Generosity in action - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Generosity in action - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog My good friend Lars Pind runs a company, Collaboraid, which embodies generosity in a number of ways. They develop e-learning software based on an open source platform, which is generous in itself, since they spend time and energy not only on creating solutions for their customers (among which youll find MIT, Heidelberg University and Greenpeace), but also on improving the platform itself. And now theyve taken it a step further, and have arranged a two-day conference about the technological platform for anyone whos interested, and people are coming from all over the world. Cost of participation: Zero! They spend a lot of time arranging this event but wont make a single buck on it. They do it simply for the sake of the community, and because they think it will be fun. What does it signify, when a company does something this generous? Most of all, it points to a commitment to something larger than and outside of the company itself. In this case, Collaboraid are committed not only to their own success, but are also working for the success of the OpenACS and dotLRN communities. This might even mean aiding your competitors, since they will also benefit from whatever improvements are added to the platform. It also indicates a belief, that together we can achieve results, that are not possible alone. That the collaborative contributions of many people from many companies can create something that is better for the customers than a single company could alone. To take it one step further, it also points to a belief, that to improve yourself, you must help others to improve and vice versa. The saying no mans an island refers to the fact that noone is completely isolated, were all connected. And when were connected through something like an open source community, helping the community means helping yourself. And lastly I think theres a belief, that working in this way, will always be more fun. When youre open and generous, youre working in a way thats more natural for most people. We like to be open and to share whatever we can it makes us feel good. Conversely, when companies hold on tightly to whatever they have, refusing to share, and working only for their own good, it introduces a certain closedness. They risk seeing everything around them as potential threats, and miss many opportunities for fruitful collaboration. All of this generosity seems to be working just fine for Lars and Collaboraid. Theyve recently completed a project which included a lot of improvements to the dotLRN platform. All of these improvements are now part of the platform, and anyone is free to use it, netting Collaboraid huge respect points from the community. Theyre also increasing the workforce by 50% soon, when theyre joined by a new Australian developer. All of this reminded me of an article in Fast Company Ive written about earlier, about the value of generosity in business. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related