Over the last 6 years we’ve watched over 800 user testing sessions between us and on only 3 occasions have we seen the page fold as a barrier to users getting to the content they want.

One of the most common things we see on a heatmap is a strong hotspot over the scrollbar. The scrollbar is used to assess the page length. Users expect to have to scroll. The heatmap below shows this.

• Sponsoring Executive: The C-level or SVP that is the champion of community & social media in the C-suite. This is often the CMO, the VP of Marketing, or VP of Support.
  
• Strategy Lead: The person charged with directing strategy development from kickoff through launch or annual engagement planning.

• the intention in engaging the community;
  
• the potential value the organization hopes to create for itself and its customers;
  
• the risk associated with engaging, including worst case scenarios;
  
• the overhead, including headcount, budgets and staff time;
  
• the level of readiness to participate, and the required culture change to be successful

• Marketing: Representatives from brand, field and demand generation;
  
• Web Team: User experience, analytics, content and technical / development resources;
  
• Product: Product management, product marketing;
  
• Support: The manager of any existing support forums, knowledgeable, as potentially a representative from technical writing;
  
• HR: HR representatives to help develop participating policies and guidelines;
  
• Legal: to develop policies and guidelines, as well as terms of use;

• Project scope, participant roles, and communication protocols;
  
• Review of the current state of online community and social media activities (if any);
  
• Discussion of potential goals for the community strategy, related to organization's mission and annual goals;
  
• Potential sources of value from online community engagement, including qualitative and quantitative measurements;
  
• Recent customer research and/or feedback;
  
• Existing customer community touchpoints & activities (blogs, facebooks groups, etc)
  
• Possible Inluencers / Lead users in the community ecosystem (bloggers, Twitter pundits, etc)
  
• Discussion of additional stakeholders to involve;
  
• Discussion of potential risks;

• A statement of purpose or intention for the online community strategy;
  
• Business goals for the online community initiative, ideally showing support of organizational mission and goals, and with initial metrics of success;
  
• Key findings from the stakeholder interviews (which will have informed, and ideally support, the two points above)

• Within 45 days, each agency shall identify and publish online in an open format at least three high-value data sets and register those data sets via Data.gov


• Within 60 days, each agency shall create an Open Government web page, and respond to public input received via that page


• Within 120 days, each agency shall develop and publish an Open Government Plan that will describe how it will improve transparency and integrate public participation and collaboration into its activities

Not sure how to get started? We can help. We've worked for many years helping organizations develop effective approaches to be more transparent and accountable online. We can help you develop and document a credible Open Government Plan that meets OMBs objectives and at the same time aligns with your organizational realities and challenges. Opening your organization up to invite and respond to public input can be scary. It helps to have well crafted plan that is rolled out smoothly. For most organizations, there will be some easy wins that you can already take credit for or accomplish quickly, along with some more challenging actions to be taken over the longer term.

Have a plan for your data. To meet the requirements for publishing open data, we can help you identify and prioritize candidate data sets that might be well-suited to publishing online and to Data.gov. We can help you understand what formats are most appropriate for the data and put in place a communications strategy to accompany its release.

Kudos to the administration for pushing the envelope on open government. It's going to be an exciting several months to watch everything unfold.
]]> nospam@example.com (Joe Pringle) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:45:39 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/WEs6o2uohrQ/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/yJGWuYjySds/182-Drupal-Is-a-PHP-Application,-Remember.html Keith Casey recently observed to me that "Drupal developers don't seem to think of themselves as PHP developers," and the ensuing conversation, at various times roping in Joe LeBlanc (a Joomla! developer) and Aaron Brazell (WordPress) caused Aaron to write this really thoughtful post. What we've realized is that many of these applications with large communities don't seem to think they're a part of the larger PHP community, and for whatever reason the divide exists, it makes both communities weaker.

PHP is actually a rich language. It has been used from tiny personal projects up to FaceBook and Digg. The collective experience of its community also spans that range and much in between. So there are things the broader community of developers has learned that could greatly benefit Drupal and other open source projects.

As Joe points out in the comments to Aaron's piece, not every application is a Digg. So the PHP community could use the feedback that optimizing for the Digg case might come at the expense of middle-tier uses of the language. And of course it remains a stubborn trope in the Drupal community that object-oriented programming in PHP results in "slower" applications, yet the broader community has learned that object orientation is almost never the cause of slow PHP applications; doing things like having too many database calls is--and that's definitely a problem Drupal has by design (see slide 40 and forward of this presentation).

So both communities would be enriched by the participation of members of the other. I admit I have been more of a PHP developer who happens to use Drupal, but I have attended the DC DrupalCon and a couple of the DC user group meetups. Yet aside from developers who report to me, I haven't seen anybody from the DC Drupal community showing up at a DC PHP meeting.

So if you develop sites with Drupal and know even a little PHP, check out your local user group or consider attending a PHP conference. You might find potential members of the Drupal community and learn some things that could benefit your next Drupal project. And I will definitely bring my Drupal experience to PHP conferences and meetings.

We will both be better off, so if you've been waiting for somebody to invite you or bug you to join in, consider yourself invited!

]]> nospam@example.com (Sandy Smith) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:07:44 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/IDHX-RgTIjs/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:15:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/D9FeJEFOUQA/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:15:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/S2oHA6B52vc/ Full Report Available for Purchase]]> Online Community Research Network http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:15:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/IC-xpphQB-Y/583-Current-Research-Social-Marketing-Compensation-Study.html

A few weeks ago, we announced our partnership with WOMMA. As part of our partnership, the Online Community Research Network (OCRN) and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) are co-producing our first research study on Social Marketing professionals (marketers who focus on social media) compensation, job satisfaction, and team structure.

For the past two years, the OCRN has studied online community and social media professionals compensation. As social media continues to intersect with marketing tools, we'd like to study how social marketers are being compensated and how actively they are involved with online marketing.

If you're a marketing professional involved with social media, we'd like to invite you to participate in the Social Marketing Compensation survey.

The survey can be found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NYYK8BB

Things for participants to note:

-All participants will receive a participant version of the report, which includes aggregate data.
-All data will be processed and compiled in aggregate. Data will not be reviewed or presented in a personally (or company) identifiable way.

Please complete the survey before the end of the day on December 18th.

Feel free to email me with any questions: hvirga@forumone.com ]]> nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:42:01 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/9sZo2TWJ-1U/581-Current-Research-Participating-in-the-Social-Media-Ecosystem.html The Online Community Research Network is conducting our second study that examines how community and social media professionals engage in the social media ecosystem. Last April, we conducted the Social Media Ecosystem study to gain a better understanding of how organizations were managing their hosted and external online community touch points.

Our goal with the current Participating in the Social Media Ecosystem study is to gain more information on how companies participate, how frequently they engage in activities in the social media ecosystem, who manages the participation, and what value participants' companies have gained from their activities.

The research targets online community and social media executives, strategists, and managers, working both in the commercial and non-profit space.

The survey can be found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/W3MT3ZL

If you decide to participate, there are few things to note:

-All participants will receive a participant version of the report, which includes aggregate data.
-All data will be processed and compiled in aggregate. Data will not be reviewed or presented in a personally (or company) identifiable way.

We would like to receive your responses by the end of the day Friday, December 11th, please.

Feel free to ping me if you have any questions: hvirga@forumone.com ]]> nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:45:23 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/HOQ9En2o1pQ/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:15:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/DqAX8rPka0w/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/iFo3yxC_C04/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/EFAHnY6QoA4/ Full Report Available for Purchase]]> Online Community Research Network http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/nogeFdoIlng/578-Online-Community-Unconference-East-February-10,-2010.html We're geaing up for our first event of 2010, the Online Community Unconference East, on February 10th in New York City. We expect 250-300 online community and social media professionals to attend -- making this our largest east coast unconference yet! Additionally, we expect to have 40-50 collaborative sessions.

Current attendees include: Cisco, IBM, The Humane Society of the United States, Answers Corporation, Medidata Solutions, Consumer Reports, Knowledge Alliance, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, CafeMom, CFA Institute, Impact Interactions, Optaros and more.

To register at the early bird rate of $145 ($195 after 1/10 edited to correct date) please go here: http://ocue2010-ocr1203.eventbrite.com

For an excellent summary of last years Online Community Unconference East, check out this Huffington Post article, An "Unconference" for Online Communities.

Last year's Unconference featured approximately 40 sessions on key topics including:

Best Practices - Busting the myths of online community management
The idea of the session was to drive discussions regarding many of the common ideas around community that have been published/promoted/blogged about as if they were absolutes rather than the experiences of a few.

Twitter for Business
A discussion of how different companies are using Twitter.

Best Practices for Content
Strategies and best practices for company and user-generated content.

Social Networking in the Enterprise
A discussion around how companies are using social networks and social media.

The Online Community Unconference East is being held at the Digital Sandbox in NYC, which is centrally located in the financial district and provides plenty of breakout space to support a full day of learning and fun. Lunch and snacks and WiFi will be provided.

You can see pictures from the 2009 Unconference here

OCU East 2009 Wiki

If you currently drive the community or social media strategy for your organization, and you are in (or will be in) the NYC area on 2/10, please join us for a highly energetic day of learning and collaborating.

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







]]> nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:29:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/_SC5s4zZUDw/416-Institute-of-Medicine-Hiring-Manager-of-Web-Communications.html IOM are looking to hire a Manager of Web Communications, to serve as the primary point of contact for the IOM’s interactive activities as well as the producer and editor of the IOM’s website. "It is a critical role in this 175-person organization focused on improving health." More info here. ]]> nospam@example.com (Chris Wolz) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:13:32 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/na-N8yTMGZM/577-Back-to-Basics-Developing-an-Online-Community-Strategy.html The topic of online community strategy is one of the things that occupies a large chunk of my mental cycles. I've written about a pretty basic process and framework a few times over the years, and I think the baseline concepts have held up well. You can read a couple of relatively recent posts here (I'd love to hear your thoughts):
How to Develop a Community Strategy
Holistic Community Strategy

Why am I Doing This?
I'm very passionate about the opportunities that online communities and social media bring to the table, and I've had my fair share of real world experience (10+ years), but the primary reason I want to write this series is pretty simple:
Organizations are still challenged with setting strategy. From our efforts with the Online Community Research Network, we still see that only about 25% of our participant organizations have a comprehensive community strategy in place.

Over the next few weeks, I will explore the following topics, offering my own opinions and insight, data from our ongoing community research, as well as other relevant content from experienced community-building professionals. I'll also try to post as many templates that I use (or can borrow), where appropriate. In short: I'll be posting, you will be adding to the discussion, and we will all (hopefully) be making our day to day community practices a little better. I hope that sounds like fun

The Topics
The topics, which generally follow my strategy development process, will be:

1. Goal Definition:
How to assemble an internal stakeholder team and facilitate definition of business goals for the community.

2. Member Needs Research:
Processes and techniques for engaging community members in a process of discovery and conducting member "needs" research.

3. Social Media Ecosystem Research:
Methodology for conducting a discovery exercise of the relevant parts of the social web to find out where your community (or potential community) is already working and playing.

4. Designing an Online Presence Architecture (with a hat tip to Chris Brogan):
Factoring the goals of the business, the needs of the members, and the opportunities in the social media ecosystem to create a presence architecture that maps out where to focus engagements.

5. Engagement Planning:
How to develop content & activity plans for the community, including
–Where: to engage (home, outposts)
–Who: responsible party
–How: specific activity
–When: frequency of activity
–What: expected outcomes (prototypical metrics!)

6. Community Platform Selection:
Guidance on how to select a community platform, along with recent ratings for major platforms.

7. Management & Moderation
An overview of the important and evolving role of the Online Community Manager, building an online community team, and best practices on moderation.

8. Metrics & Reporting
What metrics to collect, what they tell you, who to report them to, and how often.

9. Policy Creation & Roll-out
How to develop community and social media policies that fit your organization, and how to deploy them.

10. Governance
Creating a governance structure in your organization, keeping exective stakeholders informed and engaged, and achieving the right balance of of inter-departmental communication and guidance.

11. Superusers / Elites
A review of the best superusers programs, with a focus on process, identification and incentives.

Again, I would LOVE your feedback on the topics above. My goals is to write an article a week over the next 12-14 weeks. Each article will be labeled "Back to Basics", and will be tagged #ocb2b

]]> nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:29:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/z5_ErWy2OJk/263-How-to-Learn-More-About-Your-Web-Sites-Audiences-on-the-Cheap.html There are a number of ways to learn about your site's audiences. Many of them are expensive and time consuming - focus groups, interviews, and personas for example. Here are three relatively cheap and easy ways you can learn more about your audiences.

Utilize Your Site Statistics
Statistics provide a very useful glimpse into many characteristics of your audiences. Demographic details can tell you from where your audiences are viewing your site. Technical details can tell you what browser they're using. A content analysis can tell you what keywords they used in a search to find your site. Other useful tidbits include things like: from what page on your site they left, navigation paths they used to find content, which documents they downloaded, and if they were referred to your site by another site.

Looking at the top content (example below) in your site statistics gives you a clear picture of what pages are being accessed the most by your audiences. Knowing this can be helpful in understanding where you want to focus your development efforts.



Create Quick Personas
Personas take time and are costly, but they are extremely useful in fine-tuning your site requirements. If you don't have much time or budget, consider creating quick personas. More often than not, this activity will need to be conducted with the client or based on what you already know about the audiences. If you have access to a sample of the actual site audiences, all the better.

Start with the basics - Define each audience type and get a better understanding of their characteristics. Does their job force them to look at your site in a hurry? Are they in the field looking at your site on a mobile device?

After you've defined some characteristics, you want to elaborate on two major needs - what they, as the audience, want from the website, and what the client (or whoever is in charge of the site) wants them to get from the website. What are they ultimately looking for? News? Quick-facts? A media contact? What does the client want them to find? Resources? Knowledge-sharing opportunities? Ways to donate?

