community, identity & science / fiction.

Signing up for a new service usually means receiving at least one little ‘welcome’ email. Often it requires you to confirm your email address, or simply tells you about your next options.

Most of the time I open these kinds of mails blindly, skimming the text until I find the confirmation link or any other important call to action. These mails always look the same, an go something like this:

“hi xyz, welcome to xyz, the best blablabla.  Please…” and so on.

Sometimes these mails are sent from a no-reply address, signaling: “it’s an automatic system talking to you here, don’t even think about getting in touch, just read the manual and be on with it. Ok, if you really need help [idiot] there’s the support center.”

BUT there are exceptions to the rule

1) founders2be welcome mail

From founders2be, I got this nice personal letter, the sender introduces himself as one of the co-founders and uses a regular email address with his name. He tells a little story about how the startup was born and convinces me to fill out my profile information because this will increase the value of the experience. I think the mail was personalized to the specific status of my profile information. It wasn’t particularly nice looking or fancily html formatted, it just looked like any old email from a real person who wants you to make the most of the service you’ve just signed up to. +1!

2) Gidsy keeping early sign ups happy mail

Some services allow registration before the actual launch. In some cases you end up forgetting you ever signed up because nothing happens, or you get frustrated by boring, newsletter type emails promoting a service you don’t feel attached to yet. Gidsy however have treated their early sign-ups really well, inviting them to a test round of the newly available features. The email is layouted in a subtle way, still looking like an email and not newslettery. Also notice the please-reply address – nice pun.

some REALLY mess it up

While what feels like at least 90% of messages of this type resort to the mediocre, standard variety, there aren’t only those who stand out as positive deviations from the norm. No, there are also the really annoying ones which make you lose all appetite for a service before even using it.

1) Pistachio blackmail

When pistachio pitched at betahaus the other day, they invited the audience to tweet for an access code. I found the concept interesting enough to want to test it. But instead of access to the service, I got this mail. They thank me for requesting an invite. Um… no, actually YOU invited ME, remember? Then they go on to ask me to invite more friends to the service. In fact, they blackmail me with what sounds vaguely like a threat: “the more friends you invite, the sooner you’ll get access”. You know what… I never really liked pistachios all that much.

I’m sure my colleague Jeroen had made  a very similar experience when he tweeted this just a few days ago:

I’m not exactly a feminist. I’m not even a very political person. But I’m a woman and I suddenly realized I don’t really know that many women and there are definitely more men than women in the group of people I would call my “professional network”. That sucks! Which is why I went and joined  the recent netfeminism meetup here in Berlin. Hopefully, strengthening the ties among each other and making us more visible, in a way, will lead to less male-dominated events and conferences and more and more women being recognized for the good stuff they do, online and offline.

So while I’m on this train of thought, I made a mental list of women that have inspired me lately and which I truly admire. Why not write this down here and repeat the exercise every now and then.

Here we go:

1. Régine Debatty

I don’t know her personally at all, but from the outside it looks as though Régine leads the life of my dreams! She’s the main writer of one of the coolest blogs I know, we make money not art. She reports on cutting edge technology, arts and sciency stuff, right up my alley and she’s always on the move. I can check into WMNA any time of day, any day, and I’ll find a mind boggling story worth exploring. I got in touch with the Open Sailing collective after reading a WMNA article, and though this project is at the moment dormant for me, I’m so glad to have met César. Oh and I have tried to get Régine to speak at Pecha Kucha Berlin during my time there, but unfortunately it never worked out due to scheduling problems. Doesn’t matter – one day I’ll meet you, Régine, and give you a big long hug, hehe.

2. Mercedes Bunz

She founded de:bug. Nuff said. Too bad she’s left Berlin for London but on the other hand good for her. She still writes some incredibly smart stuff.

3. Tina Fey

I was never all that much into 50Rock or knew much about Tina Fey until I heard some podcast with her as a guest. Somehow that intrigued me to find out more and then I got the audiobook version of “bossypants” read by herself and I realized I find her sooo funny that I’m even giving 50Rock another chance. Too bad she’s not on twitter. (Yet? Yet??)

