Announcing the Online Community Unconference 2013 – We’re Back!

File under: blog posts I never thought I would be writing – but excited that I am.

It’s been an interesting journey to get here (and I’m certain it will continue to be), but I’m very pleased to announce that we will hosting the Online Community Unconference in Mountain View, CA on May 21ist.

> You can register here. <

The Unconference planning team is rooted in the #OCTribe meetup and is made up of me, Kaliya Hamlin, Randy Farmer, Scott Moore, Susan Tenby, Gail Williams, Rachel Luxemburg and Maria Ogneva. Our plan is to closely follow the successful format of the Online Community Unconferences that ran from 2007 – 2010 in the Bay Area and New York that I produced when I was at Forum One – specifically:

• Personally inviting key professionals in the industry to ensure a knowledgeable and experienced group
• Adhering to the principles of Open Space Technology to ensure a quality event experience & maximum content – no filler / no talking head keynotes and no recycled presentations that you’ve seen from “noted experts” at other conferences. This is about real professionals having real conversations
• A great location in the Computer History Museum
• A commitment to document the proceedings  – see an example of the Book of Proceedings from the OCU 2009.
• A fun and collegial environment

I’ll have more details as we get closer to the date, but the key things for now are:

• Registration is open now with early bird rates @ $85
• We are currently looking for a modest amount of sponsorship (feel free to email me)
• Our hashtag is #OCU2013
• We hope you can join us on 5/21!

And lastly… its nice to be back

Supporting Community Manager Appreciation Day #CMAD

First established in January of 2010, Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD) is held on the 4th Monday of January to celebrate the role of Community Manager. The celebrations range from small acts of gratitude, like thanking a staff community manager with a note, to major events and meetups all over the world.

Jeremiah Owyang, the event’s creator, is tracking all of the activity on his blog here:
4th Annual Community Manager Appreciation Day: Jan 28, 2013

San Francisco Happy Hour on 1/28
I am helping organize a San Francisco happy hour on the evening of the 28th at District Wine Bar. The event is free, but you must register and RSVP here:
Community Manager Appreciation Happy Hour – San Francisco

Google Hangout from the folks at My Community Manager
Tim McDonald and the team at My Community Manager are hosting a hangout on Google + all day on the 28th – more info at:
My Community Manager G+ #CMAD Hangout 

Again, Jeremiah is doing a great job of tracking all of the activity across the globe via this blog post.

Find YOUR own “A” in CMAD
I originally chose to support #CMAD because I believe that most organizations are underinvesting in and not properly prioritizing the role online communities can play in their marketing, sales and support strategies. I see #CMAD as a way to raise the visibility of the role of Community Management in addition to a whole lot of gratitude for Community Managers being passed around. With that being said, I have a couple of suggestions for celebrating #CMAD:

• As a baseline, acknowledge the community managers on your staff with thanks and perhaps a small gift
• Thank a community manager in one of your passion or hobby communities
• Thank those you have learned from in the space – I threw a shout out to Amy Jo Kim, Howard Rheingold and Joe Cothrel… and I will continue to add to that list on the run up to the 28th
• Think about how we go beyond “appreciation” for the CM role next year – should it be Advancement? Acceleration? Let’s ave this discussion during the year!

As I look back on my 14 years in the space, I am encouraged by the progress in tools, practices, programs and professional network… but we still have a long way to go! I look forward to seeing Bay Area Community Managers at the Happy Hour on 1/28.

Announcing “Community Secret Sauce”: a Panel Discussion Feb 1st in SF

Join me next Wednesday, February 1st, in San Francisco for the “Community Secret Sauce” panel discussion. The event is part of the #OCTribe  meetup series that Susan Tenby hosts, and these events are always a fun and informative time.

