(photo courtesy thomas_hawk on flickr)
One of the most fascinating things happening right now during Kathleen Gilroy’s presentation is the questions. So far, I’ve noticed that it seems a lot of questions are being asked like this: “So, that’s interesting and everything, but what things should we build? What’s the basic toolset to building a community?”
kq
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this question. Lately, however, I’ve heard it a ton. Most of the people asking these questions are what we call TBP’s (Traditional Business Person/People). I’m not going to get all over the case of these people for being out of touch (although, I think they are). What I’d rather do is help you people out.
I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you this. Stop asking that question.
You can’t build tools for your community without knowing your community. The basic answers Katleen gave - tagging, RSS everywhere, personalization, customization, and user profile pages (you’re welcome, but don’t leave now that you have her answer) - these are good answers to the wrong question. But how many people, other than the Threadless guys, are going to tell you that’s a dumb question? Not many.
But, why do I say it’s the wrong question? Because if you’re asking that question, you don’t know your community at all! You’re not part of it. You don’t get it. You ARE out of touch.
You said you’re here to help… what’s your problem?
Ok, so here’s the help I mentioned. When you are in, or simply are the community, you understand what is needed. You know what you have to do.
The answer is… get involved! Stop sitting around trying to figure out how to capitalize on eyeballs. Start thinking about how to “give your users the ability to kick ass”!
In the end, I’ll let Louis Armstrong say it best:
“If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.”
And “practice”, in this conversation, means “doing it” and “being a part of it”.
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(photo courtesy allanimal)
I’m that guy. That typical procrastinator. You know, the guy who packs at the last minute. This time, I’m packing for the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas.
I’m excited to go, and for free at that. My employer has kindly paid for the flight and the (thankfully) discounted hotel room at the Red Rock Hotel and Casino. Thanks to Francois, I’ve gotten a free pass to the conference (a $1500 value) and the discount on the hotel. All this because (1) Francois invited me to blog about and during the conference and (2) Eventful wants a representative there to help promote the ever popular demand services. We have yet to build a bunch of community oriented tools, but we will. Hence, another reason for me to be there.
I am, however, hoping this conference is better than the last one I went to. Now, I’ve been to a few conferences and never really liked them in the first place. But the last few I’ve been to have been focused on community in particular. And, honestly, I’ve been pretty dissatisfied.
Here’s the thing. For a conference to be about community, shouldn’t the entire thing act like one? I mean, eat your own dog food guys!
What I mean is, we talk about community all the time. We think we know what/who it is, and if we don’t, we try to define it/them. But really, we have community with people all around us.
Think about it. There will be a bunch of people invested in the time, space, subject, and relationships with each other. WHY don’t WE have stuff that will let us kick ass? I want to get to know the people who will be there, talk about the stuff before it happens, make connections.
With that rant in mind, here’s a few links that are worth reading:
- Forming community in online games
- Paul Resnick’s papers on virtual community and contributions
- CommunityExperts wiki
(If you’re going to the conference, let me know… I’d love to meet up)
Shared bookmarks from nateritter
- Coffee with John Coate —
Tara Hunt had coffee with John Coate - an event I wish I could have listened to first hand. But, this is a good secondary quick overview that says everything I want to say to anyone attempting to “build a community”. Please, don’t. - Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community by John Coate —
- SimpleFlickr Plugin for Wordpress —
Wordpress and Flickr plugins abound. But, I’ve used SimpleViewer before and it rocks. The combo, henceforth also rocks. I haven’t used it yet, but I plan on it. Henceforth, I will rock. - Strength from "Weakness" —
This is one of those posts that makes you think all day long. It almost makes me want to write out lists and stuff. - A faster way to speed up Mail.app —
woo hoo! This is a great tip for all you OS X Mail fans out there. I tried it and found great success. Some of my coworkers did as well and all is well for those of us on IMAP. Not sure for all you POP folks out there.
(photo courtesy minarai)
According to my buddy Brian over at Social Degree, there are 3 qualities of a good social network. Now, this isn’t an exclusive list by any means. He’s focused on sites like Yelp, Facebook, etc. You know, the ones he/we use every day (or are supposed to by generational standards).
Brian’s 3 qualities were:
- Personality/Identity
- Fun
- Genuine
Now, I’m not typically a drink-the-kool-aid type of guy. But, lately, I’ve really been wondering what you think of Eventful. I keep up with what some people are saying, and the novelty factor is strongly positive so far. But, I can be somewhat negative at times - *gasp* say it aint so - yep. It’s so.
So, here’s my question, and I want pure unadulterated honesty now: What do you think of Eventful.com?