4. Gina Trapani

Gina is my favorite person on this week in google! While the guys are sometimes bragging and repetitive, Gina is always modest, funny, sharp as a knife and always has an interesting perspective to add. She’s a hacker, entrepreneur and what not. Yay!

5. Jane Bussmann

Although I was only at one book reading of hers in Berlin, and that was by accident, the memory of that evening is still fresh in my mind! I mean, who is gutsy enough to go to Uganda – alone – in some sort of investigative journalism mission and turn that whole experience into an extremely funny book? Uhh.. no one? Except Jane Bussmann? Read the book, or go to one of her shows!

6. Dr. Kiki

I listen to Dr. Kiki twice a week, at Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour and This Week in Science! The first is an interview show featuring one guest on one science topic, the other is a weekly roundup of the craziest and most relevant science news which she does together with a (sometimes a little annoyingly self-confident) male co-host. Dr. Kiki definitely holds together both shows. And she’s also a role model for showing how to be a scientist, podcaster and mom all in one. Sometimes her baby cries a little during the recording sessions, but that’s ok.

7. Ela Kagel

A networker and enabler of ideas and events, Berlin wouldn’t be the same without her! She was a curator at transmediale, made tons of events happen, like the workshop series “Free culture incubator“. Can’t wait til her new project space Supermarkt  finlly opens – this will be sometime in November. Will be a reason to make the trip up to Wedding more frequently.

I now realize I probably should have done this post on Ada Lovelace day – like Mercedes Bunz did in this article for the guardian! Next year, then.

By lucky coincidence I came upon this post by David Eaves which is already a couple of moths old. Reading this reminded me that any Comunity Manager can learn a lot by looking at how Open Source (Coding) Communites work and manage themselves.

The interesting thing he describes, is that communities can manage themselves better, and work more efficiently together – and ultimately enjoy themselves more and be motivated – if they have access to community data.

So, instead of merely monitoring the content YOU yourself put in, or the activities that happen right around you, any member of the community could see metrics about what the community has achieved as a whole. This could be a key to keeping motivation levels high, and ensuring members know where and how to engage most effectively, and immediately see the effect of their actions.

And of course there’s a parallel to the idea of Open Data (David is also an Open Data activist and advisor). In most online comunities and networks, access to community data is likely to be the priviledge of those who manage the platform. As Community Managers we know how enriching and motivating it can be to publicize data now and then, such as “there have been contributions from 190 countries, including South Sudan” or “this month, we’ve cracked a record in new active members”.

Why not make that a habit and provide relevant data in real time? As David explains in the post the video below, knowing more will help each member understand what’s going on around them and act accordingly. And of course it will also help Community Management in analyzing and reacting to issues.

I totally love this idea of an open dashboard of community data, accessible for all members.

Talk by David at the Mozilla Summit

Makerplatz is in full swing: the idea is to bring together all people and projects that have come to life in the past years around the previously rather desolate area surrounding Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg.

My contribution was the creation of a  visual guide connecting the spaces physically (and with some data).

Makerplatz visual Guide

My contribution was the idea to create a visual guide that would connect the spaces physically and through information. This consisted of a map, assigning each space its own color . The map was enhanced through QR codes, which let you surf to the site-specific timetable of events immediately.

Using the actual Moritzplatz roundabout as the starting point, I created drip lines with each color, leading right up to the respective spaces. Of course I used DIY, eco-friendly paint. It consists of flour, a type of chalkstone and pigments. It dillutes easily and will fade away within a few days. A similar recipe can be found here.

I also experimented with balloons. I created flying sign posts in front of each location, which would give visitors a sense of direction from far away and would tell them they had reached the right location.

Digging deeper into the idea of using balloons to carry lightweight material, I teamed up with Emre who is doing a “Dream Drawing” workhsop. Creating a dreamy and cozy environmend for the workshop, we made a tent-like structure of very thin, translucent plastic foil which is held up only by balloons. The tent sides waver about a little with any kind of air movement, which makes it very dreamy indeed. Inside the tent, there’s a table and two chairs, and Emre will receive his visitors in there to teach them techniques how to capture and visualize their dreams.

