Thanks for sharing this, very useful for defining the community and the role within it. I’ve just been made the community manager for our site, so I’m looking around for relevant expert material, just like this!

Richard

thanks for the great presentation.

Just one point of criticism: I really don’t like anything that promotes long working hours / ‘workaholic’ attitude – this is what gives employers the chance to exploit employees. Yes you can put in more hours than your colleagues, and yes it will lead to higher output but this is what we all hate about the rat race mentality. Fortunately plenty of companies out there promote a healthy work-life-balance e.g. short Friday’s, 4 day rotas etc.

In terms of community management, it’s better to have two well paid managers who work less but have time to live an active life outside the online space (and generally much more personable and agile as a consequence). Something employers and aspiring community managers should aim to achieve.

FM2030

Guy – I agree that internal community management is also important. I briefly covered that topic in this blog post.

Great slides (there were some very useful ones in the backup set as well). I know you mentioned ‘corporate/customer’ communities in your presentation, but do you cover ‘internal’ corporate communities? They can be very useful and powerful if run correctly. I ran such a community at Motorola (an internal clone of SourceForge.net), and it was successful at not only providing a place to collaborate, but as a means to ‘cross-pollinate’ ideas in a traditionally ’stuffy’ company.

The transformative power of community is usually thought of as outward facing, but I think good companies can and should also develop inward facing versions as well.

Hope your presentation went well, and I’d be interested to read a blog post with some of your impressions of the questions you received during Q & A. Thanks!