In the Ning of things October 13, 2008

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I’m a snob.

You may have known this already, but it has come as a revelation to me.  What I’ve been a snob about is Ning, a super-simple social network in a can.

I have unkindly described it as “stupid-proof” and “social networking for the technologically intimidated.” Then I put on my fortune teller’s hat and decreed that it’s neither “robust nor intelligent enough to meet all our needs over the long-term.”

Geesh. What a snot I can be.

Ning is exactly what it promises to be — so easy to use that anybody can build an online community with it in about 20 minutes and so open that folks with the know-how can tweak it to be more than what it started as.

We have, in fact, launched The Fan Zone, the community component of IowaPrepSports.com, on Ning. I actually like that it’s easy to use and that it can be tweaked. I’m already asking developers here for more stuff, like the ability for users to flag comments for moderation and a place to put the forum code of conduct.

So why did I say such mean things about Ning? It never did anything mean to me. My best guess is that I’m really dissing on an online community I met that was built on Ning. It was my first encounter with Ning many months ago, and I was turned off by the people I encountered there. Some real stuffed shirts.

So, in the name of self-awareness and self-improvement, I’m casting off my snobbish gloom and admitting that Ning is alright.

Don’t believe me? Check out The Fan Zone, or see Beth Kanter’s blog post in which she interviews a non-profit Ning user/fan.

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City of 5 smells October 7, 2008

I love this! The Medill students are calling the partnership with us the Crunchberry Project, because of Cedar Rapids’ breakfast-cereal aroma, courtesy of Quaker Oats. They’re blogging about what they’re doing at http://crunchberry.org Professor Rich Gordon also blogged an introduction to the project at http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/10/medill-student-innovators—-i.html

Life of the party October 2, 2008

Josh Bancroft uses the metaphor that having online communities is like hosting a party.

And to have a great party you have to be a good host. He notes that companies that have online communities often think they own the communities and often behave like dictators. Tsk, tsk. Here are Bancroft’s “rules” for being a great party host:

• Think of yourself as an equal member of the community, with some special responsibilities.
• Remember, you’re throwing the party. You built and “own” only the party venue.
• Invite interesting people to the party and have interesting people for them to talk to and interesting topics for everyone.
• Provide amusements, but not stupid, mandatory party games.
• You’re there in case something goes wrong and needs to be addressed.
• Enjoy the party for yourself, but don’t make yourself the center of attention the whole time.

The concrete example Bancroft gives is comments. He recommends that the community have clear rules for comments and only those that break the rules get pulled. In other words, a critical comment that’s within the rules gets to stay, even if it’s critical of the party host.

This isn’t just a great how-to point for online communities. It speaks to a fundamental problem for journalists as we move forward into a digital-first world. WE have always owned the party and been the center of attention. Or we thought so.

It’s not “all about us,” anymore. I’ve been saying that for months, and I’m not sure anyone’s listening. After all, I’m still hearing objections to allowing comments because “they might get ugly.” And?

Maybes and what-ifs cannot be reasons for refusing to change. To every what-if we should respond, “Then we’ll …” And since we aren’t going to be dictators or the center of attention anymore, we can ask the community for help, too, in finding solutions.

Will it get ugly? We hope not. Will it be messy? You bet. And have you noticed that real life is, too? Welcome to the party, my friends.

So many ‘ships, we need a marina October 1, 2008

Image by BryanPerson via Flickr

Let’s talk about partnerships and relationships.

I spent the past two days with associate professor Rich Gordon and his graduate new media class from Northwestern‘s J-school, Medill. We’re partnering with them this semester on a community project (more details as they develop).

Frankly, I ran them ragged around the company and Cedar Rapids, trying to give them an overview of who we are, where we want to go and what obstacles stand in our way.  By the time they left, they looked haggard and felt admittedly overwhelmed, but I’m looking forward to whatever they might ask for next on the path to a focused project.

It was great to hang out with some sharp, young people. Of course, it meant admitting that while I might still be sharp, I’m no longer young. (I’ll thank the peanut gallery not to comment on either of those assertions, please. Sigh.)

Student Brian Boyer, one of two programmers recruited to Medill with Knight Foundation fellowships, asked a great question: What’s the big, high-level goal of experimenting with online communities?

