Forum One Communications - Latest Items

Online Community Ecosystems: Slides + Diagrams - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:58:02 GMT

I'm often asked about my online community ecosystem diagrams when I include them in a presentation, like the June 17th Online Community Health webinar. I've put together a little care package for those of you that would like to use or extend the diagrams and slides.

Below you will find links to a PowerPoint deck that includes several versions of the ecosystem diagrams, as well as an OmniGraffle diagram that can be modified to fit your circumstances.

The only thing I ask as that you: a. provide attribution to the source and b. let me know what modifications or extensions you make.

Ecosystems PowerPoint source file

Ecosystems OmniGraffle source file

Preview of Ecosystem slides:

View more documents from Online Community Research Network.

Social Media Analytics and Measurement Lead - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:15:00 GMT

Forum One at Privacy Camp 09 - Influence

nospam@example.com (Chris von Spiegelfeld) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:27:24 GMT

Securing Your Lawn
A neighbor in distress called me this past weekend trying to see if I had a key to our buildings tool shed so he could grab the lawnmower and cut the grass. Evidently he lost his. Although I had no key, I did have was a lock pick kit I acquired from Privacy Camp DC. Lock picking just happened to be one of a few sessions I attended that day and the speaker, Deviant Ollam (yes that is his real name), sold kits for anyone wanting to pursue lock picking as a hobby. Dashing off as if I were a Pink Panther gang member, I grabbed my tools and went to town on the lock. My hope was to evade detection, cut the grass, and leave everyone wondering who the grass cutting vigilante was.

Unfortunately after spending fifteen minutes playing with rakes and other lock picking essentials, I realized my skills as jewel thief were going nowhere. So I turned to plan B, which was acquiring bolt cutters and cutting the lock off.

While Deviants lock picking session was fun for everyone wanting to try their hand in thievery, it presented Privacy Camp attendees with a lesson in security that is invaluable for anyone working with agencies hosting sensitive data. Break-ins occur quite often, and some go undetected. Early detection of a breach enables organizations to quickly mitigate potential damage and take steps to ensure it doesnt happen again.

At the end of the day, my condo association was much better off knowing I had to hack off the lock. They knew there was a break in. They knew they needed to take new security measures. And they knew exactly who was responsible. Thus they would never have to become reliant on a lawn mowing crusader.

Privacy Camp 09
Though learning how to pick a lock was fun, Privacy Camp 09 had a lot more to offer. The underlying theme of the camp was trying to find balance in managing security, privacy and transparency with existing technologies and data. As private and public institutions implement processes that might affect one aspect, concerns are typically raised about how the other two are affected.

Ari Schwartz from Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) kicked off the day by saying a few words about ongoing trends. In his message he mentioned many public agencies are risk averse to employing new technologies due to missteps that have exposed sensitive information in the past. For example, the ramifications of the Social Security Administrations boondoggle in the nineties that made public peoples personal earnings benefits statement still affect how some organizations adopt online tools.

Following Ari, would-be topic facilitators stepped up to suggest a session they wanted to facilitate. Once the sessions were confirmed, an announcement went out and attendees flocked to a board to see the events of the day. Below are some of the sessions my workmate, Brian Verhoeven and I attended:

Digital Signage
If you have seen the movie Minority Report, then you may be familiar with some of the innovations in play that can use facial recognition software to match a persons profile and churn out a digital advertisement within seconds. And the good news, depending if you are a fan of this type of technological marvel, is that they are already in use and many people are none the wiser. What may seem like innocuous digital displays lined up in Times Square and in elevators across the county, are actually equipped with demographic profiling mechanisms that match advertisements to a persons age, gender and ethnicity.

Harley Geiger of CDT raised the question about private data collection in the public domain and unforeseen uses that could result. In particular, there is no legislation that prevents commercial entities from sharing/selling data to each other. Your profile could potentially be tied to your shopping habits, your passport (RFID) or surveys taken. While some people might love the extra attention, it has many privacy advocates concerned. Principally, there are no policies in place to notify users, and there are no guidelines to protect the data. People essentially are at the mercy of the companies that are stockpiling the data.

Good Locks and Good Privacy
So back to the subject of lock picking. When selecting this session, there was an assumption it would focus on online security and how hackers get around firewalls, steal your passwords, etc. Wrong.

Though Deviant Ollam is a skilled hacker, he is also a lock picker hobbyist. And it seemed that lock picking made for a better topic than hacking that day. Deviant, actually showed us the technique to pick physical locks. We were even able to practice on padlocks, desk drawer locks, and the type used in standard household doors.

His presentation would serve as an allegory of a cautionary tale that was oft repeated in Privacy Camp. In the physical word, most criminals take a smash and grab approach to stealing. This is actually a good thing. At least you have evidence that someone had broken in to your car, home, or office. Online, however, it is not always clear who is viewing your data.

Privacy vs. Transparency
In this session we discussed the difficulties involved with participating in online conversations. How much about yourself do you reveal? If you reveal too much, it may be used against you. If you do not reveal enough, as one participant has experienced, it may be difficult for people to know who you really are.

Some of the take-aways from this session

1.   Dont post anything online that you would not want your mom to read.
2.   You dont want to be a web celebrity because it is too easy for people to tear you apart
3.   The crimes are the same [the Internet] just decreases the transactional costs

Government Use of Social Media
After the Social Security Administration fiasco, one understands governments reluctance to dip their feet into the social media pool. But, the new administrations promotion of transparency in government and the effectiveness of these tools at communicating with the masses have agencies curious on their potential. Some agencies are looking toward using social media tools run by the private sector (e.g. Twitter and Facebook), while others are looking to build their own organically.

While Twitter and Facebook have better reach than home grown communities, they also have issues government needs to overcome. For starters, FOIA rules have no bearing on what is released on privately owned web sites. Thus government data could disappear.

Additionally, there are challenges in establishing a presence on privately owned sites. How will government attain the type of following Ashton Kutcher has on Twitter? Who is going to want to risk sharing college party pics with the Department of Homeland Security? How do government employees converse openly on these tools without getting their employer in trouble?

While there were many questions asked and few definitive answers, the Federal Web Managers Council is at work drafting guidelines to address many of these issues. Presumably a policy is coming in the near term.

End of the Day
Privacy Camp either left people paranoid or interested in breaking in to their buildings tool shed. I personally am curious to see how government engages in social media in the next two years. As mentioned above, there are some hurdles it will need to overcome, but government can no longer afford to bunker down.

Web Jobs at Pew Environment Group! - Influence

nospam@example.com (Chris Wolz) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:07:29 GMT

Pew Trusts has two new job openings for the web communications team at the Pew Environment Group.

"PEG" is ramping up its organization and its efforts - and so this should be an exciting time to work there! PEG focuses on addressing three major environmental problems- climate change, wilderness and biodiversity loss, and degradation of ocean environments and marine fisheries.

The positions are "Senior Web Associate" for online advocacy, and for communications:

http://jobs-pct.icims.com/jobs/1830/job
http://jobs-pct.icims.com/jobs/1833/job

Online Community Roundtable: July 8th - Washington DC - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:17:34 GMT

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 .

Online Community Unconference Book of Proceedings - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The book of proceedings from the Online Community Unconference on June 10, 2009.

Independence Day Sale! - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:45:00 GMT

AARP, RWJF, Unveil Improved Site to Combat Nursing Crisis - Forum One Communications

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Online Community Expert Interview: Patrick O'Keefe, Founder, iFroggy Network - Online Community ...

nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:32:14 GMT

Patrick O’Keefe is the founder of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He’s been managing online communities since 2000 and currently runs KarateForums.com, phpBBHacks.com, PhotoshopForums.com and other sites and blogs about community management at ManagingCommunities.com. He authored the book “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online forums, communities and social spaces.

Q1: You run a network of independent communities. How has the economy affected the business of running these communities? What lessons have you learned? Has the economy had an effect on participation?

The economy has affected most businesses in a negative way, and online communities are no exception. Generally speaking, since most revenue is generating through advertising and advertising has been hit hard, it has been difficult. But, you can only do what you can do, work hard and find a way. I don’t know if I’ve learned anything in particular: at the end of the day, when the economy is bad, most everyone is going to be worse off. You just have to experiment, try new things and see what works. I don’t think that the economy has had a determinable effect on participation. People will always have the desire to connect with likeminded individuals and to take a break, regardless of the economy.

Q2: What role do you see independent communities like the ones you run playing in 2-3 years, especially given large social networks like Facebook attempting to become a center of gravity for social activities online?

I think that they are just as valuable. A community offering something that people want has always been the key. If people want to have legitimate discussion of the martial arts, for example, where they know that disrespectful comments and spamming aren’t permitted, are they more likely to go to Facebook and join a group on the martial arts, or to end up at a moderated martial arts community, dedicated to that subject?

In my experience, people will prefer something that is dedicated to what they want and that’s regardless of where it is. Facebook’s offering is new in some ways, but the same, as what has existed, in others. There have been sites that could “streamline” online community for years and years and cover endless topics all at one site. But, it still comes down to the community and the management and that doesn’t have a lot to do with it being on Facebook or it being on a standalone forum.

Q3: You recently wrote about a very tragic issue: dealing with a suicide in your online community. Can you talk about what prompted you to write the post, and how the response has been?

It’s always been an important subject to me, because we’re talking about human life. Luckily, I have not been affected by this type of tragedy. But, I’ve always recognized the potential and have had an idea of how I would want to handle such a situation, for a long time. The Abraham K. Biggs’ and Megan Meier stories brought it back to the forefront and I thought it gave me an opportunity to address the topic. I have actually been thinking about it for months and researching it, in order to formulate a post that would help community administrators.

I think it’s somewhat of an elephant in the room in that it’s difficult, no one wants it to happen and we’d rather not talk about it. But, thinking about it and planning ahead can help to eliminate fear and give you the greatest chance to help someone. The response to the post has been great so far.

Q4: What advice would you give to a startup that wants to develop an online community strategy as part of their product offering and brand experience?

Spend time setting up the entire operation before you make anything public. From the organization of the site to the (really important) guidelines or participation policies, your community should be consistent with who you are and how you want to be seen. Don’t set it up as you go and don’t try to cater to everyone – stay true to what your operation is about. It’s important to get community right and getting community right means, eventually, people will shout that you are wrong. Be strong and be consistent.

Patrick O'Keefe
Owner, iFroggy Network - http://www.ifroggy.com
Author, "Managing Online Forums" - http://www.managingonlineforums.com

Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/iFroggy
Skype - patrick_okeefe

Online Community Unconference 2009 Wiki Open & Session Highlights - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:05:22 GMT

One of the most exciting things about the Unconference format is the fact that there are so many sessions running simultaneously. This can also be on of the most frustrating, as it is impossible to be everywhere at once. Thankfully, participants generally try to take thorought notes of their sessions to share back with the group.

We had over 50 sessions at the Online Community Unconference, and notes for most are captured on the Unconference wiki. The wiki is now open for public reading (editing and commenting are reserved for Unconference attendees).

The Online Community Unconference wiki can be found here:
http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2009

A few highlights from the session notes include:

Managing the Mob: What to do when things go wrong
Melissa Daniels of Yahoo! convened this session to discuss how to integrate your community into the organization's decision making process, even when the community mood is dark.

Social CRM : Mapping Social ID's, Behavioral Targeting & Common Profiles
A session about managing customer relationships across multiple domains, convened by Ajay Ramachandran of SourceN.

Using Community in Strategy Development
Nilofer Merchant of Rubicon Consulting convened this session to explore how companies can use communities as a strategic tool and integrate feedback and learning from communities into product development and company strategy.

Community Driven Product Design - Collecting Feedback from your Community
Siko Bouterse of hi5 convened this session to explore the best ways to build feedback systems.

B2B Communities - What works, Best Practices
Mike Rowland of Impact Interactions led a session sharing community management best practices based on his firm's experience over the last 10 years.

What is Community Leadership?
Scott Moore convened this session to explore the attributes of leadership in communities.

Social Network Analysis (in excel!)
Marc Smith of Telligent led a session on social network mapping and analysis, and offered a demo of NodeXL, a free, excel-based tool.

Mission Aligned Twittering
Jill Finlayson of Social Edge led a discussion on a holistic approach to Twittering: figure out how the whole organization can get value.

Are we a Community Too? Ways Community Practitioners Stay Connected. What's next?
Gail Williams of Salon Media Group and Scott Moore explore the concept of a community manager and strategists "tribe".

Please feel free to share the link to the wiki, or to link to the source session notes from your blogs / tweets.

Community Manager at Communispace - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:45:00 GMT

Data for Global Health, Part II - Influence

nospam@example.com (Joe Anderson) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:47:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago a group of Seattle global health data experts met at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute to continue a conversation we started earlier this year on global health data. This session we focused on issues of health data collection--represented by the form shown here, which is a brand-new data collection instrument from Kenya (brought to the group by PATH's David Lubinski). This form is emblematic of the profound challenges in gathering accurate, reliable, consistent data at the field level. A quick glance makes it clear that the not-entirely-standard definitions of the diseases listed, and the data collection process implied (often a matter of guesswork and intuition), may introduce some uncertainty into the reliability of the data that results. The conversation touched on various dimensions of the data-collection issue:

The challenge of cultural assumptions embedded in standard health surveys (what is "jogging", exactly? how do you evaluate the health significance of "one glass of rice wine per day" in China vs. Japan?). Betsy Rolland of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Asia Cohort Consortium, a group tasked with wrangling and consolidating data from half a dozen Asian countries, is wrestling with these issues every day in her work.

The impact of donor expectations on data collection. Health systems in developing world countries will, understandably enough, do whatever it takes to help donors determine the outcomes of their giving--but often doesn't translate into systematic, consistent data collection that best meets the needs of the entire system.

The issues are not limited to the developing world. Finland has an excellent health data system, but many developed-world countries struggle with health data too--even in Seattle, a leader in advanced medical research and practices, getting good data from the University of Washington Medical Center to the Department of Public Health, just a few blocks away, is a non-trivial task.

OK, these are hard problems to solve. But we talked about solutions as well:

Jason Parker of the Gates Foundation told us about techniques Google is using to overcome issues of accuracy by dramatically increasing the quantity of data being analyzed. (We agreed that getting representation from commercial organizations like Google and Amazon at our Global Health Data meetings could well provide useful insights into the problems we wrestle with.)

Sherrilynne Fuller of the UW's Center for Public Health Informatics observed that a typical attitude to these daunting data infrastructure problems is "let's deal with that tomorrow and do fun stuff now." To encourage investigation at the level of *system* rather than the isolated individual issues that get funders' attention, she proposes building a simplified conceptual model for health data that will help students, funders, and researchers--and the general public, too--gain greater insight into systemic data collection issues and solutions.

David Lubinski of PATH, fresh from a series of recent trips to Africa and bringing a wealth of insights (for example, if a local clinic has drugs, the word spreads like wildfire and people come; no drugs, no people), is working on an exciting new health data management project that takes a "less is more" approach: identify a few key significant data points (for example, asking a clinic "how many patients were admitted?", "what were they admitted for?", "who's paying for their treatment?") and develop an end-to-end system that manages those key points all the way from collection through regional, national, and international aggregation to analysis.

We ended this time in a similar place to our first meeting in February: here we are in Seattle, a relatively small, convivial town with a strong global health tradition, a desire to collaborate, and a ton of excellent coffee shops--shouldn't we keep working together to help bring some of these possibilities to fruition? We'll continue to explore that key question in a couple of months when we meet again.

Webcast of Online Community Health: Give Your Online Community a Check-up Now Available - ...

nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:13:34 GMT

The archive for the Online Communities Health: Give your Online Community a Check-Up Webcast is now available.

You may view an archive of the video / audio from the webcast here:
http://www.forumonenetworks.com/ochealth

On the webcast today, Bill Johnston was joined by Joe Cothrel of Lithium Technologies and Marty Collins of Microsoft. Topics discussed in the webcast included:

- How to define “health” in an online community
- How to measure online community health
- How to concepts of community health can be applied to distributed communities (on Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
- Three steps you can take today to improve the health of your community.

Ask questions and discuss the webcast on the Lithosphere at: http://bit.ly/ochealth

#ochealth

Pandora Update: Feedback & Fitt's Law - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:15:35 GMT

I stepped away from my computer and paused Pandora. When I returned, I noticed that they had updated the interface to include a large pause icon over the current track. This struck me for two reasons

1)It made it immediately apparent that the system was paused. In previous sessions, I had struggled with the play / pause toggle (largely due to delays in pumping sound into my headphones). However, I was also confused by the toggle itself. Was the grey triangle for play representing that it was "pressed" and therefore playing music? Or did the orange color indicate the state? In the new version, I have no questions, I clearly know when the system is paused.