Part of Makerplatz

I’m glad Jay and the ODC people saw this potential and initiated Makerplatz – for the first time I really came notice that is an exceptional entrepreneurial and creative energy all around that area.

There’s the pioneer coworking space betahaus, which has become a hub for startups in Berlin and also houses ODC; a workshops space for a community of makers and tinkerers of all kind. There’s the IMA, in which EstyLabs have quickly become a lively hub for regular workshops and conferences for Berlin’s creative class. And more recently, the huge gray giant Aufbau Haus, housing Planet Modulor and other small shops and workshops, has awoken. And then tere’s the magical community garden Prinzessinnengärten who have (wanted or unwanted) become a lunchbreak hideaway with healthy food for the Platz’ residendts.

Good times, thanks for making it happen Jay!

So that was it! Yesterday`s panel at Social Media Week Berlin, “Job Title – Community Manager” went really well, at least if you compare it to last years rather confusing chit chat. I think we community managers have matured and got much better at reflecting our jobs and understanding various community models.

Towards the end we were asked for advice: What should someone do if they aspire to be a community manager? What are the skills they need and where should they start? There isn’t any Masters’ program “Community Management” just yet.

community managers of TLGG, Soundcloud, jovoto (me) and Nokia // borrowd from Social Media Week Berlin's photo pool

Join a community and learn to love the internet

It’s pretty obvious of course, but my advice is that you should be or have been an active member of an online community. (I strongly recommend the same  to people who still claim online relationships are “fake” and somehow “not real”.)

For me, this community initiation took place when I was about 15. I was a quiet girl who found it hard to make friends at school. I listened to Grunge and was obsessed with anything regarding Pearl Jam. One day my dad’s colleague, a fat American engineer, introduced my dad, a thin German engineer, to the internet. Dad immediately understood the implications and was geek enough to want to try that at home. I should add that we lived in Jakarta at that time, and this was in 1995. I don’t think many of my German friends had internet at home at that time.

I had an Apple IIvi (That same American colleague introduced my family to the Mac, for which I am eternally grateful) in my room, and now it had a dial up modem. I think I must have been surfing with Opera or Netscape Navigator, although I can’t quite remember. My favorite search engine, before google, was Lycos. And sure enough I must have typed the words ‘Pearl Jam’ into the search box.

Macintosh IIvi // From Wikimedia Commons

From then on, the internet was the world. I had somehow discovered a Pearl Jam related chat forum. I don’t know how or in which parts of the internet I was actually clicking myself through. I never questioned or  tried to understand the technology itself, I simply expected it to work and do wonderful magic for me.

Ok – so technically a chat is not a community, at least not in the sense we understand it today. There certainly wasn’t a community manager, and there was no “profile activation link”. You chose a nickname and you were on.

I don’t remember my first words, or in fact anything about how I started out in that chat. All I know is that by a couple of weeks, I knew almost everyone that logged on, I knew who to expect at what time of day (or night) and I started having crushes on some people I was chatting with who I was sure had to be extremely cute guys (probably 40year old housewives in reality).

We pulled pranks on each other, introducing fake new nicknames and waiting how long it would take for someone to find out that XYZ was really YXW. Newbies were first regarded suspiciously, until they said something cool about a cool band or were otherwise funny. After a few months, I knew everybody’s real names, knew who was friends with who in real life and where they lived. We even wrote each other “letters” because that was what you did to show someone you really cared.

The Pearl Jam chat was with me until I graduated from school and left Jakarta. Then, I somehow lost touch, and the internet had changed. I literally couldn’t find the door to that secret world anymore. But I think I experienced what it can be like to be part of an online community.

Uh, so what’s the point here?

Yes, I was a teenager who needed to learn to be comfortable in her own skin, and to play with identities and opinions in the safety of the “anonymous” internet. But I think that is still true for grown ups. In an online community (whether it is based around co-creation and problem solving, like at jovoto, around being a mom, or loving tennis) part of the fascination will be about building identity, about building a reputation and having this extended playing field of who you can be and who you can talk to.

The personal component, at least in my experience as a community manager, is one of the strongest motivators for people to stick around a community for a long time. If you’ve experienced that warm community fuzzy feeling from within, you will be much better at managing one from the outside.

