P4D Case Study #1: Airtable(Community List)
Community Curation and Homogeneous Competitions
The Supportive Cycle model is a sub-framework of the Platform-for-Development framework (P4D). I am currently working on some P4D case studies. Today I’ll share a case about Community Curation and its business ecology.
The case study report is organized with D-D-R structure.
- Part 1 Description introduces the story of the case with the framework of Supportive Cycle model.
- Part 2 Discussion focuses on discovering some insights from the case.
- Part 3 Reflection is my personal reflection on both practice level and theory level.
Thus, this case study also aims to test the D-D-R structure for writing P4D case study reports.
Contents
Part 1: Description
1.1 Airtable (Community List)
1.2 Platform: Airtable
1.3 People: Sudharshan C. Babu
1.4 Project: Community List
1.5 Platform-ba: Marketers, Indie Creators, Community Builders
1.6 Concept: Community Curation
1.7 Four Supportive Movements
Part 2: Discussion
2.1 Platform-ship: Competition
2.2 Platform Endorsement
2.3 Support-for-Endorse
Part 3: Reflection
3.1 Personal Innovation Matters
3.2 The Affordance-Supportance Hierarchy Loop
Part 1: Description
This part introduces the story of Airtable(Community List) with the framework of Supportive Cycle model.
1.1 Airtable (Community List)
The basic unit of analysis of the Platform-for-Development framework is Platform(Project). Thus, I will use the format to name each case. For example, Airtable(Community List) means:
- Platform: Airtable
- Project: Community List
If a project is related to several platforms. I’d like to pick one platform as the primary platform and consider other platforms as context. It also depends on the research purpose. If you want to focus on the development of the project, you can draw several diagrams for your case.
The Supportive Cycle model has five elements and four supportive movements. The above diagram shows all basic ideas with the case of Airtable(Community List).
- Platform: Airtable
- People: Sudharshan C. Babu
- Project: Community List
- Platform-ba: Marketers, Indie Creators, Community Builders.
- Concept: Community Curation
The following sections will offer more details about these elements.
1.2 Platform: Airtable
Airtable is a popular no-code platform for building databases with spreadsheets. The platform was founded in 2012 by Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, and Emmett Nicholas. Database is the foundation of modern software and web/mobile applications. However, it’s hard for ordinary people to build a database with SQL or similar database programs. Airtable gives users a spreadsheet-like user interface with a powerful function for building flexible relational databases. The result is the democracy of online database building and web/mobile application development.
Airtable was officially launched in 2014. In the beginning, people used Airtable for their personal organizational needs. In other words, early users were passionate curators! They curated everything from travel plans to wine bottle collections. For example:
- Every Star Trek Ever by Flourish Klink
- Metaphor Map by Nick Moore
Later, businesses started to adopt Airtable for their workflows. Today Airtable is defined as a cloud collaborative software for professional and enterprise usage. Moreover, some third-party developers also adopt Airtable and other tools to form a solution such as Integromat’s case “Create new Google sheets row from Airtable records when triggred by a webhook”.
While Airtable focuses on the B2B SaaS market, some users are taking the technological affordances of Airtable to build their projects. They create databases with themes on Airtable and curate the content of their databases. As indie creators, they launch their databases as business products.
This story is part of the prevalent no-code movement and the well-known passion economy.
1.3 People: Sudharshan C. Babu
For the Supportive Cycle model, the term “People” refers to people who initiate Projects. For the case of Airtable(Community List), the creator of the project is Sudharshan C. Babu.
Sudharshan C. Babu is a machine learning engineer and an indie maker. He claims his strategy is building one product per month. We can find the following projects on his personal website.
You can find Sudharshan on his website, Twitter and Linkedin.
1.4 Project: Community List
Community List is a database which lists 310+ communities from Slack, Discord and Circle with 12+ relevant data-points. The data includes 50+ sponsored communities, 50+ paid communities with price and 75+ communities.
What’s the purpose of the project? The slogan of Community List is Find hundreds of communities to promote your product. The benefit of buying the Community List database is saving 100+ hours on manual searching and sorting.
1.5 Platform-ba: Marketers, Indie Creators, Community Builders
For the Platform-for-Development framework, the term “Platform-ba” refers to the total users of a platform and their activities. For example, Twitter-ba means all twitter users. YouTube-ba means all YouTube users. Airtable-ba means all Airtable users.
For the Supportive Cycle model, the “Platform-ba” refers to a small group of a platform-ba, not all users. The reason is we only talk about the project-related users.
For the case of Airtable(Community List), we can consider “Markers, Indie Creators, Community Builders” as potential users of Community List. Some members of this group might be existing users of Airtable, other members are considered as potential users of Airtable.
Sudharshan launched Community List on Product Hunt and it hit #2 Product of the Day on the site. The above screenshot shows some feedback from members of the site.
1.6 Concept: Community Curation
The term “Concept” is adopted from Project-oriented Activity Theory which considers an activity is a process of formation of a brand new concept. From the perspective of the theory, the term “project” refers to such a process. The Platform-for-Development framework is inspired by Project-oriented Activity Theory. It would be great to incorporate Concept into the Supportive Cycle since a Concept can be considered as the Curator of the whole activity. By adopting a Concept, the four supportive movements become a meaningful whole process.
