community category archives

There is an interesting pair of articles that focus on collaboration in the April 2008 Communications of the ACM. And one of them leads to even more interesting stuff.

Luis Suarez pointed to an article by Dennis Stevenson on his first blush with Twitter, The World is Smaller than You Think. I think Dennis' observations are in line with whymany people get so excited about social media.

In a blinding flash, Stephen Dale reminds us that "It's not the (social networking) technology - it's the people that matter."

Valdis Krebs points to some more research that confirms the Allen Curve works.

Stowe Boyd has just given me about the best description of why I like blogs in comparison to wikis. In blogs the author shines through. In wikis, nothing human shines through.

Tom Davenport has been writing about online social networking lately, mostly appearing the curmudgeon. I suspect he's getting it a little wrong.

There was another interesting article in the November 2007 Communications of the ACM, "What Motivates Wikipedians" by Oded Nov. Is there a connection to the larger question of motivation in wikis?

I spoke today on the Blogs and Wikis in the Corporate World panel at ASIST. My topic was one of my favorites, around how blogs can support formation and maintenance of communities. Slides available.

James Robertson makes an interesting claim in "Collaboration tools are anti knowledge sharing?" The short idea is that the tools can create information islands that limit sharing at the larger level.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach has an excellent piece on "The Art of Building Virtual Communities." The article was posted about a month ago, and the comments have extended the discussion even further.

I'm not so interested in the specifics of Freecycle as in the familiar sound of their growing pains, as reported on the front page of the Chicago Tribune today.

Wondering what to do about setting up a social networking website for your burgeoning community of Hot Rod Bowling* enthusiasts? Here are some resources for you.

People who have been following my blog for a while have probably seen me reference Brandon Wirtz' thought that Blogs are just a front porch. I like this particular analogy enough that I tossed it out as a topic at the BlogHer unconference.

The second unconference session was initiated by Aliza Sherman as a result of the communities panel from Friday, where there was not enough time to talk about how and why communities die / break-up / fade away.

Some of my reaction to the first day of BlogHer 2007 in Chicago.