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Online Community Ecosystems: Slides + DiagramsThursday, July 2. 2009 I'm often asked about my online community ecosystem diagrams when I include them in a presentation, like the June 17th Online Community Health webinar. I've put together a little care package for those of you that would like to use or extend the diagrams and slides. Below you will find links to a PowerPoint deck that includes several versions of the ecosystem diagrams, as well as an OmniGraffle diagram that can be modified to fit your circumstances. The only thing I ask as that you: a. provide attribution to the source and b. let me know what modifications or extensions you make.  Ecosystems PowerPoint source file Ecosystems OmniGraffle source filePreview of Ecosystem slides: View more documents from Online Community Research Network. 
Online Community Roundtable: July 8th - Washington DCWednesday, July 1. 2009 Are you a community manager or social media strategist or are you in charge of online community & social media at your organization? Are you in the Washington DC Area? If so, you might find the Online Community Roundtable of interest. This is a small networking group / event that meets regularly to discuss issues, opportunities and trends with online communities, and represents leading organizations (large and small). This will be our first meeting in the DC area, and I'm very excited to be "taking the show" to the east coast. The format is an hour of networking, followed by two hours of presentation and discussion about online communities and social media. The Roundtable is free, but you need to RSVP. Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2009 Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm Location: Center for Global Development Street: 1800 Massachusetts Ave NW City/Town: Washington, DC You must RSVP to attend: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128815474008#/event.php?eid=128815474008 Please note: even if you don't have a Facebook account, you can still rsvp to the event. If you have any questions, please email me .
Online Community Expert Interview: Patrick O'Keefe, Founder, iFroggy NetworkTuesday, June 23. 2009 Patrick O’Keefe is the founder of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He’s been managing online communities since 2000 and currently runs KarateForums.com, phpBBHacks.com, PhotoshopForums.com and other sites and blogs about community management at ManagingCommunities.com. He authored the book “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online forums, communities and social spaces.Q1: You run a network of independent communities. How has the economy affected the business of running these communities? What lessons have you learned? Has the economy had an effect on participation? The economy has affected most businesses in a negative way, and online communities are no exception. Generally speaking, since most revenue is generating through advertising and advertising has been hit hard, it has been difficult. But, you can only do what you can do, work hard and find a way. I don’t know if I’ve learned anything in particular: at the end of the day, when the economy is bad, most everyone is going to be worse off. You just have to experiment, try new things and see what works. I don’t think that the economy has had a determinable effect on participation. People will always have the desire to connect with likeminded individuals and to take a break, regardless of the economy. Q2: What role do you see independent communities like the ones you run playing in 2-3 years, especially given large social networks like Facebook attempting to become a center of gravity for social activities online? I think that they are just as valuable. A community offering something that people want has always been the key. If people want to have legitimate discussion of the martial arts, for example, where they know that disrespectful comments and spamming aren’t permitted, are they more likely to go to Facebook and join a group on the martial arts, or to end up at a moderated martial arts community, dedicated to that subject? In my experience, people will prefer something that is dedicated to what they want and that’s regardless of where it is. Facebook’s offering is new in some ways, but the same, as what has existed, in others. There have been sites that could “streamline” online community for years and years and cover endless topics all at one site. But, it still comes down to the community and the management and that doesn’t have a lot to do with it being on Facebook or it being on a standalone forum. Q3: You recently wrote about a very tragic issue: dealing with a suicide in your online community. Can you talk about what prompted you to write the post, and how the response has been? It’s always been an important subject to me, because we’re talking about human life. Luckily, I have not been affected by this type of tragedy. But, I’ve