We’re approaching the June 9 Online Community Unconference in Mountain View, CA. Here’s a quick update on what will be a terrific event for online community professionals:
Attendees: We have a lot of knowledgeable folks from industry (Google, eBay, Walmart, HP, LinkedIn, Nokia, O’Reilly, Intel, Microsoft, Flickr) as well as from many smaller firms. We also have many non-commercial groups with community expertise (Wikia, Pew Health Group, Civic Ventures, Skoll Foundation). See the full (growing) list here: http://ocu2010.eventbrite.com/.
Discounts: Our final event discounts end May 26 – $50 off the event price. Sign up now!
Sponsors: Answers.com just joined the event as a Platinum Sponsor. We are expecting a group of others to join this week. If you would like sponsorship information, contact Chloe at ccaviness@ForumOne.com.
We’d be delighted to see you there: great venue, nice food, bottles of wine for some attendees – and most of all a great group. Here is more detail from a previous post. This year please join us!
The Online Community Unconference is scheduled for June 9th in Mountain View, CA. The Online Community Unconference is one of the largest online community events in the area and we expect 250-300 online community and social media professionals to attend with 50-60 collaborative sessions on timely social media and online community topics.
Current attendees include: Oracle, Jigsaw, Google, HP, Intel, iVillage, Autodesk, CafePress, Paypal, WiserEarth, Panasonic, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Linden Lab, Care2.com, NetApp, Flickr, Wells Fargo, Rosetta Stone, and many more! Go to the bottom of the registration page to view the entire list of attendee companies.
To register at the discounted admission rate of $195 ($250 after 5/26) please go here: http://ocu2010.eventbrite.com/
Last year’s Unconference was fantastic, and we expect this years to be even better. We had 220+ people in attendance in 2009, including: Microsoft, Autodesk, NetApp, Google, Yahoo!, Symantec, EcoTuesday, Cisco, GreatSchools.org, HP, Intel, Intuit, LinkedIn, Packard Foundation, Nokia, Walmart.com, REI, VMWare, TechSoup, and many more.
We also had an amazing list of sessions, including:
Managing the Mob: What to do when things go wrong
How to Manage Multiple Personalities & Relationships Online
Social CRM : Mapping Social ID’s, Behavioral Targeting & Common Profiles
What Metrics Should be Used to Measure Community Health
Metrics for Measuring Community Health
Using Other Social Media Networks to Build Your Community
Recovery.gov Myth or Reality – How do we pay for virtual community outside of for profit?
Using Community in Strategy Development
How Does Online Community Help Local Businesses Generate Traffic
Social Media Monitoring
Identifying and Engaging with Online Influencers
Big Community – Strategy Across Your Ecosystem
Social Psychology 101 for Community Managers
Social Capital – Community for Social Good – Your Stories/Valuation
Communication Skills for Community Manager (How to effectively be an advocate for users and your company, to engineers, execs, etc…)
If you Build it They Will Come…NOT! – Tools/Tips/Tricks to Grow a Community
Online Community for Social Good/Change (Non Profits, Multiple Stakeholders)
Empower Citizens to Solve Community Problems!
What Makes Users Want to Participate in a Community? How do we Encourage Engagement?
Super Tools for Super Users – Next Generation UI and Technology Brainstorm
Mission Aligned Twittering
Moving Beyond Metrics to ROI
Changing Platforms & Vendors
Community Driven Product Design – Collecting Feedback from your Community – Scale, Sustainable Fun
Starting An Online Community
Online Protests (like Amazonfail) – How they happen, How organizations respond
Tools to Mobilize Your Community (as advocates)
Sustainable Participation
You can see pictures from the 2009 Unconference here: ocu2009 on Flickr
Register
Again, to register at the discounted admission rate of $195 ($250 after 5/26) please go here.
If you are charged with managing online communities or community strategy for your organization, this will be a valuable event for you. The agenda is participant driven, the networking is unmatched, and the content will be awesome.
We also have several sponsor opportunities open for this Unconference. If you are looking for a cost-effective way to reach west coast community and social media professionals, please contact Chloe Caviness about our sponsorship options.
Here goes – our annual pitch to sponsors for the Online Community Unconference. It’s a huge event and great exposure, so we’re happy telling you why you should sponsor the event!