For the case of Airtable(Community List), I consider the concept is Community Curation.
From the creators side, it is clear that the Community List is a data curation product. The pieces are data about communities while the whole is a database of communities.
From the users side, they have to use Community List to promote their products. The process requires them to find communities one by one, join particular communities one by one, and connect members of a particular community. Finally, they have to build their own product-oriented community by attracting some members from existing communities.
For both sides, their activities are considered as Community Curation.
Curation is time-consuming practice. Community building is time-consuming practice too. Patience, my dear. This great thing takes time.
1.7 Four Supportive Movements
The Supportive Cycle model also highlights four supportive movements. The Supportive Movement is defined by the concept of Supportance which refers to the potential supportive possibilities for actions. Each movement is divided into two statuses: the Potential status and the Actual status. The relationship between two entities is roughly considered as “environment” and “organism” from the ecological perspective. One side (as “environment”) offers Supportances to the other side (as “organism”).
- Environments: Platform, Project
- Organisms: People, Platform-ba
For the case of Airtable(Community List), I identify the following themes of supportive movements:
- Create: Airtable (Platform) offers a supportance of “support-for-create a database” to Sudharshan(People).
- Curate: Community List (project) offers a supportance of “support-for-curate a list of community” to Sudharshan (People).
- Buy: Community List (project) offers a supportance of “support-for-buy a database about communities” to marketers, indie creators, community builders (Platform-ba).
- Use: Airtable (Platform) offers a supportance of “support-for-use a database” to marketers, indie creators, community builders (Platform-ba).
The concept of Supportance is a brand new idea. The above case study is a test. It’s hard to find a simple way to present a particular Supportance. I just use “support-for-action” as a format to describe it. The purpose of the concept is highlighting the Potential status of human actions and social life. Unfortunately, this case is very normal. Thus, the concept of Supportance doesn’t bring new insights to us.
You can find details about the concept of Supportance here and the details of supportive movements here.
Part 2: Discussion
As an independent researcher, I don’t have enough resources to support empirical studies. In order to test the Platform-for-Development framework, I use the following two ways to conduct further empirical studies:
- Rapid Analysis
- Slow Synthesis
Rapid Analysis is based on a very limited number of observations and its report might be just a blog post while Slow Synthesis is based on formal qualitative research methods such as participatory research and other methods. The report of Slow Synthesis might be a white paper or a book.
Rapid Analysis aims to produce at least one insight by conducting a case study with the Supportive Cycle model. The case of Airtable(Community List) belongs to Rapid Analysis. From this case, I found two insights which attracted me very much.
- Platform-ship: Competition
- Platform Endorsement
Part 2 will focus on discussing these insights and other topics.
2.1 Platform-ship: Competition
I have mentioned the term “Platform-ship” in Platform as Infoniche on Feb 26, 2021. “So far, we can use the supportive cycle as a way to understand the macro level potential action possibilities. However, I think it is possible to discover more ways to conceptualize these macro supportances. I consider using a new concept ‘Platform-ship’ as a starting point for further study. Each type of Platform-ship means a special type of social connection. If we can develop a typology of Platform-ship, then we can get more insights about platform-based social practice.”
The case of Airtable(Community List) offers a great example of Platform-ship: Competition. Originally, I found Community List in the Community Club platform. See the screenshot below, you can find a similar product which is offered by Ric Arthur.
Ric Arthur launched a 1000+ communities database in the Community Club platform on June 5, 2021. He named the product as Communitable.
Let’s apply the Supportive Cycle model to the case of Airtable(Communitable). What’s the difference between this new diagram and the above diagram for the case of Airtable(Community List)? They share almost four elements and four supportive movements. The differences are brand name of their products and creators.
It is clear that this is a case of Homogeneous Competition which is a typical business challenge. Now we can adopt the Supportive Cycle model to develop a strategy for avoiding the homogeneity competition. We just need to rethink the five elements and the four supportive movements and make some changes. Can we change the concept from Community Curation to Talent Curation? Can we change the supportive movement between Platform-ba and Project from Buy to Co-Build? Once you understand the Supportive Cycle model, you can find there are many potential solutions for building a new Supportive Cycle which is the context of your product.
Competition is a normal type of social interaction within social ecology. I found it is possible to adopt Organizational Ecology for studying the no-code movement. Traditionally, Organizational Ecology is for organizational research. Now the no-code movement brings more and more indie creators to the market. These indie creators could be considered as “organizations” because they offer more and more “products” to the market. Thus, we can adopt organizational science for study platform-based practice.
Organizational Ecology is developed by Michael T. Hannan and John Freeman. They developed several sub-theories such as Niche Theory and Density Dependence. It goes beyond the Platform-for-Development framework because the framework focuses on adult development. But, it can be adopted to develop Platform Ecology which pays attention to business ecology. I will explore this idea further in future articles.
