Team Rubber BlogTeam Rubber talks on the Internet in a blog

PREAMBLE TO THE DISCUSSION:

PRESENTERS

* Ken Fisher – Ars Technica
* Alexis Ohanian – reddit.com
* Drew Curtis – Fark.com
* Erin Kotecki Vest – BlogHer Inc

DESCRIPTION

Many start blogs and social networking sites, but few build vibrant, self-sustaining communities. This panel explores some of the most successful ventures that grew independently and continue to grow today. Lessons learned, plans for the future will be discussed along with some best practices for those who seek to develop true communities.

TYRANNY OF THE WILL OF THE MINORITY

Drew Curtis coined “the tyranny of the will of the minority” to explain how the few in a community will try to dictate the tone and topic of the discussion to the majority. This drew a small hallelujah from me as my experiences in forums have reflected this.  Interestingly, Alexis Ohanian later stressed the importance of trying to understand the voice of a sometimes often barely audible “silent majority”.

MODERATION

It was interesting to hear Alexis mention that comments need to be moderated in context of a greater discussion and not judged in an isolated moderation queue.

COMMUNITY IS A HOUSE PARTY

Drew Curtis believes in managing his Fark community like a house party. Come for fun but abuse the decor and you’re out.

BAD COMMUNITY MANAGERS

They tell rather than ask
They don’t inform the community of coming updates
Interestingly, they listen to the community TOO much

GOOD COMMUNITY MANAGERS

Have patience, level-headedness, calmness, handle users with grace, multi-task – Erin calls them the “calm multi-tasker”.

AVOID A GHOST TOWN

If you’re making a community don’t make forums look like a ghost town with too many sub-forums as this will dilute content.

USER ANONYMITY

Drew Curtis says “if you can’t say something with your name attached then go to hell”.

Yesterday evening myself and Rory headed down to the Thames and hopped on a boat to film a 100ft water projection of Dr. Manhattan as part of the Watchmen campaign. The flip camera’s humble results, in my opinion, still managed to capture some of the best footage (OK, a tad bit of filmmaker bias here).

Dr. Manhattan

Comedian Badge

ComputerTan.com, the hoax site we launched with McCann Erickson, could have easily been an advertisement for Something Awful‘s anchor “the internet makes you stupid”.

It wasn’t, thankfully. It was for the wholehearted cause of spreading awareness around the tanning risks of skin cancer.  The anger of being hoaxed by something so preposterous was replaced with a little helping of understanding.

500k visits to the site, 100′s of blogger mentions and a wealth of international press since it was launched 7 days ago make this wholly pro bono campaign deeply satisfying for everyone involved. For those who who were luckily enough to not fall for it, here’s the informercial:

I’m a big culprit of ignorance in an age of Wikipedia. For me it’s too much of an open invitation to indulge in highlight culture, giving me only the necessary fuel to read books that can’t be summarized by Wiki’s meritocratic article compilation. Perhaps Chris’ Gladwell post sits in agreement with me.

So I am intrigued to work on the 2008 National Year of Reading campaign which aims to engage the younger generation by welcoming any form of reading – offline and online. I may be too old to be in the target demographic but perhaps I’m in the ideal position testify how important it is for the future that an entertaining Web 2.0 successfully embraces (not opposes) offline and online reading for an infotained public. McQuail’s uses and grats coins this as cognitive needs.

I can also testify that my younger sister spends 43204834309 hours on social media – YouTube, Bebo and Facebook – the latter of which the topics of discussion I’m constantly reminded of via a newsfeed. Unfortunately as the fabric of social network discussion revolves around events or people the platform does not necessitate too much reading.  However, optimism must be expressed when the architecture for participation on social networking sites is the the wall – a perfect basis to share information as well as entertainment.

Name the Greek philosopher who once said:

“Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people”

(Yet when someone mentions this quote to me I can’t help but think the presupposition of the philosopher was one of big head and not great mind.)

What I really like about the National Year of Reading’s online campaign is that it uses video dares over YouTube as entertainment, to incite information retrieval in the form of reading – and then uses a YouTube channel wall as the voice or participation platform.

The online campaign targets 1-14 year old boys who have become disengaged with reading in school. Running until Christmas, the campaign aims to creatively engage with the target group by tapping into
their online habits. The press release stresses multiple values such a program instills into communities and reads: “The year aims to encourage people to read in businesses, homes, and communities around the country, providing new opportunities to read and helping people to access help and support through schools and libraries” — but i’ll leave you with a quote on why this as a Government initiative is also a great democratic process:

“A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.” -
–  James Madison

The ultimate dare of the campaign is to read – do it, DO IT NOW! (your Governor needs YOU!)

We’re lucky enough to be working on this and it’s fab.

Have you seen this 02 ad campaign on billboards, the underground, press, TV, in-store and even online? (for 02 customers only)

Take a picture of the shiny “I” on your phone in any of these surroundings (yes, even online) and text it with the letters ‘NYE’ to 63333 and you’ll receive a reply with the “I” (acting as a door) opening to reveal either a Christmas scene, or an image of The O2 – the latter signifying you are a winner of tickets to one of the New Year’s Eve events at The O2, featuring Elton John, 2ManyDJs (@ matter) and Hed Kandi.

Here’s my humble 2MP attempt:

And here’s one I spotted in Old Street, London:

I hope the image processing technology doesn’t have megapixeltronic aesthetic bias. Actually I do. If I text a picture of Jessica Alba to this number, will it….

Check the microsite.