participation

Time is money

Just because there's no price tag doesn't make you aren't paying for it

Hourglass: time is money

It happened again today. Every time an online service like Twitter or Facebook hits a roadbump, or stops working altogether, there's an outcry of protest from its users. Then, just as quickly, comes the backlash: "How dare you complain about a FREE service?"

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Engaging online participation: the research

A new, emerging space like social media might seem like unmapped territory. But actually, there's already a lot of knowledge available about how and why people participate online. Our methodology for fostering online participation has its roots in Alex's Ph.D. research at Harvard University and her work for social capital scholar Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone.

That methodology is grounded in three key insights:

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Time well spent

Time well spentA pie chart depicting the information on the Internet. While most of it is serious, meaningful stuff, a tiny slice shows 'YouTube videos of people hurting themselves in amusing ways'. According to the chart, that's also what most people actually watch.
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Spurring participation: Vancity's Viva la resolution! contest now in its 3rd year

Viva la resolution! contest

A little over two years ago, we sat down with Vancity's Kate Dugas and William Azaroff to help them think through a New Year's resolution contest. Little did we know we were helping to forge a dynasty.

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Bedtime with Rob and Alex ep. 13: the over-participation episode

How to skillfully manage community enthusiasm

This episode finds Alex and Rob with some company in bed: the kids. (Parental discretion advised: contains explicit sounds of complaining toddler.) We talk about what happens when your favourite online community members participate just a little too much... and what you can do about it.

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Nudging participation along at ChangeEverything.ca

User-based sites like Vancity's ChangeEverything.ca thrive on participation. And there's a lively community creating changes and blogging about them... which is a tribute to the community, to the site's compelling concept and to the work of community animator Kate Dugas.

Now Vancity wants to take participation to the next level.

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Love your leaks

Helping your community do what they want to online - even outside your website

How do you create a site that keeps people on your pages? By creating a site that's easy to leave.

Traditional web design often focused on keeping people on a site by reducing the number of exit points: with few or no external links, the logic goes, people will stay longer.

It doesn't work that way. The Internet is designed for hyperlinks, lateral exploration, serendipitous discovery. When you cut off exit routes, you're cutting off your site's circulation, and you're creating a stagnant site.

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Helping users to help users

Grow your community by making it easy for newcomers to ask questions... and answer them

There's a superb post by Kathy Sierra at the Creating Passionate Users blog about user-submitted questions and answers, which are at the heart of many online communities – especially the ones built around forums.

Here's how questions and answers typically work on those sites:

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For every regular contributor, nine occasionals and ninety-nine lurkers

Online participation

Working with everything from political groups to online discussion boards, I've heard the same lament: "We have so many members. Why do we have so few people participating?"

Hard though it is to admit, for the vast majority of members, that organization or web site that occupies the dead centre of our universe lies at the outer fringes of theirs. Whether because of interest, attention or life's many other demands, they'll only partake of a little of the array of functions and content we've set out before them.

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