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.
Twitter Stream
The twitter stream was going strong with lots of good tidbits, ideas, and discussions from the event.
#OCUE10 Twitter Stream
Flick Stream From #OCUE10
Blog Reactions
Notes from the Online Community Unconference East 2010 – Matthew Lees / Impact Interactions
Takeaways from Online Community Unconference East 2010 – Marshall Sponder / Web Metrics Guru
A BIG thanks to our Sponsors:
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