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This 'Introduction to Online Communities' has been written to give an overview of the different types of online community, what makes an online community, and the various community tools. Every community is unique and it is difficult to give a guaranteed recipe for success, but I will cover common factors found in every good online community. It is also worth remembering that as in real life communities take time to grow, and will continually evolve. This is the challenge of online Community Management.

George has been designing, facilitating and hosting online communities for 20 years. Out from that experience, he developed his Community Design Architecture (CDA), that he refined and tested during his work at INSEAD. He provides consulting and virtual community architecting services to organizations in the private and public sectors. George is also known for his first-of-its-kind, virtual or hybrid (online/off-line) events he designed and facilitated, which were attended by from 30 to 6,000 participants. George designed and leads an innovative, highly interactive, executive workshops on “Collective Intelligence 2.0,” in which participants are learn to upgrade the collective IQ of their organization, by applying the principles of CDA.

In recent years online and blended communities have become a popular topic among educationalists. In this paper we present a framework that supports the analysis, development and maintenance of online and blended communities. This is applied to two community case studies that differ along several key dimensions such as type of membership, the purpose of the communities, their policies and size. The analysis draws attention to the differences between the two types of communities. It also highlights the advantages and weaknesses of the framework with respect to these two case studies and suggests areas for future development. In the discussion that follows we highlight some key differences between this framework and Wenger’s work on Communities of Practice (COPs).

"Individuals are forced to consider more information and opportunities than they can effectively process. This information overload is made worse by ‘data smog’, the proliferation of low quality information allowed by easy publication. It leads to anxiety, stress, alienation, and potentially dangerous errors of judgment." Complexity and Information Overload in Society: why increasing efficiency leads to decreasing control by Francis Heylighen. Even when we’ll have much better summarizing and other meaning-making tools than we have today, no amount of technology will give us peace of mind when we will need it most - in the midst of rapid technological changes which affect how we live, work, learn, and play. To rightfully trust our capacity to learn as fast as necessitated by the pace of changes which affect us--individuals, communities and organizations--, we need to learn how to learn faster together. Recommendations and pointers to resources, emailed by friends and colleagues in our social and knowledge networks, are some of the signposts that many professionals and managers use for navigating in today’s fast-moving landscapes. If none of us is as smart as all of us, then creating shared resources, shared social and knowledge capital, is one of the smartest things we can do. The intent and core idea of Collaboration Campus™ is to provide a space for mastering the arts of collaborative learning, and building valuable social capital just by participating in the life of the campus community.

Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.

A new open-source social networking software gains its power to be used in schools and other organizations. University of Brighton was the first to introduce Elgg, a social network to help teachers in their interaction with children and use social networks like MySpace, blogs and document.write(MLnkMk('=b!isfg>#iuuq;00efm/jdjp/vt#!!ubshfu>#`cmbol#?Efm/jdjp/vt=0b?'))Del.icio.us feeds for educational purposes. If earlier, the access to these sites were seen as a an obstacle and were banned, now many teachers see it a helpful tool as this attracts great interest among teenagers. Every participant taking part in the project will have a blog with profile page, and have an opportunity to share photos, ideas and communicate with friends in online communities.

Much of the current web 2.0 vibe was born by the folks who started the Whole Earth Catalog, the WELL (first online community), and Wired magazine. Well, here in this panel interview are the founders of all three: Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand, and Howard Rheingold, talking about how it started, why they did what they did, and what they think of where we are today. 80 minutes long in Realvideo format. Skip to ~15 minutes in to bypass the various intros.

We can increase productivity and profit, and save money. We can decrease congestion, and reduce environmental pollution, without spending millions on new infrastructure. We can achieve economic and community development, and improve national productivity. We can do more and better work, and spend more time enjoying life.

Writing effective text for the Web is more than just stringing words together and hoping for the best. It goes beyond just conveying information. If you really want to capture the interest and engagement of your users and members, the text needs to do much more. Ideally, you want your writing to:attract their attentiongrab their interestpull them into the contentadd real value to their workmake then want to register or return, andincrease their sense of trust in your community.

