2007 was one hell of a year for me, ushering in a new company, new clients, and of course a new baby who has now become a toddler. I joined Kiva and funded my first loan which has been recently repaid, then gifted my family via Kiva for Christmas. I racked up tens of thousands of air miles, spoke at a number of conferences, and met a lot of new people. Overall, it’s been a fantastic year.
As is apt to happen, I’ve put together a collection of my favorite Community Guy entries from 2007. I know, a bit played, but it was fun to review the archives for the last 12 months. Hopefully you’ll get a kick out of it too.
So without further ado, my favorite posts of 2007!
The Social Community Ecology
Over the course of 2007 I spent a lot of time looking at and speaking about ecology and balance as part of the community equation. More to come on this subject in 2008.
5 Minutes with a Marketing Manager
I asked some of the smartest people I know a simple question: “If you had 5 minutes with a marketing manager, what would you tell them about social
Six Techniques for Safer User Generated Content Campaigns
By far one of the funnest projects this year was working with eModeration to develop a whitepaper that was extremely well received.
Tools for the household, not the individual
I was struck by how much “waste” happens when multiple people from a single household are using the same data set. 2008 is going to prove to be interesting on this front… more soon.
The perfect customer interaction support tool
I know what I want… why is it so hard to find?
AMA gets it wrong in an ethically questionable way
As a member of the AMA this year, I found it largely unsatisfying. They spent a large majority of their efforts pitching me on a wide variety of expensive conferences and sessions. Needless to say, I won’t be renewing my membership.
Blogging and the Public Square
Being called a “modern day slave trader” has a way of getting your blood up, but the ensuing discussion was interesting and certainly made me think.
Intelligence community gets social
Even the CIA (and more broadly, the intelligence community) jumped into the online social waters this year. I posted a few thoughts on how I thought they might be able to best help their efforts.
“Heroes” does character blogs right
I love character blogs, but only when they’re done right. Few actually do it right, but Heroes pulled off a huge win.
Disposable camera model for community growth
What if we thought about social software the same way we think about photography? What if our first community engagement efforts followed the disposable camera model, rather than the professional photographer model?
Twitter suddenly becomes relevant
What makes a conversation tool like Twitter interesting? Having people you actually want to hear from using it and connected to you. Twitter was largely pointless to me until several of my friends joined up all at once. Instant interest!
Rant: Online Etiquette Tips
Because you can never get enough help trying to make the non-personal communication more effective.
Supporting digital culture means supporting the writers
Yep, we’re still dealing with an influx of reality programming, but I still believe that it’s crucial to support the writers.
Picnik makes me feel all fuzzy inside
For as much as I drooled over Picnik this year, I have to give them a shout out. Use it. You’ll love it.