Once you've detailed the characteristics and needs, these points should map nicely to the services and content you need to provide. Look back through the list of needs and start jotting down your content and services. Will the audience be looking for news? Then you probably need a news section. Do you want them to share knowledge amongst themselves? Think of some services that could provide options for this - a discussion forum, a wiki, or a blog.

This type of activity will help you get a quick glimpse at what your audiences are looking for. In lieu of creating full-blown personas, addressing each audience by type can be a great way of narrowing down what you're offering.

Here's an example of this activity from a client meeting. You can see that it's easy to get creative when conducting this activity.


Conduct Online Surveys
Sometimes the best way to find out what your audience wants is to ask them. Surveys are an easy, and fairly non-intrusive, way to learn more about audience characteristics and needs. You can use surveys to learn about general characteristics of your audience - gender, profession, location, etc. You can also use surveys to pinpoint certain areas of your site. If you've just launched a new service and want to determine whether or not your audience likes it, develop a survey that asks very focused questions pertaining that service.

There are a number of free services you can use to create online surveys. Two of my favorites are Survey Monkey and Survs.

Here's an example where we used to survey to learn more about the specific actions of our audiences.



The next time you want to quickly and cheaply dig deeper into the characteristics and needs of your audiences, consider using one of these methods.
]]> nospam@example.com (Matt Humphrey) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:16:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/OSpvFdeQ-oE/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:45:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/9Kb0YfeEc_o/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:45:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/rR2NnMDV8Bk/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:45:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/_Iy2s2Y4AQE/579-Online-Community-and-Social-Media-Jobs.html As we get closer to the end of the year, many companies are actively seeking qualified community and social media pros to help them build, grow and manage their community and social media programs in 2010. Below you'll find a list of 14 jobs that are posted on the Forum One Networks website.

In addition to all of the job listings below, we wanted to highlight a new position that one of our clients is looking to fill. The position is for the Community Director of National Geographic's Animal Jam Community, an online community for kids aged 5-9. It's an exciting opportunity to build a new and innovative community that will launch in 2010. Go here for more information about the position.

National Geographic's Animal Jam
Community Director

Baptie & Company, Inc.
Community Manager – Hi-tech Channels

Knight Foundation
Social Media Superstar

Skyfire
Community Manager / Tech Evangelist & Support

Sonicbids
Designer
Director, Customer Engagement

Spiceworks
Community Manager

Test Yantra Software Solutions
Software Test Lead-Bangalore

TokBox, Inc
Community Evangelist

United Service Organizations
Director, Online Fundraising

WebMD.com
Online Community Moderator -- Freelance

Wikimedia Foundation
Chief Technology Officer

WorldWinner
Senior Community Moderator & Customer Services Representative

If you'd like to post an open position, please go here. All jobs posted at Forum One Networks will remain on our website for 90 days and will also be included in the monthly Online Community Report newsletter. ]]> nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:49:35 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/RbBSZq0bck8/576-ReadWriteWebs-Guide-to-Online-Community-Management.html We announced our partnership with ReadWriteWeb in August of this year. One of the best resources we've seen from ReadWriteWeb this year is their Guide to Online Community Management, which is a great primer to the ins and outs of managing an online community. Editor Marshall Kirkpatrick and his team have sifted through massive amounts of information to cull out the most salient points and relevant sources for thinking about engaging in online community-building activities and getting started with online community management.

The Report Covers:

The Basics
The definition of an online community manager, assessing the need for community features on your site, and reasons for participating in the social media ecosystem (like Twitter & Facebook).

Do Startups Need Community Managers?
The blog post and comments that triggered the report: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hiring_a_community_manager.php

ROI
Perspectives from the field, including Jeremiah Owyang and Joe Cothrel.

Job Description
A thorough exploration of the role of Community Manager, and key differences between the community role and more "traditional" roles like marketing and customer support.

The Marketing / Engagement Balance
A discussion of the convergence of activities for the Community Manger role.

Dealing with Challenging Community Members
How to deal with "problem" community members and how to redirect the negative energy.

Interviews with Community Managers
Including Dawn Foster and Lucia Willow

The report also lists a number of key online and in-person resources (including Forum One's Online Community Unconferences).

Online companion
One of the most innovative things about the report is the companion content site that curates the content streams from the contributors to the report in a one place.

If you are interested in purchasing the report, you may do so here.

]]> nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:02:56 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/IoW6M9xwv-k/179-How-to-Create-a-Custom-Login-and-Welcome-Block-in-Drupal-6.html


Every now and then I have the task of creating a Drupal block that displays Register and Login links for users who are not logged in and also displays Welcome Text and Logout links for users who are logged in. This can easily be done using two separate Drupal blocks and good ole PHP. However, if like me, you have curious clients who aren't knowledgeable in PHP but love editing every block on their website, a different solution may be more suitable.




Using a Custom Module to Create a Login/Wecome Block




If you don't already know how to create a module in Drupal 6, you can check out the tutorial on the Drupal site.





1. In your custom_module_name.module file, you will need to implement hook_block to create your custom block.
   Below is the function I used for my module (f1_login_welcome_block):
   
   
/*Implements hook_block to make custom login/welcome block for users */
function f1_login_welcome_block_block($op = 'list', $delta = 0, $edit = array()) {
    if ($op == 'list') {
        $blocks[0] = array('info' => t('F1 Login/Welcome Block'));
            return $blocks;
        }
        else if ($op == 'view') {
            switch($delta) {
                case 0:
                $block = array(
                    'content' => f1_login_welcome_block_display_block()
                );
                break;
            }
        return $block;
    }
}

   
   Your function should look just like this, except you should replace all places that say 'f1_login_welcome_block' with the name of your custom module. As you'll notice, this function simply adds my block to the Block listing with the description "F1 Login/Welcome Block" and it displays the block using a custom function f1_login_welcome_block_display_block.
   


2. Next, you should add your function to display the content for your block. In the function I created (f1_login_welcome_block_display_block), I used a conditional statement to show a welcome block if the $user->uid value is not empty and display a login block if it is empty. Below is the function I used:
   
   
   function f1_login_welcome_block_display_block() {
    //load user
    global $user;

    //if user is logged in, display welcome block
    if (false == empty($user->uid)) {
        $username = t(truncate_utf8($user->name,20,false,true));
        $user_link = l($username, 'user',
            array(
                'attributes' => array(
                     'class' => 'wb-user-link'
                )
            )
        );
        $logout_link = l(t('Logout'),'logout',
            array(
               'attributes' => array(
                    'class' => 'wb-logout-link'
                )
            )
        );
       //set the html for welcome block
        $block_text = '<div class="welcome-block">Welcome, '.$user_link.
                    '!&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'.$logout_link.'</div>';
    }
    //if uswer is not logged in, display login block
    else {
        $register_link = l(t('Join'),'user/register',
            array(
                'attributes' => array(
                    'class' => 'lb-register-link'
                )
            )
        );
        $login_link = l(t('Login'),'user/',
            array(
                'attributes' => array(
                    'class' => 'lb-register-link'
                ),
                'query' => drupal_get_destination()
            )
        );
        //set the html of login block
        $block_text = '<div class="login-block">'.$register_link.
                    ' '.$login_link.'</div >';
    }

    return $block_text;
}

   
   As you can see, I used the drupal_get_destination() function to redirect users back to their current page after they login on the login page. You can omit that line if you wish for users to be redirected to their account pages after login.
   


3. Enable your module and add it to a block region!



That's it, you now have your own custom login/welcome block in your own module. ]]> nospam@example.com (Norman Bucknor) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:55:58 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/PKO3Z7z1f-0/259-How-to-Keep-Users-Coming-Back-for-More.html


On November 5, a group of web executives around the DC area joined us to hear 4 speakers share their stories and strategies to get return visitors. And boy did we learn a lot!




Michael Edson kicked off the session speaking about how the Smithsonian developed a new strategy to reposition their relationship with their audiences and make a more meaningful user experience. Smithsonian did some investigating and found that many people rarely even visit Smithsonian websites.
In his presentation, Michael tackled:

• Alternative ways to assess your organization's reputation


• Barriers you may face as you change


• Alternative ways to create a strategy to reach your audience


• How a strategy can re-frame your relationship with your audiences



See Michael's presentation



Next up was Roger Burks from Mercy Corps. He shared Mercy Corps strategy around online storytelling. Five years ago, Mercy Corps realized that they weren't connecting with their audiences in a meaningful way. Instead of spending time on press releases and hard-to-understand program descriptions, they shifted their focus to telling the stories of those they reached. This storytelling strategy has engaged more users, helped increase donations, and made for more meaningful connection with their audiences.

See Roger's presentation



After the break, we heard from Jim Hunn from KaBOOM! about lessons learned when building and updating online tools.
Some of the lessons included:

• Improve your online tools continuously (and be willing to make and learn from your mistakes)


• Learn to tell the difference between picking up the shiny nickel vs missing an important trend


• Trainings must be provided on the trainee's terms - online


In the end, this helped them engage more users online to act offline. To see the full list, check out Jim's presentation.



Brian Dunbar, from NASA, wrapped up the session with a presentation that highlighted how audience and stats research has changed the user experience on NASA.gov over the last 10 years.. They use many methods to gather audience feedback, including: emails sent from users, usability testing, statistics review, and customer satisfaction surveys. The changes made over time (as shown in the old and new screenshots) have dramatically improved user satisfaction over the years.

To see the screenshots and guidance on gathering audience feedback, check out Brian's presentation.



Overall, it was a great event!
]]> nospam@example.com (Courtney Clark) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:47:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/iOrHrDkAij0/260-Engaging-Your-Users-To-Extend-Your-Online-Reach.html Share This allow users to select their social site of choice to distribute content. Check out the 199 options on Nielsen's Share menu! Fortunately the most popular 8 are exposed outside of the drop-down.

But the real consideration is not to which social sites should you allow visitors to post information, but rather who are these users and how are they likely to want to engage?


Take a look at Forrester's Social Technographics Ladder. It shows the breakdown of user behavior on the social web. Notice that 'Creators', those people who are actively blogging or publishing media accounted for a mere 13% of US Adults in 2006 (source: Forrester's NACTAS Q4 2006 Devices & Access Online Survey). 19% from that same pool were considered 'Joiners', people who use social networking sites. One of the key opportunities for online marketers is in understanding how to motivate and convert Joiners into Creators, thereby promoting company products and site offerings through social channels.

I've been noticing a trend lately with social bookmarking buttons that starts to address this point. During a few recent online transactions, I was prompted to post my action to one of my social networks. But instead of simply providing a button to access that social network, I was also provided canned messages from which I could choose. In essence, the site was offering to do the 'contributing' for me.


Example 1: Toms
Here's a screenshot of my order confirmation for a purchase of Toms shoes, an awesome organization that provides a pair of shoes to a child in need for every purchase you make. Notice the Twitter and Facebook appeals? Clicking on them generated a canned message, the result of which you can see on my Twitter stream.








Example 2: Firefox
Here's another example, lowering the barrier of engagement even more by exposing the canned messages to the user. Firefox's 5th anniversary was just a few weeks ago. You can see from this screenshot how easy they're making it for users to take action. Here's my resulting message on Twitter.





Example 3: Eventbrite
A final example, below, through Eventbrite. Notice that on the sign-up confirmation page, I'm presented with a number of social networks to which I can announce that I've just signed myself up to attend an event.

Clicking on the 'twitter' icon redirected me to my Twitter account with a canned message which I could, with a single click, submit. Or I could edit over the message to my liking.
























"Is it you or is it me?" -Twitter
You might have noticed that these are all twitter examples. In this recent research by Nielsen on social network loyalty, you'll notice that, at the same traffic levels, Facebook and MySpace outperformed Twitter in retention rates. I believe that's because it's easier and more acceptable to be a 'Joiner' on those networks than it is on Twitter, where the whole purpose of the tool is to operate as a 'Contributor'. If sites, particularly around transactions, are able to bridge the gap between Joining and Contributing, I believe we'll see tools like Twitter sustain themselves a while longer. But most importantly, take into consideration that it's simple engagement steps like canned messages that may convert your joiners into contributors, thereby broadening your reach online.
]]> nospam@example.com (Sophie Burns) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:26:28 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/WW5_deNUoAQ/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:00:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/705/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/VpevR2YHoCs/414-How-We-Use-Twitter-at-Forum-One.html We have described previously on this blog how Forum One approaches social media in general, as well as our experience with SlideShare and Scribd. In this post, we'll discuss the current glamour child of social media, Twitter.

Twitter is impossible to ignore. It has been embraced by celebrities (Britney Spears, Oprah), adopted by journalists (Anderson Cooper, Nicholas Kristof) and appropriated by politicians (Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin). More importantly, it has grown quickly (from 5 million to 50 million users this year) and is becoming a fixture with the influential organizations and individuals with whom we work.

In response to Twitter's influence, we have launched five company Twitter feeds, @ForumOne, @OCReport, @DataMasher, @Legistalker, and @ProjectSpaces (a combined feed is here). These feeds currently have a total of about 15,000 followers, up from 4,000 in August. A number of staff also have personal accounts they manage (on their own time) which include a lot of company re-tweets and information and represent another 15,000 or so followers.

Here is our approach to this growing network:

Goals: As with all social media, we need to be clear about our goals, and whether Twitter supports them or not. In shorthand, our goals are 1) to sell more consulting services and products; 2) strengthen our ties with existing clients; 3) learn about social media to support our consulting; and 4) increase our general name awareness.

Current Priorities: In order to improve our effectiveness, we've focused on a number of areas. We wrote an internal guidelines document structuring our approach to Twitter. We've made a concerted effort to increase our tweeting and follower counts of relevant individuals. We've tried to improve the quality of our content (importance, grammar, format) as well as mentions when appropriate of "Forum One" (as opposed to "the company" or "F1", which we say internally). We've increased re-tweets across accounts when useful, and have decided on metrics of success which we review every other month.

