• The State of Online Community 2008

    I developed the first draft of this presentation for the Communities Exchange Summit. I plan on presenting to the member base of the Online Community Research Network in November, and then to hold a couple of public webinars in late November and early December. The content is based on Forum One’s research and consulting work…

  • Marketing & Online Communities: Final Agenda Set

    We are just over a week away from the Marketing & Online Communities conference, which will be held November 5th at the Tribeca Grand in New York City. The event promises to be an informative and interactive discussion of the intersection of marketing and online communities. We still have a few seats left, so if…

  • Online Community Summit 2008 – A Report Back

    Cross posted from the Online Community Report. The seventh annual Online Community Summit was held October 9-10 in Sonoma, CA, at Ramekins culinary school. The beautiful Sonoma setting was the perfect backdrop for two days of in depth discussion about engaging and growing online communities. Participants were senior practitioners and from a diverse set of…

  • Online Community Research: Community Culture

    The Online Community Research Network is kicking off our next research project to study how online community cultures form, what factors effect change, and how hosts maintain a desired culture. We have found that the best source of information about community best practice and strategy comes from the collective experience of real-world practitioners. If you…

  • Online Communities: Surviving and Thriving in a Downturn (Part 1)

    Note: this is cross posted from the Online Community Report Unfortunately, there has been a lot of very grim economic news of late. The purpose of this post isn’t to give an overview of the current situation, but to highlight possible implications of a slower economy on business, and by extension on online community budgets.…

  • Online Community Events for Fall & Winter 08

    We are just beginning the mad rush of the fall and winter conference season, and I wanted to highlight a few events that I am participating in. Online Community Roundtable: October 2 – San Jose, CA The Online Community Roundtable series is a free netowrking event that I have been hosting since 2005. The Roundtables…

  • Online Community Compensation 2008

    Cross-posted from the Online Community Report: The Online Community Compensation study was initiated in July of 2008 as part of our ongoing research efforts with the Online Community Research Network. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at online community compensation, factors that effect compensation, and the current environment of the…

  • SxSW09: What does a community manager do? THE PANEL! (please vote)

    I’ve been invited to be a panel at 2009 SXSW Interactive Festival entitled “What Does A Community Manager Do?”. Aside from being deliriously happy to have an excuse to go to SXSW, I am also stoked by the opportunity to be on a panel with really smart and experinced people talking about online communities. I’ll…

  • Online Community Governance: The Project Brief

    One of the biggest challenges for those leading the community efforts for large organizations (or really, orgs of most sizes) is ensuring that the hosted community efforts of the organization are appropriate, valuable (both to the org and to the member / customer) and sustainable. First, a little context. I worked at Autodesk for 6…

  • Online Community Research Network: Our Research Agenda

    Cross-posted from the Online Community Report: Over the last 3 years we’ve conducted research with over a 1000 organizations actively engaged with online communties, including Fortune 500 companies, cutting edge community-based startups and some of the world’s leading non-profit organizations. We are currently conducting 6 studies annually, and we typically release the research reports (for…