Are you going to the Online Community UnConference?

Posted on May 22nd, 2007 in: Conference

If you’re responsible for online communities at your company, I highly suggest you consider attending this Online Community Unconferenceon June 6th in Mountain View. I’ll be attending as media, and will be capturing on video key learnings and highlights from the event. I don’t need to express the importance of having a strategy to joining or creating or leveraging communities in today’s online marketplace. Here’s the summary on the conference:

“The Online Community Unconference is the premiere unconference for online community practitioners – managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors – to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities. Those involved in online community development (and social software in general) share many common challenges: community management, tools, marketing, business models, legal issues. The best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners.”

There’s quite a guest list which you can see many practioners and thought leaders attending. If you’re trying to learn about “Community Marketing” access all my posts tagged, there’s quite a few examples and best practices I’ve been collecting.

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  • http://mickipedia.com Micki Krimmel

    Sadly, I won’t be able to make the event. Do you know how much of the content will be available online?

  • Mickey M

    very pricey

  • John Stokes

    Looks like a lot of vendors talking about their products.

    And there are too many of these conferences today.

    Just last week there was Salesforce.com developers day, Software 2007, TiE conference….

  • http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ jeremiah_owyang

    Mickey M

    I dont know if the content will be online, I’ll probally ustream the event.

  • Wilder

    i will be there. should be educational : )

  • http://www.spideysenses.com Ted R.

    “premiere unconference”?

    $200 to attend to provide the knowledge?

    Vendor talks?

    I’m highly dubious. It’s fine for what it is, but exploiting the unconference/camp mantra rubs me the wrong way. For example, if you have to market an unfonference, should you really be having it?

    And Jeremiah, as a community manager do you really recommend “leveraging community.” Why not simply say exploiting community?

    I’m sure as the defender of a community you really meant to say nurturing or stewarding community. ;>

  • http://www.forumone.com Bill Johnston

    Hi Ted,

    I’m curious why you think we are “Exploiting” the unconference mantra? These events are all based on Open Space Technology, and there are no hard / fast rules about pricing. We charge admission to cover costs, and are subsidized further by a small amount of sponsorship dollars.

    Forum One(the company I work for) has been doing Online Community conferences for the last 7 years, and we primarily work with non profits and policy organizations. Personally, I dropped out of the corporate world in January to focus on all aspects of online community, including the commercial becuase I am very passionate about the space.

    I’m not sure we are in a position to “exploit” anything :)

  • http://www.forumone.com Bill Johnston

    Also – a couple of other links that provide more info:

    An FAQ
    http://www.forumone.com/unconference_faq

    A list of conference attendees (bottom of page):
    http://ocu2007.eventbrite.com/

    If you have any questions or want to discuss, you can reach me at bjohnston@forumone.com or call 415.299.9638

    Bill

  • http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ jeremiah_owyang

    Ted,

    I stand behind the term “Leverage”. It’s not an exploitive term, here’s why:

    When I ran the user forums at Hitachi, I “leveraged” the community to self-support. Customers may have been better at asking and answering each other’s questions better and faster than the official teams may have.

    I believe in crowdsourcing, which in my mind is a form of leveraging, it’s not exploitive, it’s efficient.

  • http://www.spideysenses.com Ted R.

    Hi Bill,

    My apologies. your event looks great. best sucuccess

    Jeremiah,

    It sounds to me that you are describing the term then as, building tools that communities can leverage for their own benefit, which is wonderful. But I’d take care using that term in regards to the marketplace, becuase I *think* and I could be quite wrong, that the term ‘leveraging community’ was coined by marketing folks, and not community stewards. Now I am very keen to trace backs it’s derivation.

  • http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ jeremiah_owyang

    Ted, this is good, there’s a few other terms out there that fall into this category that have been discussed before, thanks.

  • Pingback: unconference » My Upcoming Tech Unconferences : Online Community, Supernova, BlogHer

  • Mickey M

    very pricey