Newsgroup: it.cultura.libri
Titolo: Intervista a Scott Sorochak, CEO di BookCrossing  (CORRETTO)

Salve a tutti,
vorrei segnalare l'intervista che ho recentemente realizzato con Scott
Sorochak, il nuovo CEO (Amministratore Delegato) di BookCrossing.
Scott ha rimpiazzato il fondatore Ron Hornbaker alla guida della
societa' e comunita' dei bookcrossers. Ho fatto a Scott alcune domande
cercando di capire dove corre il confine tra il business e le
community e di capire un poco piu' a fondo lo spirito e imeccanismi di
questo gruppo (di cui faccio parte!).
L'intervista e' disponibile (in inglese) sul blog di Novedge, questo
l'URL:
 
http://blog.novedge.com/2007/07/an-interview--1.html
Fatemi avre le vostre opinioni qui sul newsgroup o direttamente sul
blog.
Franco Folini
P.S. Perdonate il doppio post, ma mi e' sfuggito il dito sul tasto di
[INVIO].

       
http://blog.novedge.com/2007/07/an-interview--1.html
Scott Sorochak is the CEO of BookCrossing, a company and website based
on a simple and revolutionary idea about sharing books. BookCrossing was
founded in 2001 by Ron Hornbaker, Heather Mehra-Pedersen, and Bruce
Pedersen. Since then the community of bookcrossers has gown continuosly.
Scott, a bookcrosser under the name of redsoxbookguy and a blogger,
recently became the new CEO.
While BookCrossing is not related to the CAD world in any obvious way, I
believe that great and innovative ideas -- like this one -- can change
the way we look at things, people, and processes around us, inspiring
new ideas and pushing further innovation.
Unfortunately I missed the opportunity to meet Scott in person at the
last meeting of my BookCrossing group in San Francisco (I couldn't
attend the meeting) and therefore asked him to answer a few questions by
e-mail. Here is the interview.
Scott, can you tell us a bit about yourself and BookCrossing?
I grew up and went to school in Boston but I've been working in Silicon
Valley for about 20 years now. I came across BookCrossing after meeting
with the founders and working with them to map out the next 3-5 years of
the company's growth. As an avid reader, I was completely awe struck at
how this tiny company has gained so much worldwide popularity, yet still
remained relatively unknown. BookCrossing is simply the act of Reading a
book after you've purchased it and rather than toss it on shelf to
collect dust somewhere, you Register it on the 
www.bookcrossing.com
website so it gets a unique tracking number and then you Release it.
Leave it in a coffee shop, hotel, public transportation, anywhere, for
someone else to also enjoy... it's a blend of serendipity, altruism and
fanaticism over books all rolled into one.
How do you balance the for-profit motivations of BookCrossing as a
company, with the altruistic, sharing attitude of your members?
That's a great question. The core elements of BookCrossing have been
free for 6 years now and that will not change, period. But without
question, we are a company that employs staff, has built a global
platform to service our nearly 600,000 users in over 130 countries and
all that takes money. We have a nominal amount of advertising on the
site which we really try hard to tailor to the members and we also have
some affiliate relationships with book retailers so that our members can
buy the books through our site.  We also did a survey a few months back
and one of the questions was whether or not members would be interested
in a "premier membership offering" that would be above and beyond the
core offering.  Nearly 50% said yes, so we're thinking about how that
would play out and what would be included in that offering. Our members
have always helped to contribute in one way or another to the financial
support of the site through these and other methods and we are grateful
for it.
What is the impact of your members' community on the evolution of
BookCrossing?
As I mentioned before, we're now nearly 600,000 members strong in over
130 countries worldwide and have registered over 4,000,000 books in
those short 6 years. What is amazing to me and something that cannot be
easily replicated anywhere else, is the community "bridge" between
online and offline. What I mean by that is the core part of BookCrossing
is registering your books, making journal entries on books you've read,
tracking their progress as they bounce around the globe from person to
person. All that is done online. However, nearly 50% of our members
actually get together-locally in their communities weekly or monthly to
meet-up in small groups(10-20) and swap books, share stories about the
authors and characters, and release books. When you have a product and
service so strong that it connects that online and offline community
like that, it's irreplaceable... this is only going to grow and get
stronger as BookCrossing grows regionally in each country and we expand
into countries we're not yet in.
Do you think the BookCrossing idea can be applied to other areas? Are
you aware of similar groups or companies?