always recognized the potential and have had an idea of how I would want to handle such a situation, for a long time. The Abraham K. Biggs’ and Megan Meier stories brought it back to the forefront and I thought it gave me an opportunity to address the topic. I have actually been thinking about it for months and researching it, in order to formulate a post that would help community administrators. I think it’s somewhat of an elephant in the room in that it’s difficult, no one wants it to happen and we’d rather not talk about it. But, thinking about it and planning ahead can help to eliminate fear and give you the greatest chance to help someone. The response to the post has been great so far. Q4: What advice would you give to a startup that wants to develop an online community strategy as part of their product offering and brand experience? Spend time setting up the entire operation before you make anything public. From the organization of the site to the (really important) guidelines or participation policies, your community should be consistent with who you are and how you want to be seen. Don’t set it up as you go and don’t try to cater to everyone – stay true to what your operation is about. It’s important to get community right and getting community right means, eventually, people will shout that you are wrong. Be strong and be consistent. Patrick O'Keefe Owner, iFroggy Network - http://www.ifroggy.com Author, "Managing Online Forums" - http://www.managingonlineforums.com Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/iFroggy Skype - patrick_okeefe
Online Community Unconference 2009 Wiki Open & Session HighlightsMonday, June 22. 2009 One of the most exciting things about the Unconference format is the fact that there are so many sessions running simultaneously. This can also be on of the most frustrating, as it is impossible to be everywhere at once. Thankfully, participants generally try to take thorought notes of their sessions to share back with the group.We had over 50 sessions at the Online Community Unconference, and notes for most are captured on the Unconference wiki. The wiki is now open for public reading (editing and commenting are reserved for Unconference attendees). The Online Community Unconference wiki can be found here: http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2009 A few highlights from the session notes include: Managing the Mob: What to do when things go wrong Melissa Daniels of Yahoo! convened this session to discuss how to integrate your community into the organization's decision making process, even when the community mood is dark. Social CRM : Mapping Social ID's, Behavioral Targeting & Common Profiles A session about managing customer relationships across multiple domains, convened by Ajay Ramachandran of SourceN. Using Community in Strategy Development Nilofer Merchant of Rubicon Consulting convened this session to explore how companies can use communities as a strategic tool and integrate feedback and learning from communities into product development and company strategy. Community Driven Product Design - Collecting Feedback from your Community Siko Bouterse of hi5 convened this session to explore the best ways to build feedback systems. B2B Communities - What works, Best Practices Mike Rowland of Impact Interactions led a session sharing community management best practices based on his firm's experience over the last 10 years. What is Community Leadership? Scott Moore convened this session to explore the attributes of leadership in communities. Social Network Analysis (in excel!) Marc Smith of Telligent led a session on social network mapping and analysis, and offered a demo of NodeXL, a free, excel-based tool.  Mission Aligned TwitteringJill Finlayson of Social Edge led a discussion on a holistic approach to Twittering: figure out how the whole organization can get value. Are we a Community Too? Ways Community Practitioners Stay Connected. What's next? Gail Williams of Salon Media Group and Scott Moore explore the concept of a community manager and strategists "tribe". Please feel free to share the link to the wiki, or to link to the source session notes from your blogs / tweets.
Webcast of Online Community Health: Give Your Online Community a Check-up Now AvailableWednesday, June 17. 2009
The archive for the Online Communities Health: Give your Online Community a Check-Up Webcast is now available.
 You may view an archive of the video / audio from the webcast here: http://www.forumonenetworks.com/ochealth On the webcast today, Bill Johnston was joined by Joe Cothrel of Lithium Technologies and Marty Collins of Microsoft. Topics discussed in the webcast included: - How to define “health” in an online community - How to measure online community health - How to concepts of community health can be applied to distributed communities (on Twitter, Facebook, etc.) - Three steps you can take today to improve the health of your community. Ask questions and discuss the webcast on the Lithosphere at: http://bit.ly/ochealth #ochealth