Staffing: We have five staff responsible for most of our account management who all together spend about 15 staff hours per week on Twitter (tweeting, managing followers and answering direct messages). We currently use HootSuite which offers many advantages, but is not strong for joint account management. We've explored CoTweet and other platforms but haven't liked them enough to move.

Results to Date: Last month, across our five accounts, we had 317 tweets. Our "circulation" (tweets x followers) was 1.26 million, with about 5,000 "click-throughs" (which track only URLs shortened via HootSuite -- about one-third of total tweets). This gives us a click-through rate of around 16.7% (clicks divided by total all followers of our five accounts plus staff accounts) -- which is better than other Twitter click-through reports we've seen.

We feel like we've made good progress on all of the "current priorities" listed above. With respect to meeting our principal goals, we have little question that we've strengthened our ties to clients, learned about social media, and raised our company profile. We aren't yet sure about our first (and most important) goal of increasing consulting services or product sales directly attributable to Twitter. Connecting the dots from "marketing" to "sales" is always difficult. We have anecdotal information which is encouraging, but nothing unambiguous.

So on balance, we've invested a fair amount into Twitter, it is performing well in terms of growth and reach, and it clearly provides value towards goals we care about. The jury is still out whether it is crucial to driving our company marketing and growth efforts overall. We'll watch this issue closely over the next few months.

How is Twitter supporting your goals? What sort of performance are you seeing? Let us know in the comments.

Jim Cashel is Chairman at Forum One. Feel free to follow him on Twitter at @Cashel or write him at Cashel@ForumOne.com.

]]> nospam@example.com (Jim Cashel) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:55:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/uRFegcpI0QA/575-Forum-One-Networks-Partners-with-WOMMA.html Forum One is really excited to announce that we've partnered with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. WOMMA is a coalition comprised of hundreds of top marketers who are learning how to encourage and amplify the natural phenomenon or word of mouth marketing, while respecting and protecting its honesty and integrity. Forum One's Online Community Research Network (OCRN) and WOMMA share common interests in that our goals are to build networks of professionals who collaborate on best practices, standards and metrics, and share knowledge among the professionals in our industries. In our partnership, we will promote each others professional groups, events, we will partner on industry research, and we'll cohost a webinar on a social media marketing topic in 2010.

Bill Johnston is currently attending WOMMA's Summit 2009 in Las Vegas, NV. The Summit feature experts from a variety of industries, who will discuss best practices, emerging trends and offer insight into how to word of mouth marketing buzz that extends beyond social media. If you aren't there this year, you can keep up on the buzz and conversations by following the Twitter stream #womma.

]]> nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:21:33 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/29NL9ggSG4w/412-6-Governments-Who-Set-Their-Data-Free.html We're seeing exciting trends in governments making data more available  — and valuable — for the public. Whether on crime, education, or the environment, governments are putting more data on the web. And they're doing it in ways that allow people to build web applications on top of the data. 

By now, most folks in the web development and Gov 2.0 communities (and readers of this blog) have heard about the federal government's Data.gov initiative (and the winner of a certain Apps for America competition using these data sets). But local and state governments are also setting their data free. Here are a few examples:

1. District of Columbia's Data Catalog: The District has opened up 405 data sets across multiple agencies. Users can, for example, subscribe to feeds of crime incidents or view a Google Map of construction projects completed in 2009.


2. Vancouver's Open Data Catalogue: If you are a Vancouver resident or tourist, you can subscribe to an RSS feed of traffic advisories or review the 133 voting division boundaries. One suggestion, Vancouver: add a crime map. This would have come in handy a few years ago when my laptop was stolen from a parked car in Stanley Park...


3. NYC Data Mine: The Big Apple offers users expansive sets of raw and geo data. Users can grab the last two years of restaurant inspection results and use mapping software to plot after-school programs. In January, the NYC BigApps competition will award a $20,000 cash prize and lunch with Mayor Bloomberg to the developers of the most creative applications using NYC data.


4. Rhode Island's Open Data: Yet another site only a programmer could love, RI.gov's data library is as deep and wide as Newport Harbor, for which you can download tidal data. You can also view uplifting visualizations, such as this Google graph of the state's unemployment rate.


5. MassDOT's Developers Page: The Massachusetts Department of Transportation hosted a competition for users to create useful applications and visualizations of the state's transportation data. The submissions included several compelling mobile apps. The two top submissions received one-year of free travel on the MBTA, in addition to recognition at the MassDOT Developers Conference.


6. DataSF: A clearinghouse of over 100 machine-readable government data sets from a range of city departments, including Police, Public Works, and the Municipal Transportation Agency. Independent programmers have used the data to develop a range of innovative mashups an mobile apps, which the city lists in its App Showcase.

What are your favorite examples of government data applications and mashups? Tell us in the comments.

]]> nospam@example.com (Brian Pagels) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:45:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/mvHLrHqPzLI/413-Open-Government-Strategies-and-Tactics-from-the-Playbook.html
This was the theme I heard echoed throughout the interesting Open Government: "Strategies and Tactics from the Playbook" event I attended this past Monday in DC. It was organized by the team of Lucas Cioffi, Stephen Buckley, and Kaliya Hamlin.

They designed the event with the goal of sharing lessons from agencies that have some early experiences. The format was a series of short, five-minute, presentations, which I think worked well. Here are some insights I picked up:

Open Government Directive: Coming soon?
A large part of the motivation for the Playbook event was to get people engaged in discussing the Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive, which is expected to address how agencies should proceed on open data approaches and on online public engagement. The Directive was going to be released in October, but is not yet out; nobody at the Playbook event had much to say about the Directive, which was unsatisfying. There's a ton of interest in these strategies - so it cannot come too soon!
News about the Directive: InformationWeek – Sept 9

EPA
Presented a nice paradigm for modeling/planning citizen engagement:


from outreach
to information exchange
to developing recommendations collaboratively
to agreements
to stakeholder action


EPA has also apparently trained 60 people to be trainers in online collaboration. Impressive.


GSA
Some people asked questions about the role of GSA in establishing policy for federal agencies on open government issues. The answer given by one GSA staffer was, “no role.” That's too bad - given the part GSA has played in the past, e.g. in negotiating blanket agreements for the use of third party tools.

Tobi Edler presented GSA’s three-stage view of how to conduct public engagement online, which includes:
- Virtual town squares, i.e. idea jams. The White House has experimented with these several times. These are “software driven”, providing people a way to present ideas, review, comment and rank them.
- Virtual front porch: providing people ways to find and engage online with other people in their town/neighborhood, and then to take it offline to actually have in-person meetings.
- Electronic Petitions: to allow people to voice views on specific issues.

NIH Clinical Center
NIH has had some great experience with its "Drug Fact Chat Day," an annual day for teens to chat online with NIH experts. NIH provides this as a means for teens to obtain credible information from a trusted third party - and NIH gets some great intelligence about what is on the minds of teens (e.g., in 2009, there were twice as many questions related to marijuana as there were in 2008).

Drinking from the Firehose?
I heard genuine concerns from some federal staff (e.g., Forest Service) about the risk of being swamped by public input/comments online if they were to make rulemakings or decision-making proceedings more open for participation. Their concerns apparently stem from the obligation on agencies under the Administrative Procedures Act to catalog and reply to each individual comment (but is that not what the tool at Regulation.gov can help them with?).

I see opportunities for federal agencies to avoid injury from "drinking from the firehose" of public input online by defining differing levels of obligation for different levels of engagement...so they might indeed need to catalog and respond to comments in a rulemaking, but if they ask for more open-ended input about general policy issues, that should be valuable input which does not trigger response obligations.

Maxine Teller
Maxine had some pragmatic suggestions from her work at DOD for agencies wanting to experiment and explore social media. She suggested that they need to accept that (a) they do need some policy/guidance to manage it, and (b) developing some new policy/guidance for social media is not impossible – it can be done!

Centers for Disease Control
Someone from CDC presented the organization's “2x10 Principles of Consequential Public Engagement (CPE),” which is "public engagement carried out in mutual learning situations in accordance with principles designed to assure serious consideration for any recommendations produced.” See the white paper by Roger H Bernier of CDC on this.

I list their 10 rules here – even though they do not (all) apply to the many situations in which governments might want to provide opportunities for public engagement online:

1. The desire for advice + the decision on the table are real.
2. Adequate time to deliberate + clarity of purpose are provided.
3. Both facts + values underlie the choices to be made.
4. Active agency staff + sufficient resources are committed to the process.
5. Both non-partisan citizens-at-large + partisan stakeholders participate.
6. A critical mass + diverse group of persons participate.
7. Unbiased information + neutral facilitation are provided.
8. Mutual learning through dialogue + thoughtful deliberation occur.
9. Difficult choices are made + agreed upon recommendations are produced.
10. The recommendations receive “serious consideration” + participants obtain candid feedback about the final decision made.

State Dept – Office of eDiplomacy
They are doing some great stuff, including experimenting with internal and inter-agency communities of interest on specific topics. The DipNotes blog is also a good and early example of government blogging.

State has established what seem to be some reasonable, limited rules for online collaboration:
"5 FAM 777 ONLINE COLLABORATION" (download as PDF.)

TSA
I like the tag line for the TSA blog - "Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part." It is an active blog, with (moderated) comments, and they are using it in valuable ways. Just a few weeks ago there was a rumor circulating online that a woman (who is an active blogger) had been separated from her young child while going through TSA security. TSA reviewed their video of the station in question and saw that the claim was false, and jumped quickly to put the video online and to blog and tweet up a storm about the video. TSA got some 15k views of the video on CCTV, and, as of today, more than 120k of the clips up on YouTube. TSA feels they were able to nip this issue in the bud before it could cause a PR problem for them.

More about the Playbook Event
See Twitter on #opengovpb

The organizers plan to host such sessions every six to eight weeks - and will provide more info here.
]]> nospam@example.com (Chris Wolz) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:25:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/3AetoryDxhI/574-Online-Community-Expert-Interviews-Vida-Killian-of-Dell-and-Mari-Kuraishi-of-GlobalGiving.org.html
In the first interview, Bill Johnston talks with Vida Killian of Dell about the value of online community at Dell as well as lessons learned from her experience with community and social media.


In Bill's second interview with Mari Kuraishi of GlobalGiving.org, Mari share's how GlobalGiving uses online community and social media strategy for global good.
]]> nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:49:01 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/5MEOwmPqiv8/573-The-Ongoing-Discussion-Around-Community-and-Social-Media-Compensation.html I've worked in a variety of industries in various marketing related roles, including: hardware, community, real estate, software, and now back to community and social media. I must admit, community and social media practitioners may well be the most passionate people I've ever worked with. Just attend any one of our events and you'll meet so many intelligent, motivated, solution-oriented people all in one space, sharing ideas, challenges and collaborating on solutions -- it's pretty amazing. Ironically, many people in the community and social media industry feel that they are under paid, under valued and under resourced, yet in the 2009 Online Community & Social Media Compensation report most respondents were somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs. I say it goes back to the passion and commitment that community and social media people have for the work they do. As the social media industry grows and companies identify the need for social media specific roles, they are looking to reports like the Online Community & Social Media Compensation report to help determine and set salary standards. However, the disparity in salaries leaves too much room for interpretation. Tom makes a really good suggestion for another way to communicate compensation the data in his post, Is There a Disconnect Between Social Media Job Descriptions and Compensation?. "For medium to large companies and established brands, the peaks on the high end make definite sense. The peaks on the low end are for non-profit and other volunteer-run communities and should not be included in the averages."

The Online Community & Social Media Compensation has started many conversations among the practitioners in the industry. I've included some of their posts below to get a flavor of the various opinions from the people in the field.

Men earn higher salaries in social media - Angela Connor
Online Community & Social Media Compensation - The Moderator Community
Social media salaries may not match the effort - Snoo.ws
How much do online community managers earn? - vator news
Is There a Disconnect Between Social Media Job Descriptions and Compensation? - Tome Humbarger
Social Media Salary Report: Ladies, It's Not Pretty - SocialMediaToday
#occomp09 - tweetmeme
Online Community & Social Media Staff: Satisfaction - OC Report
Online Community & Social Media Compensation - OC Report

The Online Community & Social Media Compensation report is on sale for only $99 until November 20th. The regular price is $349, so it's quite a deal!

If you have thoughts on the findings from the report, please share them.
]]> nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:26:18 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneNetworks/~3/SBs9ELIfGl8/ ]]> Forum One Networks http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneNetworks Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/OVMHstBZZzE/411-Should-Your-Organization-Use-Scribd.html Many of our clients at Forum One produce large numbers of PDF documents (reports, studies, policy briefs) which then are placed in a "documents" section on their web sites. The challenge these organizations face is then making these documents as widely accessed as possible.

One way to increase attention to documents is to use Scribd, a third-party document sharing site (or in shorthand, "YouTube for documents"). We have had good luck at Forum One using Scribd for our clients.

For example, one of our clients produced sixty well-crafted, arcane reports on medical technologies. The reports were getting about 11,000 "views" per year on the client's site. We put them on Scribd, where they quickly received about 50,000 "views" per year. It is difficult to precisely compare web site traffic to Scribd traffic because the notion of "view" may be different (on Scribd it can mean a quick visit to the document's description page). Nonetheless, at relatively little cost, the documents clearly got a lot of new attention.

There are three ways in which Scribd increases "views" of your documents. First, users of Scribd can find your documents through the site's internal search or "related documents" links. Second, Scribd documents generally come up higher in search engine results than documents on your site. Finally, Scribd documents can be easily embedded in third party web sites through the Scribd viewer. Happily, all of these extra views should be complementary to ongoing traffic on your web site.

In addition to increasing traffic, Scribd offers another service of relevance to many organizations. Documents can now be sold via the recently launched "Scribd Store". The store charges a 20% commission, a lower figure than competitors.

For all of its benefits, Scribd does have one drawback: how do you pronounce "Scribd"? (Answer according to Scribd staff: short i.)

