From Jake, the wine bar owner to free samples provider, Aliza Freud, individuals are collaborating on ways to tap the collective intelligence.  They become more successful and savor their work – with others. Avoid GroupThink. Adapt one of their methods to your situation.

Visit Elance, crowdSPRING and elsewhere to ask the crowd for help.

Try another Me2We method, co-creation.  For example, together, make a custom map to serve a hot niche.

From WeightWatchers to Tami’s T-shirts, corporations, causes and soloists are generating more value, visibility and profits by partnering.

Find more Me2We success stories to attract customers, host a successful conference or other gathering,  start a support group or help a cause. Perhaps you want to influence, inspire, forge friendships or discover more about our behavior.

Don’t talk about sex, politics or religion. Remember that advice? What happens now 

that Muslims, Jews and Christians and others around the world are invited to contribute to a Charter for Compassion? To collaborate and come to group decisions. Aided by social media tools.  No anonymity for nasty

 comments. Instead, around the world people can speak up and stand behind their insight for compassion in action. That’s the just-launched mission of TED Prize winner and author Karen Armstrong. 

After listening to her you, too, way want to add your idea.  Part of the prize is support from the TED community to launch this world-changing conversation.

For this former nun and expert on comparative religions this charter-as-movement is a deep-felt mission. She hopes it helps people come together around the commonality in their faiths, rather than turning against each other over the differences.  Compassion is the centerpiece – with eight core elements. See one story from a scholar in Pakistan.

There’s an added benefit for you. As you use the online tools provided by Kluster consider how these tools can help your group become more productive together.

Tired of self-promotion? Would you like to make work and life easier, more productive and fun – with others? Here’s four ways others accomplish more together than you can on your own – and sometimes forge friendships.

1. Co-create Products, Cause Support and More

• From clothing design to science experiments, the right crowd can get more done together.

• Collaborate online for a cause or faster innovation – and to become more well-known.

• Crowdsource a contest; take it public.

2. Swap and Share

• Enjoy more travel  by house swapping or other shared hospitality.

• Swap books, lightly-used clothes and more.

• Moms share everything from recipes to medical advice.

3. Get More Out of Meetings

• Organize meetings for those who share your interest and perhaps make money.

• Capture the benefits of twittering at conferences.

• Create conference formats that will excite and involve attendees.

• Start a mutual growth, support or mastermind group.

• Share ideas in a fast and fun way for everyone. Try Ignite and Pecha Kucha.

• Make conferences more popular by harnessing the right technology.

4. Attract Customers With the Right Partners and Methods

• Even and especially in a bad economy partnering can be profitable.

• Train others to teach your methods – even sell your stuff.

• Forge an alliance with a bigger business or other organization.

• Recruit an unlikely ally to attract more interest.

Now, what Me2We methods have you used to accomplish more with others?

Authors’ alert: Try your version of Seth Godin’s newest crowd attractor that rocketed his book to the top ten bestsellers at Amazon.  And the book isn’t even out yet.

Here’s what happened. About two months ago, he offered his fans the chance to be on the cover of his next book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.  Those who were quick to act might (might!) be among the crowd of faces on the book.

Note:  “Quick” evokes “scarcity,” which spurs us to act, according to Influence author, Robert Cialdini.

To further stoke his visibility and his advance sales of the book, yesterday Godin invited community-builders and marketers to  meet each other over at his “private,”  subscriber-based social network site, aka an online book club.  Of course, even these ostensibly key influencers had to provide electronic proof that they’d pre-ordered a copy of the book at Amazon.  That membership requirement certainly cements a SmartPartnership between the author and Amazon.  Also, Seth’s social network site, aka book club was launched off the free provider, Ning.

Some are offended by Seth’s approach.

Yet, as Ron Hogan at Mediabistro suggests, it is a super quick way for an author to start and grow a book club and boost sales.  Even less famous authors (such as the rest of us) can adapt this approach to entice our kind of readers to buy early, tell others and get to know each other online – thus building an active fan community to buy our future books.

(If politicans and pet stores can start book clubs, why not authors?) Finally, to cover your bases, create a book club page at Mahalo and  Squidoo – and a write up at the still ungainly “steamroller” of an author-credited, wiki service, Knol.

We’ve all served on committees where a few diligent people did most of the work. Or gotten stuck in a boring meeting, where some just yakked and yakked. No agenda. No incentives to work smart. Time drags. You could get it done faster and better on your own.

Collaboration is only as strong as the weakest link. As a former journalist, I was accustomed to mostly working alone. No excuses. No “crowd” of other reporters to explore how we’d write the story – and meet the deadline and beat the competition. So, as a speaker, I was startled to work with so many companies and associations where things, well, took much longer. Those who did not do their assignment weren’t lambasted. Consequently, for a long time, my instinct was to duck serving on boards, avoid volunteering for committees or accepting invitations to be part of business start-up teams. But that’s changed. I am now an advocate of collaborating – in smart ways. Got so fervent on the power of partnering that I wrote a couple of books about it.

I realized that, with the right Rules of Engagement, where people are motivated to contribute their best effort, everyone can win. More opportunities appear. Sometimes friendships happen. When we are working from our brighter sides together then we tend to become ever happier and higher-performing.

The secret seems to be two-fold. Creating the right method to
1. attract the best of “us” (the right mix of people in the best roles) for a task ….
2. to contribute the best side of “us” (talent, temperament, experience, etc.)

Don’t let group participation be a wearisome bother but a benefit for all.

Following up on yesterday’s post about Crowd Wisdom (avoid the Crowd Stupidity experience), here’s three more sites that involve advocacy and polling. Set up a poll. Offer your opinion. See what others think. Then use the results to be quoted on the topic by the media, improve your product or mix of services that for firm or not-for-profit provides.

1. Tribyounal: From child custody to copyright, you can post a question on a social or business issue, share evidence and create a poll for the crowd to contribute more information and then vote on the question. My thought here: when you ask the right question, the poll results can provide a news hook for the media to interview you.

Suppose, for example, that you work for a child advocacy group. You might submit the question, “Should TV shows that involve violence be shown before 9:00pm? The poll result and the kinds of evidence contributed by both sides are grist for a human interest story for newspapers, radio talk shows and mommy bloggers.

2. Avanoo: Take a stand, contribute evidence, include photos other media to support your view then start a poll to see what others think.

3. CrowdRules: Share the url of your video to get feedback from other users. The responses could help in market research and to find helpful allies to improve your idea.

Here’s more places to propose a question or to get an answer from an expert in the crowd, including my two favorites.