How To Herd Cats (tips on running a successful online community) - Oxford Geek Night 16

How To Herd Cats (Tips for running a successful online community) - What is this talk about? - 11-ish tips for running an existing community - I tried for 10 and overshot slightly - What’s it not about - Not starting or bootstrapping a community. That's a different talk - Community management is frustrating, exciting and rewarding all at the same time - Prepare to be one part UN Envoy, one part Benevolent Dictator

"You can herd cats, move their food." - Still not entirely sure about the food analogy, but it made me laugh - So who is this talk for? - Professional community managers, volunteers, activists, even marketing - Based on my experience with evolt.org and the Oxford Flickr Group - Nothing original here, it’s a distillation of things I’ve learnt from watching luminaries of community management - Jono Bacon - Ubuntu, Heather Champ, George Oates - Flickr, Denise Wilton - Moo, Matt Haughey - Metaﬁlter

Set the ground rules - Be consistent and apply the rules fairly - Be willing to adapt and reﬁne if things keep cropping up - Communities are living breathing things, organic - Let people know someone is watching out for them, be involved (more on this later)

Speaking of rules - Rough ground rules are best, not directives - "Simple is sustainable" - Jono Bacon (The Art of Community, available to download under a CC license) - Community should not be about bureaucracy - Best example: "Don't be creepy. You know the guy. Don't be that guy" - Flickr’s Community Guidelines

Avoid the single point of failure - Spread your responsibilities - Recruit other members as administrators and moderators - Holiday time becomes less of an issue - Especially for international communities - Metaﬁlter has geographically distributed admins keeping an eye on things as the world turns - Oxford Flickr admins keep going to the pub together (whoops!)

Reward good behaviour - Highlight good responses - Positive reinforcement - Promote from within

Ensure you have the right tools - Does your CMS / Platform have the tools to manage your community effectively? - Multiple privilege levels, banning, blocking - Monitoring content - RSS (monitor incoming content), Google Alerts - Administration - Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox

Lead by example - "Be The Best Member Of Your Community" - Matt Haughey - "Post regularly and intelligently" - Matt Haughey - Maintain a high proﬁle, it keeps some troublemakers away - Comes back to the point: let people know someone is watching out for them

Tend your garden with care - Yes, I got eaten by a wooden dinosaur, it’s all okay now though - People should be proud of their shared space - Give them a sense of belonging and ownership - Involve the community in decisions, but be prepared to make the ﬁnal call - Again it’s the UN Envoy/Benevolent Dictator split

Beware of knee-jerk reactions - This goes for you as well as your members - Look for opportunities to reframe the conversation into something more useful. What’s the underlying cause? - Heather Champ - "The feedback you get over the first two weeks is less reactionary and a lot more thoughtful [than the first 48 hours]" - Watch for wedges. What are wedges? Divisive elements that can blow up - No advice how to recognise them, but you'll learn - First Offence? - Don't berate first time mistakes publicly, use a back channel, take the chance to educate

Own your mistakes - Take responsibility when you screw up - You will screw up - Seriously, you will screw up - Flickr and the the Yahoo authentication incident - Change is hard

Act quickly when things go wrong - A split second decision can persist - This is the exception to avoiding knee jerk reactions - Your tools will be invaluable - Don't be afraid to stop a discussion - Give people time to cool down - Spammers, porn, et al - Broken window theory - If people’s shared space isn’t looked after then things will get worse

Get outside once in a while - It’s difficult to ﬂame someone you’ve shared a pint with - Face time is key - Humanises personas - Gives you a chance to put a voice and mannerisms to the name - People will connect over issues outside of the community sphere - Positive reinforcement again - Social ties feed back into the community

And ﬁnally… - Before I go - Communities can be difficult and you need to know when to step away - Moments of frustration, anger - If you don’t have at least one sleepless night a month you’re doing it wrong. Or less stressed than me - But remember…

Have fun! - Reward - Real moments of “Wow, look what we did!”

More Information delicious.com/garrettc/ogn16 twitter.com/garrettc Thanks Torchbox, Heather Champ, George Oates, Denise Wilton, Jono Bacon, Matt Haughey Photos flickr.com/photos/tjflex/233593402/ flickr.com/photos/mahalie/571144258/ flickr.com/photos/bixentro/341485394/ flickr.com/photos/manthatcooks/85558734/ flickr.com/photos/revdancatt/449142212 flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/3951143570/ flickr.com/photos/jazza2/1169499874/ flickr.com/photos/doodledan/3900798566/ flickr.com/photos/balakov/3754851363/ And me. - Interesting links on delicious under ogn16 - Feel free to follow me on twitter (although I tend to ramble about lots of things outside of communities)

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How To Herd Cats (tips on running a successful online community) - Oxford Geek Night 16

by Garrett Coakley

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How To Herd Cats (tips on running a successful online community) - Oxford Geek Night 16 Presentation Transcript