So in short, we have found Scribd to be a useful service for organizations seeking increased attention to their documents. Scribd's core services are free, work well, and are worth a try.

Future post: Twitter.

Jim Cashel is Chairman at Forum One. Feel free to write him at cashel@ForumOne.com . ]]> nospam@example.com (Jim Cashel) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:49:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/c3JTETO0jgQ/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:45:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/eWpTg2hjXgM/258-Replacing-Form-Buttons-with-Images.html So you want to use CSS to style a form button to appear as an image, similar to the way you would with any anchor link (using background-image). While the process is very similar, there are a few odd behaviors that form buttons exhibit that anchor links do not (particularly when viewed in IE6) that require a little extra CSS tom-foolery to get around.


We start with a normal form button that, without any css, looks like what you see above, generated from this html.

<input id="stayConnected" type="submit"/>



And what we want to end up with is a nifty little square with an arrow in it, like you see in the above image.

Using the traditional background-image replacement technique would lead to the following CSS.

input#stayConnected {
    background: url(images/button_submit.png) no-repeat 0 0;
    display: block;
    height: 25px;
    text-indent: -9999px;
    width: 28px;
}



That code forces the submit button to behave as a block, gives it the same dimensions as our arrow button image, applies the image as a background and forces the actual text of the button (submit query) off the screen. In most browsers, this leaves us with basically what we're looking for except that there's a strange border on the edges of the button left-over from the form button (see above). Adding the following line to clear the borders will take care of that, and leaves us with a nice looking button for our sign-up form.

border: 0;



The button looks good now, but in some browsers (Firefox included) it doesn't fully function as we'd like. When hovered over, the cursor does not change to the expected pointer for a link... so we need to add one more line to get things working properly in modern browsers.

cursor: pointer;

After that, hovering over the button behaves as shown in the picture above.



Are we done? Well, like many things in the world, everything looks ok with this technique until you view it in IE6. As you can see above, the majority of our CSS gets properly applied within IE6 except for the negative text-indent, which doesn't work for form buttons in IE6. What to do? Well, we can try shrinking the text infinitesimally and see if that works.

font-size: 0%;



Despite the fact that 0% should mean the font has no size at all, IE6 still renders it, albeit in a very very tiny fashion (shown above). If we replace the font-size declaration with one setting the line-height to zero, however, the text disappears completely and we have a nicely styled image form button that's cross-browser compatible.

line-height: 0;



Below is the complete style used to create the button. As far as I'm aware, it works in all major browsers.

input#stayConnected {
    background: url(images/button_submit.png) no-repeat 0 0;
    border: 0;
    cursor: pointer;
    display: block;
    height: 25px;
    line-height: 0;
    text-indent: -9999px;
    width: 28px;
}

]]> nospam@example.com (Corey Lafferty) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:16:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/GuTAA5CXUI0/571-Online-Community-Social-Media-Staff-Satisfaction.html In addition to studying compensation during our second annual Online Community & Social Media Compensation study (summary here), we also want to dig in to issues related the organizational environment that community and social media professionals work in. One key dimension is overall job satisfaction.

As part of the research, we asked the question: Please rate your overall job satisfaction?
Of the 370 respondents, most are "somewhat satisfied" with their jobs with an average satisfaction score of 4.1 and a median score of 4. The average satisfaction score was slightly less than last year’s score of 4.2. It is encouraging that while there is an economic downturn, the overall satisfaction with Online Community positions is well above average. This indicates the combination of salary, benefits, work environment and subject matter is working for most of the respondents. The economy can't be ignored as a major factor of influence on satisfaction scores, as a tough economic environment generally discourages folks from aggressively exploring new opportunities and tending to stay with existing positions.

The graphs below show data from the satisfaction questioned presented in a couple of ways: answers form our 2008 survey compared with 2009, and overall satisfaction compared between genders.

2008 Satisfaction vs. 2009



Satisfaction by Gender


As you can see from the graphs, average overall satisfaction was down slightly from 2008 to 2009. You can also see that women were less satisfied than their male counterparts.

A few write in answers from the report that add color to the graphs:



Unfortunately I feel that most companies are still unable to fully grasp the importance of a dedicated social media team. They do not see a direct correlation between social media and ROI, and therefore are hesitant to put as many resources (both people and money) into social media as is typically necessary. Granted, I was on the periphery of social media for the last three years while I was in graduate school; however since my graduation and re-immersion into social media, I haven't noticed much of a change. Most social media job postings are for intern positions.





I think, even still, a lot of organizations (executives and HR) don't understand what we do, and therefore tend to undervalue it. I was laid off from my previous job last year and although I found another job fairly quickly, compensation was a struggle. I ended up settling for less compensation than I wanted in order to get back in a job quickly.





Engagement with the online community and interacting with others in the field is the most rewarding part of my job.





Because community management is often rooted in customer support organizations, compensation tends to be determined relative to CSRs. In fact, more and more community managers play a critical role in shaping customer experience and ultimately brand, and their compensation needs to reflect that value in a way more commensurate with significant marketing roles.





Perhaps the only one other comment I would suggest is that the corporate world needs to understand that community building is a full time job and as such we need official job descriptions put together by HR that are aligned with the business needs as well as the personal career development opportunities from knowledge workers. Something we haven't even started to think about just yet!





Unless Online Community and Social Media is considered a valuable part of an organization and an intrical part of the overall customer touch processes, it won't get the resources and funds to grow. The value given directly correlates into the # of bodies dedicated to support it and the salaries that are paid.



On the one hand, community and social media professionals still seem very enthused about their jobs, and the emerging "social" industry. On the other hand, issues related to lack of standards on community and social roles, team structure, funding as well as difficulty showing financial ROI (in some cases) are clearly starting to cause fatigue.

What do you think? How satisfied are you in your community or social media role? ]]> nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:08:26 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/ly2YpDQgIGg/408-Policy-2.0-Can-Online-Collaboration-Lead-to-Better-Public-Policy.html First came "Web 2.0" in which we (the people) got the power to publish, share, comment, friend, follow, tag, and organize online.

Then came "Gov 2.0" and the trumpets sounded for transparency of government data and innovation.

Now, Hope Street Group (a Forum One client) has opened up the policy making process with a new collaboration platform: Policy 2.0.

The concept is simple. The three steps are:

1. Recruit engaged citizens from outside of government -- most importantly the people directly impacted by the policy


2. Provide them with the tools to learn about, collaborate and refine real world policy recommendations


3. Give them a microphone and access to government leaders to advocate for and implement these recommendations



Hope Street Group pilot tested its Policy 2.0 model this past summer with a project to craft recommendations that improve teacher evaluation systems nationwide.

"Recommendations like this generally come from researchers and policymakers, administered top-down in states, districts, and eventually schools," according to Monique Nadeau, Executive Director of Hope Street Group. "But Hope Street Group recognizes that teacher and administrator input is critical in designing and implementing teacher evaluation systems, and this project really brought their voices to the table."

The pilot team comprised 22 K-12 educators, 6 private sector professionals, and 8 participants from the civil society sector across 17 states. They collaborated online on the Jive community platform, the recommendations were published in a report, and the results were presented at an October 26 event at the National Press Club.

Hope Street Group and team leaders from the pilot project then took their recommendations to Capitol Hill.

What's most exciting about this platform is that it puts the power to craft real policy solutions in the hands of the engaged citizen, whether that citizen is a teacher who wants to have input in the policy that impacts his/her livelihood, or a community member motivated by a desire to improve a failing school district.

In the coming months, Hope Street Group and its Policy 2.0 community will be busy identifying targets and implementing its teacher evaluation recommendations in 10 or more districts, expanding its policy focus into health reform and looking to the public for the next great policy area to tackle.

]]> nospam@example.com (Brian Pagels) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:22:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/_Y8rbwkZBeI/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:00:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/GrmuOBxYuCA/177-How-to-selectively-import-data-from-a-data-file-in-MySQL-5.html
Recently I had to import a data file (tab delimiter) containing geo-coding data for zip codes into a table that had less columns than the data file and the columns were not in the same order as my database table. Using MySQL's LOAD DATA INFILE 'path_to_file' syntax and @User_Variables I was easily able to get the data that I needed into the table.

Data file colums:
The data format is tab-delimited text in utf8 encoding, with the following fields :

country code : iso country code, 2 characters
postal code : varchar(10)
place name : varchar(180)
admin name1 : 1. order subdivision (state) varchar(100)
admin code1 : 1. order subdivision (state) varchar(20)
admin name2 : 2. order subdivision (county/province) varchar(100)
admin code2 : 2. order subdivision (county/province) varchar(20)
admin name3 : 3. order subdivision (community) varchar(100)
latitude : estimated latitude (wgs84)
longitude : estimated longitude (wgs84)
accuracy : accuracy of lat/lng from 1=estimated to 6=centroid

Database table columns:
zip
city
state
latitude
longitude
timezone
dst
country

When doing an import from a data file there are a few things that you need to take note of and adjust your import script and/or table definition accordingly.


• How your columns/fields are terminated.


• How your data (column values) are enclosed.


• How your rows are terminated.


• How large of a entry will your values be and does the column definition of your database table expect the maximum size. If not, your data will be truncated to the maximum allowed length.



Once your table structure has been adjusted to accommodate the data expected to be imported you are ready to write your script.

Rules on importing in MySQL 5:

• The order of the columns are dictated by the data file, not the table.
• You have to account for every column within the data file rows.


So the fields that I want to capture are mapped to their respective table columns:

datafile columns--------------table columns
country code-------------------country
postal code----------------------zip
place name----------------------city
admin name1-------------------
admin code1--------------------
admin name2-------------------
admin code2--------------------
admin name3-------------------
latitude---------------------------latitude
longitude-------------------------longitude
accuracy-------------------------

In order to produce a query statement that will adhere to the rules mentioned above we need use @User_Variables as fillers for the columns/fields that we are ignoring.

User variables are created by simply using the '@' sign in front of a variable name (ie, @user_variable). The naming convention of the user variable really doesnt matter when being used. But I will use @ignore just for readability sake.

Below is the new mapping with the addition of the user variable, @ignore, which again is being used as a simple filler to get to the columns/fields that we want to import.

datafile columns---------------table columns
country code-------------------country
postal code----------------------zip
place name----------------------city
admin name1-------------------@ignore
admin code1--------------------@ignore
admin name2-------------------@ignore
admin code2--------------------@ignore
admin name3-------------------@ignore
latitude---------------------------latitude
longitude-------------------------longitude
accuracy-------------------------(not need cause we do not need to get to any columns after this one)

With the completed mapping we can write our script as such.


LOAD DATA INFILE '/path_to_file/datafile.txt'
INTO TABLE zipcode
FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
(country,zip,city,@ignore,@ignore,@ignore,@ignore,@ignore,latitude,longitude);


Query Explained
LOAD DATA INFILE '/path_to_file/datafile.txt' ---------Points to the location of the data file.
INTO TABLE zipcode ----------------------------------------------Points the the table that we want to import into.
FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t' ---------------------------------Specifies how the fields are terminated. In our case, they are terminated by a tab, '\t'.
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' ----------------------------------Specifies how the lines are terminated. In our case, they are terminated by a new line break, '\n''
(country,zip,city,@ignore,@ignore,@ignore,
@ignore,@ignore,latitude,longitude); --------------------Specifies the table columns that we want to map the incoming data to. Again, the order is dictated by the data file.

For more information on importing data in MySQL 5 visit, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/load-data.html.
]]> nospam@example.com (Dan Crowder) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:05:05 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/qop5IZTwq0w/567-Social-CRM-Virtual-Summit-November-11th,-2009.html
The Social CRM Virtual Summit is a five-hour online conference, which includes webcasts by industry leaders in an interactive exhibit hall, a resource center with extensive materials for download, and a virtual networking lounge to chat live with speakers and prospects. Bill Johnston will lead a session on Best Practices: Community, Strategy and Planning with Joe Cothrel of Lithium. Their session includes discussions on:




• Defining and creating a community strategy by working with organizational and customer stakeholders to determine needs, goals and key influencers.
• Determining what metrics are important to track, what is currently being measured against what many companies want to measure, and current key performance indicators, featuring research from the Online Community Research Network.
• Defining the value of online communities through the key sources of value, including: cost reduction, lead generation, increased engagement, building customer loyalty.


The virtual event is featured in two time sessions on November 11th.

• 5am to 10am PT / 8am to 1pm ET / 1pm to 6pm GMT, or
• 10am to 3pm PT / 1pm to 6pm ET / 6pm to 11pm GMT




Social CRM Virtual Summit Agenda

The social media revolution has changed everything, including how customers choose to interact with companies and each other online, and where they turn for trusted information. This virtual summit comes at a time when companies are starting to see tangible financial results from deeper online engagement with customers, and will explore the current capabilities of and future for Social CRM.

At this five-hour live, virtual summit you will experience:



• Webcasts by industry luminaries such as Mike Fauscette (IDC), Bill Johnston (Forum One), Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group), and Ray Wang (Altimeter Group) in a virtual auditorium
• Scheduled live chats with industry experts and practitioners from companies including Barnes and Noble, Lenovo, National Instruments, Redfin, Best Buy, Juniper Networks, and T-Mobile
• An interactive exhibit hall with dynamic sponsor booths, including Genesys, ON24, Ant's Eye View, Forum One Communications, CRM Media, Cognizant, and Liveperson
• A resource center with dozens of valuable white papers, podcasts, and presentations for download
• A virtual networking lounge to meet other like-minded professionals through live chat
• Keynote speeches from CRM thought leaders, Paul Greenberg (The 56 Group) and Brent Leary (CRM Essentials)


Summit keynote speakers include Social CRM thought leaders, Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary.

Go here to register for this free event and to see the complete agenda.
]]> nospam@example.com (Heather Virga) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:56:29 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/HXb6L9E3PwY/410-The-Voter-Information-Project.html election day in the Commonwealth of Virginia -- the state in which most Forum One staff call home. Today we'll elect a governor, a lieutenant governor, attorney general, and 100 house delegates.

