Nuts and Bolts: Building Community

Thanks for sharing, Michael. Interesting article and I completely agree that adding barriers (like a long set of posting/etiquette rules) will only serve to stifle discussion and innovation. We're very excited with the potential of the new community tools for our staff learning portal and hope to foster discussions that will help our staff across the country learn from each other organically. Particularly for best practices, tips/suggestions, and areas where developing a formal training won't necessarily provide enough ROI. We might spotlight a topic of the week and consider incentives for participation.

I like your ideas for generating participation. What incentives are you considering?

We'll have to see how well the community is received, but we have a "Spirit Committee" in place for our staff. We may look at off-line recognition through the committee as an extension of badges and perhaps small prizes like gift cards for coffee, etc. for top contributors, or entries into a raffle based on your amount of participation.

The article was good in the why of communities and some pitfalls. I am looking for a way to build a community that does not generate a lot of emails, as the "community" that I regularly push information out to, is getting to the point that emails are not necessarily the best mode of communication. I do believe that communities are great for tips/suggestions and bouncing ideas off of others.