Joining me will be Thor Muller from Get Satisfaction, Rachel Luxemburg from Adobe and Gail Ann Williams from Salon.com & The Well. We will each be sharing “Secret Sauce” examples for online community success. The first part of the discussion will be panel-based, then we will shift gears and solicit the best secret sauce ingredients from the participants in the session. Our goal is to walk away from the evening with a nice list of ingredients for Community Managers and Strategists to use in their day to day practice.

More details on the #OCTribe Meetup site: RSVP here (Registration Required).

Reflections on Community Manager Appreciation Day

Today was the third annual Community Manager’s Appreciation Day, or #CMAD. The intention of #CMAD is to raise awareness about the role of the Community Manager, and to recognize the hard working women and men who support this role for their organizations. Jeremiah Owyang originally proposed the idea for #CMAD, and has been very active in evangelizing and supporting it since launching 3 years ago.

I was had the privilege of joining Connie Bensen, a colleague on the Dell Community team, for a fantastic Google+ hangout today to talk about the evolving role of the Community Managers. the following folks participated and the video follows below:

+Bill Johnston, Director of Global Online Community, Dell;  <that’s me
+Jeremiah Owyang, Partner, Altimeter;
+Connie Bensen, Sr. Manager Community, Dell;
+Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger, Dell;
+Amy Muller, Chief Community Officer & Co-Founder, Get Satisfaction;
+Mark Harrison, Community Manager, Google Earth & SketchUp;
+Patrick O’Keefe, Author of Managing Online Forums / iFroggy Networks;
+Jim Storer, Principal/Founder of The Community Roundtable; and
+Vanessa DiMauro, CEO, Leader Networks.

Based on the G+ hangout, and subsequent conversations, I was encouraged by a number of things today:

• The global community of community managers is alive and well. I saw hundreds of CM’s participating in the #CMAD hashtag via twitter and on Google+, and had Community Managers from all over the world reach out today.
• The spirit of the day was generous and inclusive, with lots of shouts out to CMs all over the world.
• The day surfaced a lot of great questions that the industry is struggling with, including where and how the Community Manager role (and related team roles) should evolve, how community management changes by online touchpoint, and how to deal with burnout in a very high-touch and sometimes emotional role.

My key hopes for next year (#CMAD 2013):

•  That there is a more integrated approach to Community-building, as part of most organization’s social business efforts. Specifically, I hope that Community Management is seen as a role, as well as an intention (to form and nurture a network of relationships).
• That we (as a community) will have developed mature social team structures, with specific roles and resources, robust enough to support a range organization types.
• That we will see rich and diverse educational opportunities for Community Managers (and other social team members), coupled with mentoring opportunities.

As someone who has championed the value of Online Community building for most of my career (at least the last 12 years of it), I am very proud of where we are as an industry… but I also feel that we have much work ahead to fully realize the opportunities that online communities present to our respective organizations and stakeholders. I look forward to continuing the conversation with you all every day, including Community Managers Appreciate Day 2013.

Online Community Roundtable – now Online Community Tribe

Howdy Folks – you may have noticed a name change to the Online Community Roundtable group. What’s up with that?
The primary motivation was to give a home to all the great activity that has sprung up with community managers and strategists around the #octribe tag. The tag sprung out of a conversation that Randy Farmer, Gail Williams, Kaliya Hamlin Scott Moore and I had in the summer of 2009 about a way to connect the emergent community of community practitioners – we discussed many things, including a regular blog-based discussion. It is pretty amazing to me that the #OCTribe tag was the thing that got traction.
The second motivating factor is that good friends Rachel Happe and Jim Storer are trying to build a business around the “Community Roundtable“. They’ve gotten a great start, and I don’t want to confuse folks with similar labels.
Has the intention of the group changed? Not really – I would love OC Tribe to be an aggregator of community best practices, high value events and a place to post key resources and jobs. To that end, you will notice a growing list of folks being added as admins for the group. Admins are charing some sort of regular regional meetup for community pros.

So, that’s an overview of the name change in a nutshell. If you have any questions, please let me know!

Update: I found Gail Williams original post about the origin of #octribe:
Are we a Tribe?