Thousands of people woke up this morning seeking answers to these three questions:



• How do I found out if I'm registered to vote?


• Where do I vote?


• What's on the ballot?


Many will turn to the internet for the answer and will find themselves at this polling place form on the Virginia State Board of Elections voter information web site. The form is clunky. It assumes you know your exact "locality." ("Do I live in Fairfax City or Fairfax County?"). Worse, it is the only place to find this official information.

Official voter information should be easily available in myriad web sites, search engines, and mobile phone applications. It should be presented in simple, attractive user interfaces. Unfortunately, the information is stored in a variety of dissimilar, muddy, closed formats. Every state stores this information differently.

Fortunately, a new partnership of state election officials, foundations, and technology companies are developing a better system. The project is led by the Pew Center on the States and Google.

The initiative is called the Voter Information Project. Their goal is to standardize official voting information into a common, XML standard. This will enable states to share this data widely with civic groups, political parties, and the media. Web programmers, in turn, can develop better voter web sites and applications.

The Virginia Voter Information Tool is a example of how good these tools can be once voter data is standardized and shared. Check it out. And if you live in Virginia, vote today! Polls close at 7 p.m.

This video introduces the Voter Information Project in plain English:

]]> nospam@example.com (Andrew Cohen) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:20:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/9RzEiDvk058/565-Online-Community-Social-Media-Compensation.html Last year, Forum One recognized that one of the key issues community and social media professionals face is that we (as an industry) are suffering from a lack of solid benchmarks, including compensation of online community and social media professionals. In July of 2008, as part of our ongoing research efforts with the Online Community Research Network, we conducted the first comprehensive study and gained valuable insight about online community and social media professional's compensation, team structure, and current job satisfaction.

In July of 2009, we launched the second annual Online Community & Social Media Compensation study, and received approximately 370 qualified responses. Participants represent a comprehensive sampling of organizations involved in building online communities, including: large software companies, large community destination sites, niche community sites, platform providers, media & entertainment, retail and independent consultants. A sample of the 300+ organizations that participated include (with their permission):
Answers Corp., Autodesk, Avid, Best Buy, Cartoon Network (Turner), Consumer Reports, Electronic Arts, hi5, IBM, KaBOOM!, Nokia, Quest Software, Sage Software, Seesmic, Sony Online Entertainment, The Knot, and Yahoo!

This year's report was truly global in scope, and included respondents from the USA, UK and Canada as well as Australia, Argentina, Spain, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine.

Several key issues pertaining to online community and social media salaries surfaced during this report, including:
• The gap between the average male and female salaries widened, with male respondents averaging $86,644 (up from $85,423 in ’08) and Females averaging $75,624 (down from $77,319 in ’08).
• The majority of respondents reported a salary increase in 2009, but the percentage compared to last year was down, as was a significant increase in the number of respondents who took a salary decrease in 2009 compared to 2008.
• Average overall job satisfaction was down by a fraction, from 4.2 (out of 5) in 2008 to 4.1 (out of 5) in 2009.
• Several respondents mentioned feeling like they were being inadequately compensated because of lack of data available regarding community and social media salaries, as well as lack of understanding of community and social media ROI relative to their organization’s activities.

Demographics
Key demographic and background information about the respondents:
• The majority of the respondents are Female (52%) vs. Male (48%).
• The majority (77%) of respondents are from the USA.
• Most of the respondents have more than 5 years of experience, completed a Bachelors Degree, and work 41-50 hours per week.
• The majority of respondents work for a Profit Based Organization (85%) vs. Non-Profit (15%).

Industry



Years of Expereince




Work Environment

Location of Community Team
The majority of responses indicate their Community teams reside in the Marketing and Community departments. “No formal structure” and “Throughout the company” were also popular responses. The placement of the community team seems to be shifting to Marketing and Community departments. Last year 20% reported residing in the Marketing department and only 19% reported that they had their own Community department.



Hours Worked Per Week
Most of the respondents (45%) work 41-50 hours per week.



Percentage of Time Dedicated to Community & Social Media
Approximately three quarters of the respondents (73%) said that their job duties were not only comprised of working within the online community, and that a percentage of their time is dedicated to other areas within their organization.




Compensation
The average salary of the research participants, $81k, is the same as last year. The mean was $77.5k, which is $10k higher last year. As in 2008, there were peaks on both the low ($0-$25k) and high ends (more than $150k). There were also peaks and dips throughout the salary spectrum for 2009, including peaks for the following salary ranges; $50-55k, $65-$70k, $90-$95k and $100-$105k.

Salary by Gender
On average, the female participants earned an annual salary of $75.5k, which was slightly lower than last year’s $77k. At $86.5K, the male participant’s average annual salary is one percent higher than last year. The overall average annual salary for all participants was the same as last year’s $81k.



Salary by Region: USA
Respondents in the southwest region of the USA reported the highest average / median salary. The average salary for the southwest region was $99k with a median of $102k, which is significantly higher than last year’s average salary of $85k.

The second highest average / median salaries in the USA are in the northwest region. These respondents have an average salary of $87k, which is slightly less than the average annual salary of 2008. Within the northwest region, California had a higher average annual salary ($92k) than reported last year ($89k).

Even though lowest average / median salary in the USA was the same this year as last, the southeast region did have the largest reported average annual decrease compared with last year. This year the southeast region had an average annual salary of $46k, whereas last year it was 72k.

There were general peaks on the high ends (more than 150k) and low ends ($0-$25k) for all regions, except for the Midwest region, which dipped at the low end and remained even at the high end.




Satisfaction
The average satisfaction score was slightly less than last year’s score of 4.2. It is encouraging that while there is an economic downturn, the overall satisfaction with Online Community positions is well above average. This indicates the combination of salary, benefits, work environment and subject matter is working for most of the respondents. Although female and male participants mostly rated as being satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their jobs, the female participants are slightly more satisfied with their jobs than their male counterparts. The women had a higher percentage of rating in the somewhat satisfied category, whereas the men had a higher percentage rating for the somewhat dissatisfied category.




The Full Online Community & Social Media Compensation Report
The full 45 page report can be purchased here: http://store.onlinecommunityresearch.com/oncosomecosu.html
includes detailed information, analysis and charts on:
Participating organizations industry, size and history of community programs
Community Team Staff & Size
Education and experience of respondents
Compensation structures
Detailed benefits
Salaries
- Ranges
- Average by title
- Average by Gender, Age, Eduction
- Average by global location and USA Region
Salary Changes (Increase and Decrease)
Advice from many of the participants about factors that affect compensation, and the evolving roles and responsibilities of the online community team, the team's staff, and executives.

The tag for the Online Community & Social Media Compensation report is #occomp09.







]]> nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:25:32 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/6wtG9ZaCpKY/409-Forum-Ones-Experience-with-SlideShare.html We recently described how we use social media at Forum One. Today we'll talk about the category leader for posting and sharing PowerPoint presentations, SlideShare.

Since we're a consulting firm, we (and many of our clients) produce a lot of PowerPoints. Some of them are not too bad. We've used SlideShare actively for the last three years posting our better efforts, as well as presentations from many of the events we host. The Forum One channel on SlideShare currently has 64 presentations.

The good news about SlideShare is that it is free, relatively easy to use (we'd give it a B+ for usability - some uploading is tricky), and seems to attract a lot of traffic. Our presentations have had about 90,000 views, with 5000 new views per month. This is more than they receive when posted on our own site. (A "view" means someone went at least to the landing page of the presentation, but didn't necessarily open it.) We assume that this attention is useful for propagating our firm's name and ideas.

The bad news is that we don't see SlideShare as a significant source of referral traffic to our web site. We're careful about including contact information in all of our presentations and on the presentation description pages, but despite our efforts we don't see much impact. About 30% of the traffic to our site is "direct" (that is, somebody already knows us and types in our URL), so it is possible that some of that is due to SlideShare.

Our overall conclusion is that for relatively little effort we can post presentations, refer to them in our daily correspondence which is useful, and (probably) benefit from their broader exposure on SlideShare.

Feel free to post your experience in comments below!

Next up: Scribd ]]> nospam@example.com (Jim Cashel) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:53:33 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/53s7Yj7mrr0/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/_Y4HQo_7Lyw/257-Web-site-makeover-or-total-overhaul-Lessons-learned-from-a-kitchen-remodel..html
Recently a friend asked me, “How do you know if your company’s web site needs a visual design refresh opposed to a full redesign?” Because we both spend a lot of time cooking, I talked to him about the decisions he made during his kitchen remodel process and how they may apply to his web site as well.

Why are you considering a remodel?
Believe it or not, determining if you need a web site redesign or face-lift is very similar to investing in a home improvement project. It all starts with a solid understanding of the aspects of your kitchen that don’t meet your needs and what type of budget you have for the project. Some reasons you may be considering a kitchen remodel:

Is your family expanding? Have you suddenly found yourself doing a lot more cooking? Did you compromise on the kitchen when you bought the house? Are you constantly misplacing your utensils, pots, bowls because you do not have enough storage? Do you suddenly have the budget for the kitchen of your dreams? Did one of your appliances die? Are you generally happy with your kitchen but feel it looks dated?

Similarly, when considering a web site redesign or refresh you are probably prompted by similar changes in your needs:
Are you suddenly producing more content? Is your current site a starter site? Do you or your users have a hard time finding information on your web site? Have you been recently provided additional funding for your web site? Does the site continue to support your goals but feels dated?



It's Time for a Change, Now What?


Once you've identified that there is an issue with your kitchen / web, you have options on how you plan address them:



1. reface your cabinets


2. full remodel


3. upgrade your appliances.



Cabinet Re-facing
You do not require a bigger kitchen. You find everything you need with ease. The cabinets just look out of date. You’re a good candidate for cabinet re-facing.

The same principles can be applied to your web site. If your goals are being met and you are happy with the general structure of the site (content organization and layout); you’re probably a good candidate for a refresh.

The Remodel
Do you have a structural problem that prevents you from finding your tools? Is your kitchen just too small and you need more room? Do want more appliances (bigger fridge, a wine cooler, etc). More room, more cabinets, better organization, new appliances all suggest that you are looking at a remodel if you have the budget.

Similarly, if your web site is making it hard for users to find information or you want to add large pieces of functionality that were not previously accounted for; it’s probably time for a redesign.

Upgrading Appliances
How I long for a nice Subzero stainless steel refrigerator with side-by-side doors. While I am dreaming, why don’t we add a Wolf or Viking oven and range to the wish list? Appliances are expensive! People usually only replace them when 1) the old ones break, 2) they are investing in a larger remodel.

On the Web; however, people add new appliances (widgets, tools, functionality) to their site all the time. This is usually where the trouble starts and before too long you have that Subzero refrigerator, two avocado 1970’s ovens opposite each other, a fantastic wine cooler and disposal held together by duct tape. Not to mention your previously organized recipe collection is now in four or five places—one of which is not even in your kitchen!

Why we Refreshed forumone.com in early 2009


Our last redesign of forumone.com was in 2006 and the site was built on a custom CMS (syntaxCMS). By 2009, the visual design felt very dated and we were missing a few key pieces of content on the homepage. Over the last few years we have been attending and hosting more events and we wanted to feature them on the homepage. We have also created a strong following on several social networking sites and wanted to provide links to those communities from our homepage to encourage more conversation with our core audiences.

The primary reasons that we went for a refresh over a redesign:



1. Goals / Objectives: The homepage no longer supported our expanding goals and objectives and we needed to address them in a timely manner.


2. Timing: We did not have design or development resources available to address a full redesign


3. Visual Design: The visual design felt dated and we wanted something that was more representative of the caliber of work we provide our clients.




If we just refreshed, then why are there rumors of a redesign?
It’s true . We are redesigning Forum One’s web site and we are excited to be able to share the new design with you soon. The existing technical platform, information architecture and visual design do not support all of our objectives for the new site.



1. Technical Platform: We used to (and sometimes still do) develop our sites on SyntaxCMS. Most of current client work is now developed on open-source platforms; most notably Drupal or Wordpress. We felt it was very important that our company web site demonstrate our abilities with these technologies.


2. Information Architecture: There are significant tweaks to page layout, interactive behaviors, and to some site sections that will help users more quickly access content related to their needs.


3. Visual Design: We really want the visual design of this site to showcase our capabilities in both coordinating a strong design and implementing that design through CSS, HTML and Javascript.



Stay tuned to our blogs to learn more about the upcoming redesign of forumone.com



]]> nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:38:51 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/juztGS5CREI/176-Pods-An-introspective-on-software-development.html Pods is a pet project that I've been working on for more than a year. It's purpose is to sit on top of WordPress and allow for users to create custom data structures, called content types. It's sort of like Drupal CCK, but for WordPress.

The biggest challenge for the Pods team isn't what most developers would expect. It's not the coding itself, the bug tracking, or the release testing. The toughest aspect for us is balancing coding and documentation. We're not proud of our documentation yet, but we're finally aware of how important it is for our project (or any project) to suceeed.

There are many great open source projects out there. A lot of great projects also fail. Why?

It's not necessarily because their code is obsolete, or because there are better ways of doing things than their project code allows. Most of the time, projects fail simply because people don't know how to use it. The software itself isn't intuitive enough, the documentation sucks, or both. Your potential users move on, and your software gets left behind.

The WordPress team didn't succeed only because the software itself is easy to use (although it didn't hurt). WordPress succeeded because when you can't figure something out, the well-written documentation and tutorials are there to guide you in the right direction. It's only after your users start reaching "Ah-ha!" moments that your community can really start to flourish.

In the spirit of documenting how Pods works, here's the first of (hopefully) many tutorial videos. Enjoy.

]]> nospam@example.com (Matt Gibbs) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:42:26 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/lJcy099nDGA/405-A-Compass-for-Congress.html I want to tell you about a fantastic new (and developing) resource for congressional staff.

