-person content creators and distributors, and to receive a constantly update stream of information and ideas from people they care about.

But there is a ground swell happening. Rather than just sharing interesting news articles and pictures of funny cats, the increasingly public timeline of activity we produce is making it easier and easier for us to discover kindred spirits. Creatives, entrepreneurs, moms, creative-entrepreneur-moms and all variety of others are weaving together digital communities of common passion and complementary need.

And more than ever before, they're taking it offline.

Writing about Virgance last week, ecofirm Max Gladwell advanced a new definition for Web 3.0 that's not about cloud computing and semantic web, but instead about a phenomenon of human use:

Web 3.0 might also encompass the merging of the digital world with the actual world through Web and mobile technologies. Web 3.0 might include applications that integrate or necessarily include the actual worldwide web—the one in which we live, the tangible web of homes, streets, businesses, and government offices. If Web 2.0 is the Internet as a platform, then Web 3.0 might be the World as a platform.

In the new internet there is an increasing fluency between online and offline, and the direction of discovery flows both ways. Social networking technologies are no longer just the place where your offline connections live, but a doorway for relationships with new friends and colleagues.

The creatives are translating this emergent energy by building community hubs, rooted in place and designed to unleash the power of relationships to inspire innovation and ideas.

In the for-profit world, this is taking the shape of incubators. Y-Combinator is just the best known of an array of institutions designed to accelerate young companies by lavishing them with mentorship and connections. VentureBeat wrote yesterday about a new group, SproutBox based out of Bloomington, Indiana, and gave a shout to the growing field "a list that includes TechStars in Boulder, Colo., Launchbox Digital in Washington, D.C., Start@Spark in Boston, Mass., and Capital Factory in Austin, Texas."

In the social sector, there is an explosion around co-working spaces for social innovators. The Hub's global network is one of the leaders (and poised to come to the US for the first time this fall), but there are many others, such as NEDSpace in Portland, Oregon. Both the incubators and the co-working spaces share a common sensibility in attempting to draw out the unique composition of the communities in which they're rooted.

And everywhere, conferences are popping up to build momentum around new sensibilities. This post was inspired by Big Omaha, a truly awesome looking event wrapping up in Nebraska today that is designed to converge brilliant entrepreneurs around the leading city of the  Silicon Prarie.

The potential here is truly immense. Imagine a network where every city you went to, there was a community hub that you could check in with, each with a feel it's own, but all connected by a passion for unleashing people's capacity by allowing them to inspire and collaborate with one another.

I believe that's happening, and I think the new social internet provides the plumbing. And smart companies are going to be flocking to provide tools to help accelerate the movement.