2)The area to get the music playing again is MUCH larger than the small play button. Now I can click anywhere on the album cover to resume my listening session.

Community Manager, Health and Wellness - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:45:00 GMT

The Revolution is Twitterfied - Influence

nospam@example.com (Michaela Hackner) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:09:03 GMT

Five years ago, CNN and 24-hour news channels and personal blogs captured US citizen dissent at the 2004 Presidential election results (or lack thereof). In 2008 TwitterVoteReport attempted to provide real-time election monitoring as US citizens posted voting experiences to their Twitter feeds. Concurrently the Obama campaign leveraged every social media tool in the book to engage US citizens, empower them with ways they could help, and ultimately contributed to winning the next presidency.

Right now the world is watching the next level of emergent social media and citizen engagement. Twitter and social media hacktivists are once again changing the landscape. In Iran. The power of these tools (and their ability to reach millions) is explicitly demonstrated in the defiant behavior of Iranians, dissatisfied with the recent election results. What's more fascinating to this social media geek, is that through cooperation from hackers and content generators, this social-media based revolution is happening from within a closed society.

As @zittrain expressed on their Twitterstream, Qualities that make Twitter seem inane & half-baked are what make it so powerful. The same goes for the rest of the tools in the Iranian citizen's arsenal. The very openness and flexibility of purpose is exactly what's powering this type of engagement.

Here's just a taste of the thousands of pages being leveraged in this fight:

Mousavi's Flickrstream:

Images on Boston's the Big Picture

YouTube:
A student group posting videos on the Iranian election and aftermath

Facebook:
Mousavi on Facebook (via rwanderman)
Protest Iran Election

Twitter:
#iranelection
#Ahmadinejad
#Mousavi
#Tehran
Mousavi's Twitterfeed
Katrin Verclas' Twitterfeed - actively amplifying the news out of Iran

Activist Guides:
#iranelection cyber war guide for beginners (via Huffington Post)
Where is their vote? - guide for first aid, treating injuries, and Mac and PC proxies
How to Setup a proxy for Iranian citizens

Internet Graphs:
Internet usage trends on Twitter show the consistency and growth of the Iran Election movement

If you have others to share, please share them in the comments of this post.

Vera Institute Unveils Improved Site in Support of Criminal Justice Research and Reform - Forum ...

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:45:00 GMT

Initial Report Back from the Online Community Unconference 2009 - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:30:41 GMT

We had an amazing day at the Online Community Unconference yesterday. Over 220 people attended the event and the agenda included 57 breakout sessions throughout the day on topics including:

Identifying and Engaging with Online Influencers
Social Psychology 101 for Community Managers
W.O.M. Branding - Mobilizing Advocates and Brand Citizenship
Online Community for Social Good/Change (Non Profits, Multiple Stakeholders)
Super Tools for Super Users - Next Generation UI and Technology Brainstorm

We will report more about the event in the next few days, but here are some tweets, blog posts and pictures of the event:

My take-away from the Online Community Unconference - Open Business
Online Community Unconference 2009- the groupery
Back From the Online Community Unconference - Tom Humbarger
Back from Online Communities Unconference 2009 - Stefano Maffulli
#ocu2009 Community Jobs Wanted - Janet Fouts
Reflecting on #IABC09 and #OCU2009 - AudioBoo (Bryan Person)

A few tweets during the Unconference:
@penguinasana - Being open to getting bad feedback, but allowing that & listening, making change as a result builds loyalty #ocu2009

@suzboop - Incentives are bad, instead reward -give users a way 2 feel good about what they're already doing well.Don't pay them 2 participate #ocu2009

@DebbieDembecki - feature development without plan for measuring use of the feature is counter productive to measuring engagement #ocu2009

Twitter Streams
#ocu2009
#octribe

Pictures from the Online Community Unconference 2009:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2009

#ocu2009
#octribe

ProjectSpaces adds reporting and security enhancements - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:00:00 GMT

We recently released some new additions to ProjectSpaces, including site statistics reporting, enhanced adminisrator control over security settings and usability enhancements.

Washingtonian: Forum One is a Great Place to Work - Forum One Communications

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Slides: Government 2.0 for Decision Makers - Forum One Communications

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT

"Book Discovery" and Policy Impact - Influence

nospam@example.com (Chris Wolz) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:48:11 GMT

Clive Thompson's article in the latest Wired on "The Future of Reading" is a compelling read. And I found especially interesting his mentioning of "what bibliophiles call book discovery."

He talks about the benefits of both putting book content online *and* also allowing people to engage/comment/mashup the text.

This would massively improve what bibliophiles call book discovery. You're far more likely to hear about a book if a friend has highlighted a couple brilliant sentences in a Facebook updateand if you hear about it, you're far more likely to buy it in print. Yes, in print: The few authors who have experimented with giving away digital copies (mostly in sci-fi) have found that they end up selling more print copies, because their books are discovered by more people.

This also applies well to what a lot of our clients who are focused on accomplishing - trying to have their policy analysis content reach the widest possible audiences and have the largest possible impact. In this context I'd say "idea discovery", or "policy discovery" is enhanced by having that content get picked up and commented on, cut-n-pasted into blog posts, snippets linked to from course curricula, woven into other people's work, etc.

How to do well with "ideas discovery"? I'd say the use of XML to make content as linkable and mashable as possible is great - but may be a bit out of reach just now.

So in the short run, I'd say put policy analysis and policy content...
-into web pages as in-line text (searchable and cut-n-paste-able)
-in logical sections/pieces so discrete (groups of) ideas can be linked to
-with feature for people to comment on the text
-with those sorta annoying little icons for "sharing" with Digg, StubbledUpon, etc.
-with social media tie-ins woven in, such as for FaceBook (looking for ideas on how best to do thi?)
-with author comments/answers about the analysis on a blog, with commenting enabled
-onto content sharing sites like Scribd , Slideshare, YouTube, Flickr
-with content in editable format (ie a wiki) to allow real user engagement...

Other ideas for enhancing idea discoverability?

Breaking with Business As Usual - An MDG Strategic Conference - Influence

nospam@example.com (Suzanne Rainey) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:30:06 GMT

Next week, I'm pleased to be participating on a panel as part of an intriguing event called "Breaking with Business As Usual - An MDG Strategic Conference". It is being led by a group I've recently learned about called MIDEGO - Global Partnerships Reaching Global Health Care Goals, based here in D.C.

I like the concept of the conference: Accelerating the Millennium Development Goals

It is an all-day event next Friday June 19, 2009 in Burke, VA, and registration is still open. Registration by Monday June 15th is encouraged, but you may register through the seek.

See details at http://midego.com/mdgstrategicevent

Conference organizers say:

"The MDG Strategic conference is intended for anyone interested in advancing global public health and environmental sustainability. The conference will feature keynote speakers including Jack Bryant, Sonia Sachs, Donna Barry and others, as well as panelists from both the private and public sector (World Bank, ABT Associates, UNC, GWU, John Snow International, Chemonics, Africare, PAHO and more).

Come be part of the movement to accelerate the Millennium Development Goals!"

I will be speaking on an Education panel about how online technologies can be used to strengthen programs and efforts to reach the MDGs. The day's events look very interesting. Hope to see some of you there!

The Unconference is tomorrow! - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:21:27 GMT

The Online Community Unconference is coming up tomorrow, June 10th, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

This is the fourth year for the west coast Unconference, and we expect it to be the best. We will have over 200 online community professionals come together tomorrow to share issues, experiences and knowledge related to growing successful and healthy online communities.

You can see pictures from the 2008 Unconference here:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2008&w=all&s=int

You can still register here (and save $50 off the door price): http://ocu2009-ocr62.eventbrite.com

A note to those looking for work
Again, we have reserved a number of $25 tickets for community pros that have recently been laid off. If you are interested in learning more, please let me know

All work and no play:
Don't forget about the tweetup in Palo Alto at Gordon Biersch from 7pm to 9pm tonight (6/9).
http://ocu2009tweetup.eventbrite.com/

Social Media Community Specialist - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Online Community Unconference: Updates & Discount for Those Out of Work - Online ...

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:31:39 GMT

It is hard to believe that we are just a week away from the Online Community Unconference in Mountain View. This is the 4th year that Forum One has hosted the Unconference, and this always proves to be the "gathering of the tribe" for online community pros. We have a great group of folks coming (see below), a great facilitator in Kaliya Hamlin, a great set of topics percolating, and we still have open seats (including a limited number of $25 tickets for those out of work).

In short, the news highlights are:

We have seats available. The price is $195 pre-event and $250 at the door
We have discounted seats for community pros that have been recently laid off for $25 (email me)
We will be holding a Tweetup in Palo Alto on 6/9, the night before the Unconference
We are still looking for a couple of sponsors for the Unconference (starting @ 1k) and 1 sponsor for tweetup on 6/9 ($500)

The price to value equation is really strong - only $195 for a full day of sessions, lunch and networking for what is likely to be 200+ online community and social media professionals. You can register at: http://ocu2009-ocr62.eventbrite.com

Who is coming?
AARP
alliant international university
Ant's Eye View
Athena East
Autodesk
Autodesk Education
BoonEx
Brevidia
Business.com
Care2.com
Caring.com
ChefsBest
Cisco Systems Inc.
Civic Ventures
Clear Capital
ClickMarkets & WiredSonoma
CollabNet, Inc.
Diddit
EAA
Egret Endeavors, Inc.
Engine 16
eTouch System corp
Executive Networks
FocusCatalyst
Funambol, Inc
FutureU
Get Satisfaction
Gigya, Inc.
Google, Inc.
Gravit8 Social Marketing
GreatSchools.org
hi5
Impact Interactions
Infield Parking
Informatica
Intel
Intuit
Keibi
KickApps
Legal Resource Centre of Alberta, Ltd.
LinkedIn
LiveOps
LiveWorld
LiveWorld, Inc.
Lockheed Martin @ NASA Ames Research Center
LSF Interactive
MarketMind Consulting
Microsoft
MLS/Terraverde
MontaVista Software
mp3Car
NetApp
netinfluence
Networked Insights
NewsGang Live
officialCOMMUNITY
OMNIFUSE INC.
Overtone Inc.
packard foundation
PARC
PayCycle
PGi
Platform Associates
Posit Science
Propel Media
Rackspace
Radian6 Technologies Inc.
REI
riveraphotography.smugmug.com
sacramento bee
Salon.com and The WELL
Scottrade
Seven Sacred Pools
Small Consulting Firm
SmarterTravel
Social Alliance Network
Social Edge
SocialRep
Stealthmode Partners
Strayer & Co., Inc.
Symantec
Tatu Digital Media
TechSoup
Telligent Systems
Tendo Communications
thcg
the groupery
The Maryam Webster Group
The Whetstone Edge, LLC
TIBCO Software
Tonka Media
Toolbox.com
TripIt
Twine.com
Walmart.com
West Corporation
Western Governors University
White Space Ventures
WOM-buzz
Yahoo! Inc.

Again - we still have seats available for the Unconference. If you would like a seat, register here.

A note to those looking for work
Again, we have reserved a number of $25 tickets for community pros that have recently been laid off. If you are interested in learning more, please let me know

A note to potential sponsors
We have sponsorship opportunities for the Unconference starting at $1000. If you would like to get your product or brand in front of 200+ online community and social media pros, many of whom make or significantly influence purchase decisions, please contact me - bjohnston@forumone.com .

LegiStalker.org: Real-Time Lawmaker Monitoring - Forum One Communications

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Thanks, Come Again: Audience-Centric User Experience - Forum One Communications

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:15:00 GMT

Return visitors are the best kind! In this Web Executive Seminar, we'll explore how organizations like yours keep their audiences engaged, excited and coming back for more!

Case Study: CoverTheUninsured.org - Forum One Communications

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Energized Online Community and Social Media Professionals Buzz About the Online Community ... ...

Forum One Networks — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:45:00 GMT

Conference attendees share their excitement and ideas for the fourth annual Online Community Unconference.

Enough Project - Forum One Communications

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:45:00 GMT

Brookings: Middle East Youth Initiative - Forum One Communications

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Cover the Uninsured - Forum One Communications

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:15:00 GMT

Carbon Monitoring for Action - Forum One Communications

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:15:00 GMT

Next America: Center for Strategic and International Studies - Forum One Communications

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Results are in -- Comparing Twitter Discussion Results with Blogs, Radio & Newspaper - ...

nospam@example.com (David Strelneck) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:01:37 GMT

The upcoming Twitter discussion I blogged about on June 1 (see below) took place last Wednesday, here's my top impressions:

First, you can see the full transcript here, posted by the event sponsor Ashoka. Its nice to have a transcript packaged, though you can also see it all by searching Twitter on hash tag #SocEntChat.

Foremost for me, the result of the two-hour live chat with about 30 people was two or three new insights to challenge and refine my previous thinking -- which is great. Putting a substantive comment out to a bunch of interested people and getting their immediate feedback is provocative and useful. The fact that every Twitter comment is limited to 140 characters makes everyone cut to the main point quickly, which is nice. And because the conversation is fast moving, you don't really have to respond to comments that are less engaging!
The discussion quickly became multi-channeled in substance, but single-channeled on Twitter -- so you had to follow pretty closely to who was responding to which previous comment. I find the transcript less interesting than the real-time discussion was, when I was intently watching the comments and responding to those that caught my interest. With more people participating this might have gotten really confusing, though the moderator helped by marching us through a sequential set of discussion questions.
It was difficult to respond quickly enough -- periodically, by the time I formulated my 140 character response, the conversation had moved on. But unlike in-person and many other events, you don't have to worry about interrupting anyone else since it is multiple conversations in parallel, you do get to keep on expressing your line of thinking even while others go off on different tracks!
Some interesting questions and comments have continued to come in to Twitter after the formal discussion, so the Twitter format offers a way for people to continue the conversation.
The Twitter discussion was substantive, and generated interest in our work amongst participants. I also gained about 10 more personal Twitter followers, so far, and others seem to be finding the discussion stream. I have not found any blog or other coverage of the this discussion.
Technology: tricky despite my preparation. Twitter's search service, which many people use to stream the discussion, hiccupped at the exact time of the event. It all came back online a few minutes later. Nobody seemed to mind, but we don't know if we lost participants in the process. This highlights the ongoing tension between using 3rd-party web services which are often innovative and full featured and free (or nearly so), but out of your control, versus proprietary or your own tools which you might control more but innovate less and pay a bunch more money for.

Feel free to add comments or contact me about the merits of Twitter-based discussions, or about our substantive discussion about environmental entrepreneurs.

Original Blog Entry (posted June 1st)

This Wednesday I'll be a guest presenter in a two-hour Twitter-based discussion of environmental issues and social entrepreneurship (Twitter @strelneck). This follows on three recent press events with newspapers, radio and bloggers on similar topics, so it will be interesting to compare the Twitter results and my experience from these different media channels. You can watch or participate in the Twitter discussion, Wednesday June 3, 4pm-6pm EST.

This might be a decent case study for anyone without much experience in these venues who is thinking of using Twitter to focus attention around a policy issue. Although I use Twitter personally, I have never participated in an organized Twitter-based discussion before, so find myself thinking through how to prepare. Top of my mind are these issues:

I am preparing three main talking points to anchor my comments, as I do with all press events.

I wonder if this Twitter discussion will get picked up or elaborated by bloggers or others.

I am spending more time than I anticipated tinkering to make sure I understand how the technology works, so I do not make a mistake in the middle of the discussions. Am learning a lot in the process.

I am concerned (from ignorance!) about how my steam of Tweets on Wednesday will impact my other Twitter followers who aren't part of the discussion, since they'll see my comments coming through but out of context.

I wonder who else will start following me on Twitter as a result each time I Tweet about a new topic, additional people start following my stream.

After Wednesday, I'll post results and my impressions here too. Wish me luck!

What We Learned at RedUX - DC '09 - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:59:38 GMT

On May 9th, IxDA-DC and DCIA held a conference RedUX of the 2009 IA Summit and Interaction conferences at CDIA in Georgetown. The event had 13 world-class speakers, 5 hours of presentations, over 100 attendees, and cost less than $500 to organize. You can watch video of all the presentations at the ux workshop

My big take aways from this event:

Your career is what you make it.
Find a way to explain why you are important in only 1 sentence without hesitation. Believe it. You can take charge of your career by sharing your message / knowledge. You are an expert. Share your knowledge. Grow your network. If you are not blogging, start. Read as much as you can and share your thoughts. Use twitter. Use your REAL name. Stay positive.