I’m curious if you think Eventful fits any of these, or if they are even right? Do we need to have more (or less) of these qualities? Are there others you think we need to work on? Are we even anywhere close to being called a social network?
I’ve got my opinions, but I want to know yours. Hit me. I can take it!
(photo is courtesy of someone on Flickr. I forgot where I got this, so if you know, let me know)
Warning: There will be a helluvalotta links on this page. I don’t just want you to know the pain I went through in putting the entire Community 2.0 Conference agenda on Eventful, I also am trying to catch up with some latent blogging.
Lately, I’ve been chatting back and forth with Francois Cossieaux of Corante and Many2Many (a blog I’ve loved for a long time now). We’ve been discussing blogging ethics, specifically relating to his post about Alaskan Airlines (as a side note, I haven’t seen Alaskan respond yet, so I’m now apt to side with Francois regarding their lack of customer service, even though I’ve never had a problem like he has with them).
I’m not sure if it was because of our conversation there, or because he knows I think his name has some bit of sexiness to it. Either way, he was nice enough to get me a free pass to the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas (official site). He invited me to come as a blogger and write pretty much anything I want about the conference. Dude! You have no idea what you just got yourself into…. *evil laughing ensues*. When people give me free reign interesting things come out of my brain.
Needless to say, I am super duper crazy excited (not quite like these people, but close). I love going to conferences like these. My convictions keep getting confirmed and I meet all kinds of new friends.
With this conference, I’m excited for C20 Bootcamp where I’ll be hob-nobbing with some cool peeps like Tara Hunt (blog), who I met at Community Next, Francois himself, Craig Newmark of craigslist, John Hagel (blog), and Ben McConnell of Church of the Customer, which I’ve also been reading since I was a wee RSS newb. And that list just barely scratches the surface of who’s going to be there. I could literally pee my pants for a week if I listed all the names.
Why am I so stoked? Well, it does seem mighty geeky for someone to be excited about a conference. One reason I have high hopes is because of the names involved. And, being as I’m not really a shy person most of the time, I’m hoping to get some time with a few of them to pick their brains.
Another positive thing coming from this conference, for me personally, is the fact I’m able to blog about it. More name. More cowbell.
I also think this conference will be a great place to get more of the Eventful word out, since I made my own Demand t-shirt.
And lastly, I have high hopes for those speaking. I know there’s a few people who are talking about “leveraging” their communities, which is sad. But, I’m hopeful that the word is starting to get out about not “using” your community, but letting your community use you.
The one thing I learned from the Threadless guys at Community Next, [vid #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6] which I doubt I’ll forget any time soon, is you must simply build things that allow your users to kick ass. Everything else drops your awesomeness factor quickly.
I’m pretty apathetic on the political front, but I figured this is interesting regardless of political affiliation.
Hillary Clinton just posted an Eventful sticker on her myspace page. It’s the first Eventful Demand sticker for a major politician we’ve seen, and it may just make a HUGE difference in her campaign. Why? Because Eventful Demand is used to find out where you are wanted, and where you’re not. Think of the possibilities!
Update: Ok, so apparently this isn’t the official campaign page for Hillary. I should have known. I doubt she’d be selling rainbow cafepress stuff on her site if it were real. Ah well, the point still stands.
Photo courtesy dharmesh84.
I’m going to rant here for a bit. But, before I do, I’d like to thank Noah for putting on a decent conference. I met some good people, had some great eats, and learned a few things. Good times. *Wild applause*
While attending Community Next this past weekend, I survived the unfortunate experience of sitting through a pitch by an online advertising agency. It was pretty easy to see the motivation was to help businesses and site owners “leverage their community” with tips and techniques for using the advertising business model. The pitch, in and of itself, wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact we were at a community conference.
Why is this so bad? Well, I’ve stated my displeasure at the amount of dependence on advertising to fund websites, especially ones which are supposedly attempting to facilitate a community’s interaction (I chose that phrase carefully). I’ll reiterate here, and it’s truly as simple as this: By using advertising revenue, you’re purposefully creating a diversion from the whole point of your site in the first place.
And, there’s plenty of other people that agree with me. We (both you and I) hate advertising. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re ok with it. If the world existed without it, would you be losing something of value? Nope. Didn’t think so.
Honestly, I think if you’re using an advertising revenue model, you don’t really care about the people on your site and you’d rather have them leave through a click-through than use your service at all. Oh, and “leveraging the community” is retarded. If you have ever said or thought that, you don’t get it.
If you’re creative with how you make revenue (which is very well respected by the people who want to use what you’ve created), you can probably add value to their lives in plenty of ways. Case in point: The waterbook project.
