the title of this post is a bit misleading, i’ll admit to that now – i believe the complete opposite, but it got your attention didn’t it?

bear with me as i write as i think, probably a little out of order and lots of personal views, often too strong, maybe too passionate… but this stuff makes me tick, so i’m hoping you’ll make allowances…

i was having a conversation with a friend yesterday and it struck me that far too many people think anyone can successfully build a community – there’s not too much to it right? interact on facebook and you’re most the way there? you couldn’t be further from the truth. think of it in wallpapering terms (i warned you this was random) – for a smooth effect there’s a hell of a lot of preparation that needs to go into it… you can’t just slap it up and hope it sticks. what do i mean? well funny you should ask…

research

research, research and research some more. i can’t stress how important this is. you need to know your offering inside out, know the community inside out and don’t be afraid to think big.

sure, everyone needs to be realistic at some point, but don’t be afraid to dream… don’t restrict yourself to creating something that’s achievable – why settle for something that’s okay when it could be amazing. the web is a fabulous place but in order for it to keep getting better, we need people to push the boundaries, to question existing standards and to reach for more. be one of those people.

think about what might be possible, who might be interested, where those people communicate and how, what tools are currently offered and what could be improved, what reach do you have, who could help, what do your community value, what can you provide that is different, fresh and new?

testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

in a world where beta is often just a get out clause for a product or service that’s already finished and shiny, this is still incredibly important. of course, it wouldn’t be sensible for you to put yourself out there in a totally unfinished state, but to the same extent, i can’t stress how important it is to build in user feedback to your product. by listening to your users and incorporating their suggestions and recommendations, you’re giving ownership and allowing them buy-in.

asking for feedback is pretty pointless if you never get together with the team to review – infact this can be more detrimental than not asking for feedback in the first place. communities mean handing over power to your users and if you’re not comfortable with doing that, i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re not ready for a community yet.

not all feedback will be a quick fix and plenty won’t always be welcome (especially if it’s costly) but you need to remind yourself that the site/product is for them and not you. it’s your responsibility to give your users what they want.

fuzzy warmness

set yourself goals. so often i hear social media described as fluffy and, well, quite frankly it makes me boil a little inside. no you might not be able to set financial goals against each of your actions, but there are plenty of things that you can measure. for example:-

• site traffic
• comments
• user behaviour (are they interacting in a positive manner)
• referrals to friends
• number of mentions in the webosphere (on other blogs etc)
• feedback. if you’re not getting any feedback, it doesn’t mean that you’re perfect, it’s more likely to mean that people don’t care – and you definitely don’t want that!

it’s time to step up, to bring something to the web, to look after your community – after all, as soon as you have one set of eyeballs reading your blog – you have a community and it’s your responsibility to look after them?

food for thought? i hope so…

each week, i look forward to thursdays, it’s always fun… and well, i don’t take myself too seriously. inspiration is taking from random places (you’d never guess from the name of my blog!) and comes from all variety of places. today though… well today… i saw this…

… and well, it made me do this…

i’m sorry, i know, it’s embarrassing even by my standards. but, well, i hope it made you smile!

happy thursday xox

p.s. music is D.A.N.C.E by Justice…. i kinda love it!

ever the dork and enjoying something geeky, i enjoyed this and thought that you might too…

happy monday folks!

the question is, are you prepared for it??? time will tell…

have a fantastic thursday and keep smiling.

mel xox

p.s. for those of you who want to know the tune – it’s video killed the radio star by the feeling!!

it’s with much delight that i’m able to share with you my pitch for techcrunch50…okay i may be a little late to the game and some of the ideas might have been heard before, but that doesn’t matter….. does it?

i am sweet and innocent really i swear, i just had my kitten claws out today. hope you enjoyed though… i think there’s potential there.

have a great week fab interweb folks!

xox

p.s. happy thursday!

so today, i sent a tweet-out (boy i should copyright that term) to ask in your honest opinion the people that are must-follows… it had a good response and so i thought that i would post the results here:-

** Merlin Mann (hotdogsladies)
** Kevin Rose (kevinrose)
** Alex Albrecht (alexalbrecht)
** Jeff Cannata (jeffcannata)
** Dan Trachtenberg (dannytrs)
** Michael Arrington (techcrunch)
** Paul Boag (boagworld)
** Jeffrey Zeldman (zeldman)
** Brightkite (brightkite)
** Paul Lomax (paullomax)
** James Whatley (whatleydude)
** Ryan Carson (ryancarson)
** London Events (londonevents)
** eChuckles (echuckles)

interesting that the top results kind of reflected those of the most popular twitter users published here, which makes sense if you think about it. it did get me to thinking about people that you should be following in different fields depending on your interests. then there’s the whole issue of wanting to follow someone because you respect their work even though they may send more personal tweets that tweets with gems of knowledge.

so the conclusion that i came to is that i’m going to get a study squat on and put together a list of twitterati that you need to be following under each categories. the categories that i have so far are industry, design, development, entrepreneurs and social media. please leave a comment below if there’s someone you’d like to be considered for the list or other categories you’d be interested in seeing. this is for you after all!



p.s. thanks to all you lovely folks that said me, but let’s face it you’re going to be biased as you were following me in the first place. i still love you more for it though, you’re the best!!

