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Category: geekygirldawn

Dawn Foster chosen to head up community management for MeeGo, the joint Intel and Nokia open source mobile platform

Dawn Foster known for her work with Legion of Tech, BarCamp Portland, Ignite Portland, Shizzow, and community management will be joining Intel as the MeeGo as Community Manager.

You may remember some news last week that Intel had agreed to partner with Nokia to merge their two Linux-based open source mobile platforms—Moblin and Maemo, respectively—in the hopes of combining their efforts instead of working in parallel. The project was dubbed MeeGo. And I was intrigued. It’s kind of a startup of sorts. And it’s definitely open source-y. And mobile. And part of the Mobilin team is here in the Portland area. So it seemed like something I should follow.

But one of the consistent comments I heard about the deal? “They’re going to need a strong developer community.” Yeah, you think? Read More

Dawn Foster joins the Olliance Group to lead new online community practice

Anyone who’s spent any time at Portland tech events has likely met Dawn Foster. She’s one of the founding members of Legion of Tech, one of the driving forces behind BarCamp Portland, an adviser to the Shizzow and the SAO, a leader of the online community manager and Portland data plumbing user groups, and a regular attendee at Beer and Blog—among thousands of other things.

One thing you may not realize is that, in addition to juggling all of those side projects, she manages to do a day job, too. And today she announced that that “day job” part of her life was changing. Dawn has joined the Olliance Group to lead a new online community practice. Read More

Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy

Dawn FosterWhen it comes to social media and community management, few folks in Portland—arguably few folks in the world—understand it as well as Dawn Foster, @geekygirldawn.

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to meet her, Dawn is a community management powerhouse. She has more than 13 years of experience in technology and software with expertise in open source software, web 2.0, social media, blogging, and community building, working at companies like Intel and Jive Software. She’s also a co-founder and board member for Legion of Tech. Dawn currently consults on social media and community management and serves as the community manager for Shizzow.

So when I heard she was working on a book that was going to give me access to some of her insights, I got a wee bit giddy.

And now, it’s available.

Entitled Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy, the 80-page eBook touches on topics like blogging, Twitter, social networks, and customer-centric corporate communities.

Companies and Communities is focused on helping your company get real business value out of participating in online communities and social media. This 80 page eBook contains practical advice and suggestions for how companies can engage with online communities and social media sites.

How practical? Well, it’s full of things which we—as individual social media participants—may think are obvious, but are far from it. Especially for corporations. Things like:

Not all about you

Social media is a conversation, which is by definition two-way. In other words, it is not all about you, your company, your products or your agenda. It involves listening and participating in the broader community of people. Don’t just expect people to help you; jump in and help other people in areas where you have some expertise. If all you do is pimp your products without adding to the broader conversation, people will lose interest in you pretty quickly.

The eBook is delivered in PDF format. It’s available for $19.99. To purchase your copy, visit Dawn’s Fast Wonder Blog eBook section. Or, if you want to test drive it first, there’s an excerpt available.

I’m already thumbing through my own copy. Now, I just have to figure out how to get the author to autograph an eBook.