I have hardly had a chance to catch my breath since attending the Online Community Summit last week in Sonoma. I love this conerence because it’s a small, intimate event that brings together online community builders and other social media folk across sectors and types of communities. I always meet interesting people there and get inspired by all the discussion and friendly sharing of online community building best practices.
Big takeaways or reminders for me this year were:
- community health is not just about traffic and activity, it’s about the type of engagement
- social and fiscal responsibility need to come together, as they do in social enterprise models; you can’t have one without the other (well you can, but it’s not as interesting to me)
- our platform is extremely powerful and impressive compared to other solutions out there!
- user experience, usability, and design are still critical elements of community adoption; if you’re letting your technology get in the way, you’re in trouble. simple. elegant. don’t remind your members that they’re using a computer.
- finally, and this is the big one: mobile is here. get used to it.
Bryan Person of Live World interviewed me while I was at the conference if you want to get a bit more flavor for what I was thinking and learning there. (Warning: I say kick-@ss when I’m talking about social media librarians in this clip!) Thanks Brian and everyone for making this a great professional development opportunity for me!
Chrystie:
So pleased we had the chance to meet at OCS08, and thanks, too, for agreeing to be interviewed.
You answered my “are librarians tech savvy?” question gracefully. In fact, I’ve met, interviewed, and been in touch with several library professionals over the past couple of years who are doing great things in social media and online community. So, I certainly *knew* the answer to my question before I asked it, but I really wanted to get your take.
See you ’round Twitter.
Bryan Person | @BryanPerson
LiveWorld social media evangelist
My name is Pat Ball and I’m with Cobb County Public Library System. I will be helping to create and get going the Information Technology Interest Group for GLA. We will be meeting in Jan at the mid-winter meeting that is usually held by GLA.
If you have ideas or are interested please let me know. If you have an idea for a program or for some technology training please let me know.
Thanks ballp@cobbcat.org
[...] contain. Perhaps links to everything digital that I mention in the book? Back to the kick-ass: listen to my outright expletive in my latest post on BlogJunction. Could I get in trouble for [...]