I don’t know that my answer was satisfactory for him, but here it is: To build relationships. Really, it’s that simple. It’s not about delivering news; we are doing that and will continue to do so, no matter the delivery method. It’s not about experimenting with social or new media tools; those tools are becoming ubiquitous and we simply must adopt them or die.

I know that sounds glib and dismissive of our core strengths and current initiatives. I’m looking beyond them, though. We can have the world’s best content in the world’s coolest presentation, but if we’re seen as just another Corridor business, just another faceless media company, what’s the incentive to come to us for anything?

Relationships drive us and our choices. We ask people we know for recommendations, references and help, and social media are teaching us that we are willing to accept the recommendation of Charity1313 over that of an “expert” based on a relationship, however shallow, cultivated on Twitter.

So experimenting with online communities is about trying to meet a basic human need for relationships, because this company wants to be here and be viable another 150 years from now. The range of products we offer will be entirely different, and there may not be a newspaper, in the traditional sense, in the lineup. That’s OK.

If we build real relationships with people — look, we’re people, too, and we’ll talk to you in an authentic human voice and we’ll help you build relationships with each other — it’s with the aim of becoming so entwined in the social fabric of local life that people don’t have to think about where to turn for information and context. They’ll assume we have it or can get it.

Crusade: Carry it back to the silo September 1, 2008

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It’s good to be back. I confess that I lost (or was being ignored by) my muse and have not felt inspired to write for weeks.

WAY back on July 30 I wrote about the debate around whether companies need a companywide social media strategy or if collaboration across departments is the key. I had some good feedback from Beth Kanter and Augie Ray, whose work inspired the post. In the end, I suggested we needed a collaboration strategy.

In the weeks since that post, I’ve spent time pounding the pavement to evangelize and recruit for a prep sports community and attended a multitude of meetings and presentations around the company, and I’m even more convinced that we need that collaboration strategy. And soon.

I believe that “community” is what we need to do all across the company — internal community with our peers; external community with our customers; across all products, core and niche; marketing and customer service.

Naturally, I have an idea for this collaboration, and for fun I’ll stick with the ninja imagery I already have going: That the handful of folks across the company (fine ninja all) who are/will be tasked with exploring/building community be grouped in a “dojo.”

That this group of people make a concerted effort to share information on best practices, tools and research. That they collaborate where it makes sense on determining best practices for our company, be a support network for each other when it makes sense to fight conformity and carry concepts back to their respective departments.

I am not suggesting we create another department. The dojo would be a loosely organized group of people from various departments. Colloboration is the operative word. Each of these ninja, supported by the rest of the dojo, would push their respective silos toward the ideal — community as an integral function of our work and our lives, so ingrained that we eventually don’t need the dojo or even the ninjas.

And “community” is so much bigger than social media. “Social media,” “social networking” — those are really references to the tools we can use to foster relationships. And THAT’S what community is about.

It’s been said to me that the companywide embracing of community is the ideal for some day. Why some day? It’s tempting and easy to put off the hard work to achieve fundamental change, but the ideal doesn’t just turn up, wrapped in silver foil and a red bow. “Oh, look, the ideal has arrived. Isn’t that nice?”

We have to (cue “Battle Hymn of the Republic”) work for it every day, climb hills for it, knowing it’s somewhere on the path ahead, and that effort should start today, one step at a time. And I think the dojo could take responsibility for pushing us along on that march, be guardians of the drive for the ideal, if you will.

You may snicker at this imagery or scoff at my attempt at an inspirational speech (Obama’s speech writers were busy, so I had to go it alone), but don’t ignore the underlying message. That we need to work together and we need to start now.

If we don’t, I fear “community” will become compartmentalized by each department, owned by each silo, a piece of territorial turf to fight over, and we’ll never achieve the ideal.

Creative thinking August 8, 2008

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What a week on the homefront.

Sitter canceled on me, and it was a mad scramble to make other arrangements. Peanut is 9 and an only child — not old enough to be home alone all day and too old for the preschooler day care next door. Well, OK, if I’d been desperate enough, I would have explored that option. Samurai took a day, I took two and a friend bailed me out on the other two. (We had a dance party Thursday afternoon, where we shimmied to Hannah Montana and Cab Calloway. It’s funny to see a thoroughly modern 9-year-old dance to “Minnie the Moocher.”)

Egad, say The Blog Boys. She’s one of those — sniff — Mom bloggers. Well, motherhood isn’t why I’m writing here, but it’s part of me and so it crops up. Deal, fellas.