Your job is your business school. Learn from your organization: what does it do well? What does it do not so well? Collect samples: documentation, contracts, etc. What makes a bad client? What methodologies didn’t work? Why? What makes a bad boss? What makes a bad employee?

Strategy is very much dependent upon themes.
For a storyteller, theme is used as a compass. Themes can inform strategy. On the web, a theme is an overarching statement or phrase that encapsulates the value and focus of the experience that we intend to deliver. For the tech team, themes can define functional and content requirements. Examine every element in terms of the theme. The theme coordinates the elements of a story / direct message of your site.
In this way, themes help us design for pleasure, emotion and meaning.

Guiding principles for prototyping:
1. Know your audience and their goals
2. Don't plan too much. Prototype a lot.
3. Set expectations.
4. You CAN sketch.
5. It’s not the Mona Lisa.
6. If you can’t make it, fake it. (simulate AJAX with keynote, .ppt, even paper)
7. Prototype only what you need. Don’t do the whole entire system

Managing people is different than managing face-to-face
1.Enrich your communication skills
2.Be sensitive to what going on in other locales: Don’t schedule a meeting with team members in New Orleans on Mardi Gras
3.Email: Avoid sarcasm, terseness, and contractions
4.Telephone: Be clear and direct. Speak up. Sometimes you NEED dialogue. Don't be afraid to use the phone because you are used to email.

The UX Community is passionate.
The UX community is passionate about the work that they do. Thanks again to all who pitched in to make this happen; especially those that traveled great distances.

Thanks to Matt, Sophie, & Courtney for contributing their notes / feedback on this post.

New Site to Help Eliminate New Jersey's Nursing Shortage - Forum One Communications

Thu, 28 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Rebuilding Together in Alexandria - Influence

nospam@example.com (Andrew Cohen) — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:42:00 GMT

For the second year in a row, Forum One participated in Rebuilding Together Alexandria's National Rebuilding Day.

National Rebuilding Day is the annual signature event of Rebuilding Together, the leading national nonprofit working to preserve affordable home ownership by bringing volunteers and communities together to rehabilitate the homes of low-income homeowners.

There's more about our volunteer efforts (with photos) on our Field Notes blog.

IREX staffer Haratounian wrongly imprisoned for spying in Iran - Influence

nospam@example.com (Joe Pringle) — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:55:04 GMT

While much of the US media has focused on the recent release of Roxana Saberi after being falsely accused of spying in Iran, other cases similar remain unresolved. Silva Haratounian was working in Iran on behalf of the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), which focuses on international education, academic research, professional training and technical assistance. Silva was working on a project to improve child and maternal health in the country, when she was arrested by Iranian authorities and charged with participating in an effort to overthrow the Iranian government through a ''velvet revolution." On Jan. 19, 2009, she was sentenced to three years in jail. Haratounian's attorneys are now in the last phase of her appeal, as reported by the Huffington Post.

Haratounian's family has set up a web site and invited the public to sign an appeal to Irans government using your voice to help Silva regain her freedom.

Modeling Concepts with Dan Brown - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:39:08 GMT

I attended Eightshapes first Monthly Workshop Series. Dan Brown hosted the event and discussed concept models. The big take away from this session is that concept models illustrate relationships by connecting nouns with verbs. The nouns are concepts. The relationships are verbs. During the workshop it occurred to me that focusing on nouns and verbs could be a good listening technique when having conversations with clients.

Dan's full presentation is on Slideshare. I've included my notes from the session below.

What & Why

1) Highlights buried concepts
2) Shifts conversation
3) Draws connections / Conveys relationships
4) Contextualizes concepts
5) Establishes the problem space / Domain: (inputs, requirements)
6) Sets the direction of the design: describes the product in some way
7) Helps prioritize the needs of different groups
8 ) Allows team to engage in conversation about strategy, requirements, etc.
9) Provides a common vocabulary
10) Clarification of ideas, what did I get wrong? Presents ideas / direction for approval

How do concept models compare to other types of documentation?

Sitemaps: show hierarchy of site
Flows: Have clear start and end points. They show transformation
Concept Maps:Do not show hierarchy of the site, but illustrate the underlying strategy.
Mindmaps:is a subset of concept maps.

The Basics

Concepts models make explicit links between concepts (verbs) Note: these links can have directionality.The concepts are nouns. Ideally, a concept model will have few than two dozen concepts.

Variations of Concept Models

Value Proposition: Boil everything down to a central concept

Duo, Triad, or Quad: Focus on relationships. The relationships are more important than the nodes.

When to Use

1) Early in process
2) Think about big picture
3) Have an opportunity to iterate
4) When thinking about operational model

What to consider when planning your model?

Audience
Who is sitting across the table from you?
1) Person who likes to go through the nitty gritty? They are good at providing feedback
2) Person who likes to help?
3) Person who is good at think abstractly?

Beyond considering your audience for this document, consider how you will communicate the following and why you want to communication these to the client. Dan pointed out that sometimes the best audience for a concept model is himself and he doesn't show them to clients.

Core Message
1) You've got too much going on here
2) What concepts (nouns) are talking to each other?
3) This is what I think the site should be
4) There are meaningful relationships here.

Collaboration
1) Sharing for feedback
2) Requires some planning

Purpose
1) Describes the structure
2) Shows the big picture

So What?
Be prepared to speak to why you are having the client review this document. Be as specific as you can when communicating the results with them. It is often better to have the Concept Model in your back pocket and tell a story to the client while drawing the concept model, piece by piece, with them.

The role of concept models in various project stages

Concept Models in Discovery
1) Creating relationships between users and users needs
2) States the domain
3) Identifies what is missing
4) May have simple visual language
5) May have too many relationships included
6) May create a visual distinction between known and unknown

Concept Models in Strategy
1) Context setting: Where does it fit in the big picture?
2) May highlight one aspect of a product
3) Vision setting: Defines the end goal.
4) May skimp on detail
5) May choose relationships to demonstrate improvement area

Concept Models in Design
1) Conveys underlying structure by describing the content
2) Be careful about the number of concepts
3) What do the relationships say? Typically, they are navigation points
4) May make it look like page thumbnails

Highlights From Previous Online Community Unconferences - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:22:54 GMT

We are just over 2 weeks away from our Online Community Unconference, to be held 6/10 in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum.

One of the most valuable resources that comes out of our Unconference series is the set of session notes that are posted to the event wiki. We generally have between 40-60 sessions at each of the Unconferences, and many of the sessions are captured and posted. The wiki (and session notes) are open to the public shortly after we complete each Unconference.

In preparing for this year's Unconference, I've looked back over our previous event's wikis, and I (re)discovered the following gems that I thought I would share.

Key Sessions from Previous Online Community Unconferences:
Community Management 101: How to get started in this big wide world
An excellent overview of how to get started in community management.

Social Psychology 101 for Community Managers
Useful notes that apply social psychology theory to the context of online community.

Worst Case Scenerios - What to do when things go terribly wrong
Lessons learned from challenging community management situations.

Twitter for Business
A thorough look at use cases for Twitter use in and for the enterprise.

Managing + Motivating Community leaders
A discussion on how to energize and engage super users and moderators.

Unconference 2009
If you currently drive the community or social media strategy for your organization, and you are in (or will be in) the SF Bay Area on 6/10, I would encourage you to come check it out!

Current attendees include: Google, REI, Get Satisfaction, Intuit, Microsoft, TechSoup, Symantec, and many others.

Registration
To register at the pre-event rate of $195 ($245 on site) please go here:
http://ocu2009-ocrep526.eventbrite.com

OCU 2008 Wiki
The wiki is available if you would like to read the session notes:
http://www.socialtext.net/ocu08/

You can see pictures from the 2008 Unconference here:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2008&w=all&s=int

We also have several sponsor opportunities open for this Unconference. If you are looking for a cost-effective way to reach community and social media professionals, please contact me about our sponsorship options.

Government 2.0 and the web - what works, what doesn't, and why - Influence

nospam@example.com (Joe Pringle) — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:06:00 GMT

We are excited about the upcoming June 4 event, "Beyond the Hype: Government 2.0 for Decision Makers," where we will hear from a great lineup of speakers about innovative ways government agencies are using the web. Click here to register.

We'll learn how different federal agencies are blogging, holding online meetings, using social media, and implementing social networks to accomplish their missions. Below is the list of confirmed speakers, and a mystery guest might make a surprise appearance as well :>)

- Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist: Opening Remarks
- Darren Krape, State Department: Social Media for Public Diplomacy
- Daniel Luxenbery and Sanjay Koyani, FDA: Gov 2.0 and Peanut Product Recall
- Marcus Peacock, formerly EPA: The Art of Blogging for the Feds
- Stacey Young, USAID: Online Events for Microenterprise Collaboration

Presenters will discuss what they've achieved, how they did it, what they learned, and what they wish they had known beforehand. As usual, the presentations will be concise and targeted. Following the presenations, I'll moderate a lively group discussion about what works, what doesn't, and how to get started. It should be a great session.

Click here for more info and we look forward to seeing you there!

Craigslist Founder, Federal Innovators to Speak at Gov 2.0 Seminar - Forum One Communications

Wed, 20 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The Faces of International Development - Influence

nospam@example.com (Sarah Hassaine) — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:59:00 GMT

The Society for International Development has done it again! Earlier this month, I attended their tremendous annual conference with notable and unforgettable speakers that make you leave the glimmering chandeliers in DC's Omni Shoreham ballroom thinking to yourself, what more needs to be done in international development? How can the end goals be achieved?

The conference convened approximately 600 leaders and advocates for international development. Above the clattering of China plates covered with hot stuffed chicken and long grain rice were conversations rich in stories, pursuits, and initiatives around the world.

I alone sat between a Peace Corps Manager and an independent IT consultant from the UK. The three of us -- including me, a Product Manager at Forum One -- engaged in a debate on whether the internet pages we see here in the United States can be accessed anywhere else in the world. Do these same sites appear the same to those in Ghana? Are we, and if so, how are we configuring our websites in the States so that people anywhere around the globe can see them? But wait, are people in developing areas, and even rural areas, even getting access to the web and/or to mobile technology?

While technologies are growing and becoming more influential, I realized that their priority in international development is still unsettled. Is the rapid growth of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) more important than the basic social needs of health, education, etc.? Can we really debate one laptop per child and mobile access when kids may really just need food, clothes and school books?

I guess I consider myself a "back to the basics" girl when it comes to international aid, admiring initiatives taken by the mountain climber Greg Mortenson (author of Three Cups of Tea) who saw villages of people with no schools and started his own personal campaign to raise money and build one school at a time in the remote mountains of Pakistan, see www.ikat.org. I love hearing such inspiring stories and participating in any development initiative -- my heart lies in the pursuit of helping others, but how you define that help and the priorities of those in need, have to be well assessed and taken into consideration.

Empowerment is key.

What the international development community should focus on is turning an eye towards helping the people to help themselves. Maybe it is not about how many NGOs or how many projects are in one country, it is about the quality of those projects and their mission. The question should not be whether to use technology just because it is more popular and it is the way to operate here and now. The real question is what kind of services and knowledge do people need and how can we help them to help themselves. If ICT is part of the practical and feasible solution -- even better!

Closing speaker Michael Fairbanks (one of the unforgettable speakers of the event), raised some eyebrows but generated huge applause when he stressed introspection and the importance of stepping back and re-evaluating "who you want to be as an organization" and "really evaluating what worked (in terms of projects) and what did not, and why?"

In the West, we are lucky to be the givers, but with that comes responsibility. As Fairbanks said, "What does every problem look like if all you have is a checkbook?" It is a known fact that over half of international aid never makes it to the actual people in need (only 20 percent of aid ever reached Rwanda during its recent genocide).

My conversation over lunch was imperative and revealing and it makes me smile to realize that our web discussion was just a tiny pocket of all the hundreds of conversations in the ballroom. Next to me, two women were discussing women's rights, and another group was discussing water projects in Africa. Everyone had a mission and wanted to achieve their end goal. It renewed my confidence that less privileged people would indeed benefit.

Congratulations to SID for encouraging empowerment and asking organizations to step back and really focus on where the heart of their international development pursuit lies.

Online Community Expert Interview: Ryan Holmes, CEO/Founder, Invoke - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:16:00 GMT

This month's Online Community Expert Interview is with Ryan Holmes, CEO/Founder, Invoke - Creators of Memelabs, HootSuite, Claytorials, ow.ly. I met Ryan at this year's SxSWi, and I was struck by how well he and his company understood both the business value of twitter, as well as the functional need of the business user.

As founder of Invoke, Ryan’s experience combines diverse management skills with solid industry and technical knowledge. Since 2000, Invoke has grown to a talented 26-person powerhouse focused on new media disciplines such as online advertising, viral campaigns and social application development. As CEO, Ryan has been active in all aspects of Invoke operations, focusing on strategy, business and product development and technical and social networking trends.

Ryan gained valuable experience in entrepreneurial and startup ventures, business management, and marketing as owner of a restaurant chain, a tourist adventure business, and online store with 3m+/year revenues.

Q: What are some of the most effective techniques you've seen Hootsuite users employ for engaging on Twitter?

A: I think that the more interesting usage has been around scheduling of tweets and RSS feed integration. We recently had someone tell us that they scheduled interesting content every 10 minutes for one week and went from 100 to 5000 followers in that week. I think that's pretty amazing. The RSS feed integration is also powerful because it allows someone to easily add a bunch of content feeds around a specific interest niche. For example if your core area is technology, you can integrate a Digg, Engadget and TechCrunch feed into your Twitter account using Hootsuite.

Q: How do you think the Twitter ecosystem of content streams, API's and third party services evolve?

A: Twitters dependence on API is pretty amazing. As a service, 70%+ of its messaging volume is sent via its API, so they are ultimately very incentivized in keeping their developers and third party applications happy. I have likened Twitters business to owning a communication channel similar to IM, or email where there are multiple clients (ex: Outlook, Thunderbird, Yahoo! Mail in the case of email). The risk of a non-distributed communication channel is that if Twitter goes down, then none of the applications really function well.

I think a general trend for the third party apps will be to build out as much functionality as possible within Twitter, and then look towards incorporation of other platforms.

Q: With the recent influx of mega celebrities with huge followings (think @aplusk and @oprah), is social media starting to look more like broadcast?

A: Twitter is a very simple system and because of this simplicity, it can be a subtly different tool to everyone who uses it. It can be a microphone (customer service/sales), telephone (one-one conversation), or a megaphone (broadcast).

Q: What are your plans for Hootsuite? Can you talk a bit about the business model?

A: Our plans for Hootsuite are to continue building the stickiest application for power and corporate twitter users. Our current version has great success with group workflow (editors and administrators), scheduling, multiple accounts, and analytics. Our upcoming release will focus on simplicity/flexibility of use, brand and keyword monitoring, increased analytics and sharing of streams. I think these are massively important improvements and we expect to see some big gains in usage.

Our focus with Hootsuite has been to build community over generating revenue to date. We have been doing that very well. We have a few excellent and unique ways of monetizing as we move ahead, but we will always have some level of free functionality.

Q: Since we are talking about Twitter, what did you have for lunch today?

A: Well, I just got up after attending an amazing wedding last night. I'll tell you that I had a filet mignon there. It was completely overkill with two huge 1.5" thick medallions. I felt sad that I couldn't finish it. I twitpic'd it and it's on my twitter stream @invoker for anyone who's REALLY bored.

Director of Online Community & Content - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Widgetized Health Coverage Reform News - Influence

nospam@example.com (Andrew Cohen) — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:21:24 GMT

As the health reform debate heats up, here's a new way to stay on top of the most relevant news and opinion from major newspapers and other media outlets. Check out this web widget that you can embed on your own site or blog.

The news items are updated weekly by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Cover The Uninsured staff. Simply click on "Get Widget" and copy the code into your blog, Facebook profile, or other site.

Get the Cover the Uninsured | Let's Get America Covered widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox!