Initial Report Back from the Online Community Unconference 2009Thursday, June 11. 2009 We had an amazing day at the Online Community Unconference yesterday. Over 220 people attended the event and the agenda included 57 breakout sessions throughout the day on topics including:
 We will report more about the event in the next few days, but here are some tweets, blog posts and pictures of the event: My take-away from the Online Community Unconference - Open Business A few tweets during the Unconference: @penguinasana - Being open to getting bad feedback, but allowing that & listening, making change as a result builds loyalty #ocu2009 @suzboop - Incentives are bad, instead reward -give users a way 2 feel good about what they're already doing well.Don't pay them 2 participate #ocu2009 @DebbieDembecki - feature development without plan for measuring use of the feature is counter productive to measuring engagement #ocu2009 Twitter Streams
The Unconference is tomorrow!Tuesday, June 9. 2009The Online Community Unconference is coming up tomorrow, June 10th, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.This is the fourth year for the west coast Unconference, and we expect it to be the best. We will have over 200 online community professionals come together tomorrow to share issues, experiences and knowledge related to growing successful and healthy online communities. You can see pictures from the 2008 Unconference here: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2008&w=all&s=int You can still register here (and save $50 off the door price): http://ocu2009-ocr62.eventbrite.com A note to those looking for work Again, we have reserved a number of $25 tickets for community pros that have recently been laid off. If you are interested in learning more, please let me know All work and no play: Don't forget about the tweetup in Palo Alto at Gordon Biersch from 7pm to 9pm tonight (6/9). http://ocu2009tweetup.eventbrite.com/
Online Community Unconference: Updates & Discount for Those Out of WorkWednesday, June 3. 2009 It is hard to believe that we are just a week away from the Online Community Unconference in Mountain View. This is the 4th year that Forum One has hosted the Unconference, and this always proves to be the "gathering of the tribe" for online community pros. We have a great group of folks coming (see below), a great facilitator in Kaliya Hamlin, a great set of topics percolating, and we still have open seats (including a limited number of $25 tickets for those out of work). In short, the news highlights are:
The price to value equation is really strong - only $195 for a full day of sessions, lunch and networking for what is likely to be 200+ online community and social media professionals. You can register at: http://ocu2009-ocr62.eventbrite.com Who is coming? AARP alliant international university Ant's Eye View Athena East Autodesk Autodesk Education BoonEx Brevidia Business.com Care2.com Caring.com ChefsBest Cisco Systems Inc. Civic Ventures Clear Capital ClickMarkets & WiredSonoma CollabNet, Inc. Diddit EAA Egret Endeavors, Inc. Engine 16 eTouch System corp Executive Networks FocusCatalyst Funambol, Inc FutureU Get Satisfaction Gigya, Inc. Google, Inc. Gravit8 Social Marketing GreatSchools.org hi5 Impact Interactions Infield Parking Informatica Intel Intuit Keibi KickApps Legal Resource Centre of Alberta, Ltd. LiveOps LiveWorld LiveWorld, Inc. Lockheed Martin @ NASA Ames Research Center LSF Interactive MarketMind Consulting Microsoft MLS/Terraverde MontaVista Software mp3Car NetApp netinfluence Networked Insights NewsGang Live officialCOMMUNITY OMNIFUSE INC. Overtone Inc. packard foundation PARC PayCycle PGi Platform Associates Posit Science Propel Media Rackspace Radian6 Technologies Inc. REI riveraphotography.smugmug.com sacramento bee Salon.com and The WELL Scottrade Seven Sacred Pools Small Consulting Firm SmarterTravel Social Alliance Network Social Edge SocialRep Stealthmode Partners Strayer & Co., Inc. Symantec Tatu Digital Media TechSoup Telligent Systems Tendo Communications thcg the groupery The Maryam Webster Group The Whetstone Edge, LLC TIBCO Software Tonka Media Toolbox.com TripIt Twine.com Walmart.com West Corporation Western Governors University White Space Ventures WOM-buzz Yahoo! Inc. Again - we still have seats available for the Unconference. If you would like a seat, register here. A note to those looking for work Again, we have reserved a number of $25 tickets for community pros that have recently been laid off. If you are interested in learning more, please let me know A note to potential sponsors We have sponsorship opportunities for the Unconference starting at $1000. If you would like to get your product or brand in front of 200+ online community and social media pros, many of whom make or significantly influence purchase decisions, please contact me - bjohnston@forumone.com .