Back in September, Forum One was one of the sponsors of CongressCamp, an informal "barcamp" unconference here in Washington. For two days, attendees exchanged ideas on how social media and collaboration tools could increase citizen engagement with Capitol Hill.

As conversations came to a close, a session's focus turned toward creating something of lasting value. Hill communication folks are smart folks, but things are changing fast. Each Hill office typically has one person focused on social media. They depend on external advice and lack a single common resource for finding (and suggesting) the best tools and practices.

Even once the event ended, CongressCamp participants wished to help bridge the gap between citizen knowledge and congressional needs. They asked themselves, "How can we help Hill staff make their internet sites and services more useful for citizens?"

The result is the "Compass," a guide to online communications for Congressional offices.

Led by Wayne Moses Burke of the Open Forum Foundation, the Compass is just getting off the ground, and we could use your help. Hill staff are already using it and are anxious to receive feedback and expertise.

Wayne has created an open wiki that anyone can edit. Questions of interest to Congressional staff will be posted and answered. For example, we are currently authoring an article that answers the question: "What widgets are available to display social media content on a representative's website?"

I know we all have something to contribute. Get on over to the Compass and help improve Congress' ability connect with citizens! ]]> nospam@example.com (Andrew Cohen) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:36:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/j5A7Bpmt9Ag/255-Recap-UX-Show-and-Tell-at-Forum-One.html Chris Avore. Chris's idea was to bring together ux practitioners to share the documentation that we create and establish an open dialogue about the work that we do. Nine user experience designers gathered in Forum One's conference room for a little less than two hours and we discussed usability reports, wireframes, and creative briefs. In short, we participated in a UX show and tell.

Usability Reports
One of the participants brought a very detailed usability report and asked the group how we translate usability recommendations into designs and keep up with them during the design process. We had a lively discussion about the format of his report and many noted how they liked the separation of severe issues that needed to be addressed immediately and smaller issues that could be address later. Some participants mentioned that they use a much more visual style of report and showed examples of reports that included a screen shot of the page / functionality under scrutiny with call outs to usability participant's comments about the issue.

Many of us suggested that the recommendations from the usability report be brought into either a bug tracking system or a requirements documentation system. For further traceability, some people suggested that you number the recommendations in a way that they can be tracked within your requirements system.

Wireframes
Another participant shared a set of wireframes. The group was extremely impressed by the level of detailed included in these wireframes (I think there were over 100+ pages of detail!). The group had some discussion around wireframing tools (of course) and also how knowledge of javascript libraries can help you make sound design decisions.

Creative Briefs
We shared a creative brief for one of our recent projects and lead a discussion around how to best capture visual requirements for both client sign-off and to inform the visual design process. While most people said that our current report format served the goals that we have for it, some participants suggested new ways for us to collect the feedback that goes into the reports. More than a few people suggested that rather than sending out a questionnaire (as we sometimes do) we interview stakeholders with our design partner on the phone, thus allowing them to ask probing questions about visual design feedback. Chris also suggested that we may be able to learn something about our moodboard process by reading Kim Goodwin's Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services

Thanks again to all who attended. It was a great event! ]]> nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:02:45 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/7BfN1rt1M4M/407-Global-Health-Essay-Contest-Please-Share.html This opportunity may be of interest to Influence followers or your colleagues:


The CSIS Commission on Smart Global Health is seeking essay submissions that answer the following question in 500-800 words by midnight, November 20th 2009:

"What is the most important thing the U.S. can do to improve global health over the next 15 years?"

We are looking for fresh, innovative approaches to global health problems. The author of the winning essay will receive a $1,000 scholarship with a chance to be published in the Commission's final report. Read complete details on their website.

The CSIS Commission on Smart Global Health Policy focuses on practical solutions that maximize efficiency, produce measurable results, and engage the American public. This essay contest is one way we're expanding the conversation to include the ideas and opinions of people who are passionate about global health issues.

I hope you'll forward this opportunity along to students, friends and colleagues. 
]]> nospam@example.com (Suzanne Rainey) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:27:37 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/Dv3YknDSeEc/406-Watch-Bill-and-Melinda-Gates-Live-Online-Tonight.html
Tonight, (Tuesday, October 27) at 7 PM (EST), Bill and Melinda Gates will give a multimedia presentation to challenge the current problem-based global health narrative through illustration of success stories.  The presentation is brought to us through the ONE Campaign Team.

I just RSVP'd to watch and get a special reminder email when the video and chat go live on Tuesday night. I thought others would like to check it out too:

Sign up for a link and a reminder here.

The presentation will offer evidence that current U.S. investments in global health are working, and will demonstrate progress against global health challenges. Bill and Melinda will share their optimism that through sustained commitment to global health issues, the U.S. and its partners around the world have the potential to save and empower millions more lives.

Sounds very interesting, and I love the idea of tuning in to a live event with Bill and Melinda--so I thought I'd share.
    
       
  ]]> nospam@example.com (Suzanne Rainey) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:14:24 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/DNIqnQguOJg/404-How-We-Use-Social-Media-at-Forum-One.html At Forum One, we spend a lot of time thinking about social media: we run the Online Community Research Network, we lead many social media events every year, and we have provided consulting services to several hundred organizations. We have even published the Online Community Report newsletter for 13 years (yikes).

So when it comes to designing our company's own social media strategy, it should be simple, right? While it's true we have a big head start, social media are changing so quickly, we need to strategize and experiment just like everyone else.

Here is how we currently are approaching social media as a company.

Goals

Before we are overwhelmed by countless opportunities in social media, we need to be very clear-headed: why are we doing this stuff? In our case we have four specific goals for our social media efforts:

1) Enhance our marketing efforts for consulting services, events, and products we sell such as ProjectSpaces;
2) Strengthen our ties with existing clients and colleagues;
3) Learn about social media, so we are in better position to advise others;
4) Increase Forum One's overall visibility.

All of our social media efforts need to tie clearly to one or more of these goals.

Channels

We currently manage 14 digital media channels at Forum One:



• Web sites (five)
  
• Blogs (five)
  
• Newsletters (two)
  
• Twitter (six accounts)
  
• Electronic press releases
  
• LinkedIn page
  
• Facebook page
  
• Scribd
  
• Slideshare
  
• Flickr
  
• YouTube
  
• Delicious
  
• Events sites (eventbrite, upcoming)
  
• Paid channels (Google, Facebook)
  

We periodically review each channel to evaluate if efforts are tying to our corporate goals, and to analyze costs / benefits. At this point our efforts are prioritized into three categories:



• Receive high effort: Web, Blogs, Twitter, Newsletters
  
• Receive some effort / appear to be useful: Press releases, Slideshare, Delicious, Event sites
  
• Receive low effort / watching: LinkedIn, Facebook, Scribd, Flickr, YouTube, Paid channels
  

Our corporate circumstances are different than many of our clients. We don't really use YouTube or Scribd internally, for example, but have had good luck with clients that produce lots of video or documents.

Metrics and Reporting

Social media offer great opportunities for gathering useful metrics. While it is hard to directly tie social media to outcomes (do our blogs really drive sales?), it is possible to watch outputs (posts, tweets, etc.) and actions (clicks, re-tweets, etc.). We have set up comprehensive social media reporting systems for a number of clients. We confess that internally we do something lighter weight than we typically advise others -- quarterly channel reviews to prioritize upcoming efforts, and quarterly performance tracking on a relatively small number of metrics which demonstrate reach.

In all of this it is necessary to experiment. At any one time we have a half dozen totally experimental new services underway (anyone else using Yammer, for example?). We also do what we can to learn from others in our own professional events and other events. Things are moving so quickly, other practitioners are really the only source of useful information. (The Online Community Research Network also provides this sort of information sharing.)

In the future, we'll be posting more detailed information about various channels, including those which seem to be performing best for us and our clients. We'd also love to hear any of your advice on this topic in the comments below.
]]> nospam@example.com (Jim Cashel) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:20:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/BbpZGiphKmg/561-Community-Platform-Service-Provider-Research.html Online Community Research Network. The intention of the research project was 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. The study had over 200 participants, and we gathered data on all major commercial and open source online community platforms, as well as feedback on custom built platforms. Key highlights from the research are covered in the slides below.

The full Online Communities: Platform and Services Satisfaction Report can be purchased here:
http://store.onlinecommunityresearch.com/oncoplandses.html


Online Community: Platform & Vendor Satisfaction
View more presentations from Bill Johnston.
]]> nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:38:56 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/YeWdTR8x8XA/253-Creating-Usable-Content-A-Few-Tips.html This post is a follow-up to my previous post Writing for the Web: A Few Tips, where I focused on more conversational tactics for writing web content. In this post, I want to brief you on a few things you can do to make your web content more usable.

Shorten the Length of Lines
Keep your line length to a manageable minimum. Research has shown that the rate of reading slows and retention rates fall as line length begins to exceed the ideal width of about 12 words per line.^₁ As line length exceeds 12 words, the reader then needs to use the muscles of the eye and neck to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If the eye must scan great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line.



Great use of chunking, imagery, and clean fonts. (example from Pattern Tap)



Break it up!
Chunk your content into meaningful sections. Use section headers to reinforce the user’s understanding of the content. Doing so will provide them cues as to what they are reading. These also improve the ability of the user to scan the page in order to easily pick and choose what sections they may be interested in reading. Chances are your users are bouncing between your site, another site, a handful of social networks, and various other external influences. Providing them clear cues will help them quickly return to where they left off.

Use Images and Photographs...
...but use them wisely. Imagery is one of the most powerful tools in visual design. When choosing or creating images for a page, it's important to use graphics deliberately to support your message and communication goals.

Using images to demonstrate examples of specific ideas increases your site user’s understanding of the content. Thus, satisfaction is improved by helping the user feel that they grasp the ideas.

Imagery also can enhance page hierarchy and scanning by providing visual cues to guide the user throughout the page. Consider the use of a primary focus image with secondary supporting images. The secondary images should support the primary images by helping the eye scan through the page hierarchy. Doing so provides the user with a break from reading content heavy pages.

Use Familiar and Readable Fonts
To achieve the best possible reading speed, use fonts that are familiar and easily scanned. Save unique stylized fonts for headers and features. Use a clean font like Arial or Helvetica for larger amounts of text that requires more dedicated reading time.

These are just a few tips to ensure the best usability for the content on your site. Have any more? Share them in the comments!

-----

(1) Web Style Guide - Basic Design Principles for Creating Website
Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton ]]> nospam@example.com (Matt Humphrey) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:01:12 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/94uwI3crZkU/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:00:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/ovaPtb3ez-8/ Forum One is hosting the next "UX Show and Tell," a casual gathering of DC-based UX practitioners who discuss/critique each other's documentation and learn from each other's work.
]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:45:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/370tZuLrHsI/242-Visual-Design-intended-for-CMS.html Web designs for CMS can be a challenge at times, as the approach has to be taken in a different manner than it would be if the site were only static content. Many times we get excited about the most innovative and creative designs, however, these designs do not always accommodate the CMS framework and structure the developer is dealing with.
As you begin your approach to designing for a CMS, the designer must first take into account that this site is not static. We must consider that the content, navigation, and images will grow at an infinite amount and the design must accommodate any future modifications. Specific elements such as background images and columns cannot break if this happens the design ultimately fails.



Here are recognizable issues when designing for a CMS:



Any designs, layouts, or elements that are designed as if the site was going to print are bad way to begin. – Some examples are:



• Elements that are meant to only accommodate a fix width or height. Fixed areas on a site, such as a fixed width or fixed height should be heavily scoped by the designer to make sure these elements never change, as a CMS is an application meant to load data and content. Usually, most elements and information change or are dynamically driven. The approach should be that the design take into consideration and is adaptable to content loading.


• Gradients that go through an entire element whether vertical or horizontal should always consider expansion. Also, radial gradients should be utilized with extra caution, as this can be quite tricky or hard to achieve in an expanding elements. We love the gradient look as it adds an outstanding visual design, however the elements that use these must be heavily identified and defined.


• Evaluate and scope the usage of shadows, gradients and transparencies. Moderate the use of these and evaluate the length of them as well. Think about content elements that grow. If these elements expand or contract, we must take note that the shadow, gradient, or transparency must do the same. We should consider if these effects have a place of cutoff; I.E. will the shadow end at some place? Does the gradient flow into a solid color at some point? These are areas that should be carefully thought threw.




Headers, navigation, and any copy or text that are images. – When designing for these elements you must always consider that these can change at anytime. If using graphics for any of these, you must recognize that it may be difficult or not possible to change these in the future.


Design for future needs and minimize efforts to have to create new styles in the future. – An example of this may be where as a header is created and a client needs a new one using that style, however the header was specific to the existing content. The header style didn’t consider wrapping or long text and distorts because of this. Create designs for most elements and even scope out and design for elements a client may wish to add in the future. By doing this, you help to keep a consistent look and feel and keep your visual design clean, even as future elements or modifications are added.

Text-wrapping elements – What happens if the header is too long for the background element? The design should always consider this as the client may wish to change this element text. Be cautious on how you use fixed widths and make sure that text can wrap in those elements accordingly.


As overview, just remember it is important as a designer to understand the CMS and how it works, and map out a fully thought-out design strategy and attack plan. The designer must think to create a stable design first, and innovative and creative second or else you may face a challenging situation in trying to fix what has been created. Solve tomorrow's problems with today's design!
]]> nospam@example.com (Jason Powell) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:40:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/Zg9GJwGt1ro/248-Forum-One-to-Host-UX-Show-and-Tell.html Tuesday, October 27th from 6:30 to 8:00 Forum One will host a UX Show and Tell at our headquarters. We still have a few spots available. Please contact Chris Avore to RSVP.



What is UX Show and Tell


A UX Show and Tell is a small, informal gathering of UX practitioners to critique each others work and provide insight on how to better communicate ideas. It is all about being a better communicator and a better designer.

