Today I had lunch with a professional illustrator who had two related stories to tell...

The first story was about providing illustrations for a childrens' book being made using historical research on how people lived in the past. Illustrating such a book is not a simple task. But it seems that the writer did not want to comment on theillustrations until they were complete, as if anillustration is like writing, a product that can easily be revised at any stage.

The problem here was a lack of communication about the process of producing the book. And to make matters worse, there will be no independent or professional picture editor to check all the details of reproduction of the paintings provided.

A mediator might have been useful, to help make sure that both sides communicated everything that needed to be communicated about the project, at each stage.

The second story was about a local government worker who had been given the task of compiling a list of artists in his region, for a public website. The website itself may not be so useful, but the person who compiled the list has become known as a networking expert, helping artists meet potential collaborators working in diverse media.

Social networks on the internet have become huge and diffuse , so it is hard for people to spend all the time needed to find, consider and select really suitable working partners.

As a result, discovery agents are much needed, even if the title is not commonly recognised.

Their role is to help people make initial connections, or to be 'match makers'. Match-making sometimes requires serious mediation. This is also something that agents can do to help people in social networks.

The online social networks use various approaches to narrow down the choices, by allowing interest-groups to be formed inside each network, or by using the computers to automatically offer choices for possible contact. These approaches are not keeping up with the flood of information washing over us. In fact the choices add to our confusion in the information tsunami .

Agents can be like people who lead others to higher ground - if they know the territory well enough. They need to be specialists and should have constant contact with people who might eventually like to work with each other. My friend wished to emphasize this point especially. I think she has experienced too many half-satisfactory working relationships.

Being a specialist agent is expensive in time, and potentially expensive in fees or commissions.

Not all people involved with publishing can afford to pay for personalised, expert discovery, negotiation, and mediation, when looking for work partners.

Editing companies that employ a pool of essentially freelance editors are really acting as discovery agents and mediators. If they handle enough volume of work, they can reduce the fees or commissions to an acceptable level. Book publishing agents also exist... their hope is to at least occasionally find a new, top-selling author for a publisher, and to profit from a commission or a share in royalties, or both. There are many pricing methods for this kind of work.

Perhaps social networks can also be used by agents offer affordable, personalised networking services . Agents can also manage online profiles for others ... a role that requires a lot of trust and professional care.

Services for authors, artists, editors and translators could involve small teams composed of discovery agents, negotiators or brokers, and relationship mediators.

Each team, or a company with many independent teams, could set up a subscription system for authors, publishers, editors, artists, and translators. In this way, costs could be averaged over time, and across the entire community involved, and could be discounted for members when specific help is needed to find working partners.

One role of the Research Cooperative is to provide an environment in which individual agents, teams, or companies can:

(a) emerge from among our members,

(b) develop their own business plan, or volunteer plan, and offer specialised services,

(c) meet people and learn about their needs or skills, as preparation for their work as agents.

This is why we have forums for agent offers and requests .

The framework exists. Our members can use this framework to explore some of the possibilities suggested above. Please do!