Highlights From Previous Online Community UnconferencesTuesday, May 26. 2009 We are just over 2 weeks away from our Online Community Unconference, to be held 6/10 in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum. One of the most valuable resources that comes out of our Unconference series is the set of session notes that are posted to the event wiki. We generally have between 40-60 sessions at each of the Unconferences, and many of the sessions are captured and posted. The wiki (and session notes) are open to the public shortly after we complete each Unconference. In preparing for this year's Unconference, I've looked back over our previous event's wikis, and I (re)discovered the following gems that I thought I would share. Key Sessions from Previous Online Community Unconferences: Community Management 101: How to get started in this big wide world An excellent overview of how to get started in community management. Social Psychology 101 for Community Managers Useful notes that apply social psychology theory to the context of online community. Worst Case Scenerios - What to do when things go terribly wrong Lessons learned from challenging community management situations. Twitter for Business A thorough look at use cases for Twitter use in and for the enterprise. Managing + Motivating Community leaders A discussion on how to energize and engage super users and moderators. Unconference 2009 If you currently drive the community or social media strategy for your organization, and you are in (or will be in) the SF Bay Area on 6/10, I would encourage you to come check it out! Current attendees include: Google, REI, Get Satisfaction, Intuit, Microsoft, TechSoup, Symantec, and many others. Registration To register at the pre-event rate of $195 ($245 on site) please go here: http://ocu2009-ocrep526.eventbrite.com OCU 2008 Wiki The wiki is available if you would like to read the session notes: http://www.socialtext.net/ocu08/ You can see pictures from the 2008 Unconference here: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2008&w=all&s=int We also have several sponsor opportunities open for this Unconference. If you are looking for a cost-effective way to reach community and social media professionals, please contact me about our sponsorship options.
Online Community Expert Interview: Ryan Holmes, CEO/Founder, InvokeTuesday, May 19. 2009 This month's Online Community Expert Interview is with Ryan Holmes, CEO/Founder, Invoke - Creators of Memelabs, HootSuite, Claytorials, ow.ly. I met Ryan at this year's SxSWi, and I was struck by how well he and his company understood both the business value of twitter, as well as the functional need of the business user.As founder of Invoke, Ryan’s experience combines diverse management skills with solid industry and technical knowledge. Since 2000, Invoke has grown to a talented 26-person powerhouse focused on new media disciplines such as online advertising, viral campaigns and social application development. As CEO, Ryan has been active in all aspects of Invoke operations, focusing on strategy, business and product development and technical and social networking trends. Ryan gained valuable experience in entrepreneurial and startup ventures, business management, and marketing as owner of a restaurant chain, a tourist adventure business, and online store with 3m+/year revenues. Q: What are some of the most effective techniques you've seen Hootsuite users employ for engaging on Twitter? A: I think that the more interesting usage has been around scheduling of tweets and RSS feed integration. We recently had someone tell us that they scheduled interesting content every 10 minutes for one week and went from 100 to 5000 followers in that week. I think that's pretty amazing. The RSS feed integration is also powerful because it allows someone to easily add a bunch of content feeds around a specific interest niche. For example if your core area is technology, you can integrate a Digg, Engadget and TechCrunch feed into your Twitter account using Hootsuite. Q: How do you think the Twitter ecosystem of content streams, API's and third party services evolve? A: Twitters dependence on API is pretty amazing. As a service, 70%+ of its messaging volume is sent via its API, so they are ultimately very incentivized in keeping their developers and third party applications happy. I have likened Twitters business to owning a communication channel similar to IM, or email where there are multiple clients (ex: Outlook, Thunderbird, Yahoo! Mail in the case of email). The risk of a non-distributed communication channel is that if Twitter goes down, then none of the applications really function well. I think a general trend for the third party apps will be to build out as much functionality as possible within Twitter, and then look towards incorporation of other platforms. Q: With the recent influx of mega celebrities with huge followings (think @aplusk and @oprah), is social media starting to look more like broadcast? A: Twitter is a very simple system and because of this simplicity, it can be a subtly different tool to everyone who uses it. It can be a microphone (customer service/sales), telephone (one-one conversation), or a megaphone (broadcast). Q: What are your plans for Hootsuite? Can you talk a bit about the business model? A: Our plans for Hootsuite are to continue building the stickiest application for power and corporate twitter users. Our current version has great success with group workflow (editors and administrators), scheduling, multiple accounts, and analytics. Our upcoming release will focus on simplicity/flexibility of use, brand and keyword monitoring, increased analytics and sharing of streams. I think these are massively important improvements and we expect to see some big gains in usage. Our focus with Hootsuite has been to build community over generating revenue to date. We have been doing that very well. We have a few excellent and unique ways of monetizing as we move ahead, but we will always have some level of free functionality. Q: Since we are talking about Twitter, what did you have for lunch today? A: Well, I just got up after attending an amazing wedding last night. I'll tell you that I had a filet mignon there. It was completely overkill with two huge 1.5" thick medallions. I felt sad that I couldn't finish it. I twitpic'd it and it's on my twitter stream @invoker for anyone who's REALLY bored.
