can't dummy community

I have been asked several times to show a demo or mock-up of PlanLive, the same way software is often demoed using dummy data. When I do, people are invariably disappointed. 


Friends' vacation photos used to be my father's worst nightmare. He dreaded sitting in dark living rooms watching uninteresting vacation slides without being in control of the remote control. "Let's visit them now before they develop their vacation slides!" He would have appreciated being able to see these photos on Facebook or Flickr. 


When we watch a demo website, we often expect to see National Geographic-like photos but get to see vacation slides instead. The content on community websites acquires its value largely from its authors who are valuable to you; much more so than from the 'objective' quality of the content itself. When we go to see our daughter in a theatre play at school, we don't expect to see a professional actress. We expect to see our daughter show us parents what she and her classmates have been preparing for the past few months. That is important to us. Conversely, when we do go to a theatre play in Amsterdam we expect them to outperform our daughter and her classmates. And if they don't, we demand our money back.


Only a small part of community content is 'portable' to other communities. The vast majority of community content—the content on community websites—is relevant only for the community that created it. Now, with Web2.0 technologies, many communities, however, can and do create lots of content at relatively low cost. Many communities times lots of content times a small part of still equals a lot of relevant and portable content—but that won't show in a dummy demo community.