Can There Really Be A Million Dollar Email? - Influence

nospam@example.com (Suzanne Rainey) — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:57:30 GMT

Many of you may already know about the success of the U.N. Foundation's tremendous online fundraising campaign called 'Nothing But Nets', but do you know the secrets to their success? Luckily, they're not really secrets: Shannon Raybold, Internet Director at the United Nations Foundation, is more than happy to share the array of tactics that have helped them raise $25 million in donations from individual donors like you and me. She's got a new story in this month's issue of Global Health Magazine (sponsored by the Global Health Council) entitled 'The Million Dollar Email'. It's a good read and full of very practical advice.

Next Wednesday, I'm going to be speaking on a panel with Shannon and two other experts (Kae Dakin of Kae Dakin Consulting and Susan Blake of GRC Direct) on both online and offline fundraising strategies and tactics for global health organizations as part of the Global Health Council's annual Conference. We're planning for a lively discussion and solid audience participation, so I'll likely come away with some other useful tips to share.

Web Developer - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Mon, 18 May 2009 08:00:00 GMT

Online Community Platform & Services Satisfaction - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Mon, 18 May 2009 03:19:58 GMT

The Online Community Platform and Services Satisfaction research project was initiated in January of 2009 and published in March. The research project was conducted by the Online Community Research Network, and was created to provide insight about customer attitudes towards online community platform and service vendors, particularly around satisfaction. Further, we wanted to explore the unmet needs in the online community platform and services market.

We received approximately 208 completed surveys. Participants represent many sectors and markets include: large software companies, large community and social media destination sites, niche community sites, manufacturers, government and
non-profits.

Two items worth noting about the research protocol:

Platforms with less than 5 respondents were not reported on in depth, and
Online Community Vendors were not allowed to respond to the survey instrument, as the project was intended to study customer attitudes and issues.

Most Important Attributes for Purchase
From Question 9: Which of the following community platform vendor and system attributes are the most important to you when making a purchase decision about your community platform?

Most important vendor and system attributes ranked in descending order.

A majority (48%) of respondents consider scalability and feature set equally as important. Customization almost as important at 46%. It was interesting to note that pricing was less important that scalability, feature sets and the ability to customize. It was also interesting to see that respondents reported the that the technology of the platform was a lower priority attribute. SaaS functionality was least important at 5%.

Evaluatiton Criteria
We asked respondents to rate their primary community platform (and if applicable, supporting vednor) based on the following criteria:

Overall quality / reliability
Meets overall expectations
Vendor delivered on deadline
Post-purchase support by vendor
Ability to Customize
User experience / usability
Ability to scale to meet demand
Ongoing technical operations
Ease of community management
Metrics & reporting
Members like platform

High Level Results
Platforms with five or more respondents are featured with full details of the customer experience of implementing and using the platform. A high level summary of findings include:

Drupal (17 Respondents) – Scored high in the “Ability to Customize” category.
iCohere (7 Respondents) – Received solid ratings across the board.
Jive Clearspace (8 Respondents) – Received good ratings, with a lower marks in the reporting area.
Jive Forums (11 Respondents) – Reviews were mixed, especially around support. This is likely due to vendor no longer supporting or upgrading this product.
Joomla (6 Respondents) - Most Joomla attributes were rated fair or better
Leverage Software (5 Respondents) – Leverage scored well on delivery and scalability.
Lithium (6 Respondents) - Received solid ratings across the board, with no poor or unacceptable ratings.
Ning (5 Respondents) – Received solid ratings, with low marks regarding metrics.
Telligent (10 Respondents) – Received mostly solid ratings, with 2 respondents giving unacceptable marks regarding user affinity.
Web Crossing (6 Respondents) – Received positive feedback on many attributes, with deadlines, support and metrics being weak areas.

A sample of Quality and Reliability scores from key platforms and vendors includes:

Drupal: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

Jive Clearpsace: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

Leverage Software: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

Lithium: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

Community Server by Telligent: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

We also collected detailed data on custom platforms developed "in house".

Additional Findings in the Report
The full 68 page "Online Communities: Platform and Services Satisfaction Report" includes in depth information on:

Write in comments on vendors and community platforms
Products and services that community teams are using in conjunction with their community platform
Length of time communities have existed
Online community budgets, broken out by company size
Desired online community products and services that are currently unavailable
Advice on online community platform and vendor selection and management

Access to the Full Report
For members of the Online Community Research Network, the report is included as a benefit of your annual subscription. If you are interested in joining the OCRN, or learning more about the Network's activities, please go here.

The Online Community Platform and Services Satisfaction report is also available for purchase for $349.

What to Expect at the Online Community Unconference - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:22:27 GMT

We are just 4 weeks away from the Online Community Unconference in Mountain View. We still have open seats, and I can honestly say that this will likely be one of the best events about online community and social media this year. The price to value equation is hard to argue with as well - only $195 for a full day of sessions, lunch and networking for what is likely to b 300+ online community and social media professionals. You can register at: http://ocu2009-ocr515.eventbrite.com

Who is coming?
There is a really diverse mix of organizations coming, including: Autodesk, Cisco, CollabNet, Executive Networks, Get Satisfaction, Google, Intel, Intuit, LinkedIn, Microsoft, NetApp, Twine.com. Walmart.com and Yahoo! (to name just a few).

So, how does this work?
The premise of our Unconference series is that the best source of information on the topic of online communities is the community of practitioners building and managing online communities. The Unconference format provides a venue for folks to lead discussions about topics they are most passionate and knowledgeable about. At the end of the day, attendees walk away with new ideas, perspectives, and a long list of new professional connections.

One of the most amazing parts of the day at our Unconferences is the topic selection process. We are fortunate to have Kaliya Hamlin guiding us through the process again in Mountain View.

The topic selection process starts the Unconference, when any attendee who wishes can come forward, announce a topic, and claim one of the 50+ open slots on the grid.

Within 35-40 minutes the grid fills up with topics and the first session kicks off. It's really inspiring to hear all of the topics that are suggested, and to see so many great ideas come together on the grid.

If you would like to see an example of the great content that comes out of an Unconference, please check out the Online Community Unconference 08 wiki. I would encourage you to spend some time looking through the session notes, as there is a lot of great content.

Potential Sessions Include:
• Online Community Metrics
• Enterprise Communities: Opportunities and Responsibilities for organizations that want to host "their" part of the conversation
• Myths of the Online Community World - What we've learned in the past ten years
• The evolving role of Community Manager
• Ideas: Are they a first class citizen in your community? Why not?
• Lessons Learned: Pitfalls and Best Practices in Community-Building
• For Beginners: Laying a Solid Foundation for the Best Community
• Security: Best Practices for Community Moderation
• What to look for when hiring community staff
• Leveraging the "Wisdom of the Crowd" to Energize Your Community
• The Role of Online Facilitators and Champions in Community-Building
• The Importance of Building Collaborative Ecosystems for Community-Building
• Marketing your online community
• Best Practices for Inviting the "Right" Type of People Into the Community
• Building Community in a Support (Q&A) Forum
• What Defines Success in YOUR Community?
• Communities of Collaborative Development
• Engaging community members - how do you get people to participate and not just lurk
• Searching for a white-label community platform vendor
• How to sell community to marketers
• Ideas for making community engagement take off
• How to grow competitive communities
• Making a product roadmap for a young community: how do you pick what to do?
• How to grow leaders within a community
• How to deal with community trolls
• Balance between destination and distributed community
• Cross-organizations collaboration and tools to "grow together" vs compete
• What NOT to do in social media for social ventures: a question of focus & impact
• "Mission aligned Twittering" - balancing resource constraints and breaking silos
• The value of contests and voting versus issue fatigue and micro-spam

Again - we still have seats available for the Unconference. If you would like a seat, register here.

A note to potential sponsors
We have sponsorship opportunities for the Unconference starting at $1000. If you would like to get your product or brand in front of 300+ online community and social media pros, many of whom make or signigantly influence purchase decisions, please contact me - bjohnston@forumone.com .

A note to those looking for work
If you are an online community pro that has recently been laid off and you still want to attend the event, please let me know and we will do our best to work with you.

Holistic Community Strategy - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:53:51 GMT

Most organizations do not have a comprehensive community strategy in place. In most cases, community strategy is actually a set of tactics that individual departments are engaging in based on product or market segments. While this grass roots approach is where many organizations have to start, it is not a sustainable approach. The primary issue is one of valuing the activities, content and relationships of the community in the context of the host organization. Said another way, most organizations have no idea how to evaluate the cost of online community and social media activities, or how to asses the value of these activities because they haven't been internalized in to the organization's cultural, financial and operational value systems.

I've started to refer to a more comprehensive approach to community development as "Holistic Community Strategy". This concept builds on the techniques I outlined in the post "How to Develop a Community Strategy"

In the Holistic Community Strategy framework, I see the following as the three most important contexts:

1. Host Organization (a.k.a. "The Business")
In order to understand value, the host organization has to have a series of internal conversations at a senior level and across most (if not all departments) about:
• its intention in engaging the community;
• the potential value the organization hopes to create for itself and its customers;
• the risk associated with engaging;
• the overhead, including headcount, budgets and staff time;
• the level of readyness to participate, and the required culture change to be successful

2. Customers (a.k.a. "The Members")
Customers (potential / current members) should be engaged in the development of community features, programs and policy. I cover techniques to do this in the post "How to Develop a Community Strategy".

3. Community Ecosystem
As I mentioned before, most community strategies tend to focus on the hosted properties of the organization. The reality is that there is an ever expanding universe of online touchpoints that an organization's community members are participating in. An "Ecosystem audit" should be conducting as part of a strategy development (or strategy course correction) exercise in order to discover where the centers or activity are, and who the most vocal and active participants are.

I gave the following presentation at the Community 2.0 conference this week, that provides an initial sketch of the framework. I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions.

Holistic Community Strategy

View more presentations from Bill Johnston.

ARHP Releases Two New Educational Tools for Reproductive Health Students & ...

nospam@example.com (Suzanne Rainey) — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:16:05 GMT

I've just been introduced to what look like useful new online tools for reproductive health students, faculty, and professionals, produced by The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP). They are:

The Global Opportunities Tool (GO Tool):

"Discover unique educational and training experiences in reproductive health settings around the world."

Any healthcare student interested in broadening their reproductive health training may search the GO Tool for clinical and non-clinical opportunities using an interactive flash map. Users can share sites via e-mail, write an online review of their experience, and access supplementary travel and funding resources. Organizations can recruit students by listing program information online.

and

Curricula Organizer for Reproductive Health Education (CORE):

"Access reproductive health teaching materials or build your own dynamic curricula for learners."

CORE is an open access tool featuring peer-reviewed, evidence-based teaching materials on a variety of reproductive health topics. It is a collaborative effort of organizations working to improve the quality and quantity of reproductive health information included in health professions education. Users can search and download thousands of individual PowerPoint slides, complete presentation sets, case studies, and learning activities to develop comprehensive educational presentations.

User feedback welcome!

Online Content & Community Manager - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:30:00 GMT

Newspapers, Radio, Blogs: Nobody Quoted Me, But That's OK - Influence

nospam@example.com (David Strelneck) — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:08:19 GMT

I have recently participated as a speaker at several press events: a traditional press conference with newspaper reporters; a recorded over-the-telephone radio interview; and a call-in event for bloggers. While my role was to provide background on higher profile guests, it was educational this time around to be a speaker rather than an organizer.

The topic was similar in all cases -- specific cases of entrepreneurship and environmental action around the world. The results, and in particular the online results, have been interestingly distinct.

The traditional press conference resulted in three reporters contacting me afterwards, and inviting feedback on the stories they were writing. Two of these were subsequently published online -- and to my surprise, in more than one venue, such as this one from Voice of America. In addition, two bloggers showed up and took advantage of the in-person venue to record a short video interview which they published same-day.

The radio interviews were split up into four pieces, but we cannot access these since they will not be posted online until all have aired on the radio -- and we don't know when that will be since the radio station is using them as "filler" when needed.

The call-in blogging event, in which 15 pre-invited bloggers listened and emailed in questions for real-time answers, produced coverage in at least three blogs, such as Social Earth. Sending out a recording of this event, via MP3, was clearly a good idea. One blogger's cell phone battery died in the middle of the call, but she was later able to weave the rest of the story together by listening to the sound file. Another was attending the Global Philanthropy Forum that day but listened to the sound file later, and then blogged about it in Philanthropy 2173.

All the coverage is great to see, of course. In particular, the coverage from the traditional press conference helps me show broad-based interest in the work, while the blogger-event content most directly reached my priority audiences, because particular bloggers were invited in advance.

Community and Social Media Leaders Connect at the Online Community Unconference - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Forum One Networks’ annual Online Community Unconference is the biggest online community focused event that features a low-cost, high-value day of learning, collaborating on social media and community strategies and incredible networking opportunities.

Webcast of Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving now available - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:43:28 GMT

The archive for the Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving in the Economic Downturn Webinar is now available.

You can view an archive of the video / audio from the webcast here:
http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/webcasts/OCSVTV/index.htm

On the webcast today, I was joined by Thor Muller of Satisfaction, Chris Kenton of SocialRep and Scott Wilder of Intuit. Topics discussed in the webcast include:

- Buffalo culture as a new metaphor for your online business
- The customer relationship as a currently squandered opportunity
- Rethinking "ROI"
- The social history of marketing and media
- Setting social media policy and training staff - "Guidelines and guardrails"
- and much more.

Participant bios:

Thor Muller - CEO & Co-founder, Satisfaction
Thor Muller is CEO & Co-founder of Satisfaction, a startup delivering "people-powered customer service for absolutely everything."

He is also the co-founder and former Managing Director of Rubyred Labs, a San Francisco-based web apps firm. Since its founding in 2005, Rubyred has developed social software for a range of startups and leading portals.

Prior to Rubyred, Thor was a first generation Web entrepreneur, creating Web success stories for companies such as Yahoo, Dell, Bank of America, Intel, Virgin Records, Fujitsu, Discovery Channel, and Sony. In 1995, he started and ran one of the early Web development boutiques, Prophet Communications, later acquired by Frog Design where he served as VP Digital Media. He subsequently founded Trapezo, a venture-funded company that made Web software for syndicating content, acquired by Perfect Commerce in 2002.

Christopher Kenton - CEO & Founder, SocialRep
Christopher Kenton is founder and CEO of the enterprise social media SaaS startup SocialRep, and cofounder and consulting partner at MotiveLab a social media marketing agency. Chris was formerly Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO) Council, and its corporate parent, the international PR firm GlobalFluency, where he managed global business development, client consulting services and program development for business communities including the CMO Council, the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME).

With an extensive background in strategic marketing and software development, Chris specializes in market development, competitive positioning, marketing effectiveness and measurement, with a special emphasis on marketing technology and social media.

Scott K. Wilder, Group Manager, Intuit
Scott K. Wilder is currently the Group Manager of Intuit's QuickBooks Online Community and User-Collaboration Web site. Previously, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at KBtoys.com and eToys. He also has held numerous senior management positions at America Online, Apple Computer, Borders.com, and American Express. While working at America Online, Scott helped create the first Web-based online advertisement and commercial Web site. Wilder has a Master degrees from The Johns Hopkins University, The New York University Leonard Stern School of Business and Georgetown University's Leadership Coaching Program.

Bill Johnston, Chief Community Officer, Forum One Networks
Bill Johnston works as Forum One Network's Chief Community Officer. In this role, Bill drives the editorial vision for Forum One’s series of conferences related to online community, leads the Online Community Research Network, and leads the commercial community consulting practice.

Johnston has been building large-scale online communities since 1999. He came to Forum One from Autodesk, where he served as the Online Strategy Manager, with responsibilities including a portfolio of online communities and blogs. Previously he oversaw user experience tasks at TechRepublic, an IT professionals community (now part of Cnet). He also directs the Online Community Roundtable, an invitation-based professional networking series for online community professionals to share best practices and experiences.

Reflecting on the 2009 Non-Profit Technology Conference - Forum One: User Experience & ...

nospam@example.com (Sophie Campagne) — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:09:04 GMT

In late April, I participated in the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco. With over 1400 participants, the event sold out and saw an increase in attendance by 30% in comparison to last year. Impressive given the state of the economy.

I was invited to speak on a panel to share methods and tips for designing beautiful, usable sites. From moodboards, to audience segmentation, user research tactics, and A|B testing, three consultancies and Google shared their experiences on how to strike the right balance between organizational-centric and user-centric sites. While it can be costly and time consuming, multivariate testing created a lot of buzz, particularly as Google described testing 30 shades of blue on its site, which resulted in a $10M revenue stream. The challenge with most non-profits is that they do not see the type of traffic that major retailers see in a matter of hours, and thus must be prepared to test over a longer period of time. The suggested approach was 20% traffic with a 90% confidence interval. Meaning that 20% of your site visitors interacted with the same visual element every time except 10%.

