Archive for the 'Virtual Community' Category
July 2, 2006
WikiMatrix
Here is a nice tool for comparing various wikis, both open source and commercial/hosted: WikiMatrix.
I’ve been hearing lots of interest in wikis lately in conversations with clients and at events. If you are interested too, check out WikiMatrix.
(Via Nancy White.)
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June 27, 2006
When a Lawyer Designs Your Web Page
ASAE just posted the sign-up form for using their networking application for the Annual meeting in Boston this summer. This is a pretty cool little application from IntroNetworks that maps the social network of attendees, attempting to facilitate more contacts.
However. There is a rather unfriendly disclaimer posted above the join button, which includes this paragraph (emphasis added):
Attendee acknowledges through use of the System that ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership are not in the business of creating or managing online communities and it is the sole responsibility of the attendee to adhere to recommended terms of use provided by ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership.
Really? ASAE isn’t in the online community business? I don’t agree with that statement, so I guess I shouldn’t enter the network.
This is what happens when a lawyer, who is paid to play defense, is given too much sway over what goes onto your site. What a horrible message for any association to put in front their most committed and active members.
I would delete the entire statement and replace it with this: We are in the business of facilitating your member community. We welcome you to our network and encourage you to use it to maximize the value of your Annual meeting experience!
Update: Peter Hutchins from ASAE posted in the comments that they are working on updating the page and have removed the paragraph I mentioned as a first step. Thanks for listening and acting, Peter!
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June 9, 2006
Why Virtual Community Failed
I was thinking today about how so much of the Web 2.0 hype centers around baking customer communities right into the product. Given that, why did all the virtual community services and consulting firms implode as the bubble burst on the dot com boom? Those companies were some of the first to go.
My guess is that most of those services were positioned as add-ons to existing endeavors. Sell widgets? You need a widget discussion board on your web site! Peripheral stuff was the first to be cut as budgets tightened and these slapped on communities were easy targets for cutting.
What seems different now is that it is about building customer/member participation right in from the start and making the communities that form an integral part of the whole system. With that approach, I think online community should be a more enduring feature even if the web takes another hit.
(Be sure to check out Ben Martin’s comments about forming vs. finding communities. I think he is right on the mark.)
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February 10, 2006
Ben gets del.icio.us
Ben Martin on how he has used the del.icio.us social bookmark service with his association’s volunteers to replace the traditional resource guide authoring process:
So, who writes these resource guides? Well, in my experience the links are harvested by association staff and/or volunteers, who also compose short descriptions for the sites they collect. They then write up the guides in MS Word, hand them over to a webmaster, who codes it into HTML and uploads it to the Web site. Then, the resource guide gathers dust on a static page. Perhaps it gets updated next year. Perhaps not.
Friends, there is a better way!
I agree that traditional resource guides, as traditionally authored, are inevitably stale and not too useful by the time they are published. The key to the approach that Ben describes is to trust your members to collaborate without an editorial filter. Upside: current, relevant, member-driven conent! Downside: letting go of the illusion of control. Hmm, maybe that is an upside too…
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January 1, 2006
Rolling Support Forums Into Customer Support Escalation
David Weinberger had an interesting experience with Logitech’s support forums:
I posted a question to the Logitech customer forum because my new MX1000 mouse seems to pull downward— I have trouble getting it to point precisely where I want it, so I’m doing a lot of mis-selecting. Today I received an auto-mail message from Logitech telling me that they’ve noticed that no one replied to my question, so they’re escalating it to a human Logitech support person.
What a wonderful idea. I always recommend to my clients that they have their staff engaged in any communities that they host (which derives directly from David’s writing in Cluetrain Manifesto). Auto escalating posts that have no response in x amount of time is a brilliant idea. It gives the community time to serve itself and then makes sure they get a response from staff if the community is unable or willing to address the question.
Very simple but it makes sure the person who posted the question feels like someone is listening, which is a very powerful experience (as is the opposite if no one replies).
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August 17, 2005
Well for Sale, Comes with Free Bucket
I’ve been a member of The Well for about 6 years (whoa, time flies). I was a bit surprised to see that Salon is going to sell it off. Here is the stated reason for the sale:
Hambrecht said that Salon intends to shift from something akin to a print magazine with articles posted online to a more interactive Web site. “Salon would like to focus on our base brand rather than divert our attention,” she said.
So, they want to be more interactive and their first step is to sell off their community service. Interesting move. Not logical, but interesting. I would guess the real reason is that they are tired of dealing with all the cranky members who have been starved for any attention from the corporate parent. I haven’t checked in to the Well for a few days since I was traveling. I’m sure there are about 5,000 posts to catch up on this already.
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July 15, 2005
Association Entrepreneurship
Kevin Holland is continuing a thread of discussion he started a while back about how associations can easily be disrupted by a start-up who uses newly cheap relationship-facilitating technology to do better what you used to need a national infrastructure to do.
The tools available to associations now — open source! affordable! surprisingly powerful! — are overwhelming compared to the options we had ten (or five) years ago. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how many are actually taking advantage of them. I still see a lot of associations who think of technology as “the database” (and maybe “the website”) being run by “membership” or “IT.”
What a dangerous error and huge lost opportunity. You wanna compete in a world where anybody can raise $100k and start competing with you, then realize that it’s not about managing data. It’s not even about managing relationships. It’s about being managed by relationships.
