Social Architect

Notes, sketches, links and thoughts re: Online Community, Social Media, Online Strategy

Online Community Unconference 2010 - Will I See You There?

The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community practitioners - managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors - to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities.

Those involved in online community development (and social software in general) share many common challenges: community management, tools, marketing, business models, legal issues. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners.


The Online Community Unconference is inspired by the emerging "open space" conference format. (For an excellent description of the unconference format, see this Huffington Post article.)  

An extensive Unconference FAQ has been posted here: http://www.forumonenetworks.com/ocu_faq

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View is a unique venue with plenty of parking and WiFi. Lunch and snacks will be provided, and the Museum exhibits will be open to the group during the breaks. There will also be plenty of time for networking.

The Online Community Unconference is hosted by Forum One Communications, the leading convener of online community and collaboration for over ten years. Read more about Forum One on the Online Community Report blog.

Potential topics include:

  • Online Community Metrics
  • New Opportunities with Social Media
  • Enterprise Communities: Hosting the Conversation
  • Online Community Management: 10 Years of Experience
  • Lessons Learned: Pitfalls and Best Practices in Community-Building
  • For Beginners: Laying a Solid Foundation for the Best Community
  • Security: Best Practices for Community Moderation
  • What to look for when hiring community staff
  • Leveraging the "Wisdom of the Crowd" to Energize Your Community
  • Marketing your Online Community
  • Building Community in a Support (Q&A) Forum
  • Engaging Community Members: Turning Lurkers into Participants
  • How to Grow Leaders Within a Community
  • The Value of Contests
  • And many more!

Price: The early bird rate of $145 is available through April 23rd. Pricing is $195 April 24th through May 26th and $250 on or after May 27th. On-site registration is $295. Fee is fully refundable prior to May 9th, not refundable after (but admission is transferable)

For more event information, or information about sponsorship opportunities contact Chloe Caviness.


Tag: ocu2010


Hosted By:


Media Sponsors:

via ocu2010.eventbrite.com

I'm looking forward to participating in the Online Community Unconference June 9th in Mountain View, this year as an attendee.

My friends and former colleagues at Forum One hooked me up with a discount code. Use the following for $25 off -
http://ocu2010-bcj.eventbrite.com
Discount code: ocroundtable ($25 off)

Drop me a line or @billjohnston and let me know if you are coming.

Community + Social Media Meetup 5/19 6pm at Cedar Door

via plancast.com

Austin + #Dell peeps - anyone up for an informal Community + Social Media meetup in Austin next weds night?

Dell – The Future of E-tailing is Social Commerce | Social Commerce Today

Today, Dell outlined the future of it’s e-tail strategy – social commerce.  In an interview with New Media Age (subscription wall, but archived below) Manish Mehta, global VP of online at Dell, said Dell planned to roll out social shopping tools on its site in 2011, allowing people to shop together in real time on Dell’s e-commerce site.

Dell’s desire to recreate the social dimension of traditional shopping online is consistent with a patent granted last month (Feb 2010) to Apple for an immersive online social shopping tool (images below).

Over the last 18 months Dell has been experimenting with social commerce – selling on Twitter with its oft’ cited $6.5m+ Deal Feeds, and with its Group Buy feature Dell Swarm (video below).  Dell affirms that the results from these social commerce experiments have allowed the company to build a compelling business case for social commerce investment.

“Our measurements and results have validated that it’s a space we believe in and isn’t a fad. In parts of the business, budgets are siphoned off and dollars protected for projects that are tied to social media activity.”

One challenge that remains to be met, according to Dell, is how to apply the learnings to create an integrated and coherent socially-enhanced digital experience – shopping, community and service.

Overall, Dell appears to be conscientiously applying the LEAD strategy for social commerce; Listen (Dell Idea Storm, Direct 2 Dell), Experiment (Dell Swarm, Dell Deal Feeds) – and is now gearing up to Apply it’s learning, and given the stated importance of social commerce, will no doubt continue to Develop its social commerce strategy.

  • Listen: Begin with a simple social media monitoring solution that monitors conversations and competitors – how are competitors using social commerce?
  • Experiment – Start with small scale experiments using the toolset to identify what works for you.  Test and learn to explore ROI potential
  • Apply – Apply learning and build on tools that work for you, integrating social commerce into your overall digital strategy
  • Develop – Constantly evolve and adapt to beat user expectations – deliver “joy of use” with new insights and technology
How could you use the LEAD strategy to deploy an evidence-based social commerce strategy?

Archived New Media Age article…

Dell bets on social commerce as next boom area for etail

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 | By Charlotte McEleny

Retrieved from http://www.nma.co.uk/news/dell-bets-on-social-commerce-as-next-boom-area-for-etail/3011477.article

Dell is looking to social commerce as the next growth area for its multi-million dollar etail strategy.

