dr cool hits delete

I'm a fair man.

Actually that's not true. I'm a viciously unfair man.

So when Adam "Dr Cool" Ferrier posted his Facebook quiz, I could not resist. Adam's research is probably sound and his writing is not stupid (but it does tend towards the schoolmasterish - "I've outlined the 4Ps of Marketing as applied to this instance..."). I asked him what the foundations (who, when, where) for his cool research were. And he didn't fess up. So I asked him again. I asked him so many times that he deleted one of the comments. As you can see, oh hang on, you can't because it's deleted. So I guess we'll never know.

Incidentally, putting your research out as a quiz on Facebook is a darned-sight more effective than publishing it in an academic journal. But if you claim that your results are based in research and then complain when people take you seriously and ask for the evidence underlying your research - well that is a bit disingenuous. And frankly: uncool.

cool

There's a bit of a discussion going on over a JC's place about "cool kids" and online communities. It kinda got derailed by Adam Ferrier into a debate about what is "cool*". I am not interested in cool (as the contents of my wardrobe will demonstrate) but this discussion raises a few questions for me about the role of "community managers" and what the skills are.

The first thing to note is that generalisations are all well & good (and make nice 6 point lists that blog readers love) but may not be that much help in a particular situation. Communities vary a lot. Do not assume that your community is the same in a key respect as another community. To put it in statistical terms (which I know turns you all on), the variance matters as much as the mean. Or to put it more scientificially: The Lone Ranger & Tonto are surrounded by Indians. The Lone Ranger says: "We're in trouble". Tonto turns & says: "Waddya mean 'we', Paleface?"

Anyway, for comunity management, being a good communicator & listener is probably a non-negotiable. As is actually caring about the comunities' common interest yourself. Beyond that, it kinda gets a bit tricky. Are you "cool" or "warm"? Are you a creator or an appreciator? Are you gentle or brutal? Do you have video-editing skills? Can you sing? Are you a whizz with language or numbers? I dunno. It probably depends on your community.

A few years ago, Patrick Lambe & Shawn Callahan looked at the community archetypes** of actKM. This is a community of IM/KM professionals in their 30/40/50s. I think we have one Gen-Yer - but he acts like a 50 year old anyway. Here are the archetypes that emerged. Let me stress to marketing types that these are not Jungian (Healer, Hero) archetypes - altho some of them may look like that. These are recurring identities & behaviours are specific to that community. Similar archetypes can and do pop up across different places but each time the ecosystem is a little different.

What would the archetypes look like in your online community?

*The only comment I will make is that the question "Who is cool?" is actually "Who is cool to group X?" with the "X" bit often assumed or left unexamined - AF's original research looked a specific group (Australians aged 18-26). I also wonder if he's selected on the dependent variable but I haven't seen the original research.

**Patrick & myself are using a similar approach in our Using Expertise work (e.g. here).