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Creating community: Tips from the community master, Dawn Foster

Rick Turoczy on September 22, 2008

Today, creating a vibrant and interactive community around your product or organization can be the difference between unheralded success and unimaginable failure. And no one knows that better than Portland’s Dawn Foster, one of the leading authorities on the subject.

Dawn has just completed a series of posts on corporate communities that is a must read for anyone attempting to work online with customers.

What’s a corporate community, you ask?

Corporate communities refer to any custom community created by an organization for the purpose of engaging with customers or other people who may be interested in the organizationā€™s products and services. For the purpose of this post, custom corporate communities include communities created by corporations, non-profit organizations, educational institutions and similar organizations. These corporate communities can take many different forms: support communities, developer communities to help developers work with your products, customer and enthusiast communities, and many others.

See? I told you. How could you not fit in there?

So grab a cup of coffee (or some bubble tea if you want to be even more like Dawn) and dive into this great series of posts:

  • Custom Corporate Communities: Planning and Getting Started
    Before jumping in to create a new community, you should think carefully about the purpose of this new community including your goals and objectives, fitting your community efforts into your organizationā€™s overall strategy, measuring success, and committing the resources required to make your community flourish.
  • Maintaining a Successful Corporate Community
    I decided to follow up my post on Monday about Custom Corporate Communities: Planning and Getting Started with this post containing tips about what to do and what to avoid doing if you want to have a successful corporate community. While some of these tips are specific to corporate communities, most of them also apply to other types of communities as well.
  • A Structure for Your Corporate Community
    I thought that it would be a good idea to also spend a little time on the things that you should be thinking about when coming up with a structure for your community. It is important to keep in mind that every community software package is likely to have unique strengths and limitations when it comes to configuring your community. From a design and architecture perspective, I strongly recommend looking at this strengths and limitations of the platform and taking them into account before starting any design or architecture work.
  • Promoting Your Community Efforts the Right Way
    In this final post for the corporate community series, we will spend some time on the right and wrong ways to promote your community efforts. Some of this advice also applies more broadly to promotion of other social media efforts as well.

For more from Dawn, head on over to Fast Wonder Blog.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 21

Rick Turoczy on September 21, 2008

WhereCampPDX Blog Ā» Equilibrium: The Human Mash Up

Via the WhereCamp PDX blog “To kick off WhereCamp PDX, on Friday night, October 17th, weā€™ll be taking part in an interactive art installation entitled ‘Equilibrium: The Human Mash Up’ taking place at the Olympic Mills Building at 107 SE Washington St Portland, OR 97214.”

Success as an Entrepreneur: Why Itā€™s Not About You

Via Get Rich Slowly “Peter Hamilton is not alone. In interview after interview throughout Japan, Asia, and North America, successful entrepreneurs told me the same thing, in different words and in different languages: ‘Itā€™s not about the money.’ What, then, is entrepreneurship about? Exploiting a market opportunity? Fame? Fortune? Proving yourself? “

451 CAOS Theory Ā» Pressure, progress flow at Linux Plumbers Conference

Jay Lyman writes “This weekā€™s Linux Plumbers Conference in Portland was a great opportunity for many of the Linux kernel community people to get together, challenge one another, hash out some differences and hone their similarities and synergies. What strikes me as perhaps most interesting is that while there was some discord felt throughout the event among the different Linux camps, this conglomerate of developers representing a range of different vendors in a variety of different ways all do one thing common to all of them: push the kernel forward.”

Creating Startups in Gray Areas

Via CenterNetworks “I am by no means some kind of business rock star. I didn’t attend Stanford or know anybody. I just focused on creating what didn’t exist, both then and now. Many refer to this as ‘gray areas,’ and they can be very good for business. Here are my five rules for finding them”

Win Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6

Via the ExpressionEngine blog “Weā€™re giving away 2 copies of Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6. To enter all you have to do is post to the Discussion thread linked at the top of this post before Tuesday (September 23), 3pm Central.”

Strange Love Live – a set on Flickr

Curious about the inner workings of Portland’s favorite tech podcast? Let the lens of Aaron Hockley take you behind the scenes of Strange Love Live.

All of My Flickr Photos Now Have Creative Commons Licensing Ā» Hockley Photography

Aaron Hockley writes “After some consideration, Iā€™ve changed the licensing on my Flickr stream; all of my work there is now available under the Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial – No Derivative Works license. In short, you may use and share the photos for non-commercial purposes, unaltered, as long as you provide attribution to Aaron Hockley as the photographer. A link to hockleyphoto.com is always appreciated.”