Sure, why not. But as I sort of implied before, you can't just throw up
a website, put together all different types of offline/online marketing
programs and say "hey, we've got x thousand members now, we're a
success! Because you have to measure it by how active the users are, and
most importantly are they coming back to use your product or service. I
can't name many companies that are like that in the vertical social
networking space.
What are people's main motivations behind the act of releasing a book
"in the wild"?
I think its a couple things. First, more than likely you've just
finished a book and you're dying to tell someone about it, the
characters, the author, etc., you want someone else to enjoy that book.
What better way than to drop it off in a convenient location on your way
to work or at a coffee house, or at a school function. People just feel
good about passing along something they've already paid for, enjoyed and
now giving it away for free. Another reason is that our system
automatically tracks when that book is picked up again and someone makes
a journal entry after having found, read the book and reviewed it. No
personal identifiable information is shared, but our system ties your
screen name to your email address and let's you know when that book is
found. I've released books up in Tahoe during last ski season and just
now some folks found the books in the lodges. Someone else just emailed
me that they dropped a book in a plastic bag off the back of a ship and
the book was just journaled after someone found it on a beach... 4 years
later... just like a message in a bottle. When you get that email, even
if it's 4 years later, you remember that book and how much you enjoyed
it and now realize someone else has it. Lastly on this topic, many books
travel all over the world as people travel on business, vacations, etc.
We have ties into Google maps which allows you to visually track the
books caught and released and its amazing to see your book traveling
globally... it fascinates people.
What was your first experience as a bookcrosser like?
Amazing. I attended a local BookCrossing "meet-up" or gathering in my
local area and I just listened intently on how each person loved this
book, the characters, authors... others would chime in and
agree/disagree... 3 hours later I left with 6 books, 3 of which were
from authors I'd never heard of but sounded so interesting from what the
other BookCrossing members had said about them. I was amazed at how much
more I was reading and the diverse set of interests I had in the various
genres. I suspect most BookCrossers go through that experience.
The Internet is changing the way people read and enjoy books from an
individual activity to some sort of collective experience. How is
BookCrossing supporting these changes? What are your plans for the
future to support this evolution?
(Expanding a little on my answer above to "What is the impact of your
members' community on the evolution of BookCrossing?") We are actively
partnering with traditional "brick and mortar" companies that see our
vision of sharing books. We've announced partnerships with organizations
such as Panera Breads and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, whereby, the
BookCrossing community is getting together in those locations to conduct
their weekly/monthly meet-ups. The BookCrossers love it because its a
nice, comfortable, safe setting for them to exchange books and the
companies love it because rather than a customer stopping in for a $5
latte and leaving in 5 minutes, our BookCrossers typically stay upwards
of 2+ hours and you can bet they're spending more than $5. These are
great partnerships and we're actively engaging others on a global basis.
How is the Bookcrossing idea being re-interpreted in different
countries?
We have many support and mirror sites today: German, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, Dutch, French and many others. We try to give folks the
ability to localize the sites to provide a regional look and feel, while
still maintaining the core parts of the BookCrossing technology. That's
worked well so far and we are expanding quickly in other countries with
this "cookie cutter" approach.
I would like to thank Scott Sorochak for taking the time to answer my
questions from London. A special thanks to Susan Tunis for her superb
management and support of the San Francisco BookCrossing group and for
helping me to arrange this interview. If you have any questions for
Scott or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad
to answer.
Franco Folini
-- 
UFV:Children of the Damned(DVD)/Breakfast on Pluto/The 
secret lives of dentists(DVD) - 
http://www.albertofarina.tk

 to answer.
Domande no. Ma devo dire che, per motivi che non so, e' parecchio tempo
che non ricevo piu' alcuna notizia di nessuno dei miei quasi 200 libri.
Continuo a etichettare e condividere, pero'. Tu che nick hai su BC?


 --
Il mio nickname e' chiuro.
Franco