Online Community Building and the Future of Websites

1. Online Community Building and the Future of Websites Matthew Burnett Pro Bono Net Travis August Pro Bono Net

2. 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

3. 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?

4. 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?

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

9. shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress

10. 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.

11. NYC Pro Bono Center

12. 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)

13. 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

14. FEMAAnswers.org

15. 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)

16. del.icio.us/popular/law

17. 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.

18. IllinoisProBono.org

19. 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)

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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) • What’s next?

23. 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

24. Building and sustaining online communities • Identify your goals • What a your goals for building an online community? • Example: to build greater awareness of your site’s 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.

25. 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?

26. 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

27. Second Life

28. EnviroLink

29. Common Circle

30. N-TEN

31. Global Voices

32. TakingITGlobal

33. Questions/Contact Information • Questions? • Contact information: • Matthew Burnett mburnett@probono.net • Travis August taugust@probono.net