So sign up for a community of your choice (attention: not a social network, a community!) and do not just lurk, but involve yourself. Write comments, try to figure out who the opinion leaders and regulars are. Bring in your own thoughts and content. Try it with a new and rather small community, because it will be easier to find your way around. Write feedback messages and observe how and where the community interacts with each other and the moderators / managers. See you in a couple of years!

In preparation for the panel “Job Title – Community Manager” at Social Media Week, I have some thoughts floating around my head.

First of all,  I’m exited to meet and talk to my co-panelists (David Noel of Soundcloud, Surya Santhi of Nokia Maps, and Floian Zühlke of TLGG), and get the chance to ask some questions about their experiences on the job. I think we each come from a very different perspective on Community Management, which will make the conversation all the more interesting!

From what it looks like, the relevance of community management will continue to grow. The following topics in CM are on my radar right now:

Community Management Outsourced vs. Inhouse

To companies whose community is at the very heart of their business model (such as jovoto and soundcloud) its the most natural of things to handle community management from within. But what about traditional companies, who have only just learned the basics of being social? Rather than building that expertise up in house, can they effectively outsource it to a third party, like an agency? What are there shortcomings of that model? And there’s another aspect to it, too: do companies need to build up their own community, or is it all about access to relevant, already existing communities?

Community Management: Formalization of Training and Education

Germany has a reputation for being very structured. Think of an issue and there’s sure to be hundreds of Vereine dedicated to it and perhaps a Bundesverband. And yep, there’s a Bundesverband for Community Management! (Why are they not on the panel by the way?) The Bundesverband Community Management was founded last year and as far as I can tell they are doing important and good work.They are part of the Community Summit each year and initiate regular Community Stammtsiche (another one of those handy German social insitutions). But most importantly, they build up expertise and create visibility for this emerging profession through conducting surveys and blogging.

I believe this formalization of the profession will continue, perhaps leading to a certified “Ausbildung” as Community Manager, to standards for job profiles and wages.

Chief Community Officer / Community Strategist: More Responsibilities as Businesses Grow Social

At the other end of formalization, I believe the need for Strategic Community Managers will rise, as CM cannot be viewed as something peripheral and nice to have (“Oh, let the intern handle the blog”) but will have increasing strategic importance for any business in this fantastic era of social.

In the US, there’s already a small debate about the arising need for Top-Level Community Strategy. DDB’s calls for a Chief Community Officer and Dell employs a Sr. Manager, Community Strategy and Execution while others think this should be the role of the CMO.

Third Party Tools for CM

Social Media analytics tools are mushrooming but at the same time this has become an entire mushroom jungle. Community Managers talk to their community on Social Media, on their own platform, on blogs or in support centers and forums. There’s no central cockpit for tracking or managing all these interactions and making the most of all that channels is one of the great challenges a Community Manager faces. Getting a better hold of relevant data on your own platform as well as across platforms and smart user management systems would really really help. What’s out there so far?

Daniel Langwasser describes a solution called Basecom Community Cockpit - it sounds interesting and I’d like to learn more about it, but who can tell me why they chose such unwise wording? Creating a “Nutzerakte” for each user does simply not evoke the right associations. There’s gotta be a way to make the work of a Community Manager sound less Stasi-like!

Come to think of it, God was a pretty lousy community manager. Ok, so the idea of boiling it all down to 10 rules was good. But he screwed up the relationship with his betatesters, isn't exactly present and accessible for his community and literally communicates "top-down". Not to mention how he let down his best moderator, Jesus.

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts the other day, triangulation, and this episode’s interviewee was neuro scientist Miguel Nicolelis.

One of the topics they touched was invasive brain surgery an implants. As the technology gets smarter, the risk connected to invasive brain surgery reduces, yet a risk remains. And people simply don’t like the idea of having nodes inserted into their brains.

What happens when part of our body is suddenly exchanged or enhanced by something artificial? I recall the story by ennomane who describes in detail the process of how he received a Cochlear hearing implant and had to relearn the process of hearing and differentiating between noise and patterns in this noise. One of his posts he entitles: The Cyborg hears.

