Chicago Entrepreneurs

Here is a video series I created of some of the Chicago entrepreneurs featured at the last Crave Party in Chicago. This event featured local, organic and sustainable Chicago based businesses.

I created this series of video interviews with Chicago entrepreneurs I shot with my beloved Flip camera and edited with Mac imovie with intro sequences from Keynote. I  created it as part of a video advent calendar to promote the Crave Holiday Shopping event I produced and the entrepreneurs featured  are focused on green, organic and sustainable business practices in Chicago.

Group Collaboration – Step 2 Facilitation & Content Management

filesYou’ve got your collaborative tool up and running, your team is online, what’s next?

1. sharing the right information

2. organizing that information so it’s intuitive, inclusive and easily accessible
Creative Commons License photo credit: evelynishere

Sharing may seem like an obvious answer to how to collaborate but sometimes – having the collaborative site or tool isn’t enough. You need someone to be asking the right questions to draw out the team for answers, hold people accountable for timely answers and be monitoring for incorrect information. That’s where having at least 1 person responsible for facilitating the collaboration can be useful.

Some forums do this by being self-policing. By setting up clear policies and user guidelines on what to and what not to write or talk about. Users are assigned points or status for the quality and quantity of their posts and responses. Others rely on specific facilitators and moderators to keep the flow going in the right direction and keep the information moving at a brisk pace.

Often, those charged with facilitation need to reorganize the information so that it’s not scattered piecemeal throughout the site, but organized in a comprehensive way. You may see this on some of your favorite sites by the use of a set of site-specific tags, wiki’s and sticky posts that become permanent fixtures of forums and category groupings.

How does your collaborative tool reward content creation and manage moderation? Would you say your content is organized in an intuitive way?

Matt Mullenweg’s – 6 Steps to Kill Your Community

There is a lot of instruction on the web on how to grow your community, add followers and readership online. But is it all about the numbers? Instead the focus should be about engagement and conversation. The value you’re providing your readers in terms of fresh content that is helpful or actionable. Creating not just a resource – but a forum for debate and communication. Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress recently created a post on his site highlighting what not to do in being successful in building your online community and web presence.

I thought I’d write a guide for how to increase the number of comments you get by 400-1,000% and ruin whatever shred of community you had on your site.

In short his list is:

  1. Abandon Search Engines.
  2. Be Famous!
  3. Put the Comment Form at Top.
  4. No Subscriptions.
  5. Make People Click Click Click.
  6. Treat Everyone the Same.
  7. Don’t Ask Anything of Your Audience.

Read Matt’s full essay here at ma.tt

What would you add to take this list to 10?

Wikis work as business collaboration tools

JIBE Event #2
Wikis are a collaborative web based tool that allows users to share in not just reading information but adding and amending content as a group process.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Robert Sanzalone

Wikipedia defines wiki’s as 

“A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYGtext editor, within the browser.[1][2] Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, and for note taking. The collaborative encyclopediaWikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.[2] Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and knowledge management systems. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work.”[3]

“Wiki” (English pronunciation: /wiːkiː/) is a Hawaiian word for “fast”.[4] ”Wiki” can be expanded as “What I Know Is,” but this is a backronym.”

A recent study of “Why Businesses Don’t Collaborate” by Stewart Mader and Scott Abel highlights the fact that employees rely heavily on email to communicate and collaborate and most feel inundated and overwhelmed with the sheer volume of messages and attachments. Frequently those attachments are less than 2 pages long and could be easily added to a wiki – adding value to the overall group collaboration and shared knowledge-base. As it is, 82% of those polled received dozens of emails a day and found that due to the volume important information was often lost or overlooked, adding it to a wiki would solve not just for the reduction of emails sent but key information being skipped over or deleted.

Has your business moved away from emails to a collaborative wiki for knowledge management? How smooth was the transition?

If you’re ready to get started with a wiki, there is a great open source option called Twiki. You can check Twiki out here at their website twiki.org .

Facilitation vs. Moderation of Online Communities

Stack
You may think that there is little difference between the two terms facilitation and moderation. However, when it comes to managing online communities – the difference can be striking.

Moderation is the act of monitoring communication in an online community and editing/changing the tone and flow of conversations to fit within the excepted norms of a given community. Whereas facilitation is the enhancement of communication and conversation through guided interaction. One can be seen as exclusive and the other inclusive.

A community manager facilitating an online community knows when to be visible in the debate and when to lay back and let it unfold. This is a skill – that some are born with and many learn, in knowing how to get the best discussion going, new ideas germinating and conversation flowing around a topic.

Think of the online communities that you belong to – are there any standout moderators/facilitators that you’ve noticed?

Creative Commons License photo credit: Daniel Berg

Ready to Start Your Blog? Try WordPress

Have you been thinking about starting a blog or new site but not sure where to start? WordPress is a great tool that can help you get started in no time. I’ve created a brief WordPress startup guide and tutorial to walk you through the process of getting your blog up and running today.