Forum One’s annual Online Community Unconference takes place on June 9th, 2010 in Mountain View, CA. The Unconference is an open space gathering of online community and social media professionals from the commercial and non profit sectors. We expect over 300 participants to attend this year.
A partial list of attendee organizations includes: Genentech, Panasonic, Linden Lab, Wells Fargo, LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, Skoll Foundation, NetApp, Autodesk, Jigsaw, Flickr, Rosetta Stone, Care2.com, WellsFargo, SEGA of America, Norton, Symantec, and Intel (to name a few).
Online community professionals come to the event to discuss optimizing their online communities and social media programs. It’s an excellent and engaged audience. If you’d like exposure for your firm or products, here are three reasons to consider sponsoring:
1. Fantastic (but appropriate) Visibility
As a sponsor, you will receive the “normal” event perks – your logo on conference materials, acknowledgment at the event, a sponsor banner. The key to our sponsors’ success is that we don’t oversell our sponsorships, and we limit the number of service providers attending the event so that the ratio of practitioners to service providers is favorable (which also makes for a better attendee experience). You will also have an opportunity to address the full conference for 5 minutes shortly after lunch. In short: Limited competition for attention, you are free to participate as an attendee, and you get the events full attention shortly after lunch.
2. Good Value
Our packages start at $2k, with our premiere package at $5k. (A total steal!) Many events with smaller, less qualified audiences charge twice that, and typically try to cram in as many sponsors in as possible. We also have a handful of underwriting opportunities. Packages exceeding $5k will receive a discount.
3. Attendees are Senior Staff and Have Purchase Power & Influence
Forum One has hosted online community and social media events for nearly 10 years. Over the years, we have built a very senior network of community practitioners and executives. Most of the attendees at our conferences have direct purchase influence, and many have purchase authority. Business *gets done* at our events between sponsors and attendees.
That’s it in a nutshell: great event, great visibility, solid value and an awesome attendee list.
We really do appreciate your time and attention.
If you are interested in discussing terms, please contact me.
Now back to our regularly scheduled community and social media programing.
I’m in Austin for SxSWi (South by Southwest interactive) with several colleagues from Forum One and several thousand colleagues from around the world working in the digital and interactive fields. The “festival” is a nonstop series of keynotes and panel discussions during the day, and social events and meetups during the off hours (and in between sessions). What is the common thread tying everyone together? A strong interest in digital technology and a desire to connect with other like minded people.
As with any whirlwind experience, I will be processing the event for weeks to come, but I wanted to share some of the sessions that have been particularly thought-provoking or insightful.
Jaron Lanier’s Keynote
This has been, by far, the most thought provoking session I have attended at SxSW. Jaron Lanier started by inviting everyone to put away their laptops and smartphones, and to experience the session fully. It was a great idea, but also means there isn’t a good record of the session. Below are my notes and impressions:
Wind instruments were the first computers, with the notes and silence being binary information. Flute-like instruments evolved into pipe organs, which evolved into self playing organs and pianos.
Jaron referenced Project Xanadu as an idealized state for the Internet, where everyone would have 1 password (1 account) and there would only be one logical copy of a document. Infomediaries would disappear, every person would be a “first class citizen” and content creator, and content creators would be paid directly for their work.
Real-time is the opposite of (human) dignity. Stated another way: machines are consumers and producers of real time streams, humans are not.
People are “mean” online when they switch from an individual context to a pack context, where there is a natural pecking order, and a natural “loser” (person on the bottom of the totem pole”
Danah Boyd’s on Privacy and Publicity
Danah Boyd gave an interesting talk on the current state of online privacy, and unpacked recent events concerning Facebook privacy issues as well as the privacy issues surrounding the Google Buzz launch.
Chris Messina: ActivityStrea.ms: Is it Getting Streamy in Here?
Chris Messina from Google gave a solid review of the history of online streams, with his take being that we are essentially stuck in the RSS / late 90s portal mentality. He went on to articulate a vision for intelligent lifestreams, and more specifically, to give an overview of activitystrea.ms, an extension of the Atom feed format that supports social activity.
Forum One hosted the Online Community Unconference East last Wednesday, February 10th in NYC at the Digital Sandbox. Most of the attendees were able to make it despite the snowy conditions.
