Comments on: AppsLab FAQ: How Do I Start a Community?

By: O Community, Where Art Thou? « badgerworks

O Community, Where Art Thou? « badgerworks — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:10:02 +0000

[...] over at Oracle AppsLab wrote about community building and feeding recently. One of his best recommendations is to not build a new community but to work within [...]

By: JC John SESE Cuneta (謝施洗)

JC John SESE Cuneta (謝施洗) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:42:39 +0000

Yep. lol. and its very common these days.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:24:43 +0000

The hard parts are: 1) engaging already empowered users and convincing them your community is worthwhile and 2) finding new users who want to be empowered.

By: JC John SESE Cuneta (謝施洗)

JC John SESE Cuneta (謝施洗) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:14:02 +0000

Yep exactly. I always tell that to my boss (and past bosses), one way of measuring the success of the Community is if it's running by itself. If we are still or if we keep on spoon-feeding them, they will depend on us, and I wouldn't call it a Community at all, just “community”

And yes, it is tough, so tough. But sometimes it is just amazing how some Communities that's built get users who are already empowered, while some communities have members who just want to sit, no matter what you do they will just sit. ^_^

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:02:30 +0000

Empowering is tough, but awesome if you can get there. Lazy web rules. Empowered users do stuff without you, which nicely marginalizes your role. Community should run itself, ideally making the community manager just another user.

By: JC John SESE Cuneta (謝施洗)

JC John SESE Cuneta (謝施洗) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:53:52 +0000

I summarize it as this: “BEE Communities” – Building, Engaging, Empowering Communities.

3-Step ^_^ Most companies only build. Some reaches the 2nd step: engage. But it ends there. Very few really empowers their communities. It's all about keeping them active and stuck to you.

I strongly agree: …some stuff like promotion, moderation and content, but that stuff’s secondary IMHO. After all, it’s moot if no one shows up to your community. I hope some great minds and gurus realizes that

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:35:03 +0000

We're hoping this will be a area where people will build OpenSocial apps, e.g. Eddie could build one to tie his community to Mix and vice versa, since Ning supports OS too.

By: davidhaimes

davidhaimes — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:20:14 +0000

John

I try to monitor comments on my blog, mix, a bunch of internal forums and OTN forums and twitter. OTN forums are more active, so I agree that's first choice.

It would be nice if they could be merged iwth mix, at least if I could post on an OTN forum as a mix user. Would be good to connect on mix with people I interact with on the forums, but I have no idea who user21993205 really is.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:06:45 +0000

I am chill. Intertubes feeling fail. Just found that ironic and funny to me.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:47:21 +0000

Chill dude, I was joking, I was a drop in that flood .. just messin' wi ya!
Not sure why only certain blogs seem to have flooded orana thou – you dont want mine :0)

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:16:12 +0000

Hello sarcasm, it's me Jake.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:18:13 +0000

You're on thin ice with the orana flood reference – I seem to remember a certain firestorm when a certain person started an '8 things' flood :0)

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:04:21 +0000

This is a valid point, and Mix was never meant to compete with OTN forums. Questions are Mix were never meant to be forums, i.e. they're not threaded, not organized by topic, not monitored by any official source.

The initial audience for Mix was Apps users, who don't really have forums. However, we saw high uptake from technical users and hence the overlap.

I would use OTN forums for asking/answering questions. Mix fills that gap for people who don't use forums.

As I mention in the post, OpenSocial will help alleviate this a bit because we'll be able to bridge the communities, including Eddie's, to some extent. Stay tuned for that.

By: John Flack

John Flack — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:35:57 +0000

I'm glad that you said to join an existing community if there is one. I have a problem with both Oracle Mix and Oracle Wiki – each has forums. That would be good, if not for the fact that OTN already had excellent and active forums.

Say I want to ask a question, and get the advice of the best experts I know. Where should I ask it? On Mix? On the Wiki? On OTN? On all three? Asking the same question in more than one place is considered rude, almost spam-like. Say I am willing to answer questions. Which forums should I monitor? Answering questions is not my primary job – I do it because I want to help, and because I consider it a fair trade for all the questions that I've had answered. I cannot afford the time to read ALL the forums.

I wish that you and Justin and whoever monitors the Wiki for Oracle would get together and create ONE set of forums, and share them.