I also reconnected with Kira Marchenese from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) who had spoken at Forum One’s Web Executive Seminar last year on usability testing. This time, the topic was branding, and how to brand your organization’s sub-campaigns. The screenshots you see below are of EDF’s current home page (large screenshot) and two different campaigns. You can immediately identify one campaign as belonging to EDF, because of the way it ties back to the parent organization’s brand elements. The challenge with the other campaign, while beautifully designed, was that people thought it was a separate organization, and did not associate it with EDF.

Our conference keynote, Clay Shirky, spoke of the social networks and media tools that have emerged, allowing masses to organize themselves outside of the traditional organizational boundaries. Should you choose to insert yourself into that community, Network for Good provided tips on communication and content strategy for social media, for organizations aiming to connect and build trust with their community.

Think before you write. The tools you use won’t improve the message.
Your audience is not an audience. Two way communications are the norm and are most effective at engaging.
Be humble, acknowledge others
Cater to emotions. Humans use emotions to make decisions, and then use logic to justify their choices.
Humor can be effective.
Simplicity is more digestable, keep the information overload to a minimum, otherwise you run the risk of losing your following.

For more nuggets from other presentations, see the following:

Andrew Cohen covers social marketing tips for getting traffic, attention, and subscribers online
Michaela Hackner provides highlights of her sessions, including great tips for better storytelling online
Jo Ryden on cloud computing

Community Manager - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:45:00 GMT

The Cloud: how is it relevant? - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Jo Ryden) — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:02:08 GMT

I attended the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. As in so many other places these days, both on and offline, a lot of the buzz and talk was centered around The Cloud and Cloud Computing. What is it? What can it do for us? Who uses it? It's easy to get into long discussions about these topics and there are many articles, blog posts and even books covering a wide array of aspects and philosophies of Cloud Computing. I'll try to give a very brief and cursory overview below in an attempt not to cause immediate information overload. If you would like to continue the discussion a bit more in-depth, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me at any time.

What is it?

There are still quite extensive (and sometimes heated...) debates going on regarding how to define The Cloud and services operating from The Cloud. I'm a visual person and I think this video is a good attempt at depicting The Cloud, what it is and where it came from.

A few highlights:

A collection of shared, internet accessible resources or infrastructure evolved from several "as a Service" infrastructure and software delivery models
Can be tapped into on an as-needed basis (resources can be scaled up or down with little to no effort)
Pay for the resources you use, and don't pay for what you don't use (utility type metered billing model)
"Open" philosophy (open meaning access from any device anywhere at a higher level and API access at a lower level)

Some people like to argue that with the evolution of The Cloud, the various "as a Service" concepts have become obsolete. I don't necessarily subscribe to that view. To use a familiar example: Google Apps (GA). GA is what has traditionally been categorized as Software as a Service (SaaS), and I think that is still the most accurate description of what it is. However, since GA runs off The Cloud you could make the argument that it should be called a Cloud [based] Service.

What can it do for us?

Besides the obvious and immediate cost savings associated with life in The Cloud, it also offers a level of flexibility in a number of areas that is previously unparalleled in the computing world:

No more long binding hardware/hosting contracts
Need a staging site for that one new application to show off for an afternoon? No problem, just click a button
Have a high profile campaign driving a lot of traffic to your web site? Deploy some extra resources for the duration of the campaign effect and terminate them at will as soon as your traffic returns to normal levels
Need some compelling arguments when presenting and/or defending your web operations budget? How about: no longer will you be spending on what you might need, you are now spending on what you in actuality need and use

So what's the catch? There really is no catch to speak of. The barrier of entry to The Cloud is very low, cost is exclusively operational as opposed to in previous years where the barrier of entry to high level computing resources has been associated with large upfront capital expenditures.

Who uses it?

Chances are you as an individual or maybe in some business capacity, are already taking advantage of what The Cloud has to offer in some way or another without even knowing about it, which is coincidentally one of the major characteristics of The Cloud; the abstraction of the underlying infrastructure, hardware or software platform. I mentioned Google Apps above, here are some other major players using The Cloud and/or providing access to it and services running from it:

Salesforce.com - provides cloud services
Amazon.com - provides cloud services and cloud infrastructure (which have evolved from an infrastructure that mainly came about due to its own need for an operating platform for its e-commerce business)
Razorfish.com - operates from The Cloud

The distinction between who "uses" the cloud and who provides access to cloud infrastructure and services can sometimes be a little fuzzy since providers are oftentimes middle men and end users as well, and vice versa.

Final words

At Forum One we offer our clients and partners a slice of, and a guided way into, The Cloud and all of the benefits discussed above through our partnership with Rackspace and its Cloud Division. We also have several SaaS offerings (or Cloud Service offerings if you will), our flagship being ProjectSpaces. The Cloud isn't just the future of computing, it is here now and ready for you to put to use!

Newsletter Sign Up: Design Guidelines - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:12:00 GMT

Many of our clients include e-newsletters as part of their content strategy. As such, the website typically requires some sort of newsletter registration form. Knowing that disseminating information through multiple channels is core to many of our clients content delivery strategies, I wanted to do a little research and determine what are some of the best ways to design for e-newsletter registration. Here are some guidelines for newsletter registration.

Demonstrate the Value
Most users that I’ve interviewed are wary of what information is delivered to their inboxes (note: we guard our mobile phones even more closely). People are busy and they want to make sure that if they sign up for a newsletter, it will provide them value; not just clutter their inbox.

The first step in demonstrating the value of your newsletter is to inform your users of exactly what they will receive by registering and how often they will receive those updates. By signing up for your newsletter, will they receive periodic updates with interesting topical news, how-to tips, links to resources? Or will they receive promotional emails that alert them of special offers and new products? Or are they receiving short messages that alert them of upcoming events, recent community activity, or organizational news.

Congressional Quarterly provides a link to view a sample newsletter adjacent to the Sign Up button. When the user clicks on the sample newsletter link they are able to view the full sample newsletter in another browser window.

Congressional Quarterly does a good job of letting users preview newsletters prior to registering to receive them.

Another way to demonstrate the value is by allowing users to visit the newsletter archives prior to registering. This allows users to view all of the newsletters online prior to registration. We take this approach with our newsletter registration

Inform Users of Publication Frequency
Another factor that users consider when registering for your e-newsletter is frequency of publication. They want to know if they can expect communication from you on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis. Jakob Nielsen Alertbox Email Newsletter is a good example of how to do this.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox sign up form informs users that the newsletter is published bi-weekly.

Make It Easy to Sign Up
Technically, the basic requirement for e-newsletter registration is that the user provides you an email address; however, organizations often see this as an opportunity to gather information about their target audiences and ask more questions than those that fulfill the user’s primary goal. As with every web form it is important for you to consider what information you actually require from your users.

The context of registration is an important aspect when considering what information you should collect from users during registration. Users typically sign up for users in one of two contexts: 1) when registering for access to your website, or 2) by using a newsletter registration form. During site registration, your organization can provide the user an opportunity to sign up for your e-newsletter along with registering for the site. When the user signs up through the newsletter registration form, the primary intent is to receive the newsletter and may not want to provide your organization any more information that email address. If you do decide to request additional information during newsletter registration, be sure to inform the user what you intend to do with that information. Your organization should also consider what you are going to do with the information once you collect it. If you do not have a clear need / plan for the information request, it doesn’t belong in the registration form.

Other Resources
http://julianpowers.net/2009/03/newsletter-previews/
http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2007/10/26/newsletter-subscription-on-iwantsandycom/
http://www.ids.ac.uk/go/ks/how-we-guide

Notes from Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Washington - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:32:06 GMT

Yesterday, I attended my first Barcamp, called Mobile Tech 4 Social Change. The event was organized by Katrin Verclas of MobileActive.org , co-hosted by Google and sponsored by Forum One and Mobile Commons.

Mobile for List Building

One of the sessions that I attended was about how the Obama Campaign used mobile technology to grow their membership lists. The speaker, Jeff Lee, Distributive Networks, shared some of the best practices that he learned from working on that mobile campaign. I've also tried to weave in some of the themes and advice from other presentations below as appropriate.

Place Call to Action Button Everywhere
Jeff, and others throughout the day, said that the best thing that you can do with your mobile campaign is to have a clear call to action. Something like “Text: [xXxX] for Hope.” Once you have the clear call to action, piggy-back it on all of your other communication channels: website, radio, television, direct mail, twitter, yard signs, posters, email, etc.

Once a user responds to your call of action, there is standard language that has to be included in the response that allows the user to opt-in, opt-out, etc. When the user confirms that they are opting in, use this as an opportunity to gather additional information about your user. For example, the Obama campaign asked users to text their zip code to [xXxX]. More on Mobile Marketing Association Guidelines

One of the interesting statistics that was shared is that once a user answered the Obama campaign’s call to action, there was only about a 3% opt-out rate. There was some discussion around the Obama Campaign and later about the Humane Society campaign that suggested that the opt-out rates were so low because users guard their mobile numbers and is only likely to give them out to organizations that they strongly support. In other words, your mobile campaign may only be reaching your hard-core activists.

Provide Incentive
Another theme for list building was to get users to opt-in to your mobile campaign you need to provide them with incentive to do so. In the case of the Obama Campaign, they offered the chance to get VIP seating, a chance to meet the candidate, a free bumper sticker. They consistently offered incentive to grow their list and to gather more information from existing list members.

Use Palor Tricks
During the Obama campaign, the number one reason that users opt-in to the list was to find out who the vice presidential candidate was going to before the news media. Basically, the Obama Campaign said, if you text Hope to [XxXx] we will send you a text message that will tell you who the vice presidential candidate will be, before we tell anyone else. This is a great example of incentive.

Another classic example of this was used during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. A speaker (I think it was the Gov. of Colorado) pulled out a mobile phone and he addresses the crowd that they had set up a competition between the states to see which state has more support for Presidential Candidate Obama. His call to action is Text your zip code to [XxXx] to show your support. Then the jumbo-trons in the stadium show a US map with stars exploding to demonstrate when someone from that state sends in a text message. The response is overwhelming. Turning texting into this type of competition was extremely helpful to the Obama campaign because it provided them the user’s phone number and zip code which allowed them to target their messaging to those users.

Consider the medium:
When sending text messages to your users, remember that they may be paying to receive those messages. That means that you should be judicious with the amount of messages that you send. You can also gauge your frequency of messaging based on what you know about the group. For example, the # of messages in Obama campaign went up significantly as they approached election day.

Empower Along the Way
Think about how you can empower you activists to support your cause. During the Obama campaign Paul Notzold visited 10 cities in 10 days and projected text messages he received about why people were voting for Obama on public buildings. This was a bit of a missed opportunity for the Obama campaign because the text messages went to the artists phone and not directly to the campaign. Perhaps, the campaign could have coordinated with the artist to expand the distribution list.

The work that Paul Notzold is doing with mobile technology is really interesting and it is definitely worth a trip to his site.

Share Your Success and Disasters
Another theme throughout the day was to share your successes and disasters. People want to learn from your mistakes. They want to embrace your successes and follow your lead. Present at barcamps and conferences and share knowledge on your blog.

Other Tid-bits:

Gathering Honest Feeback
When chatting between sessions about how to get honest feedback from surveys / interviews we came up with the following tactics to get honest feedback from participants:

Ask indirectly, “what would your ‘friend’ / ‘co-worker’ say about [topic x]
Follow up with: “Other participants provided these responses to the same question, rate how true you believe them to be.

Fundraising
The Humane society ran and A/B test of mobile subscribers. Half of the list received an email that asked them to donate. The other half received an email and text message asking them to donate. Subscribers that received the text message were 77% more likely to donate than those who did not receive the text message.

Random Stats
70% of people are still not on smartphones. Yes techies, not everyone owns a iPhone

Final Thoughts

While this was my first exposure to mobile technologies, it seems that the strategies and tactics of a good communication plan apply here as well: know your audience, design for engagement, target your message, provide them clear calls to action. While attending the sessions, I also consider how similar the advice that was provided here was to advice provided for designing for social media engagement.

Great event and I hope to learn more about mobile technology soon. Who knows maybe I will even get a smart phone soon.

An Update on the Online Community Research Network - Online Community Report

nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:24:00 GMT

We mention the Online Community Research Network on the Online Community Report blog quite often, but I haven't given a comprehensive update on what we are up to in several months. Please allow me to rectify that.

As some of you know, the Online Community Research Network (OCRN) is a professional network of some of the smartest online community and social media practitioners. Forum One's goal with the Network is to connect online community and social media pros to suss out best practices, solve problems and create a constant flow of new and inspiring ideas.

Who's In?
We have over 100 online community professionals from a healthy range of industries and organizations. A sample of participating organizations includes: Adobe, Autodesk, American Express, Business Week, Consumer Reports, CNN, Edmunds.com, Global Giving, Google, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Razoo, and Yahoo! Membership skews towards Senior Managers, Directors and VP-level staff.

Research Projects / Current Practice Reports
The main activity of the OCRN is to develop and participate in an ongoing research agenda about online community and social media practice. What that means, specifically, is that members:

Drive the Research Agenda - OCRN members vote quarterly on which research subjects to study.
Help Design Research Studies - OCRN members help design the research studies by reviewing and giving input on survey instruments. We are usually able to accommodate specific questions from members into the survey.
Participate in Research Studies - OCRN members also participate in the studies by completing the survey instrument, along with a select group from our extended network of 8,000+ community professionals. Members are also occasionally interviewed in-depth to supplement information gleaned from the survey process.

For a sampling of the Network's output, check out our 6 most recent research reports. Follow the links to download an executive summary from each report:

Member Network & Collaboration
OCRN members have access to ongoing collaboration opportunities through our monthly roundtable calls, quarterly, member-only webinars where recent research findings are presented and discussed, and a member's only "Request Advice" section (think LinkedIn Answers, but very focused).

Content
Members get access to a wealth of content, including an archive of all OCRN research reports, and a library of community and social media best practice content. We also send a monthly OCRN Update newsletter with key news from the Network, as well as social media industry highlights.

Why We (and our Members) Think This is Important
In the challenging economy, online community and social media pros are tasked with developing new tactics and strategies to show growth and value to their organizations, all while working with tighter budgets and fewer resources. The OCRN offers our members an opportunity to interact with other folks that are facing the same challenges in order to share ideas, collaborate and find solutions.

A Summary of the Benefits of the OCRN:

Monthly Roundtable calls - There are three to four 15 minute time slots for members to discuss projects, challenges or opportunities with their peers
Quarterly webinars on current OCRN research
Immediate access to all research reports on timely online community and social media topics (Currently 6 per year valued at $295 and up, each)
Invitation to submit research topic ideas - Our members choose the topics
Review and input on all survey instruments
Access to the Online Community Resources Archive
Members-only professional network

If you are charged with the online community strategy for your organization, please consider joining us. One-year memberships are now available at $495/seat and multi-seat pricing of $395/seat is available for 3 or more memberships purchased from one company. Please contact Heather Virga for special discounted pricing for more than 5 seats.

Go here to sign-up: http://ocrnmembership-ocrb.eventbrite.com

Social Media Community Specialist (Level II) - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:45:00 GMT

LegiStalker: Getting people engaged with Congress - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Matt Gibbs) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:27:09 GMT

There's a lot of people out there wanting to keep up with Congress.

Many people just want to know what their representatives are doing in Congress, how they're voting, and who they're interacting with. Unfortunately, that's pretty hard to find, especially from several different angles.

We at Forum One felt that exposing this information was a pretty good idea, so we ran with it. The final result is the site LegiStalker.

From the low level, it's a pretty simple concept. We pull in all the information we can find about every Congressperson, clean it up, and store it in an ever-growing database. So far, we've managed to harness YouTube, Twitter, latest voting data, and several hundred different news sources. With so many different news sources, there's a pretty good spectrum of differing perspectives -- ranging from CNN and the New York Times to Fox News.

This is a lot of good information, but a lot of information nonetheless. If users are presented with just the latest items retrieved, it would get pretty overwhelming for the user. With that in mind, we came up with a 5-tiered system for filtering the data to meet any user's needs.

1. U.S. Level - a high-level view with the latest feeds from any congress member.

2. State Level - When the user clicks on a state, it first displays all representatives in that state. All the tabs now display feeds relating only to congress members in that state.