Moving Forward, Together
Although it was cold and snowy outside, we had a warm and cheery group to kick off the morning. I ordered extra hot chocolate to further brighten the mood. We felt like this event was particularly well-timed. Boosted by recovery from the great recession, interest in online communities and social media is at an all time high. Most organizations are actively developing or refining community and social media strategies, and are trying to figure out what to build and where to engage. For many organizations, the goal is to develop a holistic social web strategy that refines based on learning from previous years of experimentation and many experiments strewn across the social web. The real question for me coming in to this Unconference: How do we move forward? This question framed the Unconference, and played out in our theme “Moving forward, together”.
I asked the participants to use the theme as a lens for their discussions. Specifically, I encouraged participants to think about this: what do you need to move forward personally, professionally, at your organization, and as an industry?
Setting the Agenda Heidi Nobantu Saul was our facilitator for the Unconference, and she did a masterful job of explaining the concepts of Open Space and guiding the group through the agenda setting process. The essence of Open Space is that participants are free to suggest a session topic, and those who host a topic are responsible for hosting the conversation. Participants are responsible for placing themselves in sessions that they are learning from and / or contributing to the most. In short: if you are in a session that you are not contributing to or getting value from, then go find another one.
Session Topics
The final agenda had approximately 30 sessions on topics including:
Are we creating community really?
Douglas Atkin hosted a session that asked the simple question: are we REALLY creating “community” online? The group was somewhat divided over the topic, but most eventually agreed that online communities do foster a certain level of connectedness that qualifies as community.
Notes for the session can be found here.
Integrating Social into the Enterprise
Pauline Ores of IBM convened this session to explore the integration of the social web into the Enterprise. Two key theme from the session: 1. Organizational transformation is needed to get real value out of social/community initiatives and 2. The results/benefits of social/community initiatives are useless if not tied directly to clear business objectives and integrated back into the enterprise.
Online Community & SEO
David Flores of Everyday Health hosted a session to discuss taking advantage of the SEO value of online communities and social media. The group discussed the implications of tailoring social content like blog posts to be more SEO friendly, like formatting blog post titles similar to how members might construct a search query. The key takaway: Job #1 is to write good content – and it will be found.
Does Validation / Verification Help Grow/Engage Communities?
Mike Mostransky hosted a session to explore the role of verification, identity and reputation in online communities. One key question was verifying purchase / use of a product in product-based communities.
Other sessions included:
Getting Past “No” – Social Media in Non-Social
Structuring Incentives: What Works Best? (Points, Cash, Stuff, Status)
Defending Value of Your Online Community: Competing with Other SM Platforms
B2B Subscription Based $ Models / (Low Hanging) Revenge for B2B Networks
Node XL Online Community (Twitter!)
Members & Advertisers Product Testing / Advocacy Programs
Dichotomy Between Control & Awareness in Social Media
Best Practices / Tips for Creating Viral Marketing
Legal Issues with Overzealous Critical Content from Members
Key Takeaways:
Moving Forward – while we didn’t get to the tangible outcomes I had hoped for, particularly a community metrics standard, we did make some progress. An initial conversation was had about the challenges with creating a set of generally agreed upon community metrics (GACM), and we will continue to push this forward over the spring, with plans to have a solid draft by the Online Community Unconference West on June 10th.
Social Infusion – one key theme was that social media is invading every department, not just marketing, products or support. With growing awareness and interest, there is also a genreal lack of leadership and strategy at most organizations. As I said in my opening remarks to the attendees – most organizations need to think more holistically about their social strategy, and the group of internal stakeholders required for ongoing management and governance. Which leads to…
Holistic Online Presence – most organizations are struggling with how to prioritize off-domain (think Facebook) engagement, and how to combine off-domain with on-domain activities.
Increasing Rays of Sunlight – Even with the sustained interest in social media during the recession, many folks were affected by layoffs and downsizing. It was encouraging to see old friends with new jobs, as well as the number of companies at the OCU seeking new employees (including Forum One).
Twitter Stream
The twitter stream was going strong with lots of good tidbits, ideas, and discussions from the event. #OCUE10 Twitter Stream
The Online Community Unconference East is in full swing today. We’re very happy that most of the attendees were able to make it despite the snowy conditions. For those of you that were planning to attend, but couldn’t make it due to the weather, we’ve made the Wiki public and we’re updating the notes as they come in from each session.
