A Presentation About Community, By The Community

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Late last year I did a presentation to the AOP UK conference on The Power Of Online Communities. One of the things I said was that I believed that almost all of the important learnings I have gained about how online communities work have come through being a part of one, and in order to illustrate how productive the community can be I crowdsourced some opinion, which I featured in my talk. I got some great input, which I duly included in the presentation with everyone's feedback on one slide, explaining to the audience that what I was showing them was equivalent to thousands of pounds worth of consultancy, freely given, and that that alone was a more powerful demonstration of the power of online community than all the words (including mine) they were going to hear on the subject.

Well. I'm due to present next week at another conference on the same subject. So after a bit of twitter banter about it today, Mark happened to suggest the idea of people donating one slide each. In a short space of time I had several other people saying they'd contribute a slide. So I got to thinking about how the idea of compiling a presentation about community, by a community, is a really interesting one. Four people (thanks Mark, Will, Willem, Faris) are already contributing a slide each so I'm already some of the way there, but I'm rather intrigued how this could turn out, so I'm expanding the experiment. And I'd like to invite you to contribute. In order to have a minor degree of control over the outcome I setting some basic guidelines (I am going to have to present this in front of whole bunch of people after all ;-)):

• If you'd like to participate send me one powerpoint slide on The Power of Online Communities to the e-mail address on the link top right. One slide only please.
• The slide can be a quote you think captures the power of online communities. Or it might just reflect your view in some other way
• I don't want to be too prescriptive about style and I'm keen to represent the everyone's individual styles as well as their thinking, but please don't make it too text heavy (you can see the kind of presentations I prefer doing in the sidebar on the right). Not keen on templates. Big visuals are good (but please make sure you attribute the source)
• I need your slide by monday (sorry folks - but the idea has only just arisen and I've been given a deadline)
• To avoid allegations of complete laziness and to give it some degree of structure I'll front it with a few of my own slides - but then I'm turning it over to the community
• I will credit each slide in my talk and stick the whole presentation up here (crediting and linking to those who've contributed) and on slideshare when I'm done so include your name and URL on the e-mail if it's not obvious
• I can't guarantee I will use all the slides I'm afraid - I say this because I have a time limit to speak and so if I get a lot, I'll have to be selective - but I will say that I will make all efforts to include as many as I can and will try and use my best judgement if I have to edit. If there are way too many, I will try my best to compile and post them up here anyway
• If there is some context necessary to the slide, please let me know in the note you send me but please, keep it simple.

That's it. I have to say I'm a little nervous about presenting a presentation that is only partly mine, but if it comes off it will be an amazing demonstration of just how productive and powerful communities can be. So send me your slide. And thanks to Mark for the original thought. This could be fun (I hope).

Comments

[Rana]

Was expecting to see a lot of suggestions here, are you not displaying them? Sorry no original thought in this comment, perhaps just a reminder of that 1776 definition of society updated for the modern age: "An online community is produced by our wants, and censorship of that community by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices."

[neilperkin]

Hi Rana. People have been sending me slides direct and I've got a load which I'm sorting through (hopefully the post above clears that up). Thanks for the thought - it's been very positive so far :)