3. Zip Code Level - When the user enters their zip code in the box, all their Congress representatives will first appear. This will include the two senators, as well as one or more representatives. All the tabs now display feeds relating only to those people listed.

4. Detail Level - At this level, the congressperson's contact information is displayed. In addition to News, YouTube, and Twitter, that person's most spoken Congress words are displayed in the new "Capitol Words" tab, and there is also a history of that person's latest votes. All the other tabs are filtered to that single person in question.

5. Watch List Level - When users are viewing a congressperson's detail page, they have the option to add that person to their "Watch List". When they do, that person is displayed in the "My Watch List" area at the top right corner of the site. An unlimited number of people can be added to someone's watch list. This allows users to filter content based only on representatives that they want to keep track of.

Adding this much fine-tuning was quite some work, but we feel that it's worth it. Visitors can now keep track of who they want to keep track of, thus making more informed decisions.

Although the Apps for America contest is over, we'll definitely keep adding more features to pry open the doors between congresspeople and their constituents.

Community Manager - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:15:00 GMT

Web developer - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:15:00 GMT

Where are the Drawing Tools in Visio - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:50:49 GMT

I was recently working on a site map and I wanted to show a secondary relationship between two pages. Up to this point, I had been creating fairly strict hierarchal representations and the connector tool worked well for my needs. In other tools that I am more familiar with, I'd reach for the pen tool and draw a dotted line connecting the two boxes.

Visio's connector tool

I assumed that Visio would have basic drawing functionality because it is a pretty good diagramming tool; however, I didn't notice it in the tool bars that I had opened. I was looking for either a fountain pen icon or pencil because that is how this functionality is represented in other applications. When I could not locate those icons, I turned to search. I tried "Draw" and "Pen" and "Drawing" but I didn't notice anything that seemed appropriate in the first 10-15 results. Hmmmm. Clearly, I am not thinking about this functionality the same way as the application wants me to.

A few days later, by accident, I clicked on the icon that looks like green circle overlayed on a blue square. Aha! The drawing toolbar popped up in my canvas and it contained the pencil tool and a freeform line tool! I am still getting used to the way that I have to draw in Visio; however, at least now I know where to find the tools.

Visio's Drawing Tools are represented by the Circle and Square

Visio's Drawing Toolbar

A few key take-aways that can be applied when designing web applications.

Icon development is definitely challenging; however, you can achieve better success if you consider how your users think about the functionality that you are attempting to represent. For example, when users think about the activity of drawing; are they more likely to think about shapes or the tools (pen, pencil, eraser) that allow them to draw? Activities that you may want to perform when considering how to represent functionality/idea with an icon include: brainstorming, word association, exploring other icons that represent the same thing, and, of course, testing with users.

If your application's help documentation is a searchable database, make sure that most relevant content to a user appears in the first 10 results. When I search for "Drawing" in Visio Help, the drawing toolbar did not appear in the first 25 results. Also keep in mind that if the user has turned to the help documentation, he is not necessarily using the vocabulary used in your system.

Disclaimer: if I search "Drawing Tools," the toolbar is the first result.
A second disclaimer: When preparing this post, I noticed that the 5 result when I search drawing is "Draw a line
Help > Creating diagrams". When I clicked on this it did have the information I needed; however, when I required the information to complete my task, I did not notice this result. Perhaps, the fact that the breadcrumbs indicated that it was about creating diagrams made me ignore this result. Nevertheless, the result was there but I did not notice it.

Online Director - Forum One Networks

Forum One Networks — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Interface Development Tools - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Corey Lafferty) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:19:00 GMT

At DrupalCon this year, the first presenter I saw asked that the entire audience please blog about their favorite tools, tips and tricks used during development. This post is my attempt to do just that, not just in an effort to avoid feelings of shame if I ever ran into that presenter again, but also to share a nifty trick or two with other interface engineers (aka front-end developers, aka "the design cutter-upper guy/gal"). The following is a list of those tools and sites that I use almost every day when implementing designs and tracking down browser compatibility bugs.

Drupal Zen Theme
drupal.org/project/zen
Zen is THE theme to start from when developing for Drupal. In addition to being clean, easy to modify and well-documented, it features lots of nifty things like roll-over admin menus on blocks and easily configured subthemes.

IEPngFix
www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/
The awesomeness of alpha transparency in PNGs is eclipsed only by the stupidity of IE6 not supporting them. Well, fix that with IEPngFix. While not making IE6 100% support all possible uses of transparency IEPngFix will allow you to accomplish the common ones.

How to completely enclose a floated element
www.cs.hmc.edu/~mbrubeck/clear-after/
I'm slowly becoming a convert to the non-markup way of fully enclosing floated containers, instead of using the trusty clear div tag. However, I don't know the necessary properties by heart to specify for the :after style and which to apply to IE only... so I have this page bookmarked to easily copy them from the bottom of the explanation.

Favicon generator
tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/
I've tried a lot of favicon generators, but this one has worked the best for me. The transparency on the files it outputs is always clean and it seems to do a good job of shrinking larger images down to that tiny 16x16 size.

Firebug
getfirebug.com
Firebug is so essential, I doubt anyone reading this doesn't already use it.. Without Firebug I think I would still be working on projects today that I finished 2 years ago. It allows you to change HTML and CSS on the fly and immediately see the effects and, most importantly, tells you exactly what styles are effecting a particular element, what styles have been overwritten for that element, and which stylesheets the styles can be found in. It does a lot of other nifty things I don't fully understand, but that's part of its charm.

Web Developer
chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
After a graphics program (likely from Adobe), your html editor (likely also from Adobe), and Firebug, The Web Developer's Toolbar for Firefox is likely the next most important tool. It can manipulate and give you information on just about every aspect of your page (e.g., turning on/off CSS & images, outlining elements, validating your code, display line guides, etc. etc.).

Tab Preview
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6132
While calling it 'essential' would be overstating it quite a bit, Tab Preview is remarkably useful. It shows a thumbnail view of the contents of your tabs on hover. Once you use it, you'll wonder how you surfed the internet tubes without it.

IETester
www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
This is a new find -- IETester. Until this week I was using MultipleIE to work around the limitations of only having one version of Internet Explorer installed on a single machine. IETester bypasses the need for all that complex tinkering and gives you a single browser window with multiple tabs for IE 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 (see screenshot). The program is still in alpha, but I've used it for testing without any problems thus far.

Browsercam
www.browsercam.com
If IETester won't satisfy your testing needs and you don't feel like having 10 systems setup at your desk, you can go with Browsercam. While rather expensive, a membership at this site grants you remote access to multiple machines covering just about every combination of OS and browser configuration you could need. Particularly useful for Mac-phobic people like me when testing Safari.

EightShapes to launch Unify documentation system - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:18:18 GMT

Twitter is buzzing this morning about the upcoming release of EightShapes' Unify. EightShapes describes Unify as a "suite of templates and libraries for creating better, more consistent design deliverables, faster." Be sure to check out the What You Get and Benefits & Challenges sections

I saw a demonstration of this system last summer and started experimenting with the principles behind the system but without the templates. Once I was able to get some libraries created, I was able to move from sketch to documentation MUCH more quickly. I am really excited about this upcoming release and I hope to have some time to experiment with it further.

ProjectSpaces on Twitter! - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

ProjectSpaces is now on Twitter to help our users stay up to date on any new releases, tips, and other interesting information we are working on.

UX Reading Lists - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:23:58 GMT

Recently, I've come across a number of User Experience reading lists like the one created by School of Visual Arts in NYC, and this one created by Jackson Fox. I find lists like these to be very useful because I find books that I have not read like Tog on Interface and Designing for People. In the spirit of sharing, I thought that I would recommend a few books that I have found to be incredibly useful:

Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design
by Gunther Kress (Author), Theo Van Leeuwen
Honestly, I have not seen this book discussed in UX circles; however, it provides a framework for reading images and visual compositions. The authors argue, that visual compositions, like verbal and oral forms of language can be deconstructed in to a visual grammar. As designers, if we understand the culturally based grammar of reading images, we can leverage the principles when design. It's a great read for anyone interested in visual communication.

Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning
by Dan Brown
I often find myself referencing this book as a create a piece of UX documentation that I haven't created in a while, or as I prepare for a client meeting. Dan provides excellent examples and ideas to consider prior to presenting your materials to clients. If you don't have it yet, it's a great resource.

Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web
by by Christina Wodtke (Author), Austin Govella (Author)
I haven't read the 2nd addition; however, my copy of the 1st addition is well used. This is a very practical book about information architecture and it uses language that people who are not IAs can understand. This is the book I find myself lending to people who want to find out more about IA.

What are you reading that I should check out?

Code Samples, Job Applications, and You - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Sandy Smith) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:16:15 GMT

According to a couple of sources I've checked out recently, code samples are rare in the software development interviewing process. One discussion was full of responses calling the idea ridiculous and suggesting candidates cancel interviews at places that request a code sample. I think they're incredibly wrong. I think code samples are a great idea, and I'm going to not only tell you why, but give you tips on amateur mistakes to avoid if you want to be taken seriously.

You can't tell that much about a person from a code sample

That's right, and that's wrong. It's right in that many commenters calling a company "stupid" for "relying" on code samples assume there's no other criteria to hiring. Code samples are actually one of several initial screening devices I use to cut out people who aren't going to work out. At every stage in the game, I'm looking for something to tell me--before committing a lot of money and diverting a lot of other people's time to bring you on board--whether you're likely to be the sort of programmer we're looking for. This doesn't mean you're a bad programmer if we don't hire you; it just means that who you are and where you are as a programmer doesn't match our culture and our needs, and likely our culture and opportunities won't be a great fit for you, either.

Of course, if I like a code sample, there are still interviews, references, and some discussion of real and example code. We still care very much as to whether you know our technology, can work well on a team, are comfortable working with policy nonprofits, and several other factors that go into a hiring decision.

Then again, I can tell a lot about a person from their code. Are they consistent? Do their variable names follow a pattern? Do they have a coding style and stick to it? Basically, do they write code to be read by others, or assume they'll always know what they meant and code for themselves in the moment? Do they follow contemporary idioms for the programming language the code sample is in? Is the code filled with convoluted ways of solving simple problems? Is there anything clever, and is it in service of the problem or just adding complexity to make the solution more interesting to create? Is the code from an open source project? Have they collaborated with others? Do they follow good habits, even on personal projects? Is it well laid out or look like a quick hack?

But you don't even know it's the person's own code!

Yeah, I do. I mean, not immediately on first glance, but there should be some correspondence between the level of sophistication in the code and the work history on the resume. Rarely have I gotten a sample so perfect I wonder if the programmer wrote it themselves. And even if they stole the code, whether they have the sense to steal a Renoir or a Kinkade also tells me something. I mean, if you can't even steal good code, I can safely pass on to the next application.

If, during an interview, I get an impression that's at odds with the code sample I've seen, I can always ask about it. It's tough to fake familiarity with a piece of code you grabbed off a server somewhere. If the code uses design patterns, I ask about them. If it doesn't, I ask why not. I ask about the tradeoffs in using a given pattern versus not using one. I'll usually ask these sorts of questions anyway, so I get a sense of where the programmer is in thinking about code as well as writing it.

But maybe my code is all proprietary or even classified!

The code you write at work is, but there's no reason you can't write out part of a common solution. We're also an open source shop, so you can always write a plugin or extend an open source app. If you need a few days to get a sample together, I'll understand, but hey, if you're going to apply for programming positions, you shouldn't be surprised if they want to see samples of your work. This is a problem long ago dealt with in other aspects of your profession: strategists will be asked to provide writing samples and designers will be asked for samples of their portfolio. Programming isn't a job you tend to hold onto for decades; you should have a sample ready. I have always had current samples since I became a programmer.

OK, so what should I provide?

Above all, something you're proud of, or at the very least feel is a good representation of where you are as a programmer. This does not mean the cleverest thing you've ever done (frequently the cleverest thing a programmer does is not the best thing a programmer does). It can be a whole program or just a part of one. It should be more than one screenful of code--I need enough to see patterns.

In a way, it's like the various cooking competitions that are all the rage now (go Carla!). These chefs have a body of work and produce pieces of dishes many times each lunch and dinner (or even breakfast). But the finale comes down to whether they produced a great meal that represents them as a creative artist. And, like food, programming is a mix of artistry and engineering.

So...what should I not provide?

Thanks for asking--because I rarely worry about stolen code when I see so much bad stuff given to me as representative of a programmer.

Don't indulge your bad habits

Anybody who gets out of a programming 101 class knows good programmers comment their code. There are arguments about how much or how little, but there's a reason almost every code-completing IDE also generates comment templates for you. We all slack off sometimes (admit it), but the time to do it is not when you're sending me code that's going to help me determine whether or not to bring you in for an interview.

Likewise, giving me code with obvious XSS or SQL injection vulnerabilities is probably not a good idea. Even if you're writing a toy app to demonstrate a few techniques, the fact that you code without basic filtering and validation is going to make me nervous that you'll do it when there's a project manager asking you if there's any way you can add a couple of more client requests by the deadline. Sure, it's the kind of thing non-technical people aren't going to notice or praise you for, but they will curse you when their site around sensible regulations for underwater basket weaving curricula is replaced with pr0n.

Don't be weird

I see some really odd constructions. If you think the rest of the universe is wrong about most things about programming in a given language and you're going to prove them wrong and stun me with your brilliance in a single code sample, you're basically doomed. I'm looking to see if you're aware of best practices going on in the wider world around you (do you read any programming blogs? articles on your language?). I'm also looking to see if you think about problems in a way that makes sense to most people. In our organization at least, everybody is going to work on someone else's code at some point. Wrapping a static HTML block inside a PHP include that contains a Javascript function to print out each line of HTML is not the kind of innovation that I'm looking for. Save it for the obfuscated C competition. Don't laugh; I've seen that.

Don't give me the same code sample you used six years ago

I'm looking to see what you're like now. If you haven't really progressed in six years, then, OK. I've still got the PHP 4 samples lying around. Heck, I've even got the Perl CGI flat-file database I used when I interviewed here. They're probably not my best chance to prove to you that I know what I'm doing now. Likewise, don't give me HTML 4 table-based layouts with nested function calls that assumes register_globals is on.

Remember, all of this--at least in my case--is not to prove you're the most brilliant programmer that ever walked the face of the earth. I'm not actually interested in hiring that person. I'm interested in a really good programmer who works well with others, can be put in front of someone non-technical, and who can easily pick up our idioms and have positive contributions of their own. So don't overthink the code sample, but don't put less thought and care into it than you do how you dress for the interview. Neither will get you the job by themselves, but both of them can either keep you from getting the job you want or make a good impression you can confirm throughout the interview process.

Weekly Reads (Week of March 6, 2009) - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (UxD Team) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:21:22 GMT

Should design shape behavior?

Interaction Design is about 3 things: Conversations, Engagements, and Embodiments

Dan Willis' awesome IxD09 notebook sketches / doodles

Designing in the Open

A very solid interactive design reading list

Illustration tutorials for vector icons.

ROI of Error messages

Design by Community vs. Design by Committee

Common Typography Mistakes

10 Common Usability Mistakes

Defender of the Favicon: a favicon that you can play.

How I Might Deal with IE6

Blimpie logo redesign lacks... pretty much everything.

Wanted: Website Layout System

Great Sketching Stencils for OmniGraffle

Thoughts on RFPs and Proposals

A list of Interface Design Resources

DrupalCon DC - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Matt Gibbs) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:10:46 GMT

Hey everyone, just a heads up that the whole Tech Team will be attending DrupalCon DC from March 4 - 7. "DrupalCon is the official Drupal unconference that attracts the most talented open source developers and innovative web shops in the world and brings them together to share knowledge, make decisions on the future of Drupal, and get to know each other in person". If you're also attending, feel free to stop by our booth if you want to chat or know more about us.

We hope to see you there!

Writing for the Web: A Few Tips - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Matt Humphrey) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:33:52 GMT

In most cases, a visitor is on your web site because of the content you have to offer, not because they heard that the navigation structure and page layout is amazing. Why, then, is there considerably less time spent (if any) thinking about content during web site design projects?

In the last virtual seminar hosted by User Interface Engineering (UIE), web usability and content expert Ginny Redish provided some useful tips on how to effectively write and structure your web content. In this post, I want to highlight and expand on some of the important points from the seminar.

Don't hog the conversation.
Respect people's time, especially if yours is a heavily task-based site. People are coming to your site in order to answer a question, or complete a task. Long overblown flash introductions and long paragraphs of rambling text are two examples of things web users generally don't care about. Leave them off your site unless there's a compelling reason to have them.