We got a map | Clicky Blog

Via the Clicky blog “We re-organized things a bit, you may notice a new ‘Locale’ tab. This is where all the country, city, language etc stuff has been moved to. We also added a new sub-tab, called ‘Regions,’ but data only started tracking yesterday for it.”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 19

Rick Turoczy on September 19, 2008

OEN honors achievement in entrepreneurship – Silicon Forest – The Oregonian – OregonLive.com

No Web startups won this year, but AboutUs was in the running for a couple.

ā€œThere is no viral marketingā€

Tom Turnbull writes “Brian Solis recently spoke at the Web 2.0 conference in New York. He provocatively stated that ā€œThere is no viral marketing.ā€ Marketing in the age of social media, rather, is an ongoing, and necessarily authentic, effort. It requires more than putzing around on Twitter, slapping up a Facebook fan page or pumping out some goofy widget.”

Please excuse our dust

Cory Huff writes “This Blogger to WordPress migration was supposed to go very smoothly. WP even has a button built in to do it, but for some reason it didnā€™t work. Iā€™m re-posting each article by hand as we speak, so it looks like thereā€™s going to be a day or two of down time for the site. Iā€™ve had some really great experts look at this thing, but it looks like thereā€™s nothing to be done but do it all by hand. So much for ease of use, eh?” (Sounds like somebody has a good unconference topic for WordCamp Portland.)

Color-Based Social Networking – ColourLovers.com Celebrates All Shades

Via Trendhunter “This is a brilliant user-generated site where you monitor and influence color trends online. In brief, Colour Lovers is a social network built around color palettes.” (Hat tip Todd Kenefsky)

Hazelnut Tech Talk Special | An Interview with Virtual Architect Eric Rice | Hazelnut Tech Talk

Cyborg Anthropologist Amber Case Interviews Virtual Architect Eric Rice at Gnomedex 2008. “After an amazing post-conference dinner with a bunch of exellent people, Dave Olson was kind enough to lend his excellent podcasting equiptment. I was able to capture a minute percentage of the Sweetopian existence of Eric Rice. Rice is incredible. I wish I had better adjectives in which to describe him, but Iā€™ll let him do the talking.”

Portland Infects Seattle With Hoppy Goodness Ā« The Pursuit of a Life

Justin Kistner’s brainchild, Beer and Blog, makes the leap to our sister city to the north, Seattle. Thanks to TeachStreet (and something tells me Brian Westbrook). “He says it was inspired by Beer and Blog, a Portland gathering which Iā€™ve seen Rick Turoczy tweet about time and again – proof that in some essential alcohol- and startup-related respects, Portland is further advanced than Seattle!”

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Blog like a pirate: Beer arrrrr Blog in St. Johns

Rick Turoczy on September 19, 2008

Beer arrrr BlogIt’s an impromptu field-trip day for Beer and Blog as the head to St. Johns to celebrate Blog like a Pirate Day. Or Talk like a Pirate Day. Or whatever.

Um. Ahoy?

On this glorious day, Beer and Blog will be taking a field trip to the Leisure Public House. Here to tell you all about it is our St. Johns correspondent, mediaChick.

For mediachick’s five fantastic reasons for making the not-so-arduous trip north, see the Beer and Blog, um, blog. My favorite?

The miscellaneous, yet delightful, discoveries: jukebox, generous outside patio, ping-pong table, bocce, wifi, and a sleepy and snuggly pub cat.

For more information, details on the location, and to RSVP, see Beer and Blog on Upcoming.

Calagator documentation sprint this Saturday

Rick Turoczy on September 19, 2008

CalagatorPortland’s favorite calendar aggregator, Calagator, continues to improve, code sprint after code sprint.

And it’s drawing ever nearer to its 1.0 milestone.

But before Calagator gets there, it’s time for a different kind of sprint, as Audrey Eschright shares:

We’ll be meeting tomorrow starting at 10am at CubeSpace, to kick off the Calagator documentation sprint. I really encourage anyone who has been involved in the development of this project, on any level (including lurking on the mailing list) to stop by, even if you only have an hour or two free. We’ll be working on the Calagator User Guide, and talking about what’s next for the project after we reach our 1.0 milestone.

More details, time, and location for the Calagator documentation sprint can be found, well, on Calagator, of course.

Calagator is an all-volunteer effort to provide a unified calendar for technical communities and user groups in Portland, Oregon. Anyone can contribute information by importing, creating, and editing entries.

