Monthly Archive for August, 2010

Community Manager Tip: You Can’t Please Everyone

Published on August 31, 2010 in Community Manager Tips. 2 Comments Tags: , .

We always need to keep in mind that every choice and every decision that we make, no matter how sound, will please some people, but not everyone. “You can’t please everyone” is a saying that you hear all the time, but I remember being in high school when the impact of this statement really hit me. At that young age, I vowed to think about decisions in a different light with a component of any decision being to understand which people I cared about pleasing, and more importantly, which people could jump in a lake if they didn’t like my decision. This dynamic applies to everyday life and isn’t unique to community managers, but it does come up often when making decisions on behalf of the community.

A few tips:

  • Think about the impact of your decisions on the most important contributors in your community. Don’t let trolls and chronic whiners who will never contribute in a meaningful way dictate solutions.
  • When a few people want a change, make sure that the change would benefit the community as a whole. Don’t let a vocal minority push a decision that isn’t in the best interest of the whole community.
  • Look past your preferences to embrace solutions that benefit the community, even if they aren’t your personal favorites. Do the right thing for the community, not the individual (even when that individual is you).

Additional Reading

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Zen Sutherland used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Blogging Elsewhere

Published on August 23, 2010 in elsewhere. Closed

GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily*

Linux.com

MeeGo.com*

On Video (OK, not really blogging, but I thought it was fun anyway)

*Disclaimers:

  • GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily: I am a paid blogger for the GigaOM network.
  • MeeGo: I am a full-time employee at Intel and contributing to MeeGo is part of my job.

Community Manager Tip: Meet People in Person

Published on August 18, 2010 in Community Manager Tips. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

For those of us who manage global online communities, meeting people in person isn’t always easy. However, it is important to find ways to meet people in real life whenever possible, and we should be careful not to underestimate the value of making these real world connections. Last week, I attended LinuxCon where I gave a presentation about the MeeGo Community and did more demos than I can count, but the real value of the conference was in the conversations that I had with community members.

Some thoughts on why this is so important:

  • You put a face to the name and start to build better relationships with people.
  • People will provide different feedback in person and will often talk more frankly about community issues that they would not be comfortable putting in writing in a public forum.
  • It’s fun! These are people that you have something in common with and you can have some really interesting conversations with people and make new friends in the process.
  • I return from conferences refreshed with new ideas that come from having conversations with people outside of the typical daily routine.

Additional Reading

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Aaron Hockley of Hockley Photography.

Want to see me talk about RSS Hacking at SXSW?

Published on August 17, 2010 in sxsw. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

If you want to see me speak at SXSW, you can comment and vote on my session before 11:59 CDT on Friday, August 27. Here’s how SXSW panel selection is weighted: 30% popular vote (you!), 30% program staff and 40% advisory board, so I’ll need some votes before they will accept my session! Here are the details about my proposed session so you can decide on whether to vote for it.

Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information

Information overload is less about having too much information and more about not having the right tools and techniques to filter and process information to find the pieces that are most relevant for you. This presentation will focus on showing you a variety of tips and techniques to get you started down the path of looking at RSS feeds in a completely different light. The default RSS feeds generated by your favorite blog or website are just a starting point waiting to be hacked and manipulated to serve your needs. Most people read RSS feeds, but few people take the time to go one step further to hack on those RSS feeds to find only the most interesting posts. I combine tools like Yahoo Pipes, BackTweets, PostRank and more with some simple API calls to be able to find what I need while automatically discarding the rest. You start with one or more RSS feeds and then feed those results into other services to gather more information that can be used to further filter or process the results. This process is easier than it sounds once you learn a few simple tools and techniques, and no “real” programming experience is required to get started. This session will show you some tips and tricks to get you started down the path of hacking your RSS feeds.

Blogging Elsewhere

Published on August 8, 2010 in elsewhere. Closed

Here is a summary of links to my posts appearing on other blogs over the past couple of weeks.

GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily*

MeeGo*

*Disclaimers:

  • GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily: I am a paid blogger for the GigaOM network.
  • MeeGo: I am a full-time employee at Intel and contributing to MeeGo is part of my job.

Community Manager Tip: Role Model Good Behavior

Published on August 3, 2010 in Community Manager Tips. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Last week’s community manager tip about how members notice everything is part of why community managers need to pay close attention to how we behave in our online communities. Members notice everything, and they watch the community manager and other leaders in the community to determine what types of behaviors are appropriate and expected in the community. Every community operates with slightly different norms and expectations, and we need to be careful to role model those behaviors that we want to see in our members.

Here are a few things to think about. Are you encouraging behaviors you want to see from others?

  • Do you try to be as helpful when people are asking questions as you expect from other community members?
  • Are you careful to remain calm and not fly off the handle when things get intense?
  • Do you use language that is consistent with what you expect others to use?
  • What techniques do you use to help redirect people to keep the discussions on topic?
  • How do you deal with difficult community members?

Additional Reading

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Amber Case used with permission.