Kaizen philosophy continuous incremental improvements Kaizen method   The Kaizen method of continuous incremental improvements is an originally Japanese management concept for incremental (gradual, continuous) change (improvement). K. is actually a way of life philosophy, assuming that every aspect of our life deserves to be constantly improved. The Kaizen philosophy lies behind many Japanese management concepts such as Total Quality Control, Quality Control circles, small group activities, labor relations. Key elements of Kaizen are quality, effort, involvement of all employees, willingness to change, and communication.   Japanese companies distinguish between innovation (radical) and Kaizen (continuous). K. means literally: change (kai) to become good (zen).   The foundation of the Kaizen method consists of 5 founding elements: 1. teamwork, 2. personal discipline, 3. improved morale, 4. quality circles, and 5. suggestions for improvement.   Out of this foundation three key factors in K. arise: - elimination of waste (muda) and inefficiency - the Kaizen five-S framework for good housekeeping       1. Seiri - tidiness       2. Seiton - orderliness       3. Seiso - cleanliness       4. Seiketsu - standardized clean-up       5. Shitsuke - discipline - standardization.   When to apply the Kaizen philosophy? Although it is difficult to give generic advice it is clear that it fits well in incremental change situations that require long-term change and in collective cultures. More individual cultures that are more focused on short-term success are often more conducive to concepts such as Business Process Reengineering.   When Kaizen is compared to BPR is it clear the K. philosophy is more people-oriented, more easy to implement, requires long-term discipline. BPR on the other hand is harder, technology-oriented, enables radical change but requires major change management skills.

Welcome to the OLPC Wiki, home to collaborative notes about the One Laptop per Child project and related projects and communities. We currently have 1,166 pages and over one-thousand registered contributors; please join us and share your ideas.

Welcome to KnowledgeBoard We are a self-moderating global community thinking and collaborating on subjects around (but not limited to) Knowledge Management and Innovation in the worlds of business and academia.

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004,[1] refers to a perceived second-generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O'Reilly Media used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and it has since become widely adopted. Though the term suggests a new version of the Web, it does not refer to an update to Internet or World Wide Web technical standards, but to changes in the ways those standards are used. According to Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."[2]. Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether the term is meaningful, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have been present since the creation of the World Wide Web

K-Log guru and advocate John Robb presents the benefits of K-Logs as:1) Answers. K-Logs make it easy for people to find answers to problems they need to solve. A simple search of K-Log archives will quickly find an answer if available.2) Experts. Because K-Logs organize knowledge and information byindividual, it is easy to find people with the expertise you need. They can be found via search, cross linking from other K-Loggers, or community tools.3) Organized archive. K-Logs provide a permanent archive of all posted knowledge. Employees may come and go, but their knowledge remains.He sells the economic benefit of K-Logs as:1) Shorter time to find. Giving you faster, more accurate responses to customer inquiries, etc. 2) More accurate decision making. Use of experts, revealed by K-Logs, will improve the quality of corporate decision making. Improved knowledge transfer will expose wasteful projects and inaccurate assumptions. It will also unlock hidden knowledge resources within the company.3) Faster training for new employees. New employees can quickly find the information, context, and insight they need to become productive quickly. A new team member can synch up quickly with an ongoing project by reading the team's K-Logs.4) Simplified management and improved corporate control. The elimination of what is that person doing (?) or how is that project progressing (?) questions that plague managers.

K Log noun. See: Knowledge Log. Also: Klog, K-Blog. K-logs are usually internal blogs (i.e. on an intranet and not visible to the general public) and are used as highly effective knowledge management systems and/or internal company communication systems (such as project blogs, for example).

I'm Managing Directrix of 3D / NetTV production house Mohawk Media, and co-founder of digital label TMet Recordings. I'm also an online strategist for Creative Kiwi Community The Big Idea, and share a fortnightly 'Digital Life' slot with Chelfyn on Afternoons with Jim Mora for National Radio, New Zealand.

Examining what people do online as they look for information, communicate with others, make transactions, and entertain themselves.