Meeting Notes for 11 Apr 2011 - Special Meeting on Building a Community

Present: TomM, Phong, Liz, TomL (by phone)

Marge asked us to go ahead and try to start a community.

Steps for Building a Community for I2U2

We accomplished the following steps except getting Eric's permission to delete the other group and building the tool which requires feedback.

• Make a organizational Facebook page and then add a “Like i2u2” button in e-Lab. There is already an i2u2 group, but Phong recommends and organization because it is easier to access. We need 25 Facebook users for Facebook to give us a custom URL. http://tinyurl.com/6fg4mul --this is our Facebook organization.

• Flesh it out with some content about I2U2.

• Ask Eric Myers about deleting his group to avoid confusion and then rename ours to include i2u2.

• Make a post that tells the goal to build community for the e-Lab. (for example, “This Facebook site is part of a strategy. We want to build a parallel tool where e-Lab users can find Classroom Activities, etc. Before we decide on that tool, we want e-Lab users to give us feedback on what tools they would like. (e.g., WordPress, GoogleApps, Facebook, Basecamp, LearnCentral, Posterous, etc.).” We also added a question where they can click one of the five tools and add others if they want.

• Send email to ask people with e-Lab accounts who have Facebook account to click the “Like I2U2”. Bob will send it to Cosmic e-Lab users, Tom L. to CMS e-Lab users, and Dale to LIGO e-Lab users.

• After getting feedback in Facebook, build a parallel community based on the requirements and the users’ preferences.

Possible Functionality for Online Community Tool

• Searching blog posts
• Categories for posts

• More than a blog?
  • Place to upload documents
  • Live Chat
  • Ability to post to other social media.
• User name/password restricted access
• Outside Support for Tool rather than setting it up and maintaining it ourselves.

Using the Facebook Organization Page for Marketing

Tom L. mentioned that he met with some marketing people who had a good list of questions about a project they are trying to market. (e.g., Who do we want to be our members?) He mentioned that we can also use this Facebook organization to market I2U2.

Other Questions

Do we want to support a WordPress site?

Can we have our data if we move from a hosted site to our own?

Tools

Basecamp – straight forward interface; easy to use.

WordPress – look for blogs by month and date and searching. Can post to other social media sites. Can put a post in multiple blogs. Can subscribe.

GoogleApps - supports live chats? Customizing may add complexity for the user

Facebook – supports live chats

Posterous – no learning curve

LearnCentral

Phong also asked mentioned Active Collab.

-- Main.LizQuigg - 11 Apr 2011