Full Circle Associates

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

How to Celebrate an Online Group Anniversary

On August 12th, 1999, I started a Yahoogroup on online facilitation. I invited friends and colleagues, wanting to talk about this emerging practice that I have been dancing with since 1996. 8078 messages later (as tracked over time in the included visual), with 1231 currently subscribed and countless more who have come and gone, bounced into oblivion or stomped off in a moment of heat, I come to the 6 year anniversary. As I clean out yet another round of bounced email members and look at the listing of posts, I'm sent into a spasm of reflection and introspection.

One key insight is that I don't know how to celebrate this anniversary. I don't know what to do next, if anything, as founder of this community. I wonder if it is time to end this particular journey?

There are a handful of reasons for my feelings, mostly related to my sense of the community:

Since I started blogging, I suspect that I inadvertently changed the nature of the list-serve based community. I used to be a frequent poster of information tidbits. For a time I cross posted both on the list and the blog, but over time I could not sustain that. So I wonder, what role did information exchange play in the list and have I changed that by blogging and being the founder/facilitator/list mom?
The practice of online facilitation has diversified and so our interests, needs and contributions have changed. I had an unsubscribe message from a member leaving in my email box this morning and his reason for leaving was he felt there was no longer useful interaction around the day to day practical stuff of discussion board and chat moderation/facilitation. He felt that the definition of "online community" held by members was not his own. His email gave me LOTS of food for thought, particularly since most members of the group don't post and I don't know what they think. Surveys in the past have been less than fountains of information.
When I talk of ending the list, I get people who email me NO NO NO, this is a really important community to me. And I think, how can that be? Where are the signs of life beyond a handful of core posters? The mysterious invisibility of this sort of group is a constant puzzle.

Now I'm asking for your help. How should we celebrate this anniversary? Should we? How do we review ourselves as a group and then either look forward, or maybe even bring the chapter to a close?

Crossposted to the Online Facilitation list.

online_facilitation, yahoogroups, onfac community_indicators

(Edited for typos)

4 Comments:

Denise said...: I'm someone who bounced off that particular list awhile back. I got annoyed by Yahoo groups in general and I was going through personal life changes and I just left them all behind.

I've rejoined some, but not that one because I have found what I was looking for there in blogs. I have been meaning to rejoin for a good year now, but haven't. I always seem to keep pushing it back on the to do list.

You've got a lot to celebrate over there. That group was really the only voice of community, the only analyzer of community, for soooo long. It was a life saver for me, and others, who were just beginning to imagine what the internet could do for community.

What should you do specifically to celebrate? I have no idea, I'm bad at grand gestures, (TW is great at them and will probably come along with something wonderful), just know that I celebrate what that group provided everyday when I work with my communities.; 7:10 AM
TW said...: Written last night while Blogger snuck in and did maint.

Well Denise, you are right with the grand gesture thing. I have been thinking about this all day. I am not sure yet. Actually, I am, those stories...they are worth sharing and gathering. Your story, my story, the dozens of other stories of the people who dove into this internet community thing head first and figured a way to swim...and grabbed onto the life boat that onfac provided.
Through all of that, a good number of us have bounced in and out of the realm of the Onfac list. These are things that in one way are kept forever in archives of one sort or another but are also often lost. Sometimes the sharing of past is not just a nice way to remember but also to shed light on the future. Whether someone has been with the online group every minute of those years or only just joined, they have something to share. (and of course, THAT, is what we try to do as online facilitators...encourage sharing...)

I think in any case I will wait and ramble a bit tomorrow on wee hours about my love affair with Online Facilitation...like all good love affairs...it has its highs and lows.; 8:45 AM
Shawn said...: Hi Nancy, It is interesting that ActKMstarted at the same time and has all the same hallmarks: a few core posters, >1000 members, similiar number of messages etc. Trish Milne and I ran a survey of the members and we found, like yourself, that the non-posters found watching the list invaluable--it generated a lot of office discussion. Our results from this survey are to be published in Journal for Knowledge Management but happy to send you our paper if you are interested.

At ActKM we celebrate every year with a conference. We hand our prizes for knowledge management projects and recognise those behind the scenes. I have to admit, however, that we haven't really celebrated the online effort enough nor in an online way.; 3:06 PM
Nancy White said...: Ah, someday it would be SO MUCH FUN to create an onfac F2F. Shawn, I would love to have a copy of your reporT!; 3:38 PM