In my last blog I discussed how in developing online community, that strategy and process, AND technology, together are necessary conditions for vibrant, online community—and that none of these alone are sufficient. In particular, I discussed my definition of online community and that it is my opinion that the best online communities transcend the online and offline world.

In this blog, I will continue this discussion of online community, and discuss more about how the process of coalescing community through the setting of community norms and codifying the responsibilities of formal and informal community members helps ensure successful online community.

The process of setting community norms.

Similar to offline communities, a critical element of the online community-building process is setting a common set of goals and objectives around a set of community norms. Whether these norms are shared with all community members, is up to the specific community, but I highly recommend that these norms be thought through, by the community leaders and sponsors. Through analyzing online communities for nearly ten years, those communities that have a codified set of community norms are in a position to be the highest performing communities. These norms include: 

• Performance metrics: By setting performance metrics, the community’s leaders ensure that the community is designed and has the tools to meet these goals. These goals should be measurable and actually measured on a regular, periodic basis. In addition, these metrics should support the organizations offline goals and objectives and be explicitly tied and reported with the organization’s offline goals.
• Classification and cataloguing standards: Similar to how in an economy there needs to be a common currency, an online community needs a set of classification and cataloguing standards. For example, in the Amplifier Networks community (AmplifierNetworks.com), we have structured the community around the various user groups AND the functions they may want to perform. These user groups include investors, entrepreneurs, and technology innovators.
• Standard approaches for identifying, recruiting, and bounding community membership: Similar to any organization, it is imperative that there be a membership recruiting strategy. This strategy needs to include viral networking where the community members recruit like minded AND those with counter-opinions. These diverging views will help expand the bounds of knowledge and ensure a good balance of opinion. Depending on the objectives of the community and the target membership base, the community may be a non-moderated open, moderated open, moderated closed, or non-moderated closed. Each of these communities has it’s own time and place based on the topic and community objectives.
• Intra-group communication protocols: Communication protocols can’t be formally set in an online community and are difficult to enforce. Nonetheless, the group members themselves will help in codifying the communication protocols based on the aggregate culture of the individual members. I do recommend that the community sponsor have a set of minimum documented communication protocols. Depending on the subject matter, there may be legal as well as other softer reasons for documenting these protocols.
• Functional requirements for technology: In the founding of any online community, I recommend going through a high-level requirements analysis to see what functionality