The State of Online Community
A webinar sponsored by the Online Community Research Network
December 11, 2008, 11:00 am PST

Register at http://ocstate.eventbrite.com >>

Join online community expert, Bill Johnston of Forum One Networks for highlights from the Online Community Research Network 2008 research series and a discussion of trends on the horizon for 2009. Session highlights will include:

• Online community strategy and ownership
• Community as an ecosystem
• Budget, headcount and compensation
• The evolving role of management and moderation

Please note: Attendance is FREE but limited to 200 people. Register early to reserve your spot!

President-elect Barack Obama has launched the website change.gov, where you can find news about the transition and inauguration and information about his agenda. Interestingly, the site also has a place for people to share their ideas for government and their stories about the campaign. This might be an early answer to the question I raised in my last post...

What a wonderful day! And plenty of observers have already noted the key role that the Internet and social media played in the successful campaign of Barack Obama. But the question that strikes me is: when he’s President, how will he utilize the hundreds of thousands of MySpace friends, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, My.BarackObama.com members, and SMS opt-ins, just to name a few, to advance his policies and­ ­­politics­? Are we on the verge of a new era of eParticipation in politics?

­Since we launched TextTheMob I'm keeping my eyes open for good case studies and best practices on how to use mobile technology to support eParticipation efforts. I recently discovered MobileActive.org, a great network of practitioners that has put together a quick guide of How to Run a Text-to-Screen Campaign:

Text to screen can function as a unique way for advocacy groups to use interactive media to

• build a database of mobile phone numbers for future use
• show the opinions and demands of a constituency/the public to decision makers in a highly visible manner
• generate media and public attention.

I'm excited to announce that I recently started to work for Public Agenda as a consultant. I'm coming on board as a Public Engagement Associate and will help them identify online strategies to support their choicework approach.
 

One of the biggest takeaways from the fabulous book Groundswell - winning in a world transformed by social technologies, which I just finished reading, was the POST Method as a simple framework of how to approach social software:

Is your company [organization] doing its social strategy backwards?

If you started by saying "we should do a blog" or "we should create a page on a social network" or "we should create a community" the answer is probably yes.

I've been there and am confronted with this approach pretty often in our work. Following the POST Method seems obvious, but it's important to remind ourselves frequently to go through the steps one after the other:

P is People. Don't start a social strategy until you know the capabilities of your audience. If you're targeting college students, use social networks. If you're reaching out business travelers, consider ratings and reviews. Forrester has great  data to help with this, but you can make some estimates on your own. Just don't start without thinking about it.

O is objectives. Pick one. Are you starting an application to listen to your customers, or to talk with them? To support them, or to energize your best customers to evangelize others? Or are you trying to collaborate with them? Decide on your objective before you decide on a technology. Then figure out how you will measure it.

S is Strategy. Strategy here means figuring out what will be different after you're done. Do you want a closer, two-way relationship with your best customers? Do you want to get people talking about your products? Do you want a permanent focus group for testing product ideas and generating new ones? Imagine you succeed. How will things be different afterwards? Imagine the endpoint and you'll know where to begin.

T is Technology. A community. A wiki. A blog or a hundred blogs. Once you know your people, objectives, and strategy, then you can decide with confidence.

This may sound simple to the sophisticated readers of this blog. But it works. Try it. Think your strategy through. Even if you're just clarifying your own strategy, this should help you explain it to your boss.

You can find more information about the book and its authors on their blog >>

From the OneWebDay website: 

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

The idea behind OneWebDay is to:

• focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy)

• focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills)

• create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet

We’re building towards September 22, a Monday this year.

Curious to see what activities around online participation in democracy will be offered.  

Mobile Participation (mParticipation) seems to be the next step in ePartizipation. With the rising of the iPhone and other smart phones and combined with other features like GPS and Location Based Services the expectations for new applications for are high. Consequently mobile applications amplify eParticipation in an spatial and temporal dimension. Not only at home, but also e.g. traveling in the metro, participants are enabled to read, write and follow the discussions.

"even if SMS only offer limited possibilities (because of the restriction to 160 signs) in comparison to mobile internet devices, there are arguments for integration in participation processes. They are an easy to use feature, they are cheap, they can be integrated to web (and vice versa). Looking at demoscopic data, they even offer more advantages."