Online Community Platform & Services SatisfactionSunday, May 17. 2009 The Online Community Platform and Services Satisfaction research project was initiated in January of 2009 and published in March. The research project was conducted by the Online Community Research Network, and was created to provide insight about customer attitudes towards online community platform and service vendors, particularly around satisfaction. Further, we wanted to explore the unmet needs in the online community platform and services market.We received approximately 208 completed surveys. Participants represent many sectors and markets include: large software companies, large community and social media destination sites, niche community sites, manufacturers, government and non-profits. Two items worth noting about the research protocol:
Most Important Attributes for Purchase From Question 9: Which of the following community platform vendor and system attributes are the most important to you when making a purchase decision about your community platform?  Most important vendor and system attributes ranked in descending order. A majority (48%) of respondents consider scalability and feature set equally as important. Customization almost as important at 46%. It was interesting to note that pricing was less important that scalability, feature sets and the ability to customize. It was also interesting to see that respondents reported the that the technology of the platform was a lower priority attribute. SaaS functionality was least important at 5%. Evaluatiton Criteria We asked respondents to rate their primary community platform (and if applicable, supporting vednor) based on the following criteria:
High Level Results Platforms with five or more respondents are featured with full details of the customer experience of implementing and using the platform. A high level summary of findings include:
A sample of Quality and Reliability scores from key platforms and vendors includes: Drupal: Overall Quality & Reliability  Total responses presented in ascending order. Jive Clearpsace: Overall Quality & Reliability  Total responses presented in ascending order. Leverage Software: Overall Quality & Reliability  Total responses presented in ascending order. Lithium: Overall Quality & Reliability  Total responses presented in ascending order. Community Server by Telligent: Overall Quality & Reliability  Total responses presented in ascending order. We also collected detailed data on custom platforms developed "in house". Additional Findings in the Report The full 68 page "Online Communities: Platform and Services Satisfaction Report" includes in depth information on:
Access to the Full Report For members of the Online Community Research Network, the report is included as a benefit of your annual subscription. If you are interested in joining the OCRN, or learning more about the Network's activities, please go here.
What to Expect at the Online Community UnconferenceFriday, May 15. 2009We are just 4 weeks away from the Online Community Unconference in Mountain View. We still have open seats, and I can honestly say that this will likely be one of the best events about online community and social media this year. The price to value equation is hard to argue with as well - only $195 for a full day of sessions, lunch and networking for what is likely to b 300+ online community and social media professionals. You can register at: http://ocu2009-ocr515.eventbrite.com Who is coming? There is a really diverse mix of organizations coming, including: Autodesk, Cisco, CollabNet, Executive Networks, Get Satisfaction, Google, Intel, Intuit, LinkedIn, Microsoft, NetApp, Twine.com. Walmart.com and Yahoo! (to name just a few). So, how does this work? The premise of our Unconference series is that the best source of information on the topic of online communities is the community of practitioners building and managing online communities. The Unconference format provides a venue for folks 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. We are fortunate to have Kaliya Hamlin guiding us through the process again in Mountain View. The topic selection process starts the Unconference, when any attendee who wishes can come forward, announce a topic, and claim one of the 50+ open slots on the grid.  