Which brings me to today’s rant, er, post. I think online engagement has social development stages that mirror childhood development.

Not unlike middle school, this social media frontier sometimes feels downright clique-ish. The same names crop up , from Twitter to Google Reader to FriendFeed, with cross-links and trackbacks and back-slapping comments in between. People huddling for warmth in the dark of the blogosphere is one driver for this, but after a while, It starts to feel insular and — dare I say it? — elitist.

Now, it’s true that I can change the players in an affinity group by ceasing to follow some of them and starting to follow others, but just like middle school, I’m fascinated by this in-group. Oh, insider antics can be a turn-off, and I for one don’t need to be one of the beautiful people, but I like knowing what they’re into. They’re setting the tone, if not the agenda.

I expect this fascination with the “popular kids” will wane, because while the online connections are cool, they’re not real relationships. A handful of them may remain on my must-read list, but only a few and only those I feel a real connection to.

Jeff Jarvis, blogging about “The Myth of the Creative Class,” argues that one of the great things about the Internet is that it robs the creative class of its pedestal and “opens up creativity past one-size-fits-all mass measurements and priestly definitions and lets us not only find what we like but find people who like what we do.” (Note: It’s not about Richard Florida.)

I like that thought, that if a community gets to be too snobbish, anyone can blow it apart (read: leave) by putting his/her own talents on the line in a different online community and being judged by many peers, not just the elite few.

We mature and no longer need the in-group to validate us. See. It’s like growing up all over again.

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You. Me. Us. July 30, 2008

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Reading about best practices of online community engagement led me to this rather existential question: Do we need a comprehensive strategy for community/social media for the company or just collaboration across departments?

Beth Kanter blogs today about whether orgs really want an online community (read: relationships) or just want content (read: dialogue around a topic of shared interest). There IS a difference. Kanter was discussing strategies for community engagement, when a reader posed the question: Do you really want community? The reader suggests that an org decide what it really wants and tailor strategy around the answer.

Then I found Augie Ray’s post today at Social Media Today. Ray argues that companywide strategies are more of a hindrance than a help to effective use of social media/community because “social media is a tool to be used in different ways under different circumstances” and spending time setting the strategy won’t get you where you need to go now. He also says that no one department in a company should “own” social media, but the departments should collaborate to effectively get what they need out of the tool and to cut down on duplication.

I see the merit in Ray’s arguments. Strategy can become gospel — That’s the way we do things! — and when needs change, it can take an act of god to change strategic course.

Here at GazComm we don’t have a comprehensive community/social media strategy (as yet). There are overlapping initiatives across departments –- the ninja project, The Gazette’s social media guide, the Web Best Practices Group, social media R&D for online niche products and, one assumes, future social media efforts by the retooled marketing department. (Online communities are hot in marketing.) I’ve probably missed some projects here, and I apologize in advance.

It’s all interrelated in some way, but mostly happening independently of each other, and many of us are probably covering the same conceptual ground in our research.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not that the folks in these initiatives don’t talk to each other or don’t share information. We do, but I don’t think we can really call it collaboration, either. Not yet. I’m thinking we need to get there, though.

Time is (not) on my side July 22, 2008

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Time is fleeting. Time is relative. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

Nearly five months. That’s how long I’ve been doing this ninja gig, and I’ve come so far. Mountains of work, research and insights. Four focus groups, one concept paper, a handful of books and endless feeds later, I have a vision for online communities. Enough learning, time to DO, but the pace is slowed by forces I cannot control.

Lest you think this is some sappy swan song, no, my work is not done here. God help me, but the hard part is only starting. I must help people to understand what I’m trying to do and what I mean by online community. That mission is complicated by the misconceptions of those who think they get it and the personal agendas of others. Throw in some office politics, and it’s about as palatable as cherry cough syrup. (Anyone who ever gagged on Robitussin as a kid knows exactly what I mean.)

Lord, I sound petulant, don’t I? There are bright spots, you know.

Today I met with Mike Richards, a local Czech Village activist for post-flood neighborhood preservation. He is an interesting man who’s passionate about grass-roots networking, open-source social tools and the power of people to effect change.

He and his wife, Lynette, are heading to New Orleans in early August to spend some time with Beacon of Hope, a grass-roots organization that helped ravaged neighborhoods there coalesce online and advocate for themselves. Mike is excited to be a catalyst for us and to help nurture an online community for his neighborhood if we can provide the platform.

