Timing

Originally these were monthly chats. I opened up a blog posts similar to this one where much of the feedback said a monthly chat was all that people had capacity for. But, the downside of a monthly chat is that there are so many weeks in between to forget about it! Again, I would always set up the CoverItLive widget ahead of time so participants could sign up for a reminder when the chat was starting. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on moving to a weekly chat!

>> Share your time preferences!

I also have a scheduler set up where you can share the times during the week that you prefer having a chat! The times are set with 11 am EST as the earliest time (in case the times don’t auto-update for you when you open it). Please treat these dates as generic days of the week and not actually next week’s dates.

Topics

Normally, these chats functioned as an online open discussion. I always had questions, topics, and tools at the ready in case participants didn’t have a question to pose but it was rarely necessary for me to ask the question. Some times, people shared questions or topics with me ahead of time so I would queue those up when we started the chat to ensure we addressed them ahead of any other in-the-moment conversations. How do you feel about the free form nature of the conversation? Would you rather have a set topic or set of questions ahead of time? Do you like showing up with a question and posing it to the group for feedback?

Platform

As I said above, the chats normally took place on CoverItLive, with the most recent chat using Google+ Hangouts. I like using a tool that provides an easy way to archive and save the conversation – something that a video chat on Google+ doesn’t do. The CommBuild chat was borne out of the #4Change chats, a group-moderated monthly chat series that took place on Twitter of which I was one of the moderators. The topic was so large and many felt like we could talk every month just about community building, so I said I’d take the responsibility of wrangling (I mean, moderating!). We moved away from a chat on Twitter itself because of the regular issues faced with Twitter being down, search options not updating, and many finding too much other fun stuff on Twitter to talk about and dropping out of the chat. So, what do you think? Want to have the chats on Twitter, on a tool like CoverItLive, or something else entirely?

Volunteers

I’m happy to continue moderating and wrangling as a lone wolf, but I would really love to have a pack of volunteers working together. If we move to a weekly chat, perhaps we could split of up the month and have a different person leading the chat each week to distribute the work load. I also recognize that there are MANY people far more knowledgable and experienced than myself who would be great moderators and instigators on this topic. Please let me know if you’d like to be part of the team making #CommBuild a living chat again!

Anything else? What other ideas or suggestions do you have for the chat? Would love to hear from you! And, as always, thanks for all your feedback and participation both over the last year of chats and going forward!

August 2010 – Community Builder Chat Wrap Up

Last night’s chat had a good turn out for being the very first one – thanks to everyone who lurked, joined in, and shared! The two main questions explored were:

• Why build online communities?
• How to increase engagement when dealing with limited functionality rights granted to members and members who are new to online media?

Get the full transcript from the chat here: Launch August Chat Transcript

September 2010 – Community Builder Chat Details

We already have two questions selected for the September chat generated in the August chat. (Thanks!) This time we’ll explore 1. migrating communities from one platform to another, and 2. tools and tactics that build a loop between offline and online activities.

• Date: September 16th
• Time: 4 pm Eastern, 9 pm UK (duration: 1 hour)
• Visit: Launch the Chat (not active until the 16th)

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If you couldn’t join the chat last night, you can still contribute! Share your ideas or responses in the comments here to keep the conversation going until the next chat. If you have any questions, feel free to post those as well. Looking forward to the 16th already!

Monthly Community Builder Chats

Why: In addition to the level of interest from people on this blog and from the #4change chats in the past, I’m looking forward to having a regular opportunity to connect with others working to build community on and offline, share ideas and tips, and really start creating a community of the community builders in a way that gets us all out of the various email lists or forums and into a more public forum.

The #4Change team that has managed/supported/hosted the monthly chats for over a year now has recently come to a very interesting transition phase – there are quite a few options on the table and many directions that we could take, including a partnership with Internet4Change. I’m really interested in what happens next, and not just because I am part of the team but also because I think we can be a case study in ourselves of the changing landscape and processes of online collaboration. I want to keep these chats associated with the #4change network so that more people can find and participate, we can more directly share across other topics, and these chats can stay bundled together with anything/everything else that comes next in the growth and evolution of #4change, whether as part of the larger Internet4Change or not. Exciting times!

When: Thursday, August 19, at 9-10 pm UK (1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern)

I know that at this point it is just a matter of picking a time and making it happen. I’m willing to do just that, but want to note that I’m open to having rotating times or multiple chats to better accommodate the fact that we have a global community (and that we all need to sleep at some point!). I also think we can start with an hour-long slot and use it to stay on topic and drive conversation without people spending a long time with a chat.

Where: Click here for the live-chat (launched on the 19th)

I plan to continue exploring the best options for these chats, and welcome your feedback. For this first chat I want to use CoverItLive because 1. it’s a tool that I know works, 2. has twitter integration, 3. does not require installation for anyone to participate. The link above will work to join the chat on the 19th and will work to access the transcript when the chat closes.

What: Community Building Across Platforms

For this first chat, I wanted to go ahead and pick a topic so that we had something to drive with. In the future, I’d love to have others suggest topics that they working on or want to explore with the group.  Even though I’ve selected the topic for this first chat, I haven’t picked the questions that will guide our conversation! Please share the questions you’d like to explore by adding a comment here ahead of time and I’ll use those to feed our discussion.

Really looking forward to starting a monthly conversation on community building with you – feel free to use the #4change hashtag and if you’d like to suggest something else, go for it! Perhaps #4change.commbuild or something? Let me know

See you on the 19th!

1. Twitter fail. It has become a regular occurrence for our monthly #4change chats to find Twitter not even working. This has meant some chats haven’t happened, some have stopped early or operated on a very slow conversation, and others (like last month’s chat) have moved off twitter and onto another platform all together. What this says to me is that the chats aren’t successful because of Twitter, but because of the people engaged.

2. One time. The #4change chats are once a month events that have taken place over the last year.  Each month there’s a new topic. We’ve covered some really interesting areas and engaged with a diverse network. We also have a great core of participants that contribute to every chat (you know who you are, rockstars!). The problem for me is that I’m far more invested and interested in certain topics than others (naturally) and I don’t have an outlet to discuss regularly in the same way. In the last chat, there was a lot of mention and enthusiasm for a monthly chat specifically on community building. And I’m here to say I’ll make it happen – if you’re with me!

Launching Monthly Community Builder Chats

Next Steps:

I can’t do this without you So, I’d love to hear from you about how we can design this together to be most successful, and then we can get started!

Please take just a few minutes to share your responses to the questions below in the comments.

I’m asking that you use the comments (instead of a survey or something) because I want responses to be public (if you want a response to be private for any reason, you can always email me) and provide opportunity for discussion and response.

• Why do you want to participate in a chat about community building, community management, and community driven projects?
• What kind of chat is most valuable to you: presenter w/ q/a, moderated chat but no “presenter,” open conversation space?
• Is once a month good?
• Where should these conversations take place? (Twitter despite the fails? CoverItLive? Other platforms?)
• Anything else you want to add!

I’m really looking forward to your responses and hoping that we can launch the first monthly chat in August! Thanks for all your contributions and ideas in advance