Using a stigmergic environment for an e-business solution

Although this concept of stigmergy may appear to be wildly esoteric, it is an extremely powerful construct to use in many e-business situations. It can bring buyers in contact with sellers, it can bring information to people who want to know, it can bring help to the needy, it can bring specialist assistance to developers, it can put job seekers in touch with employers.

The first step would be to create a boundary for a people space and give it a formatting appropriate to the requirements of the business. The boundary would be the overall subject area. For example, if the business were concerned with the matching of people to jobs, the boundary condition would be to limit the space only to job seekers and employers looking for suitable job applicants.

The first level of categorisation might specify broad categories of industries. A second level in each of these primary categories might categorise according to specific job descriptions. A third level in each of these categories might divide into different areas of specialisation within those categories. Other levels may divide each of these sub divisions even further. This process of hierarchical categorisation, would format the environment sufficient to provide job seekers and employees with appropriate meeting points in the people space – in which to deposit their records.

To create a record, a job seeker or employer would simply click on a button to have a questionnaire automatically downloaded from the Web directly into their clone creation software where the questions will be presented on the computer screen. From the answers to the questions, a record would be created to represented them and their needs. This record would then be deposited in one or more of the categorised meeting points in the people space as chosen by a job seeker (or an employer).

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The actual mechanics of this process would be completely invisible to the users. They would simply click on a button to get a list of questions. When they answer the questions, they click on another button to see a the route map to guide them to an appropriate areas of interest. When they reach a point of interest, they simply click another button. This click automatically inserts their record at this point and at the same time invisibly download all the other records that are there.

The records automatically downloaded from a selected point of interest will go directly into a client side application – something like the virtual cafe software described in the previous chapter. With this client side application, both employers and employees could use the search functions to further categorise their selections. In effect, this is extending the categorisation process of the people space out to everyone's own computer – in a way that allows everyone to make the final selections according to their own specific needs.

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This is where clients are able to make their own categorisations: customising the people space to suit their own particular needs. As this is done on the client side, within the client's personal application, this has no effect of the ordered space on the server side. Clients simply choose or add their own criteria to be able to filter out a suitably short list of people to make actual contact with. With each record having a limited life span – being removed after a certain number of days – all records would be fresh.

These records can be designed to carry the URLs of a personal, or company, Web site, to provide more extensive details than can be covered by the records. Employee Web sites can hold CVs, examples of work, photographs, references, etceteras. Employer Web sites can show diagrams of the organisation, photographs of working conditions, terms of service, etceteras. The overall effect would be that employees would be able to see what kind of employers would have need of their services and have sufficient information to be able to draw up a short list for person to person contact. Similarly, employees would be able to draw up a short list of candidates for direct communication or interviews.

The great advantages a stigmergic system would have over any conventional employment agency is speed, cost and its ability to self organise. There are advantages that an employment agency would have, but, it is highly likely that an employment agency would use such a system themselves to source clients and to satisfy their needs.