Chris describes the UX Show and Tell as..


a casual get-together that’s all about the work. Show shortcuts. Ask what to annotate in a wireframe. Practice writing scenarios and user stories, and identify one from the other. Share resumes and portfolios. Get feedback from practitioners instead of stakeholders.


Format
Each presenter has about 10 minutes to show his or her work and share dialogue and get feedback from the group.

The presenter will introduce the document to the group by:



• explaining what document/deliverable you've brought to share and a background on the project/audience/etc
  
• Explain whether you're demonstrating a unique way of communicating OR if you would like feedback on how to improve the documentation that you've brought


• If you'd like feedback, you will be expected to ask targeted questions, particularly if you need feedback on the document itself.

Chris held the first UX Show and Tell in September. You can read more about the first UX Show and Tell session on Chris Arove's Blog. Chris is also taking the UX Show and Tell on the road to Interaction 10. He will be leading a UX show and tell session during lunch on Sunday. If you're attending be sure to bring some work samples to get in on the fun!

We hope that you will join us!
]]> nospam@example.com (Brian Verhoeven) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:32:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/5RFmqGNmu2E/246-NPRs-API-and-Open-Data-Public-Media-Camp-DC-2009.html Today, I attended Public Media Camp in DC to hear/discuss with locals how Public Media + Social Media trends are shifting. Daniel Jacobson from NPR held a session on NPR’s API. With a goal of publishing NPR content through various channels, opening up the API and building NPR.org on top of it has resulted in NPR’s content showing up repackaged on iPhone apps, member station sites, etc.

The NPR API's target audiences include NPR itself, partners, member stations and the general public. NPR sees the API as a great opportunity to allow the public to cultivate and repackage NPR content in ways that the NPR team doesn't have resource time or expertise to build.

One example of a NPR mashup (content + comments) includes http://www.twitter.com/NPRbackstory, which uses Yahoo Pipes to display NPR stories into a twitter feed.

WBUR is able to pull in NPR stories wrapped in WBUR.org's visual identify. Requires no human publishing, but of course means they have no control over the content within the news story.

Geomapping’s up next. Here’s a test project Daniel’s been working on: http://danieljacobson.com/NewsMap using Yahoo Placemaker which scans text to guess location and ultimately show stories overlaid on a map.

NPR's API output formats include: NPRML feed, RSS, MediaRSS, Podcast, ATOM, JSON, HTML Widget, Javascript widget - learn more on npr.org/api

Want more? Here’s a collection of articles about the NPR API -> http://delicious.com/metacreek/nprapi ]]> nospam@example.com (Sophie Burns) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:24:28 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/Y2Q9OJuIq80/243-Personas-in-comic-form.html Brad Colbow.

Personas are fictitious characters created to encapsulate the needs of target users of a site or product.

Indi Young, the star of his story, originally hails from Adaptive Path and is well known for her work on mental models, an audience research method mapping audience tasks to site structure.

Enjoy!

]]> nospam@example.com (Sophie Burns) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:04:45 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/w2G9GjUxSiI/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:45:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/WHnsDZLqfjM/403-Vote-for-Our-Sessions-2010-Nonprofit-Technology-Conference.html It's that time again. Folks are getting excited about next year's Nonprofit Technology Conference in Atlanta. Last year, Forum One brought you great panels in user experience, data visualization, digital storytelling, and who could forget: Iron Chef!

This year, we have nominated a number of great new sessions. But they won't get selected unless people score them highly. Voting ends this Friday, October 16, so time is short. Our list of proposed panels is below. We'd love to hear what you think, and of course, we'd appreciate your vote!

Voting is easy and doesn't require registration. You just click the stars to vote. It will take you just a few minutes.

Creating a Culture of Storytelling
We know that storytelling is the most powerful way to get your organization's message out there, heard and remembered. We know that compelling stories inspire action and change. But how do you get your organization to commit to storytelling?

In this session -- a continuation of last year's "Better Online Storytelling" panel -- we'll explore successful, specific techniques to get your organization started finding and telling its best stories. From stories to emails, blogs to social media, you can create a culture of storytelling. Level: Intermediate. Leads: Roger Burks and Michaela Hackner.

Vote for "Culture of Storytelling" now!

Storytelling Techniques in Practice

This session will be the culmination of a webinar series leading up to the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference. During the session, participants from the webinar will share their experiences in getting buy-in from their organizations, collecting stories, packaging them and sharing them with the world.

These participants will read their stories to the group, share lessons learned and solicit feedback. We will also name the winner of the webinar series storytelling contest. Level: Beginner. Lead: Michaela Hackner and Roger Burks.

Vote for "Storytelling Techniques in Practice" now!

Do You Want Fries With That?: Adding Value to User Experience

Users' priorities aren't always our priorities. They come to our sites looking to "buy" one thing when we wish to "sell" them something else. How can we serve their needs while also engaging users with our missions? How can we create online products and services that will keep our constituents -- whether advocates, donors, or members -- coming to our site again and again? Level: Intermediate. Lead: Sophie Campagne.

Vote for "Do You Want Fries With That" now!

Big Things in Small Packages

Once again, your organization faces a short deadline and needs to come up with an application or campaign in record time. How can you do it? And more importantly, how can you do it well? We'll hear from several web managers who deployed a web site, internet application or interactive campaign in a few weeks from start to finish. Level: Intermediate. Lead: Michaela Hackner.

Vote for "Big Things In Small Packages" now!

Set Your Data Free: How to Let OTHERS use YOUR data to make an impact

Data is sexy again, and setting it free with open API's, feeds, and open standards is transforming the way other people can use your data to help you make progress on your mission. This session will look at nonprofits that have choosen to let set their data free on the web, how they did it, and how it's helping their mission. Level: Intermediate. Lead: Kurt Voelker.

Vote for "Set Your Data Free" now!

Online Community: Real World Lessons for Supporting Meaningful Constituent Engagement Online

To build or not to build (your own community features)? That is the question. When it comes to building engagement about your issue online, we all know that interaction and community matter. But how do you balance between building community on your site, and throughout the social web? What online community tactics work best? And most importantly, how have others tackled this problem and succeeded. Level: Intermediate. Lead: Kurt Voelker.

Vote for "Real World Lessons" now!
]]> nospam@example.com (Michaela Hackner) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:24:56 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineCommunityReport/~3/drGpUjBLXgI/560-Report-Back-from-the-Online-Community-Summit-2009.html
I've included links to a few key content sources below. You will find a rich set of observations in the Twitter stream, as well as video interviews from 3 of our session leads.

Tweet stream from the Online Community Summit 2009
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ocs2009

Flickr stream:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocs2009&w=all

Video Interviews:
Sharon Carothers of Legacy / BecomeAnEx.org


Jordan Williams of REI.com


Erica Kuhl of Salesforce.com
]]> nospam@example.com (Bill Johnston) http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineCommunityReport Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:04:43 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Influence/~3/eqSrRg1xJ5A/402-Real-Time-Web-Summit-Thursday,-October-15,-Mountain-View-CA.html We're pleased to be partnering with ReadWriteWeb on an exciting conference this week - "The Real Time Web Summit". If you will be in the SF Bay area you should really think about going!



The real-time web is creating new opportunities in business, media, communication and collaboration. We are bringing together industry leaders using the real-time web in social networks, financial services, media and nonprofit groups to discuss:

* the state of the art, science and business of the real-time web

* efforts to create standards and interoperability

* challenges in user experience, technology and monetization.




The event will be an unconference format - leveraging users' interests to drive the sessions, and ensuring plenty of time for interactions.

REGISTRATION
Click here, and enter discount code: forumone to save $50.

Forum One's Chief Community Officer Bill Johnston will be there and has also blogged about essential reading on the topic of the real-time web.
]]> nospam@example.com (Chris Wolz) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Influence Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:15:03 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/FuXZ3WCh_Ic/172-Eclipse-Works-With-Preexisting-Code,-But-Not-Well.html Eclipse PDT to the most recent version, and I decided to figure out something that had been bugging me: why couldn't Eclipse use a project I'd already checked out via the command line to the same workspace?

A colleague suggested that I could indeed do it, and that I just needed to start a new project but check "Create project from existing source." This does work, but it has a couple of restrictions that explain why I was having so many problems and why it's kind of useless for me.


1. Projects from existing sources cannot be in your workspace. I have no idea why this restriction exists. I could understand why starting a project inside another project would be bad, but all Eclipse has to do is add a couple of extra files to a directory. Nonetheless, all the sites I'd set up in my workspace and had been using other text editors to edit were unusable. Coda, by contrast, will happily take over an existing project, no matter where it is or what is in it. Interestingly, you can set up a workspace inside another workspace, so I could get around this by creating another workspace that pointed to a subfolder of my current workspace that contained the source code I wanted to use.


2. If using subversion, Subclipse will not be able to work with your checked out copy if the versioned files are in a subdirectory of your project. This is also strange to me. In Drupal, for example, we only version the sites/all directory and use Drush to update the main application. In other projects, we have versioned code outside the public root and create the public root from a tarball we keep in the repository. Since these files have configurations that shouldn't be versioned, I want to be able to edit them in Eclipse while using Subclipse to control the versioned part. Sadly, this restriction means I can't do that.


So my workflow is still to create subdirectories, including a public root, in my workspace by hand, and then importing the project from Subversion with Eclipse's Import function. These seem like pointless restrictions to me. If anybody knows a workaround, I'd be grateful. ]]> nospam@example.com (Sandy Smith) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:25:29 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/eRvllZRnPpk/241-DataMasher-the-IA-perspective.html
In early July, Forum One participated in the Apps for America 2 contest, organized by the Sunlight Foundation.

The Background
The goal of the contest was to show “that when government makes data available, it makes itself more accountable and creates more trust and opportunity in its actions.”

As we put together our Forum One team, we came up with our own set of goals for the website, eventually called DataMasher. DataMasher would:



• Use government data from Data.gov


• Create something with returning value


• Let users interact with the data in ways that they couldn’t before

With a team of five people (two developers, one information architect/designer, one project manager, one advisor) and four weeks to create something, we hit the ground running!

Since data.gov is full of state-specific data, we decided to create a website that could include any type of data, as long as it was broken down by state. DataMasher allows users to combine any two data sets and display the results in a table and on a map.




What I Learned
With a limited amount of time, there are a couple of things I kept in mind while creating the information architecture and design:



Focus on a small set of solutions and goals. Do them well.
We knew that we would never get the site done in four weeks if we tried to add every bell and whistle. We had to move fast. I chose to focus on a small set of pages that we could build on (home page, detail page, list page).




Be flexible. Constantly brainstorm.
These two go together. I did tons of sketches, with different layout and functionality options, and presented those to the developers. We chose which solution to move forward with based on what required a low level of effort on the development site and still achieved a good user experience. No solution was perfect. We brainstormed and changed as needed to keep things moving. Below are some of my early sketches.









Maximize the easy stuff.
We built DataMasher on Drupal. Throughout the process we thought,

What does Drupal do well (or innately) without customization? Let’s do that!


For example, within Drupal it is easy to add commenting and rating systems. So, voila! Stars and commenting were added. I just had to figure out where to place them.




Keep it fresh.
We wanted users to see something new every time they came to the site. The easiest way to do this was to incorporate a running list of the newest items on the home page. In this case, those items are mashups.




Keep the design simple.
We didn’t have a lot of time to apply a design (or theme), so I keeping the visual layer simple was an important technical objective. I used standard web-safe fonts throughout, and not a lot of images. As you can see the buttons in the right column are simple blue backgrounds with different colored and sized text. If I had added rounded corners everywhere, we would have needed images for each corner.




Test. And then test again.
There were a couple of items that weren’t completely intuitive.
The name
We originally planned to name the website Indik8r (pronounced indicator). We chose this name because after a user combines sets of data, they get a map that shows how the states rank, and users can identify trends or indicators. After we shared the concept and site (in very early stages) with a couple of coworkers and friends, we heard from all of them that they didn’t understand what we meant by Indicator and why it was spelled wrong. Our solution was to rename and open up to forum for suggestions and DataMasher was born.

The explanation
We wanted users to do a couple of initial things on the site:



1. check out the data sets


2. check out the mashups


3. create a mashup


The original designs showed each action, but again, after running it by a few folks, they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what a dataset or a mashup was, or how to create one. So, I went back to the drawing board and tried to address these issues.

I first attempted to add more visuals and examples to make it clearer. I started with a mashup. How do you represent a mashup? My idea was based on a Venn diagram, which shows two items and where they overlap.

Before:


After:



Second, I simplified the information even more, attempting to answer the user’s question of “So what?” The user needs to know how DataMasher works and why they should participate. What do they get? The result was the final infographic on the home page.

Before:


After:



]]> nospam@example.com (Courtney Clark) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:53:08 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/JiUuInrTPM8/240-Thanks,-Come-Again-Web-Executive-Seminar.html
The November Web Executive Seminar is quickly approaching! This year we're focusing on how organizations keep users coming back to their websites. Join us on November 5th for "Thanks, Come Again: Audience-Centric User Experience"

Over the years I've worked on several project where we focus on establishing a strong foundation for a website with intuitive navigation, clear layout, and beautiful visual design, but the work doesn't end there. Websites, like cars or houses, require continual maintenance and improvement. But how do you know what your audience wants? How do you create a compelling user experience that keeps your audience engaged? How do you get more users to return to your site? What does it look like?

During this event, speakers will tackle these tough questions and share lessons learned. You'll learn what other organizations are doing to keep their audiences coming back for more.

Register now!
]]> nospam@example.com (Courtney Clark) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:38:16 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/CO9f4CeM_yQ/170-CodeWorks-09-DC.html Thought I'd give a few overall impressions from CodeWorks DC while they're fresh in my mind.



