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It’s been a few weeks now since we first launched the FOW Community to a very small and select group of members. We learned a lot through our initial (albeit quiet) launch and are getting ready to kick things up a bit. The goal of the community is to prepare organizations for the future of work by giving them access to valuable resources and a valuable network of some of the world’s most forward thinking and progressive companies around the world. We have a lot of themes and topics we want to tackle such as the internet of things, collaboration, millennials in the workplace, the sharing economy and much more. As the community grows so will the themes.

On the member side of things we are very pleased to have companies such as Wells Fargo, CEMEX, Sanofi, SAP, Alberta Energy Regulator, and others as FOWC members with several additional companies in the approval queue waiting to join.

Every month members get access to between 5-10 different types of content around the future of work.  We are now regularly providing members with:

  • 1-2 webinars every month where a guest comes to present on a specific topic, thus far we have explored things such as organizational design and workplace productivity, a non-IT focused approach to collaboration, the five trends shaping the future of work, and others.
  • 4 podcasts every month (trying for 1/week) that focuse on a specific theme related to the future of work or on a unique company
  • 2-4 whitepapers every month that provide educational content around a specific theme related to the future of work such as holocracy as an evolution of collaboration and five fears of the millennial generation
  • 1-2 report summaries every month where we take a research report that someone like a PwC may have created and distill into a very short easily digestible report summary that gives members all the key information they need

We have also made significant updates on the technology side since we custom-built an entire community for our members. Updates here include:

  • streamlined activity feeds to make it easier for members to see what’s going on in the community
  • the ability to link to specific status updates that members create
  • using hashtags within the community, this was widely requested and is now available
  • creating a single notification center where members can see who is commenting on content, liking content, etc.
  • improved UI/UX experience
  • weekly email digests so members can stay up to speed on the latest conversations, find out about new members, and learn about the more recent resources
  • and much more

The important thing to point out about the platform itself is that since we created it we can add new features to it and customize it based on what the members want and like.

Perhaps the most valuable thing that members get access to is each other, a collection of some of the smartest and most progressive organizations that thinking about how the world of work is changing. These members ask each other questions, share links, and provide advice and support to one another and it’s fantastic to see!

We are in the process of starting to explore our first physical event to happen some time in 2015 and have lots of other exciting plans such as launching a type of innovation network for members to connect to, gamification for the community, resource tagging and categorization, and much more!  The community is barely a month old (if that) and we are all very excited to see where it goes and how it grows. Members can expect new features (that they help decide on) to be released approximately every quarter.

We are now going to significantly kick up our marketing and efforts to let more people in the world know about the FOW Community!

No other community like this exists. If you are interested in learning more or requesting and invite you can do so by visiting the FOW Community or by emailing me directly, Jacob [at] fowcommunity [dot] com.

Onward!

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