Category: community indicators

Virtual Tours of Online Communities as Learning Journeys

Having been involved in online facilitation since 1997, I’m often asked for examples of “successful online communities.” People want to see them, tour them, and understand what they can learn from them as they embark upon or support their own communities. Sometimes they are interested in technology. Sometimes they want to know about how things are structured and organized, both content and activities. But mostly they want to see examples where people really DO interact. This is always a challenge for three main reasons:

  • How do we qualify “success?”
  • How do we extrapolate lessons across diverse needs and contexts?
  • How do we account for “success” as underlying technologies reshape the very nature of communities into less bounded, often larger networks?

I’m preparing for another of these tours so I wanted to do some renewed reflective homework before I started building the tour. (I’ll say more about the actual tour process in a subsequent post.) Plus, by sharing this post today, maybe you, dear readers, will have some insights, comments or pointers I can include. And as always, you are welcome to use anything here if you are giving someone else a tour!

Here are four areas I’m reflecting on to help me conceptualize,  frame and plan the tour.

Community Indicators of All Sorts

What do we mean when we say “successful” for an online community? What are the parameters  Are we talking about the success of a community’s online interactions, or the whole life of the community which is often a blend of online and offline? What are the boundaries? For some time I have been collecting examples of what I called “community indicators” the gave us some clue about the life of a community. (You can read more musings about community indicators here and some bookmarked examples here.)

What are the indicators of community activity? In other words, as we observe a community, and (ideally) interview some of its members, what signs of life are we specifically looking for? There are the process indicators, both quantitative and qualitative that are most easily seen.

  • Evidence of mechanisms and opportunities for community member participation (availability/opportunity). These are often predicated on the underlying technology and intentions of those stewarding the site. Sometimes community members bring in additional opportunities, something that is becoming more common in open networks and ad-hoc configurations.
    • Types of interaction options: discussions, blogs, commenting, rating, personal/instant messaging, other synchronous and asynchronous interaction mechanisms, linkages to F2F or offline events, etc. What is useful? Appropriate?
    • Evidence of appropriate choices about what is public/open and what is private as it relates to community purpose.
    • Clarity on how members find out and learn how to use these mechanisms. (Communications and technology stewardship)
  • Evidence of participation
    • Quantified activity – number of posts, page views, ratings (thumbs up/down, likes), comments, and contributed content.
    • Quality – what interaction patterns demonstrate that people are interacting with each other (vs simply publishing or broadcasting?) This could be looking for conversational threads, evidence of reading/responding to what others post instead of simply posting one’s views, how conflict is used either generatively or as a deterrent to further interaction.
    • Recency (i.e when was the last substantial set of interactions?) So often we see the telltale signs of a dead community…
    • Number of members – this gets a bit subjective as some communities are intended as small, others larger. Sometimes it is hard to find this data and the number of registered members rarely corresponds with number of active members.

That said, most organizations want to implement an online community for a reason. The purpose should be the driver. So how do we relate those success indicators to the mission or goal of the community? In other words, how do we look beyond process to impact?

  • What connection can we see between the activity indicators and community goals/purpose?
  • How do we discern this connection in contexts of open-ended or very diffuse purpose? What happens when purpose shifts (as it often does)?
  • What sorts of monitoring and evaluation strategies are in place (visible, or more often, invisible and we need to ask the community leaders!)?
  • Taking a communities of practice perspective, what is the interplay between the DOMAIN of the community (what it is interested in), it’s COMMUNITY (who is involved and engaged, how they play out in relationships, etc.) and PRACTICE (what they do together and how they use what they do together back out in their own work/lives, etc.)?
Finally, we are living in the era of networked social media. Rarely is “a site” the only vector for interaction. Many communities live and work on multiple platforms, or at the least, publicize community activity via other networks such as Twitter and Facebook. So we look for these connections as well, and try to understand if they support the community purpose. Or if they even dilute it. Again, it depends on the purpose. If a community is very inward looking, outward links would dilute. If it is really interested in sharing what it does/learns out to the world and bring in people and ideas from the world, then these linkages are critical.

Tapping My Network for Examples

We each may have an example or two of “successful communities,” but the fact is, we need a broader scan than what is available in our personal realm, so my first step was to tap my network and see if I could surface any new examples. Some of my known examples are great, but old. Really old. Tweeting requests on December 23rd, however, is not so smart. But here is what I received on first query about vibrant online communities (with a special interest in Drupal based sites for this instance):


The first concrete suggestion was the Buckminster Fuller Institute (http://bfi.org/). And that was the ONLY concrete suggestion. Cameron Cambell’s (@ronindotca) comment about following a Drupal Developer’s trail of tears may give you a sense of the challenge at hand! Looking at the BFI site, there is little evidence of online community interaction (see http://bfi.org/news-events/community-content). I don’t think Cameron’s observation is far off base!

