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).

email not dead shocker

A friend of mine called me last week and said she was thinking of setting up an online community for a group of female entrepreneurs. What should she use? Well, we had a chat and what do you think we came up with?

A blog, a wiki, a Facebook group, a Ning site?

No - an email list. An oldie but a goodie. These people aren't tech-savvy and email is their primary form of communication. I've ranted about email before but in this situation it kinda makes sense (for now).

online communities - everybody's gotta thang

After this post, I've been thinking about online consumer communities. I was working on something very, very complicated and then realised that the first thing I had to write was actually very simple.

Communities

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

online communities & "tribes"

I've been a participant in online communities for over decade (pretty soon after I started exploring the internet seriously in 1996). Being a bit of a freak and therefore poorly serviced by my immediate physical communities, I launched myself into groups concerned with music, chaos magic and other stuff. I was a little surprised when things I learned about this environment could be applied to the KM issues I encountered in my job. Two things have come out in the last couple of weeks that take this a little further.

Beeline Labs, Deloitte & The Society of New Communications Research have a report on the "Tribalization of Business". This does not refer to middle managers covering themselves in paint and hitting each other with sticks (altho the trend for outward bound "team bonding" exercises in the 90s wouldn't make this topic surprising). Rather it's about the involvement of businesses in online consumer/customer communities - for customer service, marketing, new product development, etc. It's actually a pretty solid piece of research - with some nifty presentation ideas (use of Slideshare as a channel, using tag clouds rather than graphs).
Some of the takeaways for me are unsurprising:

• The focus should be on creating a good environment (including seeding the space with good content).
• It's about customers talking to each other (based on social rather than market imperatives).
• You need to support/facilitate them (many organisations seem to be under-resourcing their communities).
• It's not just about your community - but the range of online environments that your customers interact with each other in. You are part of an ecosystem and you (and your ego) have to accept that.

I don't think that we will be replacing Chief Marketing Officers with Chief Community Officers anytime soon for two reasons: i. For most organisations, there is more to marketing than online communities & ii. Online community champions need a different skills set to the traditional marketer. This new role has the following skills:

• Someone who is embedded in the same online environment as your customers outside your community environment as well as inside it.
• Someone who excels at listening, facilitating & doesn't need to hog the limelight.
  
• Someone who understands their own organisation very well.
  
• Someone with some understanding of the role of the community in marketing & new product development & customer service & PR.
• Someone who can pick up the tools quickly and make them work (but probably isn't a technologist).

Meanwhile Seth Godin has a wizard wheeze to promote his new book. Which is on tribes funnily enough. So Seth put up an invite on his blog to join his tribe (on Ning natch). All you have to do is pre-order his book and you're in. Well, you were. The invite was closed after 24 hours due to demand. Seeing as I was probably going to buy SG's book anyway (and I can still cancel it from Amazon if I change my mind) I pitched in. Some observations so far:

• SG's Ning group has nearly 3000 members. Many of them are like SG - shameless self-promoters who sometimes have something interesting to say. It feels very crowded - and already some structures have either emerged or been imposed to cope with that.
• What do these people have in common? Well, Seth. There seems to be a lot of "Seth, Seth, look at me" behaviour. Hopefully this will die down after a bit and people can start talking to each other.
  
• Ning seems to cope with a few hundred people relatively well but less so with thousands.

Things to check out:

• Beeline Labs Tribalization homepage (with webinars & stuff)
  
• Deloitte webinar (with added Intuit)
• Read/Write's observations
• Seth Godin lays out his Tribe thang.
  

Just as "collaboration" will become a much-abused buzz word, so "tribes" & "online community" have hit the peak of the hype cycle. More reportage as it happens.

seattle sound

Yes - as the trip continues, the title references are getting worse. Seattle was spent in the awesome company of Nancy White and her kin. Nancy has forgotten more about online community development than I will ever know. We talked about her recent trip to Ethopia, her whitepaper with Shawn & Mark, the forthcoming book with John D Smith & Etienne Wenger, the fantastic work of the Skillet Street Food Company.

dunbar's number online

This post generated a comment from Patrick. In posts here and here and in this presentation, Christopher Allen discusses the size of functional online communities - and comes to the conclusion that the Dunbar number is a limit rather than a mean. Most online groups will have around 60-80 active members.

Hmmm.

BTW I did some more analysis of the ACT-KM discussion list. See summary.