Hold the fluff until your visitors are ready for it.
Get directly to answering the question that is probably in the user's mind. There's a time and a place for marketing fluff and specific jargon - when you know you're speaking to a very specific audience. If you're not, the fluff and jargon can become confusing and distracting. According to Redish, "you market best after you have satisfied your site visitor's needs."

Write to your site visitors.
Think about you site's potential visitors, some possible scenarios, and how they want to see and read content on your site. Use the words your visitors might use. Site designers tend to overestimate the words their readers know.

Cut! Cut! Cut!
Look at your web content and get rid of half of it. It's probably fluff and jargon. That might be a stretch, but you know what I mean. Think of simpler and quicker ways to say what you need to say. People are much less patient readers on the web - they want concise, actionable content that will help them get to where they want to go.

Conclusion/Note
Writing for the web is just one of many areas of focus in the grand scheme of content strategy. A List Apart often puts out great articles relating to the various aspects of content strategy - so keep up with them: http://alistapart.com/topics/content/

Additionally, the folks at Brain Traffic seem to know a thing or two about content strategy.

How to make new users feel welcome - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:30:00 GMT

Here are a few tips on how to welcome new users effectively and orient them on how to use an online workspace and actively participate in the community. Sending a welcome message to new users within the first 24 hours of joining often makes a huge difference encouraging new community members to actively participate. A friendly, informal, and light-hearted tone helps people get comfortable and points out specific actions users can take.

Mash-ups + open goverment, troubling or triumphant? - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (Sophie Campagne) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:31:58 GMT

The New York times released a recent article about a site mashing-up google maps and Prop 8 donors. The result? Public access to names and addresses of people in a handful of states who have financially supported the ban of same-sex marriages in the state of California. The Google API makes the map design recognizable and easy to use.

According to California law, details on contributions of $100 or more are available for public access.

The down side has included harassing letters, phone calls and emails to some of the listed donors. One University of California professor explained that despite his support of civil unions for gay couples, he made a $100 contribution because he didn't want to change the traditional definition of marriage. Following his donation, a dozen of his colleagues and supervisors were copied on an email sent to him berating his involvement in supporting Prop 8.

From nytimes.com,

Eightmaps.com is the latest, most striking example of how information collected through disclosure laws intended to increase the transparency of the political process, magnified by the powerful lens of the Web, may be undermining the same democratic values that the regulations were to promote.

Where does one draw the line between open government and protecting democratic rights? A professor at Georgetown proposed that state sites disclosing donor information should ask people interested in downloading the data to provide identification through a credit card.

Equal transparency on both ends, is that where this is headed? What do you think of using the web to expose people's support of specific policy?

Weekly Reads (Week of February 6, 2009) - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

nospam@example.com (UxD Team) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:34:36 GMT

Caffeine Free Sprite CSS Optimization

a great way to think about the web as a series of frameworks.

Another color scheme generator

Anticipating usability changes included in Drupal 7

Compelling arguments for placement of H1 tag

Fantastic resources alert: 12 screen patterns

Big plans for ProjectSpaces in 2009 - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:45:00 GMT

We're planning some big things for ProjectSpaces in 2009. Here is a laundry list of what is currently on our roadmap. As always, we love to hear input and suggestions from ProjectSpaces customers so keep them coming!

What is a Content Type? - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Matt Gibbs) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:42:00 GMT

A "Content Type" is jargon for what is a simple programming concept. I've been asked this question many times over the years, and hopefully this post will cut through the obscurity once and for all.

Document. Event. News Article. Staff Member. These are all examples of Content Types.

Which input fields would you expect to see when adding a new Staff Member? You'd probably want "First Name", "Last Name", "Date of Birth", "Phone Number", "Active Projects", etc. For Events, you'd likely want "Event Title", "Start Date", "End Date", "Location", and "Contact Name". The fields serve to describe the item, and any field(s) can be added to or removed from a content type.

That's it. A content type is the term for a "bucket" of input fields. All items marked as "Events" share the same fields. If you add a new input field to the "Event" content type, then all current (and future) Event items will have that new field, too. Pretty simple, huh?

The real power of content types isn't the categorization alone. Since all this information is now nicely structured within these content types, it's a whole lot easier to form relationships among different items. Remember that "Contact Name" field in the "Event" content type? A developer could easily set that field to pull in all staff members (items belonging to the "Staff Member" content type) and allow the user to select which staff members to use.

Many modern CMS platforms (Drupal, Pods, SyntaxCMS) allow developers to easily add and configure new content types without touching a line of code.

Drupal module and theme naming collisions - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (William Hurley) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:33:58 GMT

As good as Drupal is, as many third-party enhancements there are, there usually comes a time when they just aren't quite enough. The answer to that is to create your own module that does exactly what you or your client needs. And since they are for a particular site the natural inclination is to name them after that site. Similarly when developing a theme for a site the natural inclination is to name the theme for the site. This, unfortunately, is a Very Bad Thing (TM). For why this is let's take a quick look at where the configuration for modules and themes ends up, the system table.

A quick export shows us the following:



CREATE TABLE `system` (

  `filename` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',

  `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',

  `type` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',

  `description` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',

  `status` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',

  `throttle` tinyint(4) NOT NULL default '0',

  `bootstrap` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',

  `schema_version` smallint(6) NOT NULL default '-1',

  `weight` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',

  PRIMARY KEY  (`filename`),

  KEY `weight` (`weight`)

)

The important rows are filename, which holds the file included for the module or the stylesheet displayed for the theme; name, which holds the name of the module or theme; type which is either module or theme; and description which holds the description of the module or the path to the templating engine for themes. While I could take a slight detour to talk about why this structure is a bad idea (hint, it involves using the same column to mean two different things -- bad, Drupal, bad), it only partly contributes to our problem.

When the theme and module have the same name and a user goes to the theme administrative section it updates all rows in the system table with the name of the theme to have the correct filename and description/templating engine. It, however, does not check for the type. So when it finds the module with the same name it overwrites it. So you end up with a row that has a type of module but has the filename of a CSS file, and when the system goes to include all modules that are active it grabs the CSS and you end up with it output at the very top of the page. Oh, and any functionality that your module provided no longer works.

So the moral of the story is don't name themes and modules the same.

Drupal and basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Oscar Merida) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:29:22 GMT

Making your content visible in the first few pages of search results is a key strategy for disseminating the content of your web site. There are some basic things any CMS should do to make SEO easy and almost effortless. It should bake in the foundation for good SEO by providing the right tools, encouraging good SEO habits. However, 80% of good search engine placement is a result of good, consistent web content management of useful, compelling content. The following are some of our own thoughts about it, and tools at your disposition.

The value of meta tags

A common myth is that having the right keyword and description meta tags matters the most, but this myth was debunked a long time ago. Meta tags have little weight for actual SEO, and AFAIK meta-keywords are completely ignored by major search engines since they were so easily gamed early. Meta description tags are a bit more useful, and if provided, are used by google as the description of your page.

Court Says Keyword Metatags Don't Matter--Standard Process v. Banks

"SEOs and SEMs have known for years that most search engines ignore or give minimal acknowledgement to keyword metatags. Lawyers, on the other hand, have been living in a parallel fantasy universe where keyword metatags single-handedly divert unwaveringly brand-loyal customers to piratical competitors. Even today, many courts still rely on the 1999 Brookfield case and its dreadful keyword metatags-as-a-false-billboard analogy as an accurate and definitive statement of how search engines operate today"

Best Practices

The following practices can help SEO. Some of these should be done automatically by your CMS or platform of choice.

Use a single domain for your site

Use a single domain name for your site. Seemingly less important things such as having a site accessible by way of multiple domains/hosts/URLs (forumone.com vs www.forumone.com e.g) lowers your Google ranking. Redirecting permanently to one domain, ie if you go to projectspaces.com, redirect the link to www.projectspaces.com with a "Permanent Redirect" code so that search engines don't index both urls as separate pages. The Drupal .htaccess file has a sample rewrite rule to customize for this. Visitors can still use either domain name to reach your site (with or without www. for example), but they, and more importantly Google and other search engines, will all end up viewing your site at a single domain. This prevents your search rank from being diffused between both domain names.

If you're using Apache and have mod_rewrite enabled, you can use the following RewriteRule

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.projectspaces.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)   http://projectspaces.com/$1   [R=permanent,L]

Pay attention to titles, title tags, urls

Use descriptive and engaging titles for pages/content as well as using heading tags to mark up titles and subtitles. The title tag should reflect the title of the content a user is viewing. The order of words in title tags matters, for example, instead of "Forum One Website : Events", "Events: Forum One". Words that appear earlier in the title get more weight, and also make your titles easier to scan in search results lisitings. By default, Drupal does a decent job of this since it reuses a node's title for its title tag. Drupal also places the node's title before the site's title in the title tag.

Words in URLs influence your search ranking. Compare the urls the URL node/93 to publication/effectiveness-of-lending-in-latin-america, the latter conveys what is available at that link more readily. If any match a user's search terms, google will highlight them when it shows your search results, for example search for "online community report". By default, Drupal does not alias URLs in this way, but the pathauto module should be installed and configured to create them. If you don't have access the pathauto, contributors can manually create aliases when adding content.

Update:I just noticed Gadgetopia enumerated the benefits of readable URLs recently, beyond SEO.

Make content easy to digest and discover

Another good practice is to use descriptive links to lead users on your site, and to make content easily digestible.

Use descriptive links to your content (ie, try to avoid click here). If you must instruct users to click on a link, make the instruction context specific, ie "Click to view more publications" or "Click to read about the Annual Conference". since that improves click thru rates.
Avoiding images for text (ie navigation, headers, titles, etc...), or at least provide descriptive alt tags. This is also a good accessibility practice.
Don't just use flash, pdf to deliver text, provide content as HTML. Search engines may not be able to index content if its inside flash or requires a plugin to view.

Use Google's Webmaster Tools

Use google's webmaster tools to diagnose how your site is indexed by the search engine. The tool gives a lot of diagnostic information for making improvements to a site's content. It will report problems including duplicate title tags, missing or short description tags, content delivery errors (page not found, server or network timed out) that prevented google from indexing your site. You can also see what external pages in Google's index link to your own pages, and more.

I also recommend reading the more exhaustive Google's SEO Starter Guide. The actual guide is a PDF available at that link, and yes, I find that a bit ironic.

Drupal: restrict a block to user's buddies in Panels - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Oscar Merida) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:39:03 GMT

The code below can be used to hide blocks displayed on a Panel page. I think we tried doing this with PHP block visibility but couldn't quite get it to work. Luckily, panels provides the hook_panels_panel_content_alter() for each block/content type you have in a container. The code below is an example of using the hook to display certain blocks only if the logged in user is a buddy of the user whose profile is displayed.

   1:<?php
   2:/**
   3: * Tests is the logged in user is a buddy of the specified uid
   4: * @param integer user id
   5: */
   6:function user_is_buddy($uid)
   7:{
   8:    static $is_buddy;
   9:    static $user_buddies;
  10:    global $user; // logged in user
  11:
  12:    if (!isset($is_buddy[$uid]) && $user)
  13:    {
  14:        if (!isset($user_buddies))
  15:        {
  16:            // hold the authenticated user's buddies and
  17:            // minimize queries
  18:            $user_buddies = array_keys(buddylist_get_buddies($user->uid, 'uid'));
  19:        }
  20:
  21:        // users are there own buddies
  22:        if ($uid == $user->uid)
  23:        {
  24:            $is_buddy[$uid] = true;
  25:        }
  26:        else if(user_access('administer buddylist'))
  27:        {
  28:            $is_buddy[$uid] = true;
  29:        }
  30:        else if (!empty($uid))
  31:        {
  32:            $is_buddy[$uid]= in_array($uid, $user_buddies);
  33:        }
  34:        else
  35:        {
  36:            $is_buddy[$uid] = false;
  37:        }
  38:    }
  39:
  40:    return $is_buddy[$uid];
  41:}
  42:
  43:// implementation of hook_panels_pane_content_alter
  44:// http://groups.drupal.org/node/7678
  45:function planet_connect_panels_pane_content_alter($content, $pane, $args, $context)
  46:{
  47:    // user profile customizations
  48:    if ('user' == arg(0) && $profile_uid = (int) arg(1))
  49:    {
  50:        // don't display profile about stuff to non buddies, EVER
  51:        // delta is diff for every user
  52:        $is_buddy = user_is_buddy($profile_uid);
  53:        if(!empty($content))
  54:        {
  55:            if ('About You' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  56:            {
  57:                $content->content = null;
  58:            }
  59:            // don't display activity stuff to non buddies, EVER
  60:            // delta is diff for every user
  61:            if ('Recent Updates' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  62:            {
  63:                $content->content = null;
  64:            }
  65:            // don't display activity stuff to non buddies, EVER
  66:            // delta is diff for every user
  67:            if ('My Groups' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  68:            {
  69:                $content->content = null;
  70:            }
  71:
  72:            // our list of restricted block deltas
  73:            $restricted_blocks = array(
  74:                'blogs_user_id',
  75:                'resources_user_id',
  76:                'projects_user_id',
  77:                'favorites_user_id',
  78:                'interests_user_id'
  79:            );
  80:
  81:            // don't display blogs to non-buddies
  82:            if (in_array($content->delta, $restricted_blocks) && false == $is_buddy)
  83:            {
  84:                $content->content = '';
  85:            }
  86:
  87:        }
  88:    }
  89:
  90:    return $content;
  91:}

Drupal: create a block to display a user's organic groups - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Oscar Merida) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:28:38 GMT

I was a bit surprised that, at least in D6, the organic groups module doesn't supply a block to show a user's group memberships. We had to display such a block on a client site recently and defined the box ourself. First, define a new block via hook_block():

   1:<?php
   2:function forumone_block($op = 'list', $delta = 0, $edit = array())
   3:{
   4:    switch ($op) {
   5:        case 'list':
   6:            $blocks[0]['info'] = t("OG: Show a profile's group membership.");
   7:
   8:            return $blocks;
   9:        break;
  10:
  11:        case 'view':
  12:            switch ($delta)
  13:            {
  14:                case 0:
  15:                    $block['subject'] = t('My Groups');
  16:                    $block['content'] = forumone_users_og();
  17:                break;
  18:            }
  19:            return $block;
  20:        break;
  21:    }
  22:}

The forumone_users_og function takes advantage of the fact that a user's group memberships is a property of the object returned by user_load(). This block assumes that the uid comes from the url of the current page.

   1:<?php
   2:function forumone_users_og()
   3:{
   4:    // should be the profile the current user is looking at
   5:    $uid = (int) arg(1);
   6:    if ($uid)
   7:    {
   8:        $usernode = user_load(array('uid' => $uid));
   9:
  10:        if (isset($usernode->og_groups))
  11:        {
  12:            foreach ($usernode->og_groups as $ogid => $og)
  13:            {
  14:                $items[$og->nid]['data'] = l($og['title'], 'node/' . $og['nid']);
  15:            }
  16:            return theme('item_list', $items);
  17:        }
  18:    }
  19:}
  20:

Where is my server? - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Jo Ryden) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:06:00 GMT

Data centers and the physical location of web sites tend to be a black hole for a lot of people. Have you ever wondered where the server your web site runs off is actually hosted and what it might look like? Forum One partners with Rackspace for our clients' hosting needs, which lets us leverage a world class hosting infrastructure. Rackspace has data centers in VA, TX, The UK and Hong Kong, all of which feature impressive physical security, highly sophisticated power and network configurations, and skilled teams of network technicians.

The other day I came across an article about a new data center, built and operated by one of Sweden's largest internet providers in an old bomb shelter 100 ft below the surface of Stockholm city. As impressive as the Rackspace data centers may be, I'm guessing they might turn a slight shade of green with envy when they see these luxury server (and network technician) accommodations.

This underground data center has greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. It looks like the secret HQ of a James Bond villain.

Did you know Internet Explorer 6 limits how many stylesheets are loaded? - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Oscar Merida) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:57:54 GMT

I ran into this particularly pesky limitation on a recent project and, as in all IE6 related matters, became intensely irritated and angry. It turns out, that for both IE6 and IE7, only the first 30 <style></style> and < link type="text/css" ... /> are parsed. On Drupal, you can easily reach this limit between the core style sheets, module contributed style sheets, and your own theme's stylesheet. There are proposed patches, and a lively debate about supporting IE6 at all in the drupal issues tracker IE: Stylesheets ignored after 30 link/style tags. Mind you, this is simply a limit on the number of tags - you can load many files within each tag.

