Approaches to reaching critical (self-sustaining) mass for RBB sharing

The development of reusable building blocks (RBB) for agent-based modeling toolkits offers benefits across multiple scales – to the modelers, by streamlining the model-building task, and to the research field, by (possibly) enabling convergence upon shared and standard approaches to common modeling tasks. However, the challenge of reaching a self-sustaining system of RBB sharing and use is not trivial. On the one hand, we have yet to identify what exactly constitutes a building block, and what is the most usable package to be shared. On the other hand, informing these questions is made more difficult by the relatively low frequency with which researchers might be seeking novel ABM components. Compared to the high velocity at which scripts and functions for more general analytical tasks are downloaded, evaluated, and rated, the pace of RBB sharing is not likely to rapidly build to signals of comparative utility across building blocks. Together, these constraints limit the pace at which an RBB sharing system might grow and gain momentum. In this brief talk I draw on theories of innovation diffusion, observed successes and failures in online networking and file sharing, to suggest differentiated approaches to i) achieving momentum and convergence in an RBB sharing startup phase, and ii) maintaining / self-sustaining contributions in an RBB operating phase.