So, since I like theory put into practice, how about some practical examples of how to think more creatively about making money on citizen-driven sites? I’ll list a few here, but I’d really rather make this a post for, about, and by you. So, participate, comment, help fix the uncreative folks out there. Let’s think up some good ways to help those poor souls who think advertising is the only way to make money:
- Subscription models: Duh. If you’re not doing advertising, you’re probably doing some sort of subscription model, so let’s get that out of the way quickly.
- Affiliate/partner/sponsorships to solve a need: The waterbook project was going to give theoretical plans of systems which could be used to create potable water. Have someone like Home Depot sponsor particular projects. You give the users a link to their site where they can buy each product for the system. This kind of thing could be used for other sites like HotOrNot.com where people could send flowers, gifts, or other stuff to other users via a 3rd party merchant. Think of the added value you’d be creating without much extra work!
- Aggregated user-generated content republished: JPG Magazine does this one well. People submit cool photos. They print a cool book with some editorial. The same people who submit the photos subscribe because (a) they may be published in it and/or (b) it’s got some pretty amazing photos I’d like to keep a hard copy of anyway. It’s a cool magazine. Why wouldn’t you want that product if you’re into photography? It’s completely user-generated. You just throw the special sauce in because you’d have the deal with the printer and the voting system implemented, etc.
- What else? You tell me: Ok, now it’s your turn. What other value-adding (not “community leveraging”) ways of making money are there?
The sooner you stop treating people like money trees, the sooner you’ll actually be creating wealth.
After all that ranting and verbal flailing around, I’ll throw this bit into the mix. Some of you know that I do actually have a few ads on certain pages on this site (well, now all of you do). They’re even Google Adsense. If you want to fight about it, I do have a reason for those to be there, and I do not think they compromise what I’ve been saying above. I won’t get into why at this point, but feel free to bring it to the table if you think it’s worth it.
If you’re not crapping your pants right now, you need to break out of that pine box you’re in, dig six feet up, and pull your soul out of that decaying body you’ve been in lately. This is by far the coolest thing I’ve seen in my lifetime so far. When this is made into full walls and counter tops… well, I can die peacefully.
If you’re a VC and you’re seeing this for the first time, you’re probably too late. Bummer for you because these guys look like they’ll be changing the world if goes residential anytime soon.
For being the first video posted to this site, it had to be a good one. This definitely is a good one. Hat tip to MacRumors.com for the video and Brad for the link.
Shared bookmarks from nateritter
- Paul Graham: How art can be good —
I think this applies to your concept of programmers being craftsmen. Happy reading. - Fat Free Cart: Pop-up Free, Installation Free Shopping Cart —
nice little tool to remember for the quick freelance shopping cart - Site5 Affordable Web Hosting —
Thanks goes to Andrew Christensen for this link.
Photo courtesy fabiogiolito
So here we are, late at night working away. I’m a 30 year old entrepreneur/hacker/business man. I write code because it helps me to do business deals. We’ve rehashed this conversation over and over again.
“You just sit here and work,” she says.
“It’s what I do.” I tell her. “It’s like playing tennis or singing. This is what I enjoy doing.”
And again, we are both hurt by the other person. Not because we’re intentionally hurting each other, but because it’s hard when an extrovert web programmer gets together with an introvert normal person.
The problems with entrepreneurship - freedom
Most of the time, I love being an entrepreneur. Most of the time. Other times, I hate that I enjoy it so much. Entrepreneurs struggle with time management - our biggest enemy. We struggle with balance because most of us have 40-60 hour work weeks already. Many of us work for startups who need more time than a typical corporate job. But we can’t help it. We can’t work for larger businesses. They’re stifling, stuffy, restrictive. We need freedom.
So, we start our own things in basements, spare bedrooms, garages and kitchen tables. We carve out just a few more hours out of the week to work on something that could give us that freedom. We crave that freedom. We need the air to be our air, the land we walk on to be our land, and the time we live to be our time.
But by carving out just a few more hours a week we strain our relationships with those who aren’t involved in our adventures - our internal hopes and escapades. We lose touch sometimes. We forget often.
That freedom we’re driving forward for so badly, is it worth it? Sometimes, I think it’s not.
I once took a job at a larger organization with the intention of staying the course and simply doing my duty - providing for my family, coming home at 5:00, not having those side projects take up my time.
It didn’t work. I felt like I was a rat in a cage. I lasted 2 months.
The joys of entrepreneurship - the hope
So, here’s my question. Is it worth it?
When we finally get to the destination we’re hoping to make it to, is it worth the effort? I want your stories. I want to hear about your pain, and your joy. What is it that makes you tick? How do you handle the problems of entrepreneurship? And, in the end, is it worth it?