You'll forgive me for not being in favor of making our code lower quality to cater to a dying browser that has already resulted in the waste of hundreds of thousands of hours. If you use @import, you cannot effectively Save-As a page because the imported stylesheets don't come with it. Frankly I've yet to hit the 30 stylesheet mark myself so I've not encountered this problem.

If, like me, you are forced to work in the real world and not some idyllic fantasy land where you get a completely standards compliant browser AND a pony, you can adapt my solution below. This solution is ideal if you do not want to, or cannot, patch or hack away at Drupal's core.

In your theme, instead of using drupal_get_styles(), we'll use our own function. Find where the styles markup is defined or echo'd to the browser and replace it with a call to a new function:

   1:$styles = my_group_css();

Before that function is called, you'll need to define it with the following php code:

   1:<?php
   2:// Max limit of stylesheets in IE bug: see http://drupal.org/node/228818
   3:function my_group_css()
   4:{
   5:    // despite the name, this returns an array of all stylesheets
   6:    $styles = drupal_add_css();
   7:    $output = '';
   8:    foreach ($styles as $media => $css)
   9:    {
  10:        $css = array_merge($css['module'], $css['theme']);
  11:        $groups = array_chunk(array_keys($css), 30, true);
  12:
  13:        foreach ($groups as $grp)
  14:        {
  15:            $output .= '<style type="text/css" media="' . $media . '">';
  16:            foreach ($grp as $url)
  17:            {
  18:                $output .= '@import "' . base_path() . $url . '";' . "\n";
  19:            }
  20:            $output .= '</style>';
  21:        }
  22:    }
  23:
  24:    return $output;
  25:}
  26:
  27:

Recovering deleted data from ReiserFS 3 - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Mike Shade) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:34:50 GMT

Everyone suffers from clouded judgement from time to time; thankfully, there are tools that exist that may help correct your fat-fingered mistakes. Suffice to say, I had to delve into this subject recently and I thought I would share my method of recovering some important files from a ReiserFS partition.

If you or a user have mistakenly deleted or moved files from a filesystem, all is not lost. Most distributions of Linux that support ReiserFS ship with a couple of tools that can be used to recreate the filesystem if the data is still intact on the device. I will be discussing reiserfsck and a couple of more generic disk tools in this post.

First and foremost, it is important to unmount the partition as soon as you have discovered the mistaken deletion! Stop using it. While data is not wiped from the drive in a deletion, unlink, or move operation, the area of the disk which the deleted file occupied is marked as available. If you continue working with the filesystem after having deleted the file, chances are very good that the freed space will be used, destroying the file you want to recover!

The second rule of data recovery is to always make a backup of the affected partition. If for some reason the filesystem check makes matters worse, you can revert to the previous state. This is important, but sometimes difficult if working with large disks or partitions. Trust me, you will want to make sure you have that backup. If reiserfsck is unable to correct the problem, you may want to try another approach later. Having a backup of the partition is paramount in this situation.

Let's begin with that disk image. The dd utility can be used to make a backup of a partition or a whole disk. Remember to specify block size when you make your copy, or you will be waiting a long time for it to complete. This example assumes your affected partition is /dev/sde1 and you have enough space in /data to hold the image. You must unmount the partition if you have not already before continuing.



# dd if=/dev/sde1 of=/data/sde1-backup.img bs=16M

Now that we have a bit-for-bit backup available of the damaged ReiserFS partition, we can begin working.

This method employs the reiserfsck utility to scan the entire partition and rebuild the filesystem tree from data that is encountered. This is a big, sweeping rewrite of the partition which will recover as many whole files as possible. In my particular case, this is what I wanted -- I was after a few complete directories that had been wrongfully deleted. Depending on how quickly you caught the deletion and began this process, you may or may not recover everything in its normal location. Files that are recovered but were unable to be renamed correctly will be placed in lost+found. They will be given numeric names which loosely correspond to their locations in the filesystem. Files that have the same first few numbers were likely in the same directory together.

This invocation of reiserfsck will perform the operation described above:



# reiserfsck --rebuild-tree -S /dev/sde1

You will be required to enter 'Yes' at this point to continue. Since we have made a backup of the partition using dd previously, there is no need to worry about what will happen here. Should something go wrong, we still have the original image of the filesystem to revert to if needed.

Depending on the size of your partition, this operation may take a long time. When it returns, reiserfsck will output a summary of what was done -- how many files, directories, links, etc were recovered will be listed.

Now, hold your breath, mount the partition, and take a look around. If you are lucky, your files will be accessible in their original locations. If not, you will need to dig through lost+found and try to identify the numerically named files that were recovered. The file utility can make this a bit simpler to quickly identify files without having to open them individually.

Be careful, and good luck!

ProjectSpaces Adds Usability Enhancements - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

After hearing many of your suggestions, we added many small usability enhancements to different sections of ProjectSpaces. For example, you can both now specify user rights at the time of inviting others and use the email notification feature to better serve your needs.

Rackspace acquires VPS provider - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Jo Ryden) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:38:26 GMT

Rackspace announced just this week that they have acquired VPS (Virtual Private Server) provider Slicehost.

Our new offerings are part of a strategy to bring cloud benefits to all businesses with simple, cost-effective products that everyone can use, backed by the best customer support that only Rackspace can deliver

The news follows the success of Amazon Web Services, also just announcing its service has left the beta phase and entered General Availability. While Amazon Web Services has been loosely targeting the developer market and has been considered a "geek(y)" service, the Rackspace offering has its aim set more clearly at a production level service for the business market, the offering being backed by the characteristic promise of fanatical support and more tailor-made packaging, encompassing backup solutions and other relevant services.

The nitty-gritty details of the Rackspace offering are yet to be unveiled, and while it looks to be exciting, the Rackspace equivalent of Amazon's S3 storage service will be relying on Mosso, the Rackspace "computing and storage cloud" division, which has had its fair share of start-up and growing pains. That might give some room for pause initially but I think in the long run this is a way for non-profits and other organizations, struggling with the financial challenges of building and maintaining a complex and solid tech infrastructure, to get in on some of the fun. Virtual Private Servers and cloud computing bring to the table significantly lower investment requirements and the flexibility to create and maintain infrastructure solutions which would normally incur a significant dent in any non-fortune 500 company's tech budget.

Controlling pane visibility in Drupal Panels2 - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Oscar Merida) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:30:45 GMT

We're working on a social networking site, and one requirement is that only a user's buddies can see certain profile information by default. The site uses buddylist and I'd installed Private nodes to allow users to designate who can see nodes they contribute. But for their profile, limiting visibility to a user's buddies was a final requirement. We spent a good bit of time this morning reading the Panels2 API to figure out if we could programatically control the visibility of panes within a mini-panel or panel page. By using Panels' hook_panels_pane_content_alter() hook, we were able to implement this easily.

We already had a module to customize the site, and we added the hook and a helper function to it. First we needed a way to test if the logged in user was the buddy of the profile being viewed.

   1:<?php
   2:/**
   3: * Tests is the logged in user is a buddy of the specified uid
   4: * @param integer user id
   5: */
   6:function user_is_buddy($uid)
   7:{
   8:    static $is_buddy;
   9:    static $user_buddies;
  10:    global $user; // logged in user
  11:
  12:
  13:    if (!isset($is_buddy[$uid]))
  14:    {
  15:        if (!isset($user_buddies))
  16:        {
  17:            $user_buddies = array_keys(buddylist_get_buddies($user->uid, 'uid'));
  18:        }
  19:
  20:        // users are their own buddies
  21:        if ($uid == $user->uid)
  22:        {
  23:            $is_buddy[$uid] = true;
  24:        }
  25:        else if (!empty($uid))
  26:        {
  27:            $is_buddy[$uid]= in_array($uid, $user_buddies);
  28:        }
  29:        else
  30:        {
  31:            $is_buddy[$uid] = false;
  32:        }
  33:    }
  34:
  35:    return $is_buddy[$uid];
  36:}
  37:
  38:

In our implementation of the alter content hook, we simply remove the content we do not want to display if our is_buddy test fails by setting it to null. If content is empty, then the pane does not display at all. For most panes, the delta attribute should be sufficient to identify it, but some panes, like node fields and node field groups, have different deltas per user, so we had to rely on the subject property instead.

   1:<?php
   2:// implementation of hook_panels_pane_content_alter
   3:// http://groups.drupal.org/node/7678
   4:function my_module_panels_pane_content_alter($content, $pane, $args, $context)
   5:{
   6:    // user profile customizations
   7:    if ('user' == arg(0) && $profile_uid = (int) arg(1))
   8:    {
   9:        // don't display profile about stuff to non buddies, EVER
  10:        // delta is diff for every user
  11:        $is_buddy = user_is_buddy($profile_uid);
  12:        if ('About You' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  13:        {
  14:            $content->content = null;
  15:        }
  16:
  17:        // don't display blog posts to non-buddies
  18:        if ('blogs_user_id'== $content->delta && false == $is_buddy)
  19:        {
  20:            $content->content = '';
  21:        }
  22:    }
  23:
  24:    return $content;
  25:}

Using Javascript to Fix What CSS Can't - Forum One Tech Blog

nospam@example.com (Matt Gibbs) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:24:00 GMT

As I hinted to in a previous post, the roles of developers and designers are becoming more and more indistinguishable. Modern layouts can involve more time spent on scripting (PHP, Javascript) than on actual design (HTML, CSS, Photoshop). Take Newsvine for example. It's filled with drag-n-drop panels, auto-refreshing of content, and persistent panel states (minimize/maximize/remove). Evidently, scripting can also cover some gray areas that CSS can't yet solve on its own.

Some of the more interesting uses of Javascript from the following blog post include:

1. enabling PNG transparency in IE6
2. loading images only when their position is visible to the browser (Lazy Loading)
3. aligning elements consistently throughout browsers
4. increasing the size of click targets
5. setting equal column heights for div elements (thus imitating a table-based layout)

Using Javascript to Fix 12 Common Browser Headaches

Host ProjectSpaces on your own servers - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

We are now offering a self-hosted version of ProjectSpaces that makes it easy and cost-effective to install on your own servers. This is a great option for organizations that need to keep their files and data inside their firewalls.

ProjectSpaces releases API - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:15:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce the availability of the ProjectSpaces API. The API allows ProjectSpaces customers to integrate the powerful, easy-to-use and quick to implement project management and extranet tools with existing systems and tools.

Top 10 tricks/tips for ProjectSpaces - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Here are 10 tips and tricks you may/may not have not known about for using ProjectSpaces.

ProjectSpaces adds Gantt charts and Cloning - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:30:00 GMT

In response to overwhelming demand, we released the ability to generate Gantt charts for workplans. We also added the ability to clone projects and easily create templates with standard folder structures, work plans, documents, etc.

Embed ProjectSpaces Login Fields on Your Public Web Site - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ...

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:30:00 GMT

Want your users to be able to login to ProjectSpaces directly from your home page? It's a great way to make it really easy for staff, partners, clients, and others to log in to their workspaces. Here's how...

Collaboration convergence - how collaborative workspaces are like mobile phones - Online ...

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:15:00 GMT

There's been a huge increase in the diversity of mobile devices on the market over the past couple of years. From the simplest bare bones phone (e.g. the jitterbug) to the most feature bloated windows mobile device, there is a market for diversity because every consumer has different priorities. The same goes for collaborative workspaces.

Break the email habit - encouraging adoption of online collaboration tools - Online ...

Tue, 13 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Here are some suggestions for getting your users to break the email habit and adopt an online collaboration tool to share files, manage tasks, and communicate better. It obviously starts with using a really intuitive and easy-to-use technology platform, but it is equally important to pay attention to the "people part" and actively encourage adoption and use.

ProjectSpaces is going multilingual: Spanish, French, Arabic, etc - Online Collaboration ...

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:00:00 GMT

We are working on adding multilingual functionality to ProjectSpaces. If you are serving non-English-speaking users, read on...

ProjectSpaces vs. SharePoint - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Here are some thoughts and musings about ProjectSpaces as a SharePoint Alternative.

Forum One Communications - Latest Items

Online Community Ecosystems: Slides + Diagrams - Online Community Report

Social Media Analytics and Measurement Lead - Forum One Networks

Forum One at Privacy Camp 09 - Influence

Web Jobs at Pew Environment Group! - Influence

Online Community Roundtable: July 8th - Washington DC - Online Community Report

Online Community Unconference Book of Proceedings - Forum One Networks

Independence Day Sale! - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ProjectSpaces

AARP, RWJF, Unveil Improved Site to Combat Nursing Crisis - Forum One Communications

Online Community Expert Interview: Patrick O'Keefe, Founder, iFroggy Network - Online Community ...

Online Community Unconference 2009 Wiki Open & Session Highlights - Online Community Report

Community Manager at Communispace - Forum One Networks

Data for Global Health, Part II - Influence

Webcast of Online Community Health: Give Your Online Community a Check-up Now Available - ...

Pandora Update: Feedback & Fitt's Law - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

Community Manager, Health and Wellness - Forum One Networks

The Revolution is Twitterfied - Influence

Vera Institute Unveils Improved Site in Support of Criminal Justice Research and Reform - Forum ...

Initial Report Back from the Online Community Unconference 2009 - Online Community Report

ProjectSpaces adds reporting and security enhancements - Online Collaboration Workspaces - ...

Washingtonian: Forum One is a Great Place to Work - Forum One Communications

Slides: Government 2.0 for Decision Makers - Forum One Communications

"Book Discovery" and Policy Impact - Influence

Breaking with Business As Usual - An MDG Strategic Conference - Influence

The Unconference is tomorrow! - Online Community Report

Social Media Community Specialist - Forum One Networks

Online Community Unconference: Updates & Discount for Those Out of Work - Online ...

LegiStalker.org: Real-Time Lawmaker Monitoring - Forum One Communications

Thanks, Come Again: Audience-Centric User Experience - Forum One Communications

Case Study: CoverTheUninsured.org - Forum One Communications

Energized Online Community and Social Media Professionals Buzz About the Online Community ... ...

Enough Project - Forum One Communications

Brookings: Middle East Youth Initiative - Forum One Communications

Cover the Uninsured - Forum One Communications

Carbon Monitoring for Action - Forum One Communications

Next America: Center for Strategic and International Studies - Forum One Communications

Results are in -- Comparing Twitter Discussion Results with Blogs, Radio & Newspaper - ...

What We Learned at RedUX - DC '09 - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

My big take aways from this event:

Recommended Reading May 2009 - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

New Site to Help Eliminate New Jersey's Nursing Shortage - Forum One Communications

Rebuilding Together in Alexandria - Influence

IREX staffer Haratounian wrongly imprisoned for spying in Iran - Influence

Modeling Concepts with Dan Brown - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

What & Why

How do concept models compare to other types of documentation?

The Basics

Variations of Concept Models

When to Use

What to consider when planning your model?

The role of concept models in various project stages

Highlights From Previous Online Community Unconferences - Online Community Report

Government 2.0 and the web - what works, what doesn't, and why - Influence

Craigslist Founder, Federal Innovators to Speak at Gov 2.0 Seminar - Forum One Communications

The Faces of International Development - Influence

Online Community Expert Interview: Ryan Holmes, CEO/Founder, Invoke - Online Community Report

Director of Online Community & Content - Forum One Networks

Widgetized Health Coverage Reform News - Influence

Can There Really Be A Million Dollar Email? - Influence

Web Developer - Forum One Networks

Online Community Platform & Services Satisfaction - Online Community Report

What to Expect at the Online Community Unconference - Online Community Report

Holistic Community Strategy - Online Community Report

ARHP Releases Two New Educational Tools for Reproductive Health Students & ...

Online Content & Community Manager - Forum One Networks

Newspapers, Radio, Blogs: Nobody Quoted Me, But That's OK - Influence

Community and Social Media Leaders Connect at the Online Community Unconference - Forum One Networks

Webcast of Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving now available - Online Community Report

Reflecting on the 2009 Non-Profit Technology Conference - Forum One: User Experience & ...

Community Manager - Forum One Networks

The Cloud: how is it relevant? - Forum One Tech Blog

What is it?

What can it do for us?

Who uses it?

Final words

Newsletter Sign Up: Design Guidelines - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

Notes from Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Washington - Forum One: User Experience & Design Blog

Mobile for List Building

Other Tid-bits:

Final Thoughts