Living by Design

This artifact from Xplane is a terrific combination of several areas I have been covering on this blog: image from Xplane - full pdf version available It's another example of how Xplane creatively combines graphics and text into content-rich, single-page visualizations to produce clear and powerful communication vehicles. Over the years this company has been a great source of communication ideas and inspiration. It highlights the disruptive dynamics and scaling capabilities of social networking . It demonstrates how social networks are far more than merely relationship building tools and trivia exchange centers. In fact they are extremely efficient engines for raising money and driving revenue . No Rocket Science There's nothing terribly new here, social networking and word-of-mouth dynamics have been impacting business and society since the rise of the first human communities. The exciting difference is the emerging visibility of these networks and the ability to observ...

What does successful collaboration look like? Understanding how communities and people interact online is essential for setting the right expectations. Often people misinterpret metrics or focus their energy in the wrong direction because they do not have a reasonable benchmark to assess how well their on-line communities are functioning. All Things Are Not Equal In any team or community you can expect to find a variety of expertise and strengths. We usually don't expect everyone to do the exact same thing, or to have the same skill sets and strengths. In fact, the complementary nature of individual strengths is essential to creating strong teams and vibrant communities. Knowing this, it is surprising that the default expectation for online interaction is identical contribution, with performance metrics that reinforce this unhealthy view. Not only is this unrealistic, it's a sure recipe for failure! Setting Expectations Most everyone is familiar with the Pareto principle ...

Your company does not need to be very large before it starts grappling with two significant problems that plague the knowledge economy: How to maintain and improve effective teamwork between people that are often separated by geography or time. How to share timely and useful information across the organization, reusing existing knowledge and channeling emerging experience. Photo Credit: PMThink! Blog Technology Helps Fortunately, Web 2.0 technologies and emerging communication practices are helping slow the growth of these corporate tumors. However, it takes more than just technology to reverse the trends. Effective design, initial content seeding and proactive facilitation are critical factors for re-firing in the innovation engine. Is it working? There's only one way to know... metrics . Measuring for Success A successful community generally has two hallmarks : a high level of interaction between the participants, and a growing body of valuable content. That's a wonde...