Within 35-40 minutes the grid fills up with topics and the first session kicks off. It's really inspiring to hear all of the topics that are suggested, and to see so many great ideas come together on the grid. If you would like to see an example of the great content that comes out of an Unconference, please check out the Online Community Unconference 08 wiki. I would encourage you to spend some time looking through the session notes, as there is a lot of great content. Potential Sessions Include: • Online Community Metrics • Enterprise Communities: Opportunities and Responsibilities for organizations that want to host "their" part of the conversation • Myths of the Online Community World - What we've learned in the past ten years • The evolving role of Community Manager • Ideas: Are they a first class citizen in your community? Why not? • Lessons Learned: Pitfalls and Best Practices in Community-Building • For Beginners: Laying a Solid Foundation for the Best Community • Security: Best Practices for Community Moderation • What to look for when hiring community staff • Leveraging the "Wisdom of the Crowd" to Energize Your Community • The Role of Online Facilitators and Champions in Community-Building • The Importance of Building Collaborative Ecosystems for Community-Building • Marketing your online community • Best Practices for Inviting the "Right" Type of People Into the Community • Building Community in a Support (Q&A) Forum • What Defines Success in YOUR Community? • Communities of Collaborative Development • Engaging community members - how do you get people to participate and not just lurk • Searching for a white-label community platform vendor • How to sell community to marketers • Ideas for making community engagement take off • How to grow competitive communities • Making a product roadmap for a young community: how do you pick what to do? • How to grow leaders within a community • How to deal with community trolls • Balance between destination and distributed community • Cross-organizations collaboration and tools to "grow together" vs compete • What NOT to do in social media for social ventures: a question of focus & impact • "Mission aligned Twittering" - balancing resource constraints and breaking silos • The value of contests and voting versus issue fatigue and micro-spam Again - we still have seats available for the Unconference. If you would like a seat, register here. A note to potential sponsors We have sponsorship opportunities for the Unconference starting at $1000. If you would like to get your product or brand in front of 300+ online community and social media pros, many of whom make or signigantly influence purchase decisions, please contact me - bjohnston@forumone.com . A note to those looking for work If you are an online community pro that has recently been laid off and you still want to attend the event, please let me know and we will do our best to work with you.
Holistic Community StrategyThursday, May 14. 2009 Most organizations do not have a comprehensive community strategy in place. In most cases, community strategy is actually a set of tactics that individual departments are engaging in based on product or market segments. While this grass roots approach is where many organizations have to start, it is not a sustainable approach. The primary issue is one of valuing the activities, content and relationships of the community in the context of the host organization. Said another way, most organizations have no idea how to evaluate the cost of online community and social media activities, or how to asses the value of these activities because they haven't been internalized in to the organization's cultural, financial and operational value systems. I've started to refer to a more comprehensive approach to community development as "Holistic Community Strategy". This concept builds on the techniques I outlined in the post "How to Develop a Community Strategy" In the Holistic Community Strategy framework, I see the following as the three most important contexts: 1. Host Organization (a.k.a. "The Business") In order to understand value, the host organization has to have a series of internal conversations at a senior level and across most (if not all departments) about: • its intention in engaging the community; • the potential value the organization hopes to create for itself and its customers; • the risk associated with engaging; • the overhead, including headcount, budgets and staff time; • the level of readyness to participate, and the required culture change to be successful 2. Customers (a.k.a. "The Members") Customers (potential / current members) should be engaged in the development of community features, programs and policy. I cover techniques to do this in the post "How to Develop a Community Strategy". 3. Community Ecosystem As I mentioned before, most community strategies tend to focus on the hosted properties of the organization. The reality is that there is an ever expanding universe of online touchpoints that an organization's community members are participating in. An "Ecosystem audit" should be conducting as part of a strategy development (or strategy course correction) exercise in order to discover where the centers or activity are, and who the most vocal and active participants are. I gave the following presentation at the Community 2.0 conference this week, that provides an initial sketch of the framework. I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions. Holistic Community Strategy
View more presentations from Bill Johnston.
