Evolution of humans within a community

In Amy Jo Kim’s book “Community Building on the Web” she talks about the various roles  which community participants assume in their journey within the community.  The above picture shows the stepping stones as visitors become novices who in turn become regulars and then can become leaders, experts and then finally elders.

“Shy visitors evolve into confident contributors; eager students become knowledgeable teachers; and novice game players become tournament champions. It’s your job as a community-builder to create an environment that fosters these basic social roles, while meeting the changing needs of your members as they become progressively more involved in community life” (Amy Jo Kim)   

In designing our learning communities we are looking at the roles that people play withing the community and in community building…we havn’t got the answers yet but so far I agree with Wenger (1999) who states that you can define the roles but you cannot design the identities that will be constructed through these roles.  

Building Communities – ROI Continued

As we begin to design our learning communities I search for evidence of “experts” who are building and advising on community design. As I am a visual learner I like these two graphs from Passionate – Creating Passionate Users which have relevance for community building.  Previously I have looked at ROI and found this interesting graph on Community ROI which explains that there still needs to be investment but the community will provide pretty sound ROI with additional activities which are usually beyond the original investment. 

“Think about all the things a strong user community can do for you: tech support, user training, marketing (evangelism, word of mouth), third-party add-ons, even new product ideas”……”Yes, there’s still a budget… but we’ve all seen third-party fan/user groups that got no support at all from “the mother ship” and yet thrived and gave users a level of support and training the company didn’t provide” (Creating Passionate Users).

The second image relates to user needs and I notice at the top of the hierachy is flow and engagement. From my readings and experience I would support flow and engagement being at the top of my list – we have all experienced the concept of “internet time”…..and we often wonder where has the time gone as we sit online day after day……mmm I must have been engaged or in Csikszentmihalyi moment of flow.

Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as ‘the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.’ 

Workshop on Building Social Networks/Growing Communities

Thought this might be of interest to fellow EMLT1 students - social networking blogger Laurel Papworth is holding a workshop on June 20 in Sydney on the following:

“A one day seminar with a workshop component designed to get you thinking on your feet and engaging with the latest techniques to build and manage fast growing social networks.

This course is focussed on how business needs can be met by supporting an online social network and is ideal for those with a reasonable grasp of user applications such as blogs, wikis, and tagging – even if you are currently a forum or community leader, you may not have thought of all the insights this course presents on running a community.
Attending LAMP Insight Seminars are a great opportunity for participants to:

• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of existing social networks
• Explore the emerging opportunities of online media to enrich creative projects
• Evaluate tools and techniques for building online communities
• Stay up to date with the latest cutting edge work in web 2.0, mobile media, advanced TV, games and virtual worlds

• A light lunch is provided “

The link above will direct you to how to apply. Places are limited…..

Users beware ….No dumb answers here…..

From a blog by Kathy Sierra called “Passionate – Creating Passionate Users”

There are some great graphs and pics on her blog and lots of relevance for learning theories and tips for desiging and maintaining interest in learning communites. This article focus is on user communities however there is relevance for learning communities….

“Most user communities take a typical path–the newbies ask questions, and a select group of more advanced users answer them. But that’s a slow path to building the community, and it leaves a huge gaping hole in the middle where most users drop out” 

So how do we encourage people not to drop out, to keep being active and support a culture which encourages newbies and supports learning and participation.  Kathy lists the following tips and the creation of “there are no dumb answers policy instead of there are no dumb questions policy”: 

1) Encourage newer users–especially those who’ve been active askers–to start trying to answer questions

One way to help is by making sure that the moderators are not always the Ones Who Know All. Sometimes you have to hold back the experts to give others a chance to step in and give it a try.

2) Give tips on how to answer questions

Post articles and tips on how to answer questions, which also helps people learn to communicate better. You can include tips on how to write articles, teach a tough topic, etc.

3) Tell them it’s OK to guess a little, as long as they ADMIT they’re guessing

4) Adopt a near-zero-tolerance “Be Nice” policy when people answer questions

Don’t allow other participants (especially the more advanced users) to slam anyone’s answer. A lot of technical forums especially are extremely harsh, and have a culture where the regulars say things like, “If you think that, you have no business answering a question. In fact, you have no business even DREAMING about being a programmer. Better keep your paper hat day job, loser.”

5) Teach and encourage the more advanced users (including moderators) how to correct a wrong answer while maintaining the original answerer’s dignity.

And again, zero-tolerance for a**holes. All it takes is one jerk to stop someone from ever trying it again.

6) Re-examine your reward/levels strategy for your community
Is there a clear way for new users to move up the ranks? Are there achievable, meaningful “levels”?