XIII Seminari Compartim. L'e-moderador i altres nous agents de coneixement a les organitzacions. Barcelona, 21 de setembre de 2011

1. The Role of the Facilitator/
e‐Moderator in Building &
Sustaining Communities of Practice
XIII Seminari Compartim
L’e-moderador i altres nous agents de coneixement a les organitzacions
Barcelona, 21 setembre 2011
Stephen Dale
Collabor8now Ltd
www.collabor8now.com

2. Why the bunny?

3. http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk

4. What does a healthy
Community look like?

5. Conditions for a healthy CoP
clear purpose – what will it be used to do?
a safe and trusted environment
committed core group of active participants
motivated participants
understanding the needs of participants
a clear action plan with activities to meet needs
blending face‐to‐face and online activities
Nurturing and sustaining the CoP requires effort
and energy from a skilled Facilitator/e‐
Facilitator
Moderator

6. How Healthy Is Your CoP?

7. The community will have a rhythm
Activity of activity
Understanding the rhythm helps you keep with the beat!
http://steve-dale.net

8. Community Metrics
http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk

9. Monitoring the health of an online CoP using
Google
Analytics

10. Keeping Your CoP Healthy

11. CoP Health Check
Symptom Actions
No participation or activity. •Post new content, requesting feedback and comments to elicit new conversation.
No new documents or links •Remind people to set alerts for the site.
posted •Talk to members to find out what people are working on and ask people what they would like to
No new discussion threads, see on it.
announcements or news
Activity only by a few people •Call or email members who haven’t participated for a while; find out why they haven’t been
participating. Use those conversations to elicit new content and encourage contribution.
•Be sure that the people who are not contributing understand how to use the tools. Never assume
that tools are “intuitive” to everyone, or that everyone understands how to use them.
People use email instead of •The email habit is a hard one to break. If the goal of the community is to capture all the relevant
posting questions and discussions for future use, then the community facilitator needs to take a strong stand with
discussions on the CoP members.
•One way to do this is to make a public statement that no questions sent by individual email will
be answered, but that questions posted to the community will always be answered in set time.
•Another approach is to respond to all email questions by asking the requestor to post the
question in the forum.
Sudden drop in discussions •Review the postings for potential “flaming”. Edit the discussion threads to remove inappropriate
where there was previous comments (and state that you have done so). Speak with the people who have posted and clarify
activity. the norms for participation of the community.
Another community is focused •If the members of the other community are current or previous members of your community, talk
on the same topic. to them about why the community isn’t meeting their needs. If they do want to take a specific
focus, then be sure that you have set up cross-linkages to the other community sites, and are
referring people back and forth as needed.
•If the new community consists of people who are not participating in the current community, ask
some of the same questions. See if there is sufficient overlap that the new community might be
better managed as a Sub - CoP of the current site or a merger between the communities
Source: http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/

12. The Online Facilitator/e‐Moderator
tools/apps & upgrades
feature selection
how to use them & improvements
Platform Management
Platform Management social network analysis
connecting people Google analytics
moderation
Community Metrics
Community Metrics health checks
rule enforcement
polls
blog posts
surveys
forum seeding Community Management management reports
Community Management
comments
rewards & incentives alignment with
Business Planning
Business Planning business priorities
back-channel engagement
purpose, goals
new member welcome
& induction identifying good/best practice
campaigns networking
Outreach
Outreach
newsletters
Professional Development
Professional Development
e-bulletins attending events
participate in SIGs
Content Management
Content Management
updating links & managing tags, categories, themes
navigation
updating FAQs taxonomy management
deleting & archiving
Slide re-worked from an original by Dion Hinchliffe

13. What happens if you remove the
e‐Moderator?
http://tomhumbarger.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/the-importance-of-active-community-management-proved-with-real-data/

14. Intervention Strategies

15. Engaging and Retaining members
Make potential From participant
members aware of Highlight Write a regular
your community community newsletter to regular
content highlighting your site
and community
Building content that
will attract members Create "small People return to
steps" for places where they
Encourage encouraging From lurker find a group of
members to bring in participation, people to talk to. If
posting regular to participant
interesting you do not have
participants questions or
forum answers such a place, you
Welcome them, give will not be able to
From passer by them pointers on
Send an email to retain members.
to lurker getting started,
new members within suggest topics Facilitate members
24 hours of their where they might
participate, and tell to find people to
membership
them about any talk, through
From stranger interesting personal profiles,
ALWAYS greet upcoming events.
to passer by newcomers, and highlighting member
encourage other interests,
community Provide some discussions, and so
Make personalised on.
invitation members to reward to those who
welcome them. make the effort
Source: http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk

16. Engagement
Strategies: Hot seats
• Can be used to attract new
members to the community.
• Enables participants to ask the
person in the hot seat (usually
an expert in their field)
questions, to which they can
respond over a set period of
time.
• Normally run using the forum,
but they can also be run as a
phone conference, webinar or
interview
Source: http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/

17. Engagement Strategies:
Newsletters

18. Social Network Analysis tools provide
insight and prompt questions
“I frequently or very frequently receive
information from this person that I need to
do my job.”
job

19. Use a variety of
s
tte
r
B log
le
ws
Ne
ts
sea s
Hot P oll
t
- Ho
to s
e- pic
ac ace
F F To
partic i pation
http://www.communties.idea.gov.uk

20. Where does the Facilitator/
e‐Moderator go for help?

21. Summary
• Monitor the health of your CoP (e.g. CoP Health
Checklist)
• Understand what interventions are required for
different symptoms
• The facilitator/e‐Moderator can be the key to a
successful and healthy CoP
• …but it’s hard work and requires lots of
energy…

22. When setting up and managing a
CoP, remember that…
batteries are not included!

23. Questions?
Personal Blog: http://steve-dale.net
Corporate blog/website: http://www.collabor8now.com
http://twitter.com/stephendale
Email: steve.dale@collabor8now.com