Click the link below to download your free PDF copy of my quick-start WordPress Tutorial
Click Here for the WordPress Tutorial

You’ll learn answers to the following questions:

  • What is a blog
  • How and what to write about
  • How to install WordPress
  • How to create and edit Pages
  • How to add and edit new Posts (or articles)
  • How to add links and pictures to your blog
  • How to add new categories and categorize your Posts

and more…

Set Up A Facebook Group in Less Than 3 Minutes

Sure you may already have a Facebook page/profile – but have you ever wondered how to set up a Facebook Group?

Facebook Groups are a great way to organize a community around a cause. From the group page you can then add events, meetups, post links, have discussions and more. Once you set it up you’re the administrator, but you can always add other administrators who will also have access to help you administrate your new group.

Here is part 1 of the series of How to Start and Customize a Facebook Group. (Customization will be in the next video.)

Interview with Teresa Ging, Woman Entrepreneur

Teresa Ging is Founder of Sugar Bliss Cake Boutique, located at:

115 N Wabash Ave
Chicago, IL 60602-1907
(312) 845-9669
Open Weekdays 8am-7pm; Sat 9am-6pm; Sun 10am-5pm

www.sugarblisscakes.com

 Sugar Bliss is a premium, Chicago based bakery specializing in gourmet cupcakes. Watch the video to see how Teresa launched her business as a woman entrepreneur.

Group Collaboration – Step 1 Conversation

The internet has allowed for user groups, colleagues and new partnerships to form without the necessity of face to face time. How do we stay in synch on a project if we’re not working down the hall from each other? There are some great options available for online collaboration of work teams and projects.

Of the paid solutions one of the most popular seems to be Basecamp by 37 signals. While I enjoy this product – there are so many other free solutions available they definitely need to be considered when evaluating a collaboration tool or platform that’s right for your project or business.

To keep the conversation flowing two great tools are Yammer and the WordPress P2 Theme. Think of Yammer as a hosted solution and WordPress P2 Theme as your own white label, self hosted solution.

Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’

As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced.

Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. Information is never shared with third parties.

The advantages are that the basic Yammer service is free and it’s a hosted solution so updates and upkeep is performed by Yammer. The disadvantage is that to become an administrator or have control over the group or information companies need to pay to claim and administer their networks.

The WordPress P2 Theme would be installed on your own site. Access can be controlled by modifying your privacy and user settings. The advantages are that as it’s on your system you’re in total control and can truly customize this installation. The disadvantages would be that you need to purchase or own your url and pay for hosting fees.

 

screenshot PS Theme is a ”group blog theme for short update messages, inspired by Twitter. Featuring: Hassle-free posting from the front page. Perfect for group blogging, or as a liveblog theme. Dynamic page updates. Threaded comment display on the front page. In-line editing for posts and comments. Live tag suggestion based on previously used tags. A show/hide feature for comments, to keep things tidy. Real-time notifications when a new comment or update is posted. Super-handy keyboard shortcuts. Helvetica Neue for you modern font lovers. And more to come…”

Together these two both offer a great solution to keeping the conversation flowing when working together. How do you keep in touch with your work team?

Tracking A Tweet

Why track your tweet you may ask? Well, for many reasons. Besides @replies to your tweet how do you know if your Twitter followers are finding your links and information of value? Social Media is about 2 way conversations, information sharing – it’s not about shouting into an empty room or standing on a soapbox – which is what you’re doing if people aren’t reading your tweets, clicking your links or finding the information you provide valuable – or at the very least mildly interesting. Also, it takes time to share that information – so if you’re sharing the wrong information or information that your followers don’t think is relevant it would most likely be a better use of your time to share different information or resources.

The most basic way to track your tweets is by doing a search for your tweet or subject on Google or Twitter Search.

Or – you could use a new tool that combines these two into a powerful search engine called Twoquick

A more focused twitter search/tracking method could be had by adding a meme or hashtag to a specific keyword. hashtags.org provides real-time tracking of Twitter hashtags. Opt-in by following @hashtagsto have your hashtags tracked.

Budurl offers a free service to shrink and track your shortened link. Budurl allows you to see referrers, click charts, and more. You can create multiple BudURLs that point to the same destination so you can tell which source generates the best ROI. This allows you to see which cities, states, and countries drive your traffic. Their basic service is free and their dashboard is pretty intuitive.

PeashootApp offers to shrink and track your shortened link  but also allows you to set goals for your campaign. Like Budurl it allows tracking and a personalized dashboard. It’s good that it sets goals for measurement but the coolest option was just added. It now also lets you build an audience around a particular keyword or theme. In essence:

Peashoot’s Audience Builder automatically follows people on Twitter who are relevant to you or your company. Over a matter of days Peashoot can increase your total audience size giving you more people to connect with and help spread the word about you or your company.

Both Budurl and PeashootApp offer paid monthly plans and free trials. 

Do you currently track your tweets and if so have you changed the nature of what you tweet based on the measurement stats you’ve received?

Copyright © 2011 Jackie Cuyvers