The community


What really impressed me was just how great the PHP community is. There were some Big Names there, but everybody was really approachable and happy to share what they knew and ready to listen to others. They were really friendly, and I had some great conversations in the hall and after hours, both with other attendees and with speakers and staff. Get a sense of this over at Dawn Casey's blog.



The tutorials


I had expected the tutorials to be somewhat interesting, but otherwise expected the meat to be on the second day with the more traditional talks.

Wrong.

The code review I attended in the morning was very educational, and Keith Casey was quite sporting about letting his project be dissected by ze Germans, as they came to be known. Best line: "Well, think of how many people are in this room, multiply it by our billing rate, and see how much it cost us just to figure out what the hell this piece of code does." But the Advanced OO Design talk was really valuable. The lower crowd size coupled with the length of the presentation made it very easy to ask substantive questions and get serious responses. It helped me get over a number of mental blocks I'd been having with the implementation of MVC in web apps and better ways to do Dependency Injection.

None of this takes away from the second day's talks. I'll highlight some of them in coming blog posts. But the tutorials were an unexpected gem.



Microsoft


Microsoft appears to be making a really big effort to reach out to the PHP community, and I appreciate it. They were a big sponsor of the event, including an open bar the second night. I also appreciate what they've been doing to improve PHP's performance on IIS. I hope they follow this effort up by taking steps to make themselves really interoperable with other systems, so it doesn't feel like going Microsoft is an all-or-nothing choice.



The Organizers


Even though it was small enough to handle informally, CodeWorks felt very well-run. Despite a truly grueling schedule (two teams leapfrogging across the country, one day on, one day off), everybody seemed in good spirits and there was comparatively little confusion. When a mixup or a technical glitch occurred, they were able to adapt quickly, even ready to get a speaker to throw in an extra talk.

If they decide to to this again, I highly recommend this conference. If they're in town again, I'm going to lobby to get the whole Forum One team there--it was really that good. ]]> nospam@example.com (Sandy Smith) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:17:13 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/txTEZIjnblU/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UserExperienceDesign/~3/mwDzJR5WYZk/238-Online-School-for-Girls.html I was recently surprised to discover that a local school is leading an effort to partner with three other US schools to launch an online girls school, merging two concepts: thanks to today's technology, obtaining an education no longer requires a person to physically sit in a classroom, and single sex education has its merits. In fact, studies show that girls tend to engage and participate more in a single sex learning environment, and that females respond to technology differently than males do.

This last fact is not surprising to me. Social behaviors vary between males and females at a young age and carry through into adulthood. I remember reading similar research from a 2002 Nielsen Norman report while conducting audience research for a children's web site we were redesigning.

For this online girls school program, teachers design the curriculum, and students work through the material largely independently. This model lowers the barrier of engagement across geography, allowing registered students to exchange ideas with other female students and teachers around the globe, with whom they would otherwise not have an opportunity to interact.

Given that more than 4 millions college students are already taking classes online, it seems like a natural expansion for online coursework to be conducted at the highschool level. In fact, a national survey released in January by the Sloan Consortium, an online education organization, estimated that the number of K-12 students nationwide who took online courses had increased by nearly 50 percent since the 2005-06 school year. [1]

Because research shows that young girls respond best to environments where connectivity is emphasized, I'm interested in hearing what the program's measures of success are, and how it will overcome time differences and geographical barriers for an audience that thrives on connectivity. Shared publishing, Wikis, Web Cams, what else?

A great user experience and service design opportunity - customizing the experience to the target constituents' needs. And exciting to see to what extent technology will break down those geographic and collaboration barriers.

[1 ] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/05/AR2009070502424.html ]]> nospam@example.com (Sophie Burns) http://feeds.feedburner.com/UserExperienceDesign Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:34:38 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/QR29WaDWeYk/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:00:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/669/ "10 Best Project Management Tools" by Smartlife, a publication dedicated to professionals about how to get more out of life using technology, outsourcing, crowdsourcing, and other lifehacks. We are honored to be among the top tools for online collaboration to help people manage documents, coordinate tasks, and communicate better.
]]> http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/hie0AdCZggg/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:15:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/GwpbQUMC8lM/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:15:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/NXzx-aCUELw/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Wed, 09 Sep 2009 19:00:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/qPsDxRICsVY/168-Datamasher-Wins!.html Datamasher won in a squeaker, over some very stiff competition from This We Know and GovPulse. I got to meet and talk shop with those developers and the developers behind the Visualization Prize winner, QuakeSpotter. They're all scarily smart and great people. Since the voting was incredibly close, I think it shows the entries were all really strong.

A big thank-you to everyone who voted for Datamasher! ]]> nospam@example.com (Sandy Smith) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:23:29 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/hJWbhLSmzRg/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:45:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/CrE4O2e2bh4/167-Datamasher-at-the-Gov-2.0-Expo-Showcase.html Some of my Forum One colleagues and I will be at the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase today to talk Gov 2.0 (duh) and present Datamasher. If you're going, come by the Datamasher table and say hi, and pick up some Nerds or Smarties. ]]> nospam@example.com (Sandy Smith) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:33:18 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/ujP5Hb6_dMw/165-Datamasher-a-Drupal-Based-Data-Visualization-Tool.html Concept

In creating Forum One's entry into the Sunlight Labs Apps for America 2 competition, we were faced with a challenge: how to take some of the data cataloged on the government's new data.gov website and make it more easily used and understood by average citizens. Much of the data is obscure and not easily understood by someone not already familiar with advanced statistical analysis and whichever field the data is about, such as economics, labor studies, agriculture, biology, or environmental science.

Once we hit on the concept of taking state-by-state data and making it more available to people, we looked at what was out there to make sure we weren't reinventing the wheel. We were impressed by StateMaster, which already ranked states by single data sets. Norman, a web developer, had the idea of letting users combine datasets and graph the results. That reminded me of the Misery Index, famously used by Jimmy Carter to bash Gerald Ford, and then used by Ronald Reagan to bash Jimmy Carter. The formula was simple: take the national unemployment rate plus the national inflation rate, and you have an indicator of the pressure being felt by working families.

Initially, we considered a more complex service that would allow someone to create simple equations, such as (a + b) / (c * 2), but we realized getting the interface right would take a lot of time we didn't have. Additionally, we realized none of us were statisticians, and few of our target audience (average but web-savvy citizens) would be either. So doing something with mathematical and analytical rigor was out of the question. We decided instead to make the tool much more about discovery and discussion. The challenge of graphing 51 points also led us to lead with a map-based display. The time limitation meant we'd pare out everything that wasn't essential and polish what we had.

In the end, we decided to let users create mashups of two data sets out of a repository of datasets we'd pre-load. Users would also discuss and rate other mashups. Since we wanted the site to be self-sustaining, we would allow users to add additional datasets so updated and additional data could be included.



Components


The online community element led us naturally to use Drupal. This saved us having to build registration, commenting, pretty URL, and basic CMS features. We started with Acquia Drupal to give us a bunch of pre-screened modules we could use as we saw fit during development. We wanted a rating component to allow users to float good or interesting mashups to the top, so we used the Fivestar module, and enabled comments on the Mashup content type. To supply the datasets, we created a dataset content type, and used CCK nodereferences to connect them. To display the maps, we used a Flash map from Fla-shop.com, which we had worked with previously and knew could let us color states with XML and provide additional information in popups. To ensure the data was easier to scan, we created a second table view. To guard against spam, we enabled Mollom. To enable people to personalize their mashups with icons, we used ImageCache and a CCK Image field.



Customization


Getting lots of lists of states plus data entered wasn't easy, and required some of us to comb through data.gov and other sources looking for state-level data to include. To facilitate this and make the combinations less database-intensive, Norman built out a module to take a CSV file in State Name, Value format, create a table for that data set in the database and store the data there, and then retrieve the appropriate table for its associated node, combine them with the appropriate operator, and provide an array. I wrote a module to take the table data from Norman's module, compute the color needed for each state, and format it in the XML schema required by the Flash-based map (which, among other things, required the states be in a fixed order).



Datamasher: selecting an operator
To make it easier for people to create mashups, I themed the checkbox form element to use JQuery and formatted options to select the operator, which was the most confusing part of the default interface. Now users simply click on the operator with which they'd like to combine the two datasets, and see their choice in a very large font. Norman themed the mashup content type template, using Drupal 6's templating features to provide a tab for the map view and a tab for the table view.

We decided people would still like to look at maps and tables for each dataset, so we adapted the modules to provide the same display for those. And to deal with the inevitable carping over statistical rigor, we added a little surprise. To let people more easily add future datasets, Norman created a user data set module with a custom form that displayed an entry for each state--all the user has to do is fill in each value and some metadata. Add in views for most recent, highest rated, and most discussed mashups and datasets, a view of latest comments, an instructional video, and then some dusting off of my Photoshop cutup and theming skills, and voila, in essentially three weekends we'd built a data visualization tool.



Vote for Datamasher!



If you like it, please vote for Datamasher, by registering and voting at Sunlight Labs via that link. Today is the last day! ]]> nospam@example.com (Sandy Smith) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:31:30 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/vMP5cliBBbQ/163-Apps-for-America-2-Lessons-Learned-During-Speedy-Application-Development!.html
(Our application, DataMasher, placed in the top 3 (out of 47), so by they way, I'd appreciate your vote so we can be pushed to #1.)

First some background: The contest was created by Sunlight Labs to celebrate and publicize data.gov, a new resource for federal government data. We were given 11 weeks to work on it, and we actually completed the entire application in 4 weeks from kickoff to launch, in less than 200 hours. We spent a few weeks brainstorming in June, but the bulk of our work happened during the last 4 weeks. At times we weren't sure we would finish in time, but we really believed in our idea to make government data usable, visual, and accessible. So, we persevered!

Here's are a few lessons we captured that should be applicable to similar projects:

1. Keep the team small. Our team was only 5 people - a Senior Advisor, a Project Manager, a Tech Lead, a Developer, and an Information Architect/Designer. This focused the scope and increased our overall productivity.

2. Choose a few pieces of key functionality and ROCK them! Although the possibilities were/are endless with DataMasher.org, we tempered our expectations and were practical with our decisions. We wanted to ensure that the features we built into the site worked really well and that we'd have time to test and tweak. We also wanted to ensure that the site would be flexible enough for growth in the future. There were times we had to turn down great ideas because we weren't sure we'd nail them in the time we had left, but we kept a running tally of enhancements to develop in the future, and continue to seek out that feedback from users (including you!).

3. Leverage user-generated content whenever possible and appropriate: many heads are better than one! DataMasher is by "the people" and "for the people". We wanted the site to be about the users and their data, and most importantly, the ways in which users could manipulate that data to be relevant. Letting people create their own mashups, rank and rate them, add comments, and upload new data sets was critical to our overall goal.

4. Be flexible and keep moving - don't get caught up in the churn and debate, make decisions! If we had spent a lot of time planning and scoping, we never would have entered into development. We chose basic goals, met weekly to discuss progress and opportunities, and were always willing to both succeed and fail, and most importantly, learn.

The project was a ton of fun to work on, if not a lot of work. I hope these insights are helpful.

Once again, if you wish to vote for DataMasher, here's how.
]]> nospam@example.com (Michaela Hackner) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:01:19 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/nL4UsInGMZM/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Thu, 27 Aug 2009 04:00:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/QTDrKMqSWkg/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneCommunications/~3/JrbnVyo-D0w/ ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneCommunications Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:30:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/qz7Ft28ZAd4/161-WordPress-Certain-Widgets-on-Certain-Pages.html frameworks. They both have minimal cores, but were built from the ground-up to handle tons of extensibility.

Even though WordPress has been traditionally thought of as a blogging system, it's gradually shaping into a more refined, full-featured CMS. WordPress Plugins like Pods CMS and Flutter are opening the flood gates of potential, just like how the CCK and Views modules have revolutionized Drupal.



Drupal - Blocks


Drupal includes things called "Blocks", which are chunks of code/HTML that you can stick in various "regions" of your site (e.g. Header, Footer, Content Top, etc). With blocks, you can choose which pages these blocks appear on, or which pages to exclude them from appearing on.



WordPress - Widgets


WordPress has similar things called "Widgets". The main thing missing with Widgets as opposed to Blocks is the ability to display specific Widgets on specific pages. Regardless, Widgets are relatively simple to implement.

You first add some PHP code in functions.php to define new "regions" to place widgets into.


<?php
if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
register_sidebar(array(
'name'=>'My Footer',
'before_widget' => '',
'after_widget' => '',
'before_title' => '<h4>',
'after_title' => '</h4>'
));
}


Then, it's a matter of adding some code to your WP Template file (e.g. index.php) to display this custom Widget region:


<?php dynamic_sidebar('My Footer'); ?>




WordPress Plugin: Widget Block


I created a plugin so that you can treat WordPress widgets more like Drupal blocks. Specifically, you can choose which pages a certain widget will appear on (or be excluded from). This plugin also prevents you from needing to create many slightly different Widget regions. The plugin is called Widget Block; give it a try!

]]> nospam@example.com (Matt Gibbs) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:31:29 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/657/
]]> http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:00:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/tl1F2ZWN6g0/160-The-Cloud-how-is-it-relevant.html

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!

]]> nospam@example.com (Jo Ryden) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Wed, 06 May 2009 18:02:08 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/S5KHRbJYNDM/159-LegiStalker-Getting-people-engaged-with-Congress.html
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. ]]> nospam@example.com (Matt Gibbs) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:27:09 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/647/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForumOneTechBlog/~3/C4PtW-LctmI/156-Code-Samples,-Job-Applications,-and-You.html 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. ]]> nospam@example.com (Sandy Smith) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForumOneTechBlog Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:16:15 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/645/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:30:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/641/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:45:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/626/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/620/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/619/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:15:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/617/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/614/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:30:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/613/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:30:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/609/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Tue, 20 May 2008 14:15:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/608/ http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/syndicate/rss2.xml Tue, 13 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT http://www.projectspaces.com/content/blog/detail/598/
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