For more information, join the mailing list or visit Calagator.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 18

Rick Turoczy on September 18, 2008

Automattic to Preview WordPress 2.7 at WordCamp Portland

Aaron Hockley writes “Iā€™m excited to announce we have a great addition to our lineup of speakers for WordCamp Portland. Jane Wells from Automattic will be offering a look at some of the new features and changes that will be coming in WordPress 2.7.”

SplashCast has Politics

Tom Turnbull writes “The channel is a massive clearing house for some really great political content. Yesterday afternoon, I listened to a series of recent political speeches while working. Without divulging my political leanings (not that I hide them) some of the content fires me up, while some raises my hackles a bit – which is part of the fun of politics, after all.”

An Interview About WordCamp Portland

Aaron Hockley writes “Portland area freelance writer Kerri Buckley interviewed me about the upcoming WordCamp. Since itā€™s a blogging conference, I suggested the interview be posted on a blog.”

A case study in poor authentication: Palin’s Yahoo! email account

Greg Hughes writes “Vidoop uses a system like this for resetting information on their OpenID accounts. It’s simple and it works. It requires me to have the correct device (my phone), uses a different communication channel (the phone network, hence “out-of-band”) to contact me and then verifies I am a legitimate user. It requires me to interact as part of any change.”

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Cooking up a Story takes us from Farm to School

Rick Turoczy on September 18, 2008

It’s “using technology for the greater good” day here at Silicon Florist.

First we had the Collective Software Initiative’s TriSano story, and now we’ve got news that Portland’s favorite online show about people, food, and sustainability—Cooking up a Story—is going to be live streaming an interview with Debra Eschmeyer from Farm to School.

What’s Farm to School?

Farm to School brings healthy food from local farms to school children nationwide. These programs connect schools with local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving student nutrition, providing health and nutrition education opportunities that will last a lifetime, and supporting local small farmers.

Cool hunh? Sounds a lot better than that freeze-dried salisbury steak and reconstituted mashed potatoes they had when I was a kid.

Tricia over at my OurPDX has joined in the fun with this challenge:

Before the broadcast, Iā€™d like to get a discussion going about the Food to School concept. Personally, I think many of the worlds ills could be solved if people knew where their food came from and how it actually gets to the table. If we as a society could become more connected to the farms and farmers that grow our food, maybe we would make very different choices regarding our eating habits. And, if we REALLY knew how our food was produced, would we still eat it? Ok, donā€™t answer that.

So take a few minutes out of your lunch hour tomorrow to sit in front of your machine and listen to the interview. It will be held at 12:15 (or so) via UStream.

And if you like, you can join in the conversation, either on OurPDX or at Cooking up a Story.

Collaborative Software Initiative launches TriSano, an open-source means of tracking disease

Rick Turoczy on September 18, 2008

TriSanoIn the world of technology, we complain about having to deal with “viruses” and “infected systems” all of the time. And, as such, we have any number of tools at our disposal for tracking, managing, and eliminating these viruses.

But what about using technology to deal with the impact of disease in the real world?

Portland-based Collaborative Software Initiative may have the answer with its newest effort, TriSano.

TriSano is designed to help communities collect and share disease information within and among communities:

To provide Public Health organizations freedom and choice when tasked with making an applications decision to support their communities. We offer the opportunity to scrap the monolithic development process and custom built solutions traditionally provided through system integrators and traditional software companies. Our suggestion: engage in the power of community building and open source technology to solve complex health technology challenges for the good of public health.

It’s like your own private Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And, Utah already has plans to go live on TriSano.

But Dana Blankenhorn sees TriSano reaching much farther than that:

TriSano is written in Ruby. Rather than building 75 forms, TriSano built a form-builder. The system can be maintained by doctors, regulators, or through TriSano in the form of Software as a Service.

What it means is a faster, flexible, less-expensive system for creating and maintaining infectious disease reports. Utah will train its people first, CSI will seek to roll it out nationwide, and everyone (including you) will reap the benefits.

For all the appreciation I have for cool Web 2.0 tools, they remain—quite often—a frivolous applications of technologies that hold unlimited potential. And that’s why it’s especially exciting to see a local company tapping into that potential for the greater good of humanity.

Collaborative Software Initiative was founded in 2007 by Stuart Cohen, a veteran IT executive and former chief executive officer at the Open Source Development Labs. Cohen has partnered with Evan Bauer, financial services technology veteran and former chief technology officer at Credit Suisse, to bring together like-minded companies to build software applications at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. The company introduces a market-changing process that applies open source methodologies to building software collaboratively. For more information, visit Collaborative Software Initiative.

