Archive for the 'Community' Category

Engage

Published
by
Paul
on 28 September 2005
in Community
. 0 Comments

Communities Dominate Brands: Don’t feed the lions?

Tomi highlights some great examples of engagement marketing using mobile phones from Alexey Chuikin of Admarplus ie Plastic Media of Moscow.

The Moscow Zoo. Like all zoos around the world they had signs at all the cages to the animals saying “please do not feed”. Don’t feed the monkeys, don’t feed the lions, don’t feed the tigers, etc. That is so typical of our society, with signs everywhere telling us what we are not allowed to do. No longer. If you visit the Moscow zoo, today you see signs saying “if you want to feed this lion, send an SMS text message to..” and you will be charged a premium text message fee.

And:

[The WWF started] a campaign to plant trees in Russia. The payment was again via premium SMS text messaging, and as a further gimmick, each participant received a picture as a return message, of the kind of tree they had helped plant.

As Tomi suggests, some fantastic ideas that can be used by companies with limited budgets to generate addition revenue streams, whilst engaging wholeheartedly with their customers.

Community

Published
by
Paul
on 24 June 2005
in Community
. 1 Comment

I really enjoyed the Communities Dominate brands book, and the blog is shaping up to be interesting too (not unexpected given its written by the authors)

Communities Dominate Brands: Designing your own revolution

…And it seems the notion of co-creation is moving into public policy as a new ‘co-creation’ approach to health care is set out in this paper from the Design Council’s RED unit.

read it here.

Red Paper 01 Health - Co-creating Service

Authored by Charle [Leadbetter] and Hilary Cottam won the London Design Museum designer of the year award 10 days ago.

Cottam does not design for people but with them. Her aim is to give users the tools and support to develop their own solutions. She is particularly committed to applying this thinking to big public-service issues in education, crime and health.

The co-creation model is springing up everywhere. This triggered off something in my mind about democrary and participation. After all public services in theory should be ‘by the people, for the people’, so this initiative should prove to be a powerful model.

One experiment I would like to do myself is engage in this type of community based approach to development my own business. So if you are interested in participating, drop me a mail.

Quote thought

Published
by
Paul
on 24 September 2004
in Blogging, Community, Family, Identity, Self Improvement and Values
. 0 Comments

M. Scott Peck

“Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.”

Just read this and struck me in two ways:

  1. Relationships - both sexual and plutonic platonic, friends and family
  2. Interests / Hobbies - ideas that capture your interests more than simply that’s fun

Assuming that ‘Enlarging’ is equivalent to growth in this instance then I am a very lucky bod, as I love and am loved by some wonderful people and I have a number of interests which I love and which sustain me (of which one is of course blogging!!)

VBG :)

Give Blood

Published
by
Paul
on 16 September 2004
in Community
. 1 Comment

Gave blood yesterday. Apparently I move up to the next rank and get a nice blue donor card rather than my current red one. Anyway the reason for this is to encourage you to go out and give blood. I’m am very nervous around needles and blood but still manage to go through with it, so go give it a try.

UK: Blood Donation

US: Red Cross

Canada: Canadian Blood Services

Taiwan: Blood Donation Services

If anyone else from other countries gives blood then please direct people via comments or drop me a mail and I’ll post the URL.

You could save lives by doing this, so take 15 minutes out of your life and as the Donation Service in Britain says, ‘Do something amazing!’

Britain: A Secular Society?

Published
by
Paul
on 26 February 2004
in Community
. 2 Comments

BBC NEWS | Programmes | wtwtgod | UK among most secular nations

A survey of people’s religious beliefs in 10 countries suggests the UK is among the most secular nations in the world.
Ten thousand people were questioned in the poll by research company ICM for the BBC programme What The World Thinks Of God.
More than a quarter of Britons thought the world would be more peaceful with nobody believing in God, but very few people in other countries agreed.
The survey found the highest levels of belief in some of the world’s poorer countries, but also in the world’s richest, America.
The countries polled were the US, UK, Israel, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico and Lebanon. The interviews were carried out in January 2004.

Very interesting survey. It raises a number of questions in me although as always difficult to articulate properly.

Why is Britain considerably less religious than other countries? Is it history? Is it the religious landscape? Is it the fact that our culture perdisposes us towards not believing in a higher power?

I think it would certainly be worth some more serious research to understand more about culture in the UK and what factor contribute to this…

Collaboration

Published
by
Paul
on 12 September 2003
in Community
. 0 Comments

The Beyond Branding Blog

This is a fantastic little post on Beyond Branding which highlights the importance of collaboration. The most interesting statement for me though is:

…for example companies will never learn to collaborate with their best knowledge workers whilst booking them as costs (unlike machines which tangible accounting compounds -as its meanest cuts of all - by arbitrarily framing as an investment)

Why am I treated as a cost and yet the hardware is an investment? Answers on a postcard…

Psychology of Communities

Published
by
Paul
on 10 September 2003
in Community
. 0 Comments

Iunctura Daily– Center for Strategic Relations Under Tuesday 9th September!

Discovery some psychology of communities
theOTHERblog- Psychology of Communities [Newsability] [Bruce Landon: Social Psychology]
Ian Dickson is putting together a community, he wants it to be large, but ran into a few challenges. Here you will find comments and a brief summary of his findings on the psychology of communities.

What is a community?

A community is a group of individuals who have a common interest, purpose, objective, or desire; who work together to reach this future point.

Communities share resources, ideas, and generally help each other relate reach objectives as defined by subgroups in the larger collective.

