Category: networks

Crowdsourcing Conference Note-Taking

I’m still working on my NorthernVoice09 conference recap, but I had been meaning to check out the amazing Raul/Hummingbird604’s live blogging of the conference. I had not realized Raul was using Coveritlive WITH Twitter. So he was tweeting his live coverage and pulling in any other tweets with the #northernvoice09 hashtag at the same time. VERY clever.
photo by Tris Hussey, cc on Flickr
Take a peek at one of them:  Rob Cottingham on Teh Funny. The mashup of Raul’s intentional notes and the audience’s reaction, while not always coherent, is very cool. However, I can’t judget since I was there. It would be interesting to hear from one of you who was not there how coherent this crowdsourced live blogging is. This is another example of using the network. One person can’t do it all, even the amazing Raul. Having done a lot of liveblogging in the past, I know how much energy it takes!

I wonder what would happen if a smaller, defined group did this with a specific session tag. Does a group create a more coherent record, or the network? (EDITED IN LATER: Check out Beth Kanter’s great blog post on working with conference backchannel which could be considered unto itself conference capture or note taking.)

Just to recover, the peripatetic Raul is committing to one day a week of slow blogging. Raul, you MUST read Barbara Ganley’s blog!

Photo of Raul – ©Tris Hussey, 2009. Non-commerical use permitted with attribution

Network Effects: Advice for TJ’s and Any Organization

You know the routine. Get up. Walk and feed the dog. Make tea. Check email. And there is a note that David Armano is following me on Twitter. Being the half brain for names that I am, I say, “hm, I know that name” and click in to follow back. Then I click into some of the links in his tweets and find my  way to his blog and this great post. Logic+Emotion: The Best Little Ad Trader Joe’s Never Made

First, the embedded YouTube video – a customers video of “if I made an ad for Trader Joe’s” is amazing. (Dear readers outside of some parts of the US, Trader Joe’s – or TJ’s as we know it – is a very successful grocer that plays by its own rules. Intentionally quirky? ) I’m embedding the video because first, it is a fabulous piece of work by the creator, and second, David’s point about the video carry weight for any organization – even my colleagues and clients in international development.  Over 257,000 views of this video in just three weeks. 

 
Here’s the video:

Here are some snippets from David – click in to read his specific advice:

Listen
There are close to 100 comments on the video and over 33,000 views of the video. Track all mentions and embeds of the video and listen to how people are responding to it…

Learn
The video is mostly complimentary but shows Trader Joe’s warts and all… Remember, a brand isn’t what you say it is—it’s what they say it is. What can Trader Joe’s Learn if anything?

Adapt
Use the video as fodder to figure out how your orginzation will respond to these types of inevitable situations…

Respond
Engage your customers in the comments…. Then go back to listening—lather, rinse and repeat.

I heart Trader Joe’s. And this video. It’s catchy as hell and one of the best advertisements they never made.

I am getting ready to co-facilitate a short online workshop on social media for communications managers of a large international network of research centers. I am going to link to the TJ’s video and David’s blog. This idea of listening may not seem as relevant to a research center whose most numerous constituents are poor people who are very much NOT online. But a smaller, strategic constituency is more and more online: funders and policy makers. And future brilliant researchers they want to attract. And influentials they want in their court as they undergo their own evolution forward in a changing world. These centers  can listen, tell their own story, ask their constituents to tell their stories. It’s not the same as TJ’s, but the potential of the network effect is the same. And it matters.

We know not every non profit is going to make a clever video. But one of their constituents just might share something that gets to the heart of the matter, especially if they inspire the kind of love Carl feels for TJs, even with his criticisms. After all, we take advice better from our friends we know love us. They tell us if we have brocolli in their teeth!

Two more things. Read more of David’s blog. He gets the visual thing, the network thing and the friend thing. And I remembered now, how I know of David. Of course – through my network – via Beth Kanter. Small world, eh? That old network effect. It is real. Powerful. Ignore it at your own risk.

 

P.S. Also check out David’s visual graphic on Twitter.

