Real Fresh TV | Social Media Marketing, Social Media Training, Multi-Platform Marketing and Internet TV Specialists

4Talent Inspiration Session – Building Online Communities like Flickr and Habbo Hotel – Part 1

Posted on 30. Oct, 2008 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Engagement Marketing, Events, Inspired

I spent an illuminating day in the West Midlands on Sunday learning about building, growing and managing online communities.

It was great to attend an Inspiration Session on Online Communities put on by Channel 4’s 4Talent arm as part of the Hello World conference strand of Birmingham’s first digital festival, Hello Digital.

My guides for the day were industry luminaries like Heather Champ, Flickr’s Director of Community, Emma Monks, Senior Manager, Moderation and Safety, Habbo Hotel, Community Consultant Ed Mitchell, and Ally Branley, Community Manager at Channel 4.

It was great to learn from such experienced community managers and the experiences shared by the 19 other attendees made for a plethora of notes which I will attempt to distil into a number of blog posts.

Hats off to the team at 4Talent who put together an incredibly illuminating event.

This first blog post covers an introduction to the presentations by the panel speakers, in the order they were made.

And now for the all-important disclaimer: everything you read here is summarised from my hastily written notes.  If you were there and read anything that you feel wasn’t, please pipe up in the comments.

First up was Ed Mitchell, a community consultant who was previously Production manager at UpMyStreet.com.

Ed’s introduction had the entire group sharing what the word ‘community’ meant to them in 5 words… on Post-It notes.

The unanimous feeling was that communities are about Interaction, Shared Interests and Conversation.

His slides are up on Slideshare and you can also read his blog post about the event.  His background active work in online facilitation and community management and moderation translates to work on sites led to great examples like:

Ruralnet – a WordPress Multi-User site designed to aggregate information on living in rural communities.

2gether08 – a Channel 4-sponsored conference and website around using social media technologies.

Communities.cilip.org – a membership organisation that uses blogs to provide peer-to-peer support.

WhereIlive.org – a site for telling stories about Barnet, put together by one of the first social media managers in the public sector.

BristolWireless.net – a local community co-operative, online. No login required to participate.

WhoWants ToBe.co.uk – using the web to create new forms of civic engagement.

Ed’s vision of the next two years is that there will be an even bigger shift to organisations listening and changing their organisational models, facilitated by social media/online communities.

Awareness of our impact on the environment would grow as would the notion of design as a process, a flow.  It would be “less industrial and more about process”.

Next on was Emma Monks, Senior Manger, Moderation and Safety, Habbo Hotel, the popular teen friendly virtual world.

In the interests of brevity, I’ll be publishing my notes from her talk tomorrow!

Where you at Hello Digital?  How was it for you?  Leave us a comment here or on the Hello Digital feedback page.

Related posts:

1. 4Talent Inspiration Session – Building Online Communities like Flickr and Habbo Hotel – Part 3
2. 4Talent Inspiration Session – Building Online Communities like Flickr and Habbo Hotel – Part 2
3. 4Talent Inspiration Session – Building Online Communities like Flickr and Habbo Hotel – Part 4
4. Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 1
5. Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 3

Tags: 4Talent, 4Talent Inspiration Session, Ally Branley, Birmingham, Building Online Communities, Channel 4, Ed Mitchell, Emma Monks, Engagement Marketing, Flickr, Habbo Hotel, Heather Champ, Hello Digital, online community management, online community UK case studies, social media UK, West Midlands