The Online Community Expert Interview is a monthly series that features Online Community thought leaders driving online community strategy and practice at their organizations. This month's interview features Scott Moore from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation

Scott has been establishing and fostering online communities since 1995. Starting at the avatar-based virtual world , WorldsAway (now VZones", he supervised the volunteer community support group, designed new spaces and oversaw the virtual economy. At Communities.com he supported live events and fostered community spaces for commercial media clients. He also consulted with a variety of community-oriented companies including blaxxun and There. Since 2001, he has helped parents of kids with learning and attention problems connect and offer each other mutual support and inspiration by joining social techniques and technical tools to foster a tolerant, insightful and advocating community of parents with diverse experience and needs.


You've been working in the online community space for a number of years. What major online community and collaboration trends have you seen at your company?

At the foundation where I work, the main focus has been providing reliable research-based information to parents with social tools to foster a mutual support. The direction we have been trending is letting the community influence and inform our work in deeper ways: initially, this was through setting community policies, then recognizing the knowledge community members exhibit, then using select community members to write articles, or participate as guest experts. Along the way, we have also involved members earlier and earlier in the design process. This has been a benefit for everyone involved. Most recently, the community, when presented with a new feature at the conceptual phase, reminded me to "not make a big production of it". Following this advice, the final result was not only simpler to use, but required less effort for us to implement and was released much sooner than we hoped. I am looking forward to expanding the notion of who is in "the community" and letting their voices have a deeper influence.

What hasn't worked in the past is overestimating the community's needs up front. Keep things simple and let your community tell you what they want. They will tell you their needs, either they already know them or they discover new needs as they exchange ideas with others. Participation programs, technical tools or features that do not have an impact on helping your community benefit from being in the community should take a lower priority. When a need is clearly identified by the community, give it the priority it deserves (lots).


Do you have examples of a few major corporations / sites doing interesting things with online communities? Who are you paying attention to?

Since I started working with online communities as virtual worlds, I was introduced early to what the massively multiplayer online games (MMO) do to encourage interaction and participation. Games and other forms of play are inherently a social interaction so I tend to keep an eye on how these have been evolving over the years. MMO developers have proven willing to experiment with their player communities in ways other online services have not -- reputation systems, content, adding and even removing features, virtual market spaces and currencies. In addition to the well known companies such as Sony (EverQuest), Blizzard (Worlds of Warcraft), and Linden Labs (SecondLife), there are smaller companies that are doing interesting things. One of my favorite examples is Three Rings and their Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates game. It's a great example of grouping people together, giving them a goal and dividing the "work" needed to achieve that goal into small individual parts that are fun to do.

It hasn't been until recently that we have been seeing similar examples of engaging, fun interfaces that are not afraid to upset the people using them and having the flexibility to continuously tweak. Now, some game developers such as Raph Koster are pointing out what game companies can learn from rising Web 2.0 companies as well as vice versa. (link to Raph's Etech07 and Web2.0 sessions)


What are areas of growth in corporations in the use of online communities, from an investment, feature, or member growth perspective?

This round of renewed focus on using online communities is paying more attention on the benefits community members have by interacting with each other. Regardless which definition of ROI you want to use (return on investment, information or interaction), I am hearing more and more community managers who are focusing on helping community members increase their return as a main goal. This doesn't mean that the organization hosting the community gives up on return, but that it's not the only bottom line (and it's not just a monetary bottom line). The idea is that my bottom line is helping you increase your bottom line.


What should every CEO know about online communities?

Communities are made of people! I know that is said over and over, but it bears repeating because it is often forgotten as organizations focus on the details. Because the small details ripple through groups of people, how they behave and interact, this can cause organizations to stray away from supporting people.

The way to counter this tendency (aside from listening to what your internal community evangelists tell you) is to consider communities as trusting relationships. All the other definitions of what a community is, communication, time spent, location, shared resources or any exchange among members ultimately come down to relationships between people. What we do to keep relationships going with our spouses, children, extended family, lovers, friends carry over to what your organization can to do. Everyday think, "What can I do to have a trusting relationship with these person tomorrow?"