Webcast of Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving now availableThursday, May 7. 2009 The archive for the Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving in the Economic Downturn Webinar is now available.You can view an archive of the video / audio from the webcast here: http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/webcasts/OCSVTV/index.htm On the webcast today, I was joined by Thor Muller of Satisfaction, Chris Kenton of SocialRep and Scott Wilder of Intuit. Topics discussed in the webcast include: - Buffalo culture as a new metaphor for your online business - The customer relationship as a currently squandered opportunity - Rethinking "ROI" - The social history of marketing and media - Setting social media policy and training staff - "Guidelines and guardrails" - and much more. Participant bios: Thor Muller - CEO & Co-founder, Satisfaction  Thor Muller is CEO & Co-founder of Satisfaction, a startup delivering "people-powered customer service for absolutely everything."He is also the co-founder and former Managing Director of Rubyred Labs, a San Francisco-based web apps firm. Since its founding in 2005, Rubyred has developed social software for a range of startups and leading portals. Prior to Rubyred, Thor was a first generation Web entrepreneur, creating Web success stories for companies such as Yahoo, Dell, Bank of America, Intel, Virgin Records, Fujitsu, Discovery Channel, and Sony. In 1995, he started and ran one of the early Web development boutiques, Prophet Communications, later acquired by Frog Design where he served as VP Digital Media. He subsequently founded Trapezo, a venture-funded company that made Web software for syndicating content, acquired by Perfect Commerce in 2002. Christopher Kenton - CEO & Founder, SocialRep  Christopher Kenton is founder and CEO of the enterprise social media SaaS startup SocialRep, and cofounder and consulting partner at MotiveLab a social media marketing agency. Chris was formerly Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO) Council, and its corporate parent, the international PR firm GlobalFluency, where he managed global business development, client consulting services and program development for business communities including the CMO Council, the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME).With an extensive background in strategic marketing and software development, Chris specializes in market development, competitive positioning, marketing effectiveness and measurement, with a special emphasis on marketing technology and social media. Scott K. Wilder, Group Manager, Intuit  Scott K. Wilder is currently the Group Manager of Intuit's QuickBooks Online Community and User-Collaboration Web site. Previously, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at KBtoys.com and eToys. He also has held numerous senior management positions at America Online, Apple Computer, Borders.com, and American Express. While working at America Online, Scott helped create the first Web-based online advertisement and commercial Web site. Wilder has a Master degrees from The Johns Hopkins University, The New York University Leonard Stern School of Business and Georgetown University's Leadership Coaching Program.Bill Johnston, Chief Community Officer, Forum One Networks  Bill Johnston works as Forum One Network's Chief Community Officer. In this role, Bill drives the editorial vision for Forum One’s series of conferences related to online community, leads the Online Community Research Network, and leads the commercial community consulting practice.Johnston has been building large-scale online communities since 1999. He came to Forum One from Autodesk, where he served as the Online Strategy Manager, with responsibilities including a portfolio of online communities and blogs. Previously he oversaw user experience tasks at TechRepublic, an IT professionals community (now part of Cnet). He also directs the Online Community Roundtable, an invitation-based professional networking series for online community professionals to share best practices and experiences.
An Update on the Online Community Research NetworkMonday, April 27. 2009 We mention the Online Community Research Network on the Online Community Report blog quite often, but I haven't given a comprehensive update on what we are up to in several months. Please allow me to rectify that.  As some of you know, the Online Community Research Network (OCRN) is a professional network of some of the smartest online community and social media practitioners. Forum One's goal with the Network is to connect online community and social media pros to suss out best practices, solve problems and create a constant flow of new and inspiring ideas. Who's In? We have over 100 online community professionals from a healthy range of industries and organizations. A sample of participating organizations includes: Adobe, Autodesk, American Express, Business Week, Consumer Reports, CNN, Edmunds.com, Global Giving, Google, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Razoo, and Yahoo! Membership skews towards Senior Managers, Directors and VP-level staff. Research Projects / Current Practice Reports The main activity of the OCRN is to develop and participate in an ongoing research agenda about online community and social media practice. What that means, specifically, is that members:
For a sampling of the Network's output, check out our 6 most recent research reports. Follow the links to download an executive summary from each report:
Member Network & Collaboration OCRN members have access to ongoing collaboration opportunities through our monthly roundtable calls, quarterly, member-only webinars where recent research findings are presented and discussed, and a member's only "Request Advice" section (think LinkedIn Answers, but very focused). Content Members get access to a wealth of content, including an archive of all OCRN research reports, and a library of community and social media best practice content. We also send a monthly OCRN Update newsletter with key news from the Network, as well as social media industry highlights. Why We (and our Members) Think This is Important In the challenging economy, online community and social media pros are tasked with developing new tactics and strategies to show growth and value to their organizations, all while working with tighter budgets and fewer resources. The OCRN offers our members an opportunity to interact with other folks that are facing the same challenges in order to share ideas, collaborate and find solutions.  A Summary of the Benefits of the OCRN:
If you are charged with the online community strategy for your organization, please consider joining us. One-year memberships are now available at $495/seat and multi-seat pricing of $395/seat is available for 3 or more memberships purchased from one company. Please contact Heather Virga for special discounted pricing for more than 5 seats. Go here to sign-up: http://ocrnmembership-ocrb.eventbrite.com
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