Theory & strategy for community building Deborah Schultz www.deborahschultz.com technology changes, humans dont

Welcome Introductions Expectations Outline of the day

What Community What does community mean to you? An Exercise

What did we learn? Community Building

Important Concepts

• Collaboration

• Shared ideas, passions and experiences

• Relationship building

• Room for divergent views

• Common language and knowledge, dialog

• Social structure emerges organically

Key Concepts

• Common, shared purpose

• Interaction - must be easy

• Shared meaning

• Feelings of influence and membership

• Authenticity - Intimacy

• Emergent structures

The birth of a community

• We just illustrated that:

• • Tacit and explicit theories drive our community strategy

• • Norming functions develop quickly

• • There is an individual and group collective

• • Clustering is a natural evolution of community

Case Studies A critical analyses of existing communities Exercise II

Community Types - Broad

• Affiliation

• Circumstance

• Practice

• Elective vs non-elective

Three questions

• Review the community list we created what do you think is the intention of this site?

• Why do you think these examples are successful at community

• How do they measure their success

Choose a Site to Read

• Flickr

• Ebay

• Quickbooks

• Sourceforge

• Threadless

• Craigslist

• Amazon

• Vox

Lessons learned

• Community needs vary by type

• • Affiliation

• • Circumstance

• • Practice

• • Elective vs non-elective

• Elective affinity means we cannot mandate community

• Create platforms of emergent community

Lets get strategic What would you do? Exercise III

Answer these questions

• Who - are you designing for?

• What are you going to give them?

• How are you going to tell them?

• How would you measure success?

Three important rules

• Culture is based on your theories

• Strategy varies greatly for elective vs non-elective communities

• A huge attitude shift is needed

You are now a partner and catalyst

Elements of Community

• Content Curation

• User Refined Search

• Create & consume

• The Live Web

• Value is rewarded

• Co-creation

• Shared experience

• Offline & online

• Participation

• Niche vs Mass

• Authenticity

This is not about technology

Things to Think About

• Define THE thing

• Shift your viewpoint

• What really drives your audience?

• Give to get

• Be bold, be different

• Be a catalyst

• Explore your assets

• Everyone is an editor

• Be human

• Be an advocate

• Feed the beast

• Keep it simple

• Iterate iterate iterate

Inspiration & gut check reading Cluetrain Manifesto Seth Godin Citizen Marketers The Wisdom of Crowds The Starfish and the Spider Made to Stick Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Chris Locke Pick one Jackie Huba/Ben McConell James Suriowiecki Ori Brofman & Rod Beckstrom Chip & Dan Heath

Thanks for participating

• Deborah Schultz

• www.deborahschultz.com

• [email_address]

• Technology changes, humans dont