community

This morning I went into the kitchen at work and found a case of imported beer on the table. It's not an uncommon sight at Acquia on a Friday - as we normally have a little relaxation time as a team before the weekend begins.

I try to encourage brands to embrace both the negative and positive discussions their consumers have, preaching that it's important to learn from the negative and leverage the positive.

But for all of those brands that don't want to build the roads that provide more interaction with their consumers, your consumers are taking other roads already available. Enable them to speak freely with and about you. They're going to do it, no matter what, either way.

That's social publishing.

At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week I attended the session “Community Building: Good, Bad, and Ugly.” More than anything else, it reminded me of the “Building Community” session hosted by Laura Scott of pingVision that I attended a year ago at the OSCMS 2007 conference in Sunnyvale last April. I went to Laura’s session with no expectations (there was nothing else in that time slot I wanted to attend) and was really pleased to find the discussion relevant with tangible, actionable ideas I understood and could use. I’ve been meaning to post my notes from that session for a year and now I’m finally motived. So, here they are!