Over the last few years I have dabbled into the art of community building through social networking. I first experimented with Ning when a returned from an organizational development conference and I wanted to connect all the people that attended a my innovation session in a virtual community. This idea flopped, but I learned alot from it. I believe some of the reasons it didn’t work was because we had no goal. We had no reason to interact, only just to continue a good conversation from a conference. I was also bringing people into a new space where they weren’t already active. A new space, no goals, with very little background (just sitting in on my 90 minute session) = not the greatest online community

My next adventure into social networking was for a class I was co-teaching on digital media for social change.  This classes used a ning as its course space. This was highly effective as we had a large class (41 students) and this space made a place people could interact in a way they actually couldn’t in the class.  It fit right in with the goal of the class as it was real easy to share media.  The only problem with this space was that once the class was over, most of the action stopped in the ning even though we wanted to continue it as a sharing space.

I also made a ning space for my innovation pizza process to promote cross-fertilization of ideas and discussion over what the school needed to innovate.  This became a fun space, but was primarily used by me as a communication tool for me to the folks involved with the pizza process.

Has those past attempts with social networking got me down?  No way.  I’m now trying again using facebook to promote the TEDxMonterey event that will take place on April 16th, 2010.  I’ve created a facebook fan page and I already have twice as many members as I have ever had using ning.  I think going to a space that people are already using has helped this page grow in numbers but I’m still struggling with the social interaction.  I’m again the primary participant in this group, but it is proving to be an excellent communication tool.  I have connected with so many more members of the Monterey community through this space and I think the event will draw bigger crowds due to its presence on facebook.

What have I learned?  There is no tool that is perfect for online social networking.  The most important components of creating online spaces is really thinking through the idea before its online and figuring out what my goal is and how I will accomplish that goal with a variety of tools.  What is the goal or incentive to bring people back to the space and how can their interactions benefit them, not just me.  So while I haven’t yet perfected the online community space idea, I do know it has tremendous potential and there is still room to experiment and find the best suite of tools and practices to get the job done well.