- Virtual is Reality: The line between online and offline communities is blurred. They influence each other. - Opportunity Leads to Service: We should focus on serving users by considering their needs first. - Guiding Principles: Maintain a clear purpose, keep working to engage users, and trust users to lead rather than tightly controlling them.

1. Building Your
Online Community

2. Structure for Time
• Virtual is Reality
• Opportunity Leads to Service
• Guiding Principles
– Know Your Goal
– Work the Land
– Loosen your Grip

3. Virtual is Reality

4. Different Faces of Community
- Offline -

5. Different Faces of Community
- Online -

6. Opportunity Leads to Service

7. Opportunity Leads to Service
• Know your Goal
– Vision as Service
• Work the Land Vision Labor
– Labor as Service
• Loosen your
Grip
– Selflessness as
Service Control

8. Know Your Goal

9. Know your Goal
• Is your goal compelling?
• Is your goal clear?
• Can you describe your target
audience?

10. Your goal will become a part
of your story

11. Achieve your
• Set aside time each week to
manage the community
• Do worthwhile activity to generate
emails.
– People forget the community is there
– It’s your job to remind them!

12. Work the Land

13. Work the Land
1. Cultivate knowledge, not
just information
2. Design for evolution
3. Invite different levels of
participation
4. Develop public & private spaces
5. Focus on value
6. Maintain a strong rhythm

14. 1. Cultivate Knowledge
• Information • Knowledge
– Static – Dynamic
– Accumulation of – Accumulation of
facts experience
– Easily managed – More complicated to
– Resides in books manage
– Resides in people

15. To Cultivate Knowledge
• Share information and experience
– Uploading documents
– Protecting security
– Joining in discussions
• Search the best Crusade materials
– Google Search
• Connect with the people you need
– People Locator
– Email

16. 2. Design for evolution
Be a shepherd of the
natural community
Design rather than a builder
Constructing the
community from scratch.

17. 3. Allow Different
Levels of Participation
Core Group (10-15%)
Active Group (15-20%)
Peripheral Group 65-75%)

18. 4. Develop both public and
private community spaces

19. 5. Focus on value
Value is your key
to community life
because
participation in
most communities
is voluntary!

20. 6. Maintain a Strong Rhythm
Rhythm is
the strongest indicator
of community aliveness!

21. Loosen your Grip

22. Loosen your Grip

23. Share & Experiment

24. Principles
are not
Commandments

25. Summary
• Virtual is Reality: The line between
the online world and the offline world is
fuzzy, not distinct
• Opportunity Leads to Service: We
serve by considering the user first
• Guiding Principles
– Know Your Goal: Maintain a clear purpose
– Work the Land: Keep working
– Loosen your Grip: Trust the user to lead

26. Sources
1. Haughey, Matt. Building an Online Community: Just Add Water
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/building_an_online_community/
2. Karasic, Shara. Guide to Building an Online Community: An inside
look at how and why people connect virtually.
http://www.work.com/building-an-online-community-1299
3. Shirky, Clay. A Group is its own Worst
Enemy http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
4. Broadcast Institutions, Community Values
http://shirky.com/writings/broadcast_and_community.html
5. Communities, Audiences, and Scale
http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html
6. Social Computing in Student Populations
http://www.shirky.com/writings/students.html
7. Sierra, Kathy. Building a Successful Online Community
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/building_a
_succ.html
8. Can you teach someone to care?
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/02/can_you_t
each_s.html
9. How to Build a User Community
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/how_to_b
uild_a_.html
10. Wenger, Etienne and Richard McDermott and William Snyder.
Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge

27. Cultivating Communities of Practice:
A Guide to Managing Knowledge