Real World SharePoint: Build a SharePoint Community
Introduction Mark Miller Founder and Editor EndUserSharePoint.com Chief Community Officer and SharePoint Evangelist Global 360
Mark Miller, Founder and Editor EndUserSharePoint.com
New York City
EndUserSharePoint.com Community of SharePoint Authors 1,600 articles 12,000 comments 50,000 page views a week 13,500 newsletter subscribers
Global 360 Chief Community Officer and SharePoint Evangelist
Mark Miller Current Community Engagements
Agenda
Twitter Hash #tec2010
What is Community?
The Building Blocks of Community
The Best (and Worst) Practices for Community Building Best Practices
Q&A
What is Community?
Definition “…. a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists” -- Dictionary.com
“…. group sharing common characteristics or interests” -- Dictionary.com
“…. perceived or perceiving itself as distinct” -- Dictionary.com
Why do people join communities? By Orion Miller, Age 7
“If you don’t know something, somebody else might.” -- Orion Miller
“With one person, it’s hard to do a lot of things at once.” -- Orion Miller
“The bigger the group, the better.” -- Orion Miller
Why do people join communities? By Mark Miller, Age
Initial interest (Lurker) Looking for an idea.
Initial Participation (Minor Participant) Identify with a specific idea
Continued Participation (Evangelist) Recognition for their ideas and contributions
Types of Communities External Internal
External User Groups SharePoint Saturdays Web Sites Twitter Forums
Internal User Groups Support Groups Power Users Brown Bag
Q&A
Building Blocks of a Community Finding and Nurturing Followers
Get Started: Participate “Community is built through participation and contribution.” -- Mark Miller
Participate Leave comments in existing communities
Participate Ask and answer questions in existing forums
Participate Join events as a speaker SharePoint Saturdays Local User Group
Get Started: Your First Followers
Dessie Lunsford Chris Quick External Forums
Discussion Forum Laura Rogers Eric Alexander
Comments James Love Jason MacKenzie Peter Allen Michael Greene Jay Simcox Alexander Bautz Jim Bob Howard Sara Haase Pat Iovanella - Ruven Gotz Richard Harbridge John Ferringer Kerri Abraham
Types of Followers 99%.9%.1%
Lurkers 99% of your community
Minor Participants.9% of your community
Evangelists.1% of your community
Building Blocks of a Community Community Structure
Vehicles for Participation
Get Started: Blog SharePointJoel.com Joel Oleson
Get Started: Wiki SharePointDevWiki.com Jeremy Thake
Get Started: Forum SharePointOverflow.com Alex Angus (moderator) Nick Swan (instigator) Sam Dolan (branding)
How long will it take? “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” -- Anonymous
Worst Practices When Building Community 3 Best Practices
Worst Practice Build it and they will come
Provide new content… Worst Practice once a week
Worst Practice Worry about ownership of content
Best Practices When Building Community 4 Best Practices
Best Practice Start with a party of one, and act as a content filter.
Best Practice Provide fresh content… every, single day.
Best Practice Consistently acknowledge participants, even for the smallest contribution.
Best Practice Listen to the participants. Conversation will dictate when it’s time to expand the vision.
Conclusion “I will never be Joel Oleson” -- Mark Miller
New Community Business Process Management: EndUser BPM
“Thank you for coming.” Mark Miller Founder and Editor EndUserSharePoint.com Chief Community Officer and SharePoint Evangelist Global 360