This month's Online Community Expert interview is with Susan Tenby of CompuMentor / TechSoup. Susan is an expert at community building, and is pioneering new techniques and interactions in the virtual world Second Life.

Susan's Bio:
Susan Tenby is the Senior Manager of Online Community Development at TechSoup, where she is responsible for the promotion, management and direction of the TS community forums, with an audience of 100,000 unique visitors a month.
She recently launched a community of over 400 nonprofit staff members and volunteers in Second Life. This community has a shared community blog at http://www.nonprofitcommons.org <http://secondlife.techsoup.org> and a wiki about nonprofit activities in SL. They have a shared community tagging project using the tag “NPSL” (Nonprofits in Second Life) on sites such as del.icio.us, Technorati and Flickr, weekly in-world meetings, every Friday from 8:30-9:30am PST to teach scripting and best-practices to nonprofits in SL.

She launched a sim in Second Life called The Nonprofit Commons, with the NPSL community, on land and buildings, all donated by Anshe Chung Studios. This nonprofits-only sim houses 40 organizations, free of charge, to lower the barrier of access to the virtual world.

She runs monthly online community meet-ups in San Francisco. She speaks at conferences (in June, she organized a panel on Nonprofits in Second Life at Games for Change on Virtual Activism and presented on Using Second Life an innovative marketing tool at Supernova2007.) In August, she spoke at SLCC and in October, she presented at Faster Cures and Using Second Life for Social Work. She also writes on the topic of online community building in its various forms.

Q: What is the Nonprofit Commons?

A: We are a group of nonprofit employees and volunteer friends of nonprofits who believe that there is merit and much potential in collaboarating and working in Second Life. Our group lauched in May of 2006, and we have grown to about 400 members. We currently have a nonprofits-only island, where we house nonprofit organizations for free, we hold weekly, open town-hall meetings, every Friday, from 8:30am-9:30/10ish. In these meetings, we talk about ways to use the interactive technology to build community and eventually, to achieve our missions to change the world. We also have a community blog (nonprofitcommons.org), community tagging project (tag is NPSL for nonprofits in Second Life), wiki (linked form blog) with shared resources and free shared tools for nonprofits using the virtual world. We go to live and virtual conferences and throw mixed-reality events where avatars interact with people in the real-world room.

Q: What advantage do you see in using an immersive world like second life, over a more traditional social networking site?

A: With Second Life, you can augment reality, by using the fact that you can build your own tools and experiences to share your ideas with little cost to do so. You can show a group of people a vision and invite them to interact within that vision, in a way that text chat or videos will not accommodate. You can use virtual worlds to make animated stories or movies, through an easy process called Machinima. SL can provide you with a creative avenue to express what is not possible in the real world, while also allowing for a live teleconferencing environment which will eventually integrate with outside technologies, positioning it well for online learning environments. SL is live and can accommodate many languages simultaneously through internal translator tools, like the Babbler. I see SL as a hybrid between a website, a social networking platform, a webinar and an animation studio, where fairly un-technical end users can achieve some fairly complex tasks, with ready-made tools that are free-to-nearly free. Second Life also allows for anonymous self-expression and freedom from logistical, sociological and economic confines. For more information on this see: http://nonprofitcommons.org/node/174 and http://www.techsoup.org/community/Secondlife

Q: What have been your team’s key learnings to date with the project?

1. It is essential to organize your volunteers and empower them to take on their own ideas and implement them. It is not helpful to have a room full of good ideas with no one to take responsibility to implement them. I had to learn to stop trying to get all the ideas done by myself and I was forced to accept that everyone has a role and anyone can find one thing they are good at to help the community, no matter how small. If you can’t think of what you could do, be the one to organize the volunteers, or put them to task by being the note-taker.

2. I have had to learn to not take it personally if people don’t agree with my choices in structuring the community. There is no right or wrong way to do community, as we know. This is a fuzzy science, and we make a lot of it up as we go along. Just trust that your vision is right, and stick to it, while also being open to variances of opinion, but never try to please everyone, or you will get nothing done.

3. Enlist your most opinionated and helpful volunteers and create a “management group” of sorts. Connect with them every month, outside of the larger group, if possible, through a conference call, take their agenda items and and help them help make the community a success by forming the structure of your community with their ideas and your vision.


Q: What advice would you have for other organizations thinking about establishing a community presence in second life?

A: I would recommend that they listen to my learnings above and that they actually spend some serious time in-world, before they decide that they are a community manager in SL. This is a much more challenging community to manage than an asynchrous forum or email list, for example. People who are into the platform, at this point, tend to be leaders, innovators, and seasoned techies. In my observation, not many even think of it as an online community. They are not accustomed to following the lead of a community manager, or behaving in a way that is always conducive to productive online activity. SL is the type of environment that tends to attract the types of people who want to make the world what they want it to become, due to the nature of the client. That is, you can create your own content in-world, so who is to say how you should behave, what you should look like, what you should wear (or not wear, much to my horror, in one instance), or how you should proceed within a community of other volunteers. Many people are there to check it out, not necessarily to participate in a community endeavor. Feel free to befriend people in SL whom you may not necessarily have much in common with, as they may know tricks about the tool or ways to work within its limitations that could help you in the future. If you have volunteers offering to help you realize your vision, make sure that you have back-up volunteers for their roles. Many people get very excited about the technology and then lose steam, interest or time to finish what they started, as is the case in any volunteer effort. If you can have repeat events (like our weekly Friday meetings) and establish patterns of behavior and appropriate conduct, the community will eventually adopt this way of behaving as a standard, and you will have a more thriving, exciting, creative and active community.

