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All posts for “Social Design”
A couple of my friends, Nancy White and John Smith are organizing what they are calling a "muckabout" on the Washington State coast. They have been incredible resources for me over the last few years and I'm sure this event will be valuable.
All the details are here: Distributed Communities of Practice:
The Ecology of Support and Leadership
The event will start online in October, move to a face-to-face getaway, and then go back online. Here are some details from the site:
We will focus our... Continue Reading
Though I've shouted explicatives many times about Yahoo! Groups as a community manager- I really think it is an impressive communciation and community building platform, for something that's free.
When managing Yahoo! Groups (and OneList/eGroups before it) I learned about and used a few resources that I had to hunt-for at the time. This post will outline a couple of lesser-known ways to manage groups and information about groups. I hope they may help some list owners out there...
Email... Continue Reading
Clikz: Arrival Time and Response Rate Decline
This article is about how people generally deal with the mountain of email each morning- they cut out the non-urgent crap as quickly as possible.
It made me think about the dependence of many online communities on email and how administrators might consider altering the timing of email digests to help more members choose to read the info instead of deleting it.
Basically- the article is saying that emails that are lumped into the "morning mound"... Continue Reading
A Social Network Caught in the Web
This paper by Lada A. Adamic, Orkut Buyukkokten, and Eytan Adar
covers a couple of pertinent topics in my mind:
First, it provides an interesting look at social network analysis within a university online community. In the paper, the researchers use the Club Nexus online community at Stanford to understand how students in the community interact and perceive themselves and others. The interesting part to me is that their goal is to analyze the real world... Continue Reading
I've seen a number of folks lately seeking information for getting started with online communities. This entry provides five basic, high level things that I believe are important to remember in getting an online community off the ground.
The focus here is not social or hobbyist online communities, but communities that are created by organizations to support their users or members.
1. Active Management: There needs to be someone that is accountable and working to accomplish the goals of the... Continue Reading
Nancy White: Teleconference Call Facilitation Tips
When I was a burgeoning online community manager back in 1999, Nancy White was one of my mentors and I still learn from her on almost a daily basis. Her web site for Full Circle Associates has a great repository of online community-related information and links.
The lastest is tips for teleconferences. I wish the organizers of my recent calls would follow a few of these.
The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat
I've never been into the multiplayer world games, but this paper (circa 1990) has some great insights from some of the folks who made the first inroads into using computers to handle real-world socialization.
Perhaps I've not been paying attention, but I'm starting to see a lot of value in understanding the linkages between these games and traditional online communities.
From my impression, the creators of Habitat found that people will be people no matter... Continue Reading
Joseph Cothrel Interview Online Community Report
Joseph Cothrel is the Former VP of Research at Participate Systems which is an online community services and software provider. Joseph's interview really appealed to me as it hit on a few things that I hold near and dear.
Social Software: Especially lately, I've been debating in my mind if my current profession and background as an online community manager could be labeled as work in "social software". Based on the quote below- I agree that I... Continue Reading
There has been a fascinating discussion occurring at the “Communities of Practice�? Yahoo! Group about the various aspects, advantages and disadvantages of email lists vs. message boards. It inspired me to post here.
Before I go further, I want to provide some quick information on what these two resources are and how they work:
Email List or “Listserv�?: These enable people to have group discussions in email. The system usually provides a single email address that everyone uses. When... Continue Reading
In my previous life as an online community manager, something I thought was a really important role for me was communicating regularly and clearly with the members through announcements. A community leader needs a voice and the announcements can be the best tool to get that voice to the members.
Here are some of things I've considered over the years when creating an announcement:
Assume the member is too busy to read your post- get their attention quickly. No "At XYZ, we care about your... Continue Reading