 

Community Manager Appreciation Day: 1/24/11 – #CMAD

Monday, January 24th is the second annual Community Manager Appreciation Day.

Jeremiah Owyang kicked this off last year by suggesting we take a day every year to celebrate and acknowledge folks who work as community managers and related roles like community strategist, community support, customer outreach… basically, anyone who has the job of reaching out to customers online and building and growing relationships.

How can you participate? If you work with or employ a community manager, or if you are a member of an online community – let your community manager know that you appreciate what they do. Nothing elaborate – a note saying “thanks” will most certainly be appreciated. If you are a community manager, come celebrate! There are tons of local events happening on Monday – I’ve cribbed a partial list from Jeremiah’s blog (be sure to see his post for the most recent list):

Physical Events Around the World (from Jeremiah Owyang’s blog):

• Boston is hosting a physical event.
• New York is hosting a physical event
• SF/Silicon Valley is hosting a physical event
• Austin is going to host a physical event
• London is hosting a “wild” physical event
• Denver is hosting their event
• Toronto is hosting a physical event
• Jordan is hosting a physical event

I’ll be celebrating at the Austin event. If you are going to be there, please say hi!

Community Leadership Summit West 2011

I’m planning on participating in the Community Leadership Summit West on January 15th in Daly City, CA. The CLS West is an Unconference  that aims to connect online community practitioners in person to discuss, share and learn.

The Unconference is being organized y Van Ripper and will be facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin.

To register for the CLS West, please go here:
http://clswest2011.eventbrite.com/

ps: The topic, format and facilitators may look familiar to those who participated in Forum One unconferences – just wanted to underscore the fact that I am not helping organize this, only participaitng. With that said, i think it will be a very productive and fun event.

Next Online Community Roundtable: 12/16 at Yahoo!

The next Online Community Roundtable is Thursday, December 16th, at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, CA.

I’ve been hosting the Roundtables since July of 2005, gathering community and social media strategists to discuss real world problems, opportunities and techniques to create successful social strategies.

The format is conversational – the first hour is social, and the next 2 hours are a facilitated discussion about topics the group surfaces during the social hour.

If you work in the online community field and are in the neighborhood on the 16th, I encourage you to join us.

Please RSVP here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=170458606318864

Announcing Community Chat!

I’m pleased to announce that tomorrow, Wednesday October 13th, Thomas
Knoll (@thomasknoll) and I will be kicking off a weekly podcast:
Community Chat!
Every Wednesday at 12 Noon PT, Thomas and I, plus a special guest,
will talk about the building, managing and growing healthy online
communities.Details for tomorrow’s show:
Title: Episode 1 – Community Chat Kickoff!
Time: 10/13/2010 03:00 PM EDT
Episode Notes: The kickoff episode of Community Chat! Bill Johnston
and Thomas Knolls will be discussing the premise of the Community Chat
podcast with special guest Randy Farmer. Will also be getting a
preview of Blog World Expo from Check Hemann.

You can access the show (and archives) here – http://bit.ly/cmtychat

The tag for the podcast, and subsequent discussions is #cmtychat.

Next Online Community Roundtable: July 8th – Washington DC

Are you a community manager or social media strategist or are you in charge of online community & social media at your organization? Are you in the Washington DC Area?

If so, you might find the Online Community Roundtable of interest. This is a small networking group / event that meets regularly to discuss issues, opportunities and trends with online communities, and represents leading organizations (large and small). This will be our first meeting in the DC area, and I’m very excited to be “taking the show” to the east coast.

The format is an hour of networking, followed by two hours of presentation and discussion about online communities and social media. The Roundtable is free, but you need to RSVP.

Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Time: 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: Center for Global Development
Street: 1800 Massachusetts Ave NW
City/Town: Washington, DC

You must RSVP to attend:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128815474008#/event.php?eid=128815474008
Please note: even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you can still rsvp to the event.

If you have any questions, please email me .