Earlier this week, I published the "Identity, Reputation and Ranking" research study to members of our Online Community Research Network. The study was designed to discover best practices for content rating and ranking, and to establish a baseline of current practice for supporting member identity and reputation.

I inititated the study in early November, and sent approximately 250 survey invitations to online community professionals in our network of executives and practitioners.

Over the course of the research, we 54 completed surveys. Participants (who respond on the condition the results remain anonymous) included community managers, strategists and executives from large software companies, large community destination sites, niche community sites, consulting organizations and platform providers.

We asked 21 questions that explored member identity in the community, member reputation, reputation systems, content ranking, and moderation. We also explored current attitudes about member profile portability and universal login / ID.

In particular, I thought the data we got back on member profile fields was interesting. The graph below shows profile fields broken out by % of communities that require the field, ask for the field an don't require it, or simply don't ask for the field.

The research results uncovered several other interesting findings, including:

• New members typically don’t fill out non-required profile fields (> 25%)
• Slightly less than 1/3 of the respondents (32%) have, or plan on making member’s profiles portable in the next 6 months;
• Slightly less than 1/3 of the respondents (32%) have, or plan on implementing a universal ID solution in the next 6 months;
• The majority of respondents have, or are developing a reputation system for their communities.

We plan on releasing the full report to the public in April of 2008. For the list of currently available research reports, please check out the Online Community Research Network home page.

OK, I have to admit, I'm a little tired of talking about Facebook after attending last week's Web Community Forum in Seattle. The conference focused on community building with Facebook, and we spent two days exploring topics ranging from FAcebook usage basics to best practices in B to B marketing.

The event content is partially captured on the Web Community Forum site, which has a running blog and some twitter feeds. Most of the sessions were lecture-style presentations.

The key takeaway for me is: that, in spite of the hype, Facebook is something you should be paying attention to if you are charged with community management or strategy at your organization. I wasn't convinced 6 months ago, but I am now. Why? Aside from my increased usage of the site:

• It's the best online social experience available. Facebook has nailed the social networking experience, in part, because the system is structured to start your experience with your real world networks and contacts. Once you start using, it's *addictive*.
• It has hit critical mass, and it's growing (57 million members and growing)
• Though still very "V1", social ads and fan pages will morph into something meaningful. We are seeing the initial, crude offerings to create a marketing and advertising presence on Facebook. This is a make or break issue for the company, and they will continue to experiment until they nail it. A vocal and visible community will keep them honest (see Zuckerberg's apology about Beacon), and Microsoft's investment (among what are sure to be other upcoming investments) will push the company to develop creative sources of revenue.

Some of the key highlights from the conference (and speakers) can be found here:

Jeremiah Owyang's keynote


and Jeremiah's key takeaways

Lee Lorenzen Says Facebook is Worth $100 Billion–uh huh prove it. - Tris Hussey / blognation


Zuckerberg Apologizes for the Mess that was Beacon Rollout - Nick ONeill / All Facebook (recomended)

B2B Marketing - Facebook Tips and Tricks - Mari Smith / Why Facebook

Online Communiteers - Breaking news: we have finalized our event series for 2008. I wanted to give the OC Report readers a sneak peek, as well as to let you know that we have opened registration and have a special "super early bird" rate for our OCU East and Mobile Communities Unconferences.

Our events series for 2008 includes:

Online Community Unconference East 2008 (Registration Open Now!)
http://www.forumone.com/ocue2008
February 21, 2008 in New York
The Online Community Unconference East is the east coast of location of our Unconference series. The event is an Open Space 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.

Mobile Communities Unconference (Registration Open Now!)
http://www.forumone.com/mcu2008
March 20, 2008 in Palo Alto
The Mobile Communities Unconference focuses on social experiences on the brings together strategists, community hosts, device manufacturers, service providers, and content developers to discuss the emerging opportunities and challenges that mobile communities present.

Online Community Business Forum 2008
http://www.forumone.com/ocfb2008
April 14 - 15, 2008 in Santa Fe, New Mexico
The Online Community Business Forum is an invitation-based event for online executives to gather and discuss the intersection of business strategy and online community, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Online Community Unconference 2008
http://www.forumone.com/ocu2008
June 18, 2008 in Mountain View, CA
The Online Community Unconference is our west coast 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.

Online Community Summit 2008
http://www.forumone.com/ocs2008
October 9 - 10, 2008 in Sonoma, CA
The Online Community Summit, in it's 8th year, is the exclusive gathering for thought leaders in online collaboration gather to discuss best ideas for the future, in Sonoma, California.

Marketing & Online Communities 2008
November 3-4, NYC (dates and details to be confirmed in January 08)
The Marketing & Online Communities conference will explore current practice and innovative case studies that focus on the intersection of marketing and online communities.


If you have any questions about any of the events, or are interested in sponsorship opportunities, please let me know.