Short text that goes along with my presentation for Kom Je Ook? 3

Here you'll find a summary about what I presented at the third Kom Je Ook? Public as Programmer. 

Basically I begin my presentation by stating that although a lot of organisations are interested in having an online community, just a few actually have platforms in which interaction is taking place.

This means the problem is not creating an online community or a platform. The problem is the participation of members. If it's such a great platform, why are people not contributing and participating?

In order to answer that question, I demonstrate some examples of websites in which people are participating like crazy. Mind that these websites all are commercial or made by the public. This is for I couldn't find ANY website of a cultural organisation in which the members are interacting at a certain level that is worth mentioning.

The commercial organisations make use of a rewarding system. Yunomi offers prices for participating and earning 'noni's'. Starbucks promises to put the ideas with the highest rating in action. Current.tv gives the option of becoming a group leader of a certain subject of video's/comments/articles. In that way the group leader of the subject is responsible for the participation of others: motivating them to contribute worthy articles/video's etc. to his subject.

Looking at examples of YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and MySpace, I could see the rewarding system doesn't apply. People participate because the initiator of the website/blog is participating regularly/personally. Moreover the website is made by the public, which automatically lowers the barriers for entry. People don't trust the big media online. There's a great consensus their trust will be used for commercial goals. This especially applies to young people.

So what can we conclude: It doesn't matter what kind of rewarding-system you implement on your website. The rewards also don't seem to be the issue, whether they're prices, or popularity, it all comes down to one thing:

People love to participate if they are free to do that. So make sure the communication is open (not hierarchical), keep it personal and reward them with your own participation (at least write a comment saying:'thank you for your contribution, appreciate that').

Keep in mind people spend their well-earned free-time on your website. They should at least be treated well, like they were in your own home. Welcome them inside, make them a drink, make them feel comfortable. Before you know it, people will be gathering around each other, chatting up, the party will be pumping and they'll be making plans for the next time.

Speech at Kom Je OOk? 3

A long time ago (about one month) we were in a meeting on Mediamatic Travel. We have those meetings every Friday. Their purpose is basically discussing ways how we could improve the website, what has been done, what still needs to be fixed etc..

So in this particular meeting we were discussing ways on how to motivate people to participate. And since this is the main concern in my research, Willem ( a.k.a. the boss) asked me to give a presentation about 'online participation' on the event Kom Je Ook?.

First I thought he was kidding, then I hoped he was kidding, but he wasn't... I do think it's a nice opportunity for me to share my thoughts on online participation, but this also meant I would absolutely have to know everything about it. This is something I agreed on with myself.

Now I've already done the presentation. And though it didn't turn out the way I wanted, still I'm pleased I didn't have a nervous breakdown. Actually everybody who has been working at Kom Je Ook? is pleased with that. Thanks, everyone for the excellent breathing exercises, psychological tricks and coaching, it really worked!

After the presentation some people came up to me and asked for more specific information about online participation in the cultural sector. And this was actually the best part of my Kom Je Ook? experience: Having a discussion instead of a monologue.

You see, it really made me feel like I was doing something useful; Being able to share my opinion/ information is one thing, but listening to people that are working in the business and trying to understand their worries and arguments is another.

The whole experience of being an intern is pushing me more and more towards research. I have so many questions about social media and online communities, and there is just no general answer.

I also discovered that the kind of research I think is most suited to examine 'social media' is qualitative research. And by research I mean: research on online interaction and participation. In qualitative research a nuance isn't lost and it's focusing on meaning in stead of numbers. This gives me a better picture on how people are using social media and why.

Flap Slide

From 'Doe iets' to 'Koop Tickets| Meer Acties'. This is a short slide illustrating the transformation the flap has been going through.

Flap Slide

View more presentations from emina.

Total Flap Makeover.

Good news: we have made a lot of progress in making the 'flap' fabulous. The flap is actually a button on the website that contains all kinds of interactions (guide me, become a fan etc.). This posts will be about the flap: Next I'll describe what we did, how we did it and why.

The first flap we've made, you can check out here. Nevertheless nobody clicked or hoovered over the title. So the flap did never appear. A logical next step would be: make the flap fixed and that's what we did. You can see the result on the mediamatic website:

Still the people weren't clicking on the flap after making it fixed. Now what? We tested and tested and came to the conclusion: It doesn't look clickable, and the text doesn't invite to 'do something' ("Do What?"), certainly not clicking on it. So the next thing we did was make the flap clickable and second, change the text into something that will give more information about its functionality. My next post will contain a slide that will illustrate the change the 'flap' has been going through.

Everybody is really pleased with the final proposal. The tests show around a half of the people tend to click the flap for more actions. In case they don't click on the upper button, we have placed a flap that is already showing all the actions at the bottom. For older people and digibeten tend to look for a button at the bottom of the page.

What does an online community need?

People will participate anyway, but how to make them participate on your online platform for a long period of time?

There are million ways of implementing social network tools for online communities. In most cases they simply don't work. Why?

You need tools and technical infrastructure to make online communication possible and support the online community's interactions with the world. Mind that I'm not talking about high-tech tools or beautiful designs. I'm just saying it should fit the community's needs and wants.

The second aspect you need is social behaviour, which will sustain the community over time. This aspect we can divide into four kinds of social behaviour the online community needs at least to survive.

• People have to manage the tools they are using. Technical management.
• People have to socially manage their online platform to ensure it's safety, peacefulness and open communication.
• People have to exert some kind of external promotion in order to attract new members. 22% of members drop-out of online platforms annually. Butler recommends a annual growth of at least double the drop-out rate in order to sustain an online platform.
• People have to create content and consume it. Attending to and reading messages is a prerequisite for others to provide them. This last social behaviour lies in the heart of active participation.

Thus, you need social behavior and a technical infrastructure on a platform that suits the community. How should this be implemented in a particular platform? That's what my next blogpost is about.