Carl Weinschenk spoke with Adam Zawel, Chief Collaboration Officer, INmobile.org.

Weinschenk: What does a chief collaboration officer do?
Zawel: I facilitate conversations. Sometimes I am a catalyst for online conversations. I was an analyst for the Yankee Group for seven years. My job was to be smart and tell people things. The shift to being an online moderator is that I have to recognize that I am not the genius in the room. The executives are really the ones who know what’s going on. It is the equivalent to being a moderator on a panel rather than the keynote speaker.

Weinschenk: What is INmobile.org?
Zawel: INmobile.org is for senior executives in the wireless industry. These are the types of people who wouldn’t contribute to an online public discussion board. They are not going to be in Facebook or a LinkedIn discussion. They discuss things in INmobile.org because their peers are there.

Weinschenk: How do you put something like this together?
Zawel: The first thing I have to do is make sure we have the right members in the community. Once they all are in there and trust the community is at the right level, it is just a matter of getting the discussion started. Sometimes I’ll start it off with a topic of interest to them. When it really takes off is when one senior and respected member of the community says something provocative. You don’t have to get them together at the same time. It doesn’t have to be a chat. It could be a threaded discussion. We may have an executive from a wireless operator comment today, and an Australian compatriot respond at 3 in the morning. The discussion can keep going for a week. It’s the anti-event. It’s a 365-day-per-year conversation …: So often you’ll see this conversation going on between executives of two well-known companies, and then someone chimes in from Russia or who is not currently employed. If it was a public social network, you would wonder who is this guy, but because it's INmobile.org, they have been vetted. When you look at details, it could turn out that they used to be the CEO of some important company.

Weinschenk: These are busy people. Why do they join?
Zawel: Each one has their own motivation. That’s half the fun -- figuring out why someone said what they said. None of the comments are anonymous. You can see who someone is, what company they are from, and make a pretty good guess why they are saying what they are saying. Most want to share in the spirit of elevating the industry.

Weinschenk: How does all this relate to the great expansion of consumer social sites?
Zawel: There two links. One is that younger executives have grown up with this. Increasingly, the younger senior executives will look for this type of format for sharing. Online collaboration is becoming more and more integral in the executive networking and information sharing landscape. On the flip side, the senior executives, even the older ones, see that this Facebook phenomenon is for real and want to experience it. But when they go to Facebook, they see that it’s not really for them. Maybe they can observe and semi-participate, but don’t get it 100 percent. Here is a professional social network designed for them, with all the features and functions for them. They get it in a way and it is not as if they jumped on a teenager-oriented community.

Weinschenk: Are the methods the same as at a Facebook?
Zawel: The tools are a little different. Sometimes it’s a small thing such as calling someone a peer as opposed to a friend. It’s also the way it’s organized. It’s one community. Once you are in, you are in. There are no groups within groups. It’s an imperfect system but we get the job done. A member has to be a director at a large company or a C-level executive at a funded startup. We verify that they are who they say they are. We do have an organized monthly discussion. Many of the discussions are started by members and driven by the news. Sometimes we get the insider view on what is happening. But every month we dive into a specific topic.

Weinschenk: Where is more innovation possible?
Zawel: One area for more innovation is the linkage between physical and online events. We have our own receptions around the wireless conferences. People come in droves to see the RSVP list and to see the pictures after the event. In this way, senior executives are not different than teenagers. Before the event, they want to see who is going and after they want to see the pictures of the event. We … partner with event companies in terms of the tools, listing who is coming to the party, allowing networking in advance, and allowing continuation of discussions that happen in person and online.

Weinschenk: What other innovations is INmobile implementing?
Zawel: Another is helping companies promote themselves to the members. The culture of the discussions is not to pitch, but we recognize that there are members that want to. We want to facilitate in a way that preserves the integrity of the community. What we launched in is a marketplace where companies can pitch to one another. The culture here is shameless self-promotion. We launched it six months ago. People come primarily to network with each other and discuss things openly. Those are the more popular areas. But the marketplace is for people who have a definite purpose. If you are buying and selling or partnering, that’s when you go there.

Weinschenk: Do you think online professional communities will grow?
Zawel: There are so many drivers for more online business collaboration, everything from the price of travel to the improvement in the technology to the culture that young executives grew up with. Almost every company is thinking of doing things around communities like reaching out to customers. A B2B company can set up in INmobile.org. We’re positioning ourselves to be the uber-executive community that has [other companies’ communities] within.