Cochlear implant, image from WIkimedia Commons

Cyborg, indeed! In a way, Cyborgs are already among us. I am one of them too! I was born with a difficult heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. In my life, I have had various heart surgeries. Each time, the doctors replaced one of my defect valves with an implant and patched up the leaky spots with foreign tissue. My first valve implant contained tissue from a pig, my second was a homograft, meaning that it came from a human. I think I remember I was told it was from a man from the UK. The implant in me now is a melody valve: part stainless steel mesh, part valve of a cow’s heart. Heck, I’m not only Cyborg but even trans-species! The valve works beautifully, and I do feel gratitude towards the cow that produced this marvelous peace of cell tissue.

Tetralogy of Fallot, image from Wikimedia Commons

If you think about all the people already running around out there with their pace makers and implanted defillibrators (this will probably be the case for me too, in a couple of years) – then you realize that science, medicine, technology and man cannot be distinguished from one another.

I think it’s exiting and awesome to see what humans have achieved to repair and enhance broken bodies. And since a couple of years, there seems to be a new aesthetic regarding ‘weird’ and augmented bodies; a sort of flirt with the idea of pushing humanity past the borders of what is considered normal appearance. Of course, Aimee Mullins comes to mind and who knows, maybe the youth fashion of having an extra knee Cory Doctorow describes in Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom is not science fiction, but around the corner. My favorite implant would definitely be a superpower eye that can see in the dark and at long distances, and never gets tired or out of focus.

From top left clockwise - Aimee Mullins posing for a photoshoot, Aimee Mullings in her famous role as the Cheetah Woman in Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, custom made prosthetic leg by industrial designers bespoke innovation, french artist Marion Laval-Jeantet in a performance in which she wears stilts formed like horse legs (no "real" prosthetic)

Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are kind of complementary ideas, and wouldn’t it be in the fullest consequence of both concepts to connect the two?

With crowdsourcing, the generation of ideas is ‘democratized’ and it is collectively decided which ideas have the greates potential. In crowdfunding, it is up to the potential benficiaries of an idea to decide whether they believe in it enough to help fund it. Theoretically, a crowdsourced idea (thus approved and vetted by the crowd) should have it easy to be crowdfunded (since this is what the crowd wants).

Together with Anna Theil of the Berlin branch of Startnext, I am about to test this theory. We just started the experiment to facilitate an entirely crowd-generated artwork. 3 weeks of concept (on jovoto) 4 weeks of funding (on Startnext) and 2 weeks of set up and exhibition (in September, during Social Media Week).

Relating to the main theme of Social Media Week 2011, we want to explore the following theme: “Friend, Foe, Fan, Follower: How is the internet changing the way we think about relationship and ‘the other’”?

Who can participate?

Everyone! You don’t need to be an artist by profession. But you need a good concept, you should be sure you can pull it off! You can also participate by reviewing, rating and giving feedback to the proposed concepts.

To submit your concept, please sign up and read the briefing

We’re exited to what happens and thank @tbx, @Elakagel and @thornet for their advice, and Lab.tv, Social Media Week Berlin and crowdsourcing blog for their support!

Here are my slides for today’s Free Culture Incubator #7.

In my workshop, we will explore the concepts of crowd, community, motivation, competition and co-opetition. We will share our experience with online competitions, look at crowd-innovation sites and their models, and we’ll develop rules for successful crowd-innovation.

wohoo!

On June 30th, please join us at the Free Culture Incubator at Supermarkt, Berlin.

The Free Culture Incubator is a series of workshops initiated by Ela Kagel, with the aim to explore the different facets and models that make up ‘free’ culture, ranging from digital rights to open innovation and collaborative consumption.

This session’s topic is:

COLLABORATIVE CREATIVITY
Open Innovation and other Methods to Activate People & Resources

Together with Ela, Dominik & Simon Wind, Jonathan Imme (Until We See New Land), and Ariane Jedlitschka (HAL – Hybrid Art Lab), we will be introducing different models of open innovation and facilitating break-out sessions in which we share experience and develop ideas and guidelines for successful open innovation.

Location: Supermarkt | Brunnenstraße 64, 13355 Berlin |1-6 pm

Sign up here!