The timing is so right, and time is of the essence. Truth is, he planned to do this before I asked for a meeting, and he’ll find a way to do it without us if he has to. Digital tools make it easy. He’s heard of Drupal, and he has his own tech-savvy resources, people he found through the networks he already has.

See? It’s time to go.

It has been suggested that I stop waiting on other people and cobble together a temporary platform of my own on some system with a low learning curve (meaning even I could figure it out). That may well be what happens, but it’s not my first choice because it comes with risk — that it’ll feed the inertia.

If the stop-gap site undercuts a sense of urgency and we don’t deliver on assurances that we’ll have something better “soon,” we can kiss our credibility, and the community, goodbye.

Perhaps a better option is to take the ride with Mike. A partnership in which we build it together might bear tastier fruit and faster. Hhm, now that gives one pause.

John Lennon supposedly said that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Time marches on, and so do I.

Get ‘em talking July 16, 2008

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I have wrung my hands here, repeatedly in fact, over whether I’m adding value to the conversation.

Yes, says Umair Haque and his colleagues at Havas Media Lab. They’ve put out a paper called “The New Economics of Consumption: User Generated Context.” In it, they argue that user-generated content is in short supply, but what the market has lots of is user-generated context. Huh?

Take Content Ninja’s blog. A lot of what I offer here is my riff on the stuff I read in my feeds — good points made by bright minds in the field and then I analyze and expand (or try to) on them. What I’m doing is adding context to someone else’s content.

Haque et al. suggest that media’s future lies not in figuring out how to get user-generated content and use it for little or nothing.  The key is to put content out there that generates a contextual discussion. That discussion is important for two reasons: 1) It’s proof that your content is of value to users, and 2) the value of the context comes not from individual users but from the collective discussion.

“A naked rating, ranking, or review on its own has little value or meaning – but millions of them, in
the aggregate, weave complex and multilayered webs of meaning. Put another way, context is the result of the complex, multilevel, network effects that happen when millions of consumers connect,” they write.

And the context is specific to a community or network. Outsiders won’t get it. Think of it as a circle. Give the community content of value to members, and they’ll want to provide context of value to the community.

The white paper goes on to discuss how this viewpoint can be used to change the way advertising, business models and media strategy are done. How that works is less clear to me, but I’m sure Haque and his folks will have more to say.

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Social media isn’t enough July 10, 2008

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Rachel Happe makes an excellent point today that “Social Media Is Not Community.”

An online community is the people gathering at the site and participating for a common goal, from articulating the history of a flooded neighborhood to parents bragging on their talented teens. Social media are simply the tools that the community can use for relationship and network building. It’s about many-to-many conversations.

A common goal is important. I hadn’t articulated it that way before, but it seems so obvious now. The goal could be high-minded — say, exposing local government corruption — or more granular — like, which of the flooded neighbors on your street are going to rebuild. But it must be there because it’s what motivates people to come to the space.

While you can build social media around content, you can’t build a community around content.  “ABC allowing people to comment on specific news stories with comments and ratings is not a community. Rating and ranking books on Amazon does not create a community,” Happe writes.

That’s so important, I’m going to say it again. You cannot build a community around content. It’s about people and relationships. Content is important, but it’s not the community’s raison d’etre.

A lot of news types erroneously believe that if we allow comments on our Web sites or ask people to give us their photos that we’re building a community. SNORT.

Which leads to another good point. We cannot build a community. It just happens — because people who care come together and make connections around the shared goal.

What we can do is build an infrastructure where the community can live, and we can invite people who care about a subject to come on in and start talking. We can provide them with the social media tools that make connections easier and fun.

And when someone says, “Hey, we need a subgroup, and I care so much I want to start it and run it,” we let it happen. Because that’s a community, too.

Well, that’s nice, you say, but what does it have to do with journalism? We’re building relationships, too, with the folks in those communities. We’re building good will and even building brand.

And to the most trustworthy members of the community, we say, “Let us publish you.” To our product managers we say, “Hey, the community is really lit up today over this issue. You should consider a story.”

Wait a minute. Where’s the new business model? That’s beyond the ninja’s scope, but Jeff Jarvis takes a stab at it. His controversial suggestion that newspapers get out of the manufacturing and distribution business entirely and just do journalism is generating lots of comment. Turn those things over to Google or AP, he says. See his post “Google as the New Pressroom.”

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