As I continue to work on the vision of the WW Codezone Platform, I realize that I have yet to really convey what this thing called Codezone should be. Granted, the vision is not fully developed yet, but hopefully I can clarify it a bit with some prose.
Ode to the Community
Codezone is not a portal nor a Web site.
Codezone is not a tracking tool.
Codezone is not a User Group registration engine.
Rather, its a platform and that alone is cool.
All of these things may be or may not be,
When its all said and done,
Part of the pillars built on Codezone,
Either way the worldwide community will be linked as one.
The future of Codezone is not to necessarily create a Web site that reflects the worldwide community, but rather to build an underlying framework that supports the worldwide community, and enable every region or country to build something that is relevant to them. Additionally, we should provide functionality to third-party communities and user groups to provide a better user experience in the community.
Ultimately the vision is to connect the disparate community efforts (user groups, third-party community sites, influencers and individuals) by providing a common set of functionality to the regional or country-specific implementations of the Codezone concept, and to the community partners.
Think of the WW Codezone Platform as a Framework. By itself it does nothing except expose a common set of functionality. The benefits come through when building on that framework and leveraging the functionality to do something that is right for your context.
Here is a conceptual look at what the Codezoen Platform could look like:
More prose to follow at a future date....