I totally agree with his premise. And I don’t think it would take $100k in most cases either. In fact, this very topic will form the basis of a scenario I am preparing for a session at the ASAE Annual Meeting next month. The session is titled “Missing Conversations” and is scheduled for Saturday August 13 at 3:30 p.m.
A related idea I came across recently was an essay by Paul Graham called Hiring is Obsolete. He says that the best way to get hired at big internet companies these days is to create your own start-up and prove the value of your ideas. If you have good ideas and can execute then you have a good shot at being acquired by an existing company. Bingo: dream job and a nice nest egg.
Associations can do the same thing with self-forming groups or competing organizations: Identify the highest energy groups out there and recruit them into your association. ASAE has done this to a certain extent with the GWSAE merger and talks with the Northern California SAE.
One benefit of that approach for the organization is that it pre-qualifies new membership segments/communities that can be brought into the fold. It may also identify a market for a new or exiting product that the association would never have figured out on its own. It basically solves the issues of large organization’s inherent inertia that dampens innovation. (See also the Innovators Solution for more on that theme.)
So what might this look like in action? A simple one is to hop onto Yahoo Groups and look for active groups with a related topic. Join the conversation as a peer (not as the National Mothership Who Knows Best). Offer meeting space to the group at one of your next events, invite them to meet with your Board, get them engaged! Actually, get yourselves engaged with them, since these groups usually have plenty of engagement already, just not with you.
Associations have the infrastructure that these more ephemeral web-based groups cannot create on their own in most cases. Use that strength to create mutually beneficial relationships and see where it takes you.
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May 2, 2005
Who Should Have Online Communication Skills?
Nancy White posted on her blog about Target adding blogging skills to the job requirements for a media relations position: Full Circle Online Interaction Blog: Target requires blogging skills for media relations people
Not only are blogging skills going to be prerequisites, but more generally good online communications skills. Last week I got the chance to have a conversation with David Millen from IBM. I was blathering that I thought everyone will need online facilitation skills and he gently and accurately got me to sharpen my message. Not everyone has a job that requires negotiating meaning and roles in groups. ;-) Not everyone is going to need to be an online facilitator and those specific skills, just like the skills of a great blogger, my be more sharply defined in some roles more than others. But I’d venture a guess that many working in business will need to be skillful online communicators at some base level.
Nancy makes a really good point about the general need for online communication skills across the company. With more and more interaction being computer mediated, organizations that are generally savvy about online communication (oncomm?) will have a great advantage over those that don’t.
For example, when PR people do blogs without authentic online communication skills and experience you end up with stuff like fake blogs.
Great post by Nancy. Read the whole thing.
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March 25, 2005
Managing Logins for a Members-only Web Site
How to manage member access to member-only areas of an association’s web site is a common question posted to the ASAE Technology listserv. Since I’ve answered it a few times I thought I would go ahead and post my stock reply here to save some typing in the future. :)
Many associations, when they first create a member-only area of their web site, have used a member’s ID number and last name to control access. However, that same information is usually listed on mailing labels and membership cards. This method is very easy to set up, administer and communicate to members. However, having that info on mailing labels is definitely a security risk. The size of the risk really depends upon what they can do with the account once they login. If it’s just to view content (usually the case for early efforts), the risk is relatively low. If it can include e-commerce transactions or editing the members’ data in your association management system (what most associations want to add or expand upon now), then the risk is pretty high. Either way, I think it is smart to move to something more secure.
When I came to ASHA in 2000 we were using the same account number/last name scheme for access and that info was and is on every mailing label and membership card. We then implemented a username/password system that allowed the user to create their own login name and password. Over time, we found many members had problems remembering the login name they had created for themselves. A few years later we migrated to using their e-mail address as their login name which has dramatically reduced support calls for lost user names (many of our members call us instead of using the account help tools on the site). Based on our own experience, I would recommend going with e-mail as the login name. That seems to be the emerging standard around the web for many major sites out there (Amazon being the most notable).
Some gotchas to look out for when using e-mail as the username:
- Each member must provide a unique e-mail address. Sometimes this is an issue when a spouse shares the same account and is also a member.
- You should provide instructions on free services that members without an e-mail address can use to get one (there are still some people without e-mail addresses!). This is also useful in the spouse shared address situation.
- Clearly state how the address will be used by the association when the members supplies it to ease privacy/spam concerns on the part of the member
- Consider your response to members who refuse to supply you with an e-mail address but want access to the member-only content and services (I have encountered this a few times).
- Members should be able to change their e-mail address at any time without having to re-register with the site. In technical terms, test for e-mail uniqueness but don’t use it as the primary key for the record.
Finally, you will need to associate the login with their account number in some way. You might ask for their member ID number at the time they register or associate the login with their account later through some other process. I strongly suggest automating the process as much as possible while still preventing the same ID number from being associated with more than one login.
Hopefully the above info will help you get a jump start on the design (or redesign) of your web site login system.
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February 22, 2005
Hiring: Community and Intranet Manager
Ever wanted to manage a staff intranet and a member community for a large membership organization in Rockville, MD? Have I got an opportunity for you! :)
The Community and Intranet Manager works on our Community and Knowledge Management team along with myself and Brenda, our Knowledge Manager. I think it is a wonderful position, in that you get to play (er, work) with a lot of fun technology, partner with some of the best web staff in the association world, and facilitate our member and staff communities.
Follow the link above for details on the job (including starting salary range) and how to apply.
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