as an experienced conference organiser, i’d like to think that i’m in a good position to tell whether an event was good or not… and dConstruct rocked! i always love tech events, who wouldn’t… you’re amongst your own and able to geek out til your heart’s content. therefore the social aspect is never under question… there’s going to be free beer and you’re going to be a little merry.

dConstruct had plenty of social, with the pre-party dinner at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, the pre-event party hosted by Chi.mp at Po Na Na and the post-party at Above Audio. all round awesomeness. one of the highlights for me was talking the hind legs off a donkey to the Chi.mp guys, Tony Haile and Rob Farrow… both really inspirational. if you haven’t already checked out Chi.mp, it’s well worth a look – one personal domain from which you can manage all of your online life.

but this event was different – i learned something from every single presentation that i’m planning to implement to my current project, 4mations.

my favourite presentations would have to be those of Joshua Porter and my good friend Daniel Burka. Joshua went into some depth about heuristics and how features and even copy can have great influence over communities and users.

a prime example that Joshua focussed in on was framing something as a loss as opposed to a potential gain… for example in sign ups…. rather than:-

“sign up here to be kept up to date with the latest news and releases”

a simple text change to:-

“sign up here to avoid missing out on the lastest news and releases”

could have much more of an effect. it’s a simple strategy but it’s quite clear the influence that this should have. another aspect that Joshua looked at and Daniel picked up on was letting your users take ownership to encourage them to sign up and keep them coming back for more. the example that Joshua gave here was enabling users to do basic functions on a site before having to go through the full sign-up process.

Daniel picked up on this point and cited Geni as being a great example of how this can be done…

using Geni as an example, by the time that you’ve entered your first name, last name and email address, you’ve started your family tree! genius! you’re more likely at that stage to go through signup having already made some level of commitment to it.

ownership can also be created through the copy alone… Flickr do this incredibly well with the use of “my photos”, “my sets” etc and are fab with the informal tone that they use.

Daniel also talked about the importance of encouraging users at points when they’re likely to drop out – for example when waiting for a file to upload… by simply popping in some friendly text to help entertain them and let them know you empathise with them will break any tension points that may otherwise have occured.

another feature which Daniel discussed which i will be looking into some more at 4mations, is attaching recent behaviours to personal profiles to encourage positive behaviour. i thought that this was a really interesting points and takes it a step further than purely avoiding anonymity.

presentations and mp3s will be available on the dconstruct site and i would highly recommend checking them out – not only did i have a ball, meet some amazing people and hang out with friends, i learned a whole bunch too – making me one happy geekette!

firstly let me thank everyone for your overwhelming responses to my last post – i can’t begin to tell you how much that means to me…

not only is today thursday but i’m also off to dConstruct – so this week’s video is a little over-excited and well… random, but hey you wouldn’t expect anything less!

as i said, if there’s anyone you’d like to see me interview, please leave a comment below. i’ll be trying to cover as much of the event here as i can, so be sure to check back.

happy thursday wonderful web peeps, much love to you all.

xox

you should probably be warned now, this is my most personal post to date. it might make you feel uncomfortable, it’s probably something which i should keep personal and not post for the whole world to see. but this is the way that i live my life and that is the decision that i made. so i apologise now, but i hope that you’ll understand.

for those who don’t know my background, i’m an only child that was brought up by my mum alone from the age of 11. my mum worked hard to provide for me after my dad left us and became both parents for me for my teenage years. i didn’t go to university – i made the decision that i knew my mum couldn’t afford to pay for it and i didn’t want to end up with huge debts so instead i went out to work. i’ve worked incredibly hard to end up in a job that i love and that i’m good at and there’s been many trials and tribulations on the way as there normally are for most people, but i’m immensely proud of my mum and i hope that she is of me too.

i came to terms with the fact that i’d probably never hear from my dad again, it wasn’t something easy to get my head around, but after all these years it’s something i just accepted. you can imagine my surprise when some 16 years later my step-mother had found my websites and knew everything about me.

i know that’s such a daft thing to say, but so often, you post your pictures to flickr, your every day thoughts to twitter, planned journeys to dopplr and, well, your random videos to your blog – without thinking who is actually viewing or reading it at the other end.

when i received an email from her, it came as a total shock and turned my world upside down – a mixture of emotions, sadness for the lost years and hope for the future. there’s no need to go into specifics but after a few conversations, my dad decided that he didn’t want me in his life after all…

this led me to really re-assess my approach to the web. if only i’d not been so open – he knows everything about me, i know nothing about him. if only i’d not been on the web, he never would have been in touch and i wouldn’t have to face that pain all over again. if only i’d not been on the web i wouldn’t have to face abusive emails. if only….

for a while, i really really thought and i even considered stopping the blog. But then… then i got an email from someone telling me how my videos were helping them through a rough time in their life…. then i had tweets from people telling me they hoped i felt better when i got sick…. then i have the comments for each of my posts and videos which bring me the biggest smile, and that’s what reminds me what it’s all about.

i have the best family… i have a mum that i’m fiercely protective of, a step father better than i could wish for and a whole swarm of friends that i never would have been priveliged enough to meet if it hadn’t been for this wonderful web-o-verse that we live in. it’s then that i’m grateful, so grateful to live my life on the web. it’s not for everyone, that i admit, it’s tough for many to get their head around – but when it’s what makes you tick, what puts fire in your belly and a smile on your face, well then you’re one of the luckiest people in the world.

thankyou xox