Online Community Building and the Future of Websites

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Online Community Building and the Future of
Websites

• Matthew Burnett
• Pro Bono Net
• Travis August
• Pro Bono Net

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Outline

• What is a community?
• What is an online or virtual community?
• Why develop online communities?
• Building and sustaining online communities
• Tools and services for building online
  communities
• Examples of online communities
• Questions/Contact information

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What is community?

• A community is a group of people who interact and
  share certain things as a group, including
  intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs,
  risks and a number of other conditions that may
  be present and common, and affect the identity of
  the participants and their degree of adhesion.
• From Community on Wikipedia.org (a very good
  example of a robust online community)
• What are some examples of real world communities?
  What makes them communities?

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What is an online (or virtual) community?

• An online community has the same characteristics
  as a real world community, except that the
  interactions and sharing take place (primarily)
  online.
• A major benefit of online communities is that
  they can be both widely distributed and deeply
  networked, a feature that is supported by various
  online tools and services.
• What are some examples of online communities that
  you belong to?

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Why develop online communities?

• Recruit membership/volunteers
• Increase visibility
• Share information/resources with a wider network
• Organize/activate users around issues or causes
• Coordinate trainings, events and other activities

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Tools and services for building online communities

• There are a wealth of tools and services
  available to build and support online
  communities. These tools are sometimes referred
  to as social software or Community 2.0 (a
  derivative of Web 2.0). What distinguishes them
  is that they all emphasize collaboration among
  users.
• Here are a few examples that have proven
  themselves to be useful, or may prove themselves
  be useful, to the poverty law community.

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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Statewide Websites
• Client sites
• Feedback
• Newsletters
• Online surveys
• Advocate sites
• Interactive content (calendars, news, libraries,
  etc.)
• Listservs
• Multimedia

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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Blogs/Blawgs (law blogs)
• Online journals where authors post a series of
  articles in chronological order
• Take on a specific topic or cater to a specific
  community of users
• Users can generally post comments/feedback
• Special features like track/linkbacks (notifies
  an author that their entry has been linked to),
  RSS and inclusion in blog search engines (i.e.
  Technorati)
• Free or small monthly fee, depending on the
  service

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shlep the Self-Help Law ExPress
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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Webcasts
• Live/archived video streamed on the internet
  (internet broadcasting)
• Can be used for advocate trainings, client
  community education, etc.
• Live webcasts may include interactive chat.

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NYC Pro Bono Center
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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Podcasts
• Like webcasts, only audio
• Can be syndicated using RSS or other services
  (users can subscribe to a podcasts)
• Relatively low bandwidth, can be downloaded and
  played with mobile devices (i.e. ipods, cell
  phones)

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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Wikis
• Website that allows users to interact and
  collaborate on a project or resource
• Users can add, delete and modify information
• Tracks changes over time
• Can be made public or private

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FEMAAnswers.org
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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Content tags
• Metadata/terms associated with a piece of content
• Folksonomy (ground-up) v. taxonomy (top-down)
• Can be tagged by creators, consumers or both
• Examples
• Social bookmarking used to store, share and
  search web bookmarks (i.e. del.icio.us)
• Photo sharing used to organize photos based on
  tags (i.e. flickr)

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del.icio.us/popular/law
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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
• An easy way to syndicate content to your
  community. Users can digest feeds into their
• Websites
• Blogs
• Newsreaders (also called feed readers or feed
  aggregators)
• A simple way to bring relevant content to your
  community.

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IllinoisProBono.org
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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Webinars/Online Meetings
• Collaborate using online tools (i.e. Webex,
  GotoMeeting) to review documents, conduct
  trainings, etc.
• Users call-in to a conference call number
• Can be saved for further trainings or to archive
  project materials
• Reduce time and costs associate with travel,
  increased audience (particularly when working
  with rural populations of clients or advocates)

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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Online Project Management
• Share documents and interact with other project
  partners online
• Can be for long-term or short-term projects
• Commercial products/services are available (i.e.
  Basecamp), but free services like wikis and blogs
  may work just as well

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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Internet Forums
• Allow users to post questions and answers using a
  simple, web-based application.
• Allow administrators to set up different
  categories for discussion
• Posts are threaded, which provides users a map
  of the discussion

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Tools and services for building online
communities (cont.)

• Mobile Technologies
• SMS (text messaging)
• Instant Messaging to text mobile phones
• Sending/syncing data between PDAs, mobile phones,
  online services, etc. (i.e. photos, documents)
• Whats next?

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Building and sustaining online communities (cont.)

• Identify your target audience
• Who are you trying to reach?
• Example clients, pro bono lawyers, law students
• How will you reach them?
• Example at the legal aid office, communications
  with law firms/schools, substantive listservs,
  etc.
• Why will they be interested?
• Example to solve a legal problem, gain insight
  into a new area of practice/career, networking
  opportunities

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Building and sustaining online communities

• Identify your goals
• What a your goals for building an online
  community?
• Example to build greater awareness of your
  sites resources
• How will building an online community satisfy
  these goals?
• Example sharing resources with a wider audience
  will help build greater awareness
• How will you know if/when the goals have been
  satisfied?
• Example more resources downloaded from the site
  increase in demand for new resources, etc.

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Building and sustaining online communities
(cont.)

• Identify the kinds of sharing and interactions
  that you hope to foster/facilitate
• What kinds of sharing or interactions?
• One-to-one, one-to-many, many to many
• Do the interactions need to be real-time or can
  they be asynchronous?
• What kinds of tools or services will help to
  facilitate these interactions?

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Building and sustaining online communities (cont.)

• Identify any rules or community guidelines
• What are the rules or guidelines?
• Example flame-free, on-topic
• How will they be communicated?
• Example Join email, site policy/terms of use
• How will they be enforced?
• Example Warning, canceling membership

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Second Life
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EnviroLink
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Common Circle
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N-TEN
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Global Voices
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TakingITGlobal
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Questions/Contact Information

• Questions?
• Contact information
• Matthew Burnett mburnett_at_probono.net
• Travis August taugust_at_probono.net