The agenda has over 30 sessions on topics including:
How to drive end-user participation / engagement
Lurker to Contributor
B2B User Content Creation
My Grandma Friended Me on Facebook: Family & Social Networking
Getting Past “No” – Social Media in Non-Social
Structuring Incentives: What Works Best? (Points, Cash, Stuff, Status)
Defending Value of Your Online Community: Competing with Other SM Platforms
Does Validation / Verification Help Grow/Engage Communities?
B2B Subscription Based $ Models / (Low Hanging) Revenge for B2B Networks
Node XL Online Community (Twitter!)
Members & Advertisers Product Testing / Advocacy Programs
Dichotomy Between Control & Awareness in Social Media
Best Practices / Tips for Creating Viral Marketing
Legal Issues with Overzealous Critical Content from Members
The twitter stream is also going strong with lots of good tidbits, ideas, and discussions from the event. We’re adding session notes as they come in, so keep your eye on the wiki for regular updates.
Online Community Unconference East Wiki #OCUE10 Twitter Stream
There are two meetups after the event tonight:
Roger Smith Hotel, 501 Lexington Avenue – 7pm @RSHotel Bobby Vans, 25 Broad St – the Grill (downstairs) – 5:30pm
We are less than 48 hours from the Online Community Unconference East (yeah!). This is the third year we’ve run the Online Community Unconference in New York, and we’ve had great events both years.
On think I wanted to be a bit more mindful of for this year’s Unconference was to really be mindful of focusing the group’s energy on specific outcomes. Our theme for this year’s Unconference reflects this intention:
“Moving forward, together”
We will use the theme as a guiding principle for the sessions on Wednesday, and ask that participants think about what is needed to move forward personally, professionally, and to move community and social media forward as an industry. We will also explore what progress (moving forward) looks like.
Our notional topic list from the Unconference wiki (which will be open to the public after the Unconference) reflects the “moving forward” intention:
Online Community & Social Media Metrics: Getting to Standards
Monetizing industry communities (not related to a single brand or company)
The Community Team: Roles, Responsibilities, Job Descriptions and Reporting Structures
Using Community and Collaboration Tools Within the Enterprise
Lessons Learned: Pitfalls and Best Practices in Community-Building
How to hire community & Social Media staff
Online Presence: Creating a social strategy on and beyond your domain
“Social Shopping” Communities (focus on online brand advocacy, product reviews and ratings, “social” information search, etc.)
Leaving (too many) online footprints in (too many) communities
How to interest and keep volunteers in a commercial environment?
Beyond “Listening” – Comprehensive Community & Social Media monitoring and engagement
Community and Social Media reporting and insights
Case Studies for the class of 2009: Successful community engagements and social media campaigns from 2009 (bring yours to share)
Validation: Do verified accounts make a difference in communities for better engagement?
There are still tickets available for the Unconference. For more information (including attendee list), please go here: http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/
February 1st through 5th is Social Media Week. Social Media Week features a week of social media events, including, conferences, discussions, and meet-ups that take place simultaneously in multiple cities around the world. The aim of each event is to advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors. Check out the event schedule to see a listing of all of the social media events in San Francisco this week.
We’re very excited to co-host a panel discussion with Autodesk on Social Media for Social Impact on February 4th. The panel will explore the use of social media in making progress on social causes, and panelists will review case studies, criteria for success and lessons learned from each of the panelists.
Our panelists include:
Connie Chan, Yahoo! / Yahoo! for Good
Connie Chan is manager of Yahoo! for Good, the company’s Social Responsibility department. Connie is responsible for leading Yahoo!’s online cause marketing initiatives and managing social media for Yahoo! Green.
Amy Skoczlas Cole, eBay
Amy is the Director of the eBay Green Team, Amy leads eBay’s efforts to engage their 89 million active users in a movement to use products that exist in world, saving consumers money as well as helping protect the planet.
Peggy Duvette, WiserEarth
Peggy Duvette, Executive Director of WiserEarth, advocates for building online community capacity in the nonprofit sector. Since 2005, she has managed WiserEarth, an online community space that allows organizations and individuals to connect and collaborate around social and environmental issues.
Susan Tenby, TechSoup
Susan Tenby is the Online Community Director at San Francisco-based nonprofit TechSoup Global and leads an active community of nonprofit staff and volunteers in Second Life.
All proceeds from the event will be donated to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund.
