Online Community Roundtable: 2/28 @ Forrester – a report back

We had a great group of social media and community strategists at the Online Community Roundtable at Forrester last night. A BIG thanks to Jeremiah Owyang and his colleagues at Forrester for hosting.

We had a range of organizations and perspectives represented, from non-profit, to startup to large commercial organizations. In attendance (cribbed from Jeremiah’s notes) were Intel, Webex, CyWorld, Charles and Helen Schwab Organization, Cadence, YouTube, Lithium, Leverage, LiveWorld, MotiveLab, Ringcube, Intuit, Symantec, VM Ware, Wyse, Babycenter, Tesla Motors, Joyent, SixApart, On24.

We start the evening with an hour of networking, which gives folks time to unwind and chat… and in this case de-stress from the horrible traffic. I generally start pestering folks to sign up for discussion lead slots about 30 minutes before the main session starts. We had six open slots last night, which led to 90 minutes of great discussion.

The sessions were:
1. Rich Reader: Netsquared Mashup Challenge
Rich gave an overview of the the N2Y3 Mashup Challenge. Form the Challenge FAQ it “is all about helping projects gain new insight into the data that applies to their mission-based activities. We believe that sharper insight leads to smarter decision-making about how best to spend limited resources and time.”
http://www.netsquared.org/mashup

2. Jenna Woodul and Mark Williams – LiveWorld- “Online Community Redevelopment”
Jenna and Mark walked us through a case study on reclaiming a community gone wild. The keys? Expressing and modeling the desired culture, refining the role of moderator, and, in some cases, giving the members who want to run wild a place to play that is away from the general community population.

3. Charlene Li – Forrester – “Future of Social Networks”
Charlene gave us a sneak peak at her Graphing Social Patterns presentation. I don’t think it would be fair to her to give a full brain dump of this before the conference, but one of the most interesting ideas she put forward was the coming shift from “activities happening on social networks” to “social networks happening on top of activities”

4. Ken Kaplan – Intel – “Storytelling”
Ken led a discussion on the importance of storytelling in marketing activities in general, but also the importance of allowing the community to participate in the narrative.

5. Angie Ryan – Cyworld – “Casual Gaming, Social Networks, 3D Space / VR”
Angie led a very interesting discussion on virtual worlds, and gave a comparison of Cyworld Korea with Cyworld US.

6. Chris Kenton – MotiveLab “Marketing Integration”
Chris gave an accelerated history of marketing session. The money quote? Today’s marketers are 2 generations removed from

Again, a big thanks to Jeremiah and the folks at Forrester for hosting. Want to get on the Roundtable invite list? Email me or join the Rountable Facebook group.