Beyond Flame Wars: Building Socially Constructive Online Communities

Thanks to the good folks at today's NM Technology Educators conference!

I hope today's presentation stimulated a few neurons at least regarding the possibilities of a fruitful online community based upon my experience starting Duke City Fix and other online communities such as Connect.Bioneers.org.

For those of you happily ensconced in the conference rooms at Hotel Albuquerque, you'll remember my high-level summary... That the key to constructive communities can be encapsulated in these four activities:

How to Build Socially Constructive Online Communities

• Articulate site goals and guidelines
  
• Animate the site with content that models good behavior
  
• Invite everyone you know
  
• Evolve the site based on user behavior
  

The presentation slides dig into these a bit further.

Also, for those of you who asked, here are a few tools for building your own content management system without significant technology overhead.

Systems for Online Communities

• Plone OpenPlans
• Ning
• Kickapps
  

The Presentation:

• Building Socially Constructive Online Communities