Hot List from the Communities & Networks Connection

Rachel's Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies from cc Flickr photoLast week Tony Karrer and I launched the Communities and Network Connection, a place to bring together and surface good stuff about communities, networks and all the juicy stuff around them. Tony continues to tweak the code behind it and one of the outputs is a hot list of the posts that got the most “social juice.” Tony explains how it works for one of the other aggregated sites he stewards, the eLearning Technology site.  Check out Hot List : eLearning Technology

Tony explains: 

In other words, we are using what is happening:

  • with the content out in the network
  • on the eLearning Learning
  • searches that land on us and that occur on the site,
  • and various other kinds of behaviors.

Together these social signals indicate that the content is likely of higher quality (or at least of higher interest). Thus it belongs in both a best of list and a hot list. This is going to take some work to get it right, but we believe it will help to highlight various hot list content.

We are particularly excited that this capability will soon allow us to have a weekly post that highlights hot list for the week. This will be something like:

Posts: 

  1. Branding in the age of social media
  2. Clay Shirky: nonprofits must become new-style convenors – or lose their members
  3. Assessing the health of a community of practice using net promoter score
  4. Mathemagenic ” PhD conclusions in a thousand words: blogging practices of knowledge workers
  5. From Command and Control to Collaboration and Teamwork – Preparing Business Leaders for the Knowledge Economy
  6. Knowledge Retention will no longer be an explicit strategy
  7. Co-operatives: The Feeling is Mutual
  8. Avoid Profile Potpourri
  9. MicroGuilds Musings on Scrum and Team Integration
  10. Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities

 Other Items:

  1.  Online Community Success and ROI | Will Pate’s Blog
  2. Facebook | Community Manager, Advocate, and Evangelist
  3. Facebook | Should Brands Join or Build Their Own Social Network

 Keywords: 

Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies photo by rachel is coconut&lime

 


 

Launch Day of Communities and Networks Connection

Communities and Networks ConnectionConnections make the world go round. I can’t learn and improve without the things I learn from my network and beyond. Especially the interesting fringes. This requires some sort of “line of sight” to that network.

With that, I’m pleased to announce the launch of the Community & Networks Connection.  This isn’t a community, and  not as loose and open as a network. It is in that juicy place in between communities and networks that helps to collect and organize useful content from blogs and other web sites, from people who care about, and are passionate to understand these phenomenon we call “communities” and “networks.”  The goal of this page is to create a place where it’s easy to find current and highly relevant content. And perhaps to stimulate a new connection between you and these brilliant people.

nancys networkYou can get a sense of the power of the site by visiting the site and clicking a keyword on the left.  For example, if you look at the page on Social Media you find:

  • Keywords on the left  ordered according to their relationship to the current term.  So you can see that Virtual Community, Tags, RSS, Facebook, Twitter and other such terms all relate heavily to the concept of social media.
  • The top of the page has the latest posts. What’s new?
  • Below that you find top posts based on various social signals.  As the site runs, it will get better at finding great content.

As a long-time blogger, I’m intrigued by a few of the specific features offered to participating bloggers. Tony tells me this will bring more trafic to participating sites. I need some lessons and stimulus, because I tend to ignore things that could bring more people to my site and that is pretty silly of me.  (Edited in later: for more posts about HOW this works, see Tony’s post, and John Tropea’s post. )

If you go to my blog’s content page, Full Circle, the page shows on the left the keywords that I write about a fair amount.  Keywords like Online Interaction, Technology Stewardship,  Catalysts are all pretty good indicators.  These same keywords are listed in the new widget in my sidebar provided by the site.

There’s also a page that shows the Best Content from Full Circle based on social signals.  These will improve over time. (Though I am the first to roll my eyes at “best” — but heck, it is a useful word at the moment. Do you have another suggestion as you use the site?)

smart, funny peersThe best part of this is this is not just about my content. In fact, I’m just a drop in the bucket.  I’m not alone.  There is quite a network that is participating in the launch – from people who are close friends and trusted colleagues, to interesting people I try and follow.

It’s fun to look at some of the differences in keywords for some of my fellow participants. For example:

All of this technology underneath the “hood” comes from Tony Karrer.  I know that he has more features planned.  Certainly, Tony and I would like to hear any suggestions you have for how to make this site better.  Comment here if you have ideas of other blogs or sites I should consider including.
Take a peek. Subscribe to the whole shebang or follow one key word. Lets find out what we can discover and learn together.