Striking a balance: How many guide proposals?

This the article I wrote on how many guides have been contacted so far. You can find the link here

You might have heard of our Mediamatic Travel Project. If that is not the case, take a look here. The project in a nutshell: A platform which enables cultural professionals around the world to introduce the underground scene which otherwise would remain invisible or inaccessible. These cultural professionals are called guides that can be contacted by visitors of our website for a real-life guidance in their city. The project has now been in the air for approximately three months and we think it's time to strike a balance: How many guides have actually been contacted by visitors? How many guide-proposals have been made?

First some statistically interesting facts: We now have 74 guides and 27 guides-in-making. In total they've added around 1246 contributions to the website, which means, around 1246 secret things, things that you can't even google most of the time, have been made accessible! So how many of these guides have been contacted? Most of the guides did receive some questions online about their city. Practical questions like; 'In which part of town should I look for an apartment', but also more intimate ones like; 'Are you single?'. Furthermore guides are being praised for their extensive work online promoting the cultural underground of the city. Still none of the guides that replied to my question did actually receive visitors. Except for one guy from Beirut: Rani. Rani received five visitors and is still counting.

So, I asked myself: How is this possible? Why did Rani receive five visitors, while the rest of the guides is getting none? Last week Rani was in Amsterdam and of course I was eager to have an interview with him to find out more. Rani told me he's not only dependent on the website for promotion. He makes sure everybody interested in Beirut or him, is redirected to his guide-page. In that way people who might know someone, who is the friend of someone who's going to Beirut is being informed about Rani, the guide. Put in less confusing words: He has created a broad reach of his guidepage.

The interview was very enlightening for me and made me think about things we need to improve in the Travel project. Guides should be able to broaden their reach, promote themselves. This can be done in different ways, but for now it's up to the guides themselves. I would recommend guides to do the same as Rani: Let people know you're a guide and redirect them to your page, even if they aren't going to your city. Let's hope the next balance will be more in balance.

How many guide proposals?

Tomorrow I'll send a mail to all our guides asking them:

1. Are you still active as a guide?

2. Have you been contacted by any visitors? Have you received comments/mails from members?

In my post after new years I will strike a balance. See you next year.

Sense of community: What would bring people closer together at Mediamatic Travel?

One of the key features a successful online community is the sense of community: The users in the community need to feel like they belong to something all together. In most cases the sense of community is created by itself, by the shared interest of a number of users, who then, take up the conversation elsewhere to share more of their interest. Of course they can disagree, the point is that they all have a shared passion for something, which could be anything. To create a sense of community, one needs to ask the question: What could bring people together?

Take a look at tripadvisor. It's commercial website that gathers information about hotels and restaurant from all over the world and provides a platform for users to back that information up with their own experience. Tripadvisor has also developed a Facebook application that allows you to mark a map with all the places you've been. This map will also mark all the places your friends have been. So if you're planning on going somewhere, Tripadvisor will show you who of all your Facebook friends has already been there, and at the same time notiy those friends that you'll be going there. This is how a shared interest/link between you and your friend is created, for you'll be happy to inform your friend about that place. Automatically this information goes to Tripadvisor to use it for their own administration, analysis and marketing. In the end you'll be happy to participate in the network of Tripadvisor, not because Tripadvisor wants you to, but because it offers a sense of community with your friends. 

Another interesting travel website that is successfully bringing travelers together is travbuddy.com. This  website works somewhat like a dating website; you set up an account, enter your travel plans and preferences, and then just wait until someone wants to join you on your trip. Travelers who participate the most within the network can win awards. There's a award for writing, for photographing, for the best community leader and so on. Basically they bring people together who enjoy sharing their travel stories and pictures with each other. Basically the conversation is continuing; even if you're done traveling in real life, you can still travel online.

Both examples are stacked with advertising, which doesn't make them seem trustworthy. It's hard establishing a sense of community within a highly advertised environment, because it distracts from theshared experience/interest/link. Thank god, Mediamatic travel is about the actual experience of traveling, meeting people and their culture and more specifically; about bringing visitors in contact with guides. This will probably be happening privately ( by e-mail).

How are the visiotr and the guide linked to each other in Mediamatic? Should they be linked based upon the city? Or a particular event/ organisation/ place? Should the focus be a particular art scene or possible collaboration? Looking at the options we've got, I see future in 'events'. An event is something that is going to happen, so people can gather around it, discuss it in advance and afterwards. An event could also become more personal ( like the starting date of someone's journey). There can be multiple entry-points for a visitor, but the focus of our website should be one feature that is communicated very clearly: What do we want people to do? What do people want to do? I'll talk about this more profoundly in my net post.

Rethinking the travel website

Christmas-time is coming, but there's still a lot of work to do.

These two weeks I'll me rethinking how to increase the usability of the mm travel website. We also have to do that for the general Mediamatic website, but my focus for now will be on the Travel site. I'll keep you updated as much as I can. 

The Online Participation Factor Presentation at Kom Je Ook? 3

The slides of my presentation at Kom Je Ook?3

To see the text that goes along the presentation, click here.

The Online Participation Factor

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