The computing giant − a pioneer in online selling having generated $6.5m (£4.31m) in sales through its Twitter profile alone since it launched in 2007 – said its next focus would be creating social online shopping tools as it looks to marry up ecommerce with social media.

Manish Mehta, global VP of online at Dell, told new media age the company wants to take the social aspects of high street shopping and recreate them online by letting people interact and have discussions with each other in real time when buying products from Dell’s website.

“It won’t be something we’ll use to launch a product this year but we are laying the foundations as it’ll be a big frontier. In a year’s time we’ll be aggressive in this space,” he said.

In December, Dell said it was already generating significant sales from social media and had seen sales of $6.5m via its Dell Outlet Twitter feed since it launched in 2007.

Mehta said the measurable returns from social media have enabled the company to justify its increased investment in the space.

“Our measurements and results have validated that it’s a space we believe in and isn’t a fad,” he added. “In parts of the business, budgets are siphoned off and dollars protected for projects that are tied to social media activity.”

Mehta admitted Dell’s online activity was currently fragmented and that a challenge was to integrate its social media and community activity.

Dell wants to connect activity on dell.com, its community sites such as Dell IdeaStorm and its profiles on social media sites.

via socialcommercetoday.com

A nice overview of the initial thinking about Social Commerce at Dell.

Dude, Dell's Getting a Bill

I have some personal career news that I would like to share: I'm
joining Dell's Community and Social Media team on April 5th!

I'm very excited to be going to a company that has shown true
leadership and vision in the social media space, including Ideastorm
and their effective use of Twitter.

I'll miss my colleagues at Forum One very much - they are one of the
most passionate and knowledgeable group of folks I've ever had a
chance to work with. I know they will continue to do innovative and
world-changing work. I'm proud of what we have been able to accomplish
in the last three years, including our events (Unconferences, Summits
and Business Forums), our research into community metrics,
compensation, strategy and engagement, and being able to work with
clients like The Global Fund, Autodesk, Cisco and the AARP.

My homebase will remain in Sonoma with regular trips to Austin, so I
feel like I get the best of a couple of worlds: remaining plugged in
to the community in the Bay Area, but also getting to participate in
the cool things happening in Austin these days.

I also look forward to be able to put more energy into the Online
Community Roundtable - http://bit.ly/ocroundtable, a networking group
for community and social media pros which I founded in 2005 while I
was at Autodesk.

I'll continue to blog here, and you can always reach me at billdozer
at gmail dot com.

3 sacred cows about online community that need to be challenged

Photo cred: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skinnyde/146763376/

The sacred cows I mention below have been on my mind for several months
now, but I was inspired to take action after a community management
panel that I attended at SxSWi. My intention with this post is not to
suggest that we do away these sacred cows, but to start to be critical
of them. I fear that these 3 cows, in particular, are being accepted
as gospel, and those new (and not so new) to online community building
really don't challenge them.

As with many good things gone wrong, these cows all began with good intentions.

Cow #1: You don't own the community, the community owns the community
Original intention: To stop (mostly brand) community hosts from being
overly-controlling of the community, and being too directive of
community interactions.

Why this cow should be challenged: No ownership = absolution of
responsibility, and weak or no long term stewardship. The host *does*
own parts of the community experience, and certainly has the
responsibility to create a virtual "clean, well-lit place" for their
brand or organization. Perhaps a better cow would be: "You don't own
the community, but you have a responsibility to be a good host, leader
and listener".

Cow #2: Start by listening

Original intent: Listening was an easy (and fairly passive) way to get
brands and organizations familiar with the social web.

Why this cow should be challenged: Ok, this one isn't necessarily bad,
just a bit misguided. My recommendation to clients is to start with an internal
conversation about your goals for engaging on the social web. A
listening strategy is key to managing a successful online presence,
but brands and organizations also need to interact. Another disturbing
trend I see with "just listening" is that some brands are wholesale
farming out listening and interaction to their agency of choice, as
opposed to creating direct brand to customer or organization to
stakeholder relationships.

Cow #3: Go where your community is

Original intent: Don't just buy a platform and expect your community
to show up - (a.k.a. Build it and they will come).

Why this cow should be challenged: Many organizations are doing a poor
job of evaluating the opportunity for community on their own domain,
and are setting up outposts on large social sites like Facebook
because it is relatively easy and (initially) inexpensive. In our
"Participating int he Social Media Ecosystem" research project from
January of 2010, we saw that only about 1/2 (56%) of the participants
had a comprehensive social strategy in place - meaning, only 1/2 of
the organizations had spent time assessing and researching where their
community currently was, and the opportunities for on and off domain
engagement.

Assuming that the best place to engage members of your online
community is offsite (say, a Facebook fan page) is probably a big
mistake, and a lost opportunity to help transform a static corporate
site into a more social experience.
Those are my top 3 Sacred Cows. What do you think? And, more
importantly, what are yours?