A Cozy Lunch 2.0 at SplashCast

Rick Turoczy on September 18, 2008

Yesterday’s Lunch 2.0 at SplashCast was nice and cozy. Maybe it was my warning that space was small, the closed guestlist, the slightly incorrect address on the Upcoming event (sorry).

Or maybe people just had other things to do, like work.

Whatever it was, in contrast to the last few Lunches 2.0, only about 70 people filtered in and out of SplashCast’s semi-new offices in the old Merchant Hotel in Old Town. This worked really well for networking, since you could navigate the entire room, bouncing between conversations, and not worry about missing anyone.

As has been typical with Portland Lunch 2.0, Kim Ramage, our host, made a brief introduction to SplashCast and welcomed everyone. Then the networking and nomming began. Unfortunately, Mike Berkley, SplashCast’s CEO and the Lunch 2.0 instigator wasn’t able to attend.

Again, there’s that pesky work thing getting in the way.

Aaron hasn’t posted his photos yet, but I’m sure they will rock, as usual. Check his Lunch 2.0 collection on Flickr if you’re interested.

Mark Colman tweeted several pictures he took, including this one of AJ and Doug in the midst of what looks like an interesting conversation about the finer points of the iPhone’s keypad.

lunch.jpg

Thanks to Kim, Mike and the whole SplashCast team for opening their digs to us.

Yearning for more? No worries about space in the next few venues, the Art Institute of Portland (October 15) and the Eclipse Foundation (November 5). In fact, they’re both large, so bring your friends and colleagues.

Better yet, if you can find uninitiated Lunch 2.0 people, bring them along to spread the goodness.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 17

Rick Turoczy on September 17, 2008

WordCamp Portland: How About a Session On (insert topic here)?

Via the WordCamp Portland blog “Do you have a WordPress topic on your mind? Have you looked at our list of speakers and sessions and thought ‘thatā€™s great, but what about ________?’ Youā€™re the perfect person to suggest a topic for an unconference session!”

Tracking software’s growth – Silicon Forest – The Oregonian – OregonLive.com

Mike Rogoway writes “With old-line chip companies on a seemingly intractable decline, and software on the upswing, software now represents a greater share of Oregon’s high-tech economy than at any time in the state’s history: Roughly 1 in 6 Oregon tech jobs are now in software, up from 1 in 25 in 1990.”

Maintaining a Successful Corporate Community

Dawn Foster writes “Apparently, this is corporate community week on the Fast Wonder Blog. I decided to follow up my post on Monday about Custom Corporate Communities: Planning and Getting Started with this post containing tips about what to do and what to avoid doing if you want to have a successful corporate community. While some of these tips are specific to corporate communities, most of them also apply to other types of communities as well.”

Strands Get Win At DollarDays

Via Northwest Innovation “Corvallis, Oregon-based Strands, which provides social recommendation software, said Tuesday that the firm has been selected by DollarDays International to power personalized product recommendation on its website.”

Techcraver.com | Craving tech, craving life! Ā» Blog Archive Ā» Nokia Legends Campaign Now Live

Jason Harris writes “Nokia Legends, the ad campaign I was involved in last month will go live today. The campaign centers around 8 stories told by actor Ron McLarty (of Sex In The City and Law and Oder fame). The urban legends, as they are called, highlight innovations that are coming out in the near future, a few years from now, or are just perhaps a very lucrative research project.”

Legion of Tech Happy Hour Meetup at Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub (Thursday September 25, 2008) – Upcoming

These are super informal meetups where we hang out, talk about geeky stuff (wikis, open source, new technologies, openid, …), and wind down with like-minded people over beverages.

Neighborhood Notes Providing News and Events in Portland

Via the TeachStreet blog “Are you in the Portland area and donā€™t know whats going on in your neighborhoods? Check out your one stop shop for all of your news and events needs at Neighborhood Notes. Theyā€™ve created an amazing space where communities can communicate and connect with one another about Portland events and local neighborhood news.”

Show Your Best on ORBlogs | Oregon Blogs

Via the Oregon Blogs blog “All your images are belong to us! Oregon Blogs is looking for images to feature on its front page and banner slots. Weā€™re generating a collection of random images to show on the front page, and three banner images to show on the front, article and archive pages of the Oregon Blogs Blog (that long, narrow image at the top of the page).”

A Character Length Comparison Of Various URL Shortening Services Ā« Link En Fuego

Bram Pitoyo writes “When you want to utilize every bit of that 140-character Tweet limit to communicate your latest find or endeavor, every character matters. So I thought Iā€™d compile a character count of most URL shortening services out there and give you a round, hard number of just how short did the developer mean when he said ‘short’?”

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