Brazil

Quora Answer : What do you think about the future of associations in Brazil?

Jun 26, 2014

I don't have much technical knowledge of this. I think that, in general, we're heading for a future of more and more varied types of networks of people with more ways they can communicate and co-ordinate together. (The internet is a laboratory where inventing new institutions like this is very cheap.)

I would predict that Brazil, like everywhere else, will have more of this networking. For example, I'm in groups in Brazil that use Google Groups to organize themselves, Meetup is starting to become more popular here. Everyone uses Facebook to organize events. I have two friends who've started "co-working" spaces in Brasilia. All of these are ways that not only hobbyists meet and collaborate but can also be ways that people start to do certain kinds of business together.

Here's what I think. These more traditional associations like Chambers of Commerce (or ones focussed on a particular trade) are somewhere between networking organizations for their members to know each other, and lobby groups promoting the interests of their members to the outside world.

In both these activities, such organizations face competition from all the new things that are spawned by and on the internet. Meetup does a good job of helping you meet new people. StackOverflow is a great way to pick the brains of people with similar problems. Avaaz does focussed lobbying.

Either associations will borrow these tricks : their websites will become more streamlined tools, they'll organize more publicly accessible meetups, they'll have ways to quickly add signatures or donate money to campaigns. OR they'll lose out to this newer breed of social software.