So back to my own set of examples, I compiled the following options.

  • Share Your Story (http://www.shareyourstory.org) – a long time, well established community. (Technology:Webcrossing. Disclaimer: I was deeply involved w/ this site early on!) This is a great example of when an online community really fills a needed function that is not easily found elsewhere. And of loving community management!
  • CPSquare (http://www.cpsquare.org) – private, must be member, but I’m a member! (Technology: WebCrossing and Disclaimer, I’m a member!) This is a private community so no easy peeking, but a good example of some deep learning events.
  • BetterEvaluation (http://www.betterevaluation.org) – an example of a new, emerging community based on Drupal (Disclaimer: I’m involved w/ this site!) It is useful to see a site before it really launches its interactive features. (Beta)
  • Knowledge Management for Development (http://www.km4dev.org) as both a long lived and multi-platformed global community which uses DGroups, an email centric tool, NING and mediawiki.  (I had been on the Core group from its beginning until late last year.)
  • The KSToolkit Wiki (http://www.kstoolkit.org) which is about the artifact more than the community.
  • A couple of Facebook communities
    • RosViz – a community of interest on Facebook (I’m one of the community moderators) – open hearted resource sharing. A good example of focused domain in a very open, outward facing context.
    • Network Weaving (just a member!) – Vibrant due to some passionate leadership and blending of synch and asynchronous interaction.
    • SCoPE is another good one. This is their FB home https://www.facebook.com/SCoPEcommunity while their main home is a Moodle site.
  • I asked for some other Drupal examples and here are a couple:

Extrapolating Lessons

It is great to see a successful community and think what they did will automatically create conditions for success for a completely different community. We know this is rarely true. So we need some sort of mechanism to extrapolate the lessons. Perhaps a heuristic that says if X is your goal, patterns 1, 7 and 12 might be useful. This is much harder than it looks due to the lovely complexity of human behavior. Here is what I’m thinking so far, but I’d love your suggestions:

  • What visual elements drew you into a site? What “turned you off?” Why?
  • In terms of figuring out how to get involved, what was easy? What was challenging? What are the technical and communications aspects of getting people involved?
  • What community activities could inspire your community? Which would you avoid?
  • What community leadership/management functions did you note as important? Do you have time and skills (or someone else does) to fulfill these roles?
  • What surprised you? How can you use that insight in your community?

Reflecting on the Learning Journey

The final bit is thinking about how we apply what we learn on a field trip to our own work. The questions above are one trigger, but the final part of the tour will ask each person to consider the following “next steps.”

  • What will be the first/next thing you will do to steward your community based on today’s tour? Why?
  • Review your community plan draft and see if there is anything you want to change based on what you learned today.
  • Pick one community (from the tour or one of your choosing) and explore it on your own. What else can you learn by digging in a bit deeper? Consider contacting and interviewing the community facilitator/leader/manager. What would you ask them?

Resources for Virtual Online Community Field Trips

Inspiration from Jennifer

Weeks ago when I started my KM Singapore prep, Jennifer Dalby offered me some great inspiration for my talk. She also pointed me to her great new, inspired Experience | Portfolio.

There is so much to learn here about sharing and digital identity, but I wanted to point out one particular thing. The “Connections” section where Jennifer invited her connections to make themselves a bit more visible as part of her portfolio. In a beautiful world, our network connections speak volumes about us. Brava, Jennifer! The responses you received sure are a great community indicator!

 

Why Health Insurance Matters

While the quote below may look unusual, it is not. My blog is not about politics. It is not about insurance. But for years it has been, under the cover of “collaboration,” and “work,” about doing what matters, about living life to use our talents and blessings.

For some, that means working for themselves. For some it means being an artist. I’m lucky – I have a husband who has health insurance that covers us. But so many I know (even my online, “imaginary” friends) don’t. People who should retire but don’t because of a lack of insurance. Probably working themselves to death. Literally. Why? Because in my country we have a system that is set up for business, my friends, not health.

So read the paragraphy below. Follow the link back. Give a little. Hold me accountable to give. And lets figure out how we can stop people from finding that, when the bad news about health arrives, they know care is right behind them.