I’ll start with a caveat: this is a flat out, unapologetic (but hopefully entertaining) pitch. That’s me in the photo below, the unapologetic pitcher.
As you know, Forum One is hosting the Online Community Unconference East in New York City on February 10th. The Unconference is an open space gathering of online community and social media professionals from the commercial and non profit sectors. We expect over 200 participants (our biggest east coast event yet).
A partial list of organizations coming includes AARP, Answers.com, Autodesk, Bloomberg, Cisco, Consumer Reports, Examiner.com, Google, HP, Huffington Post, IBM, iVillage / NBC, kgb, Microsoft, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Scotttrade and TripAdvisor (to name a few). Pretty great group, no?
The Pitch – 3 Reasons
We feel like our Unconference events represent one of the best sponsorship values for events around, for three main reasons:
1. Fantastic (but appropriate) Visibility
As a sponsor, you will receive the “normal” event perks – your logo on conference materials, acknowledgement at the event, a sponsor banner. The key to our sponsors’ success is that we don’t oversell our sponsorships, and we limit the number of service providers attending the event so that the ratio of practitioners to service providers is favorable (which also makes for a better attendee experience). You will also have an opportunity to address the full conference for 5 minutes shortly after lunch. In short: Limited competition for attention, you are free to participate as an attendee, and you get the events full attention shortly after lunch.
2. Good Value
Our packages start at $5k, with our premiere package at $10k. Many events with smaller, less qualified audiences charge twice that, and typically try to cram in as many sponsors in as possible.
3. Attendees are Senior Staff and Have Purchase Power / Influence
Forum One has been hosting online community and social media events for almost 10 years. Over the years, we have curated a very senior network of community practitioners and executives. Most of the attendees at our conferences have direct purchase influence, and many have purchase authority. Business *gets done* at our events between sponsors and attendees.
That’s it in a nutshell: great event, great visibility, solid value and an awesome attendee list.
I want to be clear about our intentions with sponsorship sales: sponsorship helps us continue to run these events at a modest profit, which ensures a sustainable business. By sponsoring, you help support the larger community of social media and online community professionals.
Thanks for listening to my pitch. I really do appreciate your time and attention.
If you are interested in discussing terms, please contact me and Chloe Caviness (our sales manager).
Now back to our regularly scheduled community programing
The Online Community Unconference East will be held February 10th in New York City. To learn more about the event, or to register, go here: http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/ .
So, how does this Unconference thing work?
The premise of our Unconference series is that the best source of information on online communities and social media is the community of practitioners actually doing the hands on work. The Unconference format provides a venue for participants to lead discussions about topics they are most passionate and knowledgeable about. At the end of the day, attendees walk away with new ideas, perspectives, and a long list of new professional connections.
One of the most amazing parts of the day at our Unconferences is the topic selection process. Our Unconference uses the organizing principals of Open Space Technology to create the event agenda. Said another way, the topics discussed during the day are suggested and lead by Unconference attendees. At the start of the morning, any attendee who wishes can come forward, announce a topic, and claim one of the 50+ open slots on the grid.
Attendees announce session topics
The agenda begins to form
Within about 35-40 minutes the grid fills up with topics
Once all the topics are announced, we begin the Unconference sessions. The agenda grid plays the role of gathering place and ideamarketplace throughout the day, as attendees come back to the agenda to check for any updates, changes, or new sessions.
Outputs
If you would like to see an example of the great content that comes out of an Unconference, please check out a few of these resrouces:
The Online Community Report features best practices, strategies, research, and events for Online Community and Social Media professionals. Jim Cashel, Heather Virga, and other staff at Forum One edit the Online Community Report.
You can see pictures from the 2009 Unconference here: 
Heidi Nobantu Saul was our facilitator for the Unconference, and she did a masterful job of explaining the concepts of Open Space and guiding the group through the agenda setting process. The essence of Open Space is that participants are free to suggest a session topic, and those who host a topic are responsible for hosting the conversation. Participants are responsible for placing themselves in sessions that they are learning from and / or contributing to the most. In short: if you are in a session that you are not contributing to or getting value from, then go find another one. 
Connie Chan, Yahoo! / Yahoo! for Good
Amy Skoczlas Cole, eBay
Peggy Duvette, WiserEarth
Susan Tenby, TechSoup
The 