2.2 Platform Endorsement
I have noticed that there is a special type of Supportance from Platform. When I talked about the TEDx case, I used “Open Brand License” to describe their Supportance. This is normal because TEDx’s open brand license is intended to be offered by TED.
The concept of Supportance also emphasizes Unintended Supportances. For example, many Notion-based products use notion’s logo for their product marketing. Again, we can find a similar phenomenon from Airtable-ba. Both Community List and Communitable use Airtable’s logo and a slogan “Made with love in Airtable” for their product package design. Ric Arthur also launched a product called Podpostr which is powered by Airtable too.
In order to discuss various types of brand-related issues with the Supportive Cycle model, I coined a term called “Platform Endorsement” to describe a special type of Supportance. See the diagram below.
I have mentioned the distinction between Intended Support and Unintended Support in the article The Concept of Supportance. I used individual-to-individual social support as an example to explain these ideas. Now let’s use Platform-People as example to explain Institution-to-Individual social support.
- Intended support: Platform A intends to give some support to person B.
- Untended support: Platform A doesn’t intend to give some support to person B, but person B actualizes some supportances which are offered by Platform A.
Both intended support and unintended support require Perception and Capability from Person B, however unintended support doesn’t require Intentionality from Platform A.
For example, Brand License and Open Brand License are indented supportances from Platforms. However, Brand Appropriation is a unindented supportance from Platforms.
Is there an official open brand program from Airtable? Does Airtable allow its users to use the slogan “Made with Love in Airtable” with Airtable’s logo for promoting products?
I think this is a grey area. For Airtable, Notion, and more platforms, it is a challenge to face Brand Appropriation. From the perspective of the Platform-for-Development framework, I wish these platforms could keep this grey area and remain this supportance for creative indie users.
2.3 Support-for-Endorse
There is a bug within the case study of Airtable(Community List). I identified “Create” as the first supportive movement which is between Platform and People. However, what I described is Affordance, not Supportance.
- Create: Airtable (Platform) offers a supportance of “support-for-create a database” to Sudharshan(People).
From the perspective of ecological practice approach, the concept of Affordance corresponds to the material aspect of Platform while the concept of Supportance corresponds to the sociocultural aspect of Platform. Thus, it is better to use Affordance to describe “Creating a database” because it is related to the material aspect of Airtable.
The above discussion about Platform Endorsement gives us a new insight. There is a supportance offered by Airtable. So, I modified the original diagram and used “Endorse” to replace “Create”.
Though the affordance of “creating a database” is an important foundation for the Community List project, the Supportive Cycle model only focuses on discussing Supportances.
Part 3: Reflection
What can I learn from this case study? I’d like to share two ideas with you. The first one is about practice while the second one is about theory.
3.1 Personal Innovation Matters
While innovative technological platforms give more power to more people, it is easy to face Homogeneous Competition for indie creators. It is fine to invest time and energy to deal with homogeneous competitions because it is a useful training for indie creators to learn and grow from hard work.
However, if indie creators want to avoid homogeneous competitions and really make a small difference, it is time to put personal innovation first.
There are many ways for achieving personal innovation. I have shared a framework called Concept-fit on May 25, 2021. The framework has four key words: Experience > Themes > Projects > Opportunities. It roughly suggests the following five steps for personal innovation:
- Reflect on career experience
- Discover pairs of opposite themes
- Fit all pairs of opposite themes
- Join or initiate relevant projects
- Fit career themes with career opportunity
You can find more details from the original article. Also, I realized what I thought should be called Career Curation after having discussions with some friends. Thus, I started expanding the framework by curating more ideas from my previous works. You can find more details from this Miro board: Curativity Theory for Personal Innovation.
3.2 The Affordance-Supportance Hierarchical Loops
I have tested the Supportive Cycle model with several case studies. One mistake I often made was the first Supportive movement.
I originally described the first supportive movement as Primary Projectivity, “This special type of supportance is Primary Projectivity which is introduced in an previous article Activity U (X): Projecting, Projectivity, and Cultural Projection. The term Primary Projectivity refers to potential action opportunities of initiating a brand new Project. For the above TED(TEDx) example, the primary projectivity is the TEDx open brand license. Without this open brand licence, there are no opportunity of organizing local TEDx events.”
However, the concept of Primary Projectivity is abstract. What we need to discover from empirical studies are insights such as “Platform Endorsement.” The above discussion claims “Support-for-Endorse” as a concrete Supportance. This is a wonderful discovery because we can apply it to future case studies. Eventually, we will build a list of concrete Supportances as a body of knowledge for platform thinkers and developmental researchers.
It is useful to conduct Affordance Analysis for the Platform-for-Development framework. However, I want to remove Affordance Analysis from the Supportive Cycle model. In order to solve this problem, I need to design a new diagram for visualizing the “Affordance — Supportance” hierarchical loops and placing two level analysis together.
Further Reading
If you want to know more details about the Platform-for-Development (P4D) framework, you can start from this summary:
I am also working on editing a book for the framework. Here is the contents of the book:
Thank you very much!
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