Individuals in a community can relate to the experiences to others in the same group and often community these points with each other.

Communities are often defined by a trait recognized but not necessarily understood by individuals outside the community, this trait may even be an abstract belief.

Who is the most important person in it?

Individuals in the group are the most important part of a community, their contribution increases community value for others and shapes the outcome created.

Community leaders are facilitators or solutions providers as defined by the individuals in the group, they remain in power as long as they produce value.

Individuals can choose their own lown level of activity or involvement in a community, in turn this influences the amount of value they will receive, and how relevant this value is to them.

Group segmentation is better defined my its members than leaders of the group, use surveys and research to understand key important issues inside a larger group.

Individual desires determine the perception of community value. You can appeal to the group by appealing to individual needs under a common theme.

Other aspects of the psychology of communities: (Key points quoted from Ian Dickson’s original work, Psychology in Software)

There is no such thing as an on-line community.
Communities actually comprise of many overlapping subgroups.
Members must, as far as possible, control their community.
experience, relationships and involvement.
Most people are semi detached from their communities most of the time.
Most people are shy about speaking in public.
People do not like to impose.
Real communities have knowledge
People who are silent are important
Established communities are largely self sustaining and self managing
Communities are not isolated, but have relationships and interactions with other communities.

Ian Dickson is the CEO of Commkit, a provider of tools and knowledge necessary for building communities that work. For more papers and articles visit on-line at http://commkit.com/

Very interesting article. I was recently discussing communities with an ex-colleague as he is working on some consulting on developing communities. This article provides some good basic pointers on how to go about setting up a community, although not necessarily the perfect recipe. I think I would challenge the statement that there is no such thing as an online community though. There may be a good argument for this assertion but on its own i disagree. There are extremely vibrant online communities. The blogging community for one.

Blokis

Published
by
Paul
on 28 August 2003
in Blogging, Community, Identity and Trust
. 0 Comments

Ton’s Interdependent Thoughts: Blogs, Wikis and Blokis

On KnowledgeBoard, editor Helen Baxter starts a thread on blogs, wikis and blokis (and also a thread on K-logs). Blokis being a hybrid of both weblogs and wikis.

Ton reflects on Wikis , and how he doesn’t like or trust them. Blogs which he thinks are useful but personal and constrained(?).

But he warms to the hybrid bloki (which is just a great name). The key points about community and trust make great sense, and I have to say I agree with him. I just can’t get Wikis. Blogs obviously. I can even see group blogs. Blokis… not sure. Think they could work but as Ton says commuity is the key. I’ve used a number of collaborative tools that simply did not add value or continue to get used after an initial exictment phase. Perhaps more than community and which I think Ton hints at is a key objective or sense of purpose for the collaborative effort…

Community of Practice and Trust

Published
by
Paul
on 13 August 2003
in Community, Knowledge Management, Management Theory and Marketing
. 0 Comments

John Porcaro: mktg@msft: My Marketing “Community of Practice”

… I read a lot of blogs (and very few email newsletters, by the way), and I’m drawn towards things I care about as a marketer. One of them is research. I’m fascinated by anything that has to do with consumer research, and getting to know consumer behavior better. It’s why I read Dina Mehta, Denise Klarquist, Rick Bruner, and some of the Jupiter Research blogs. If you know of others, let me know!

I’m getting to know these guys, and I’m coming to trust them. I was anxious to meet Denise since I was coming to San Francisco. And the more I get to know her, her company, and her work, the more I’m prone to take my business to her. In fact, I hadn’t heard of Cheskin two months ago when we were selecting a firm to work with (the research we’re doing now is with a competing company), but I would certainly have at least sent an RFP to Cheskin if we were choosing a firm today. (Remember, too, I hadn’t heard of a blog five months ago!)

The main reason I blog is to build my own “community of practice” around marketing, management, leadership, and “fast” thinking. Blogs help me do that, and I’ll send my business (or Microsoft’s business) to people I know and trust (starting with members of my community).

John makes some very good points here about keeping on top of knowledge by making use of a community of practice and because of trust he wants to do the networking thing and put business their way.

Trust is so important in any relationship, and especially given the kind of world we are living in perhaps never more so.

And if no one else says it, I think the same could be said of John - I know I trust him because of what I read and know of him, despite never having met.

I can’t offer him any business but I can offer him a cup of tea.

Oh, and I love the new typepad blog - have I said that already?

‘CRADLE OF AVIATION’ IN THE UK

Published
by
Paul
on 8 August 2003
in Community
. 0 Comments

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Concrete steeped in history

Earlier this year two of its wind tunnels were given Grade I protected status.

Built in 1934, the biggest of the two looks nothing like your typical heritage site. Driven by a six-blade mahogany fan (see top picture) with a diameter of 9.1m, the tunnel was used to test full-sized aircraft prototypes like the Spitfire.

For those who like their historic buildings to come in the shape of stately homes, ancient monuments and places of worship, it’s probably no compensation to hear the awesome propeller is housed in a cathedral-like chamber.

Campaigners such as Mr Peskett, who have fought for 10 years under the banner of the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust (FAST) to save the RAE site, must now move on to phase two of their plan: restoration.

As I live in Farnborough I thought I should blog this, especially given my interest in all things historical and archaeological. Given the borough’s unique history in all things military and aeronautical, you would have thought that government backing of one sort or another would easily be forthcoming. This sadly seems not to be the case, for some political reason or other.

Do go look at the site. Do think about ways to support and even give them a visit. I shall be attempting to convinve my wife to take a trip there this summer.