This is from writer Patti Digh:

While I believe that writing is my calling, it is not as secure a life choice as working in a job with benefits. And recently, that has meant not paying our $1400/month insurance premium–like so, so many other Americans. It is a broken, broken system. So John is uninsured for this journey. Dear friends are launching a fundraising page, and it will be online in a few days. If you can help in this effort by giving or sharing the information with your networks, please let Amy McCracken know at forjohnfptak@gmail.com. It is a source of shame that we are uninsured, and it is a shame we must overcome for John’s sake. It is a reality we share with so many. And my writing is a choice I would not change for anything, not even health insurance. We will figure this out because there is simply no other option. xoxo

via 37days – Home of Patti Digh.

Oh, and caring is a community indicator. For sure.

 

UPDATE: Here is the link to the Indigogo fundraising site for John. And some more information.

Riffing off of NorthernVoice 12 and Online Community Enthusiasts

Photo by Alan Levine
This past weekend I was up in Vancouver, BC, for two gatherings that I always enjoy, the BC Campus’ Online Community Enthusiasts group (led by the always wonderful Sylvia Currie) and the Canadian blogging/social media conference, Northern Voice. OCE is a place to hang with people who wisely use online interaction, mostly in the learning context.

This year I was once again on the OCE hosting team and my job was to give an overview of the agenda, then facilitate the afternoon’s Open Space. I made a visual agenda, but in a circle it is rather hard to see, so I spontaneously became a human lazy susan. Alan Levine caught me in the act with a still, and later with an animated gif.

We had a great time with Dave Pollard leading us in some exercises using the terrific Groupworks group process pattern cards. They really elicited some insightful stories from the group and I was so inspired, I called an Open Space session in the afternoon to think about how I could use them in a webinar I ran on Monday. Bingo! As always, hanging out with friends new and old was the highlight.

Northern Voice is where I always submit weird session proposals and those crazy Canadians usually say yes to me. Silly them. My supporting role for 2012 was to co-facilitate Moosecamp, the OpenSpace of NorthernVoice, with Brian Lamb. Brian asked me to make a little announcement at the start of the conference about Moosecamp. I had decided on a whim to bring my new uke, and at the last minute decided to improvise a song about Moosecamp instead of saying it. I blogged about that already. 😉

This year my formal submission was a session with Rob Cottingham, Alan Levine and I on improvisation. I have been very inspired by Viv McWaters and Johnnie Moore’s work to bring improv into facilitation.  Our session started with each of us telling a two minute story of where improvisation played an important role, while the other two mimed the story. Then we introduced the group to Viv and Johnnie’s improv cards, which I turned into flip chart images.

We  invited people to go to the flip chart they felt MOST uncomfortable with. They then discussed the why’s and wherefore’s of their discomfort. THEN we invited each group to create a human sculpture that expressed that card. We had eight great, laughter inducing performances.

Alan then showed us his PechaFlickr applications which draws five cards with a shared tag from Flickr and you get to tell a story to go with them. Alan had five volunteers who each added an element to a story illustrated by tug boats! Give it a try yourself here. It could be a great icebreaker!

Then we segued into a classic gibberish improv and our three volunteers blew me away. They dove right in.  I was laughing so hard I was crying.

For us, it was important that this was not just about the performance side of improv, but about how improv can inform our practices every day, help us be more present in every moment. Rob Cottingham gave a insightful, improvised wrap up that inspired us all. We have 1140 minutes every day. We might as well use them well.

I loved Boris Mann’s recap:

Next I went to Improv Me, Baby with Nancy White, Alan Levine, and Rob Cottingham. My basic rule of thumb is “go to any session that Nancy White is involved with”. Of course Alan and Rob are no slouches either 😉 Lots of interactivity and group activity in getting people to participate, and to understand what improv actually means. Rob closed things out talking about how the very best improv can in fact be the result of lots of preparation and practice ahead of time, while still using a “go with the flow” approach to tailor presentations & experiences to the people and energy in the room.

In the Moosecamp/Open Space giulia.forsythe ran a great hands on session about how to do sketchnoting on the iPad and I now finally understand layers. (I’m slow.) She later did a sketchnote of the improv session which I TREASURE! What a great memento/take away!

via Northern Voice Retrospective [visual Notes] | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.image from Giulia Forsythe from NorthernVoice improv session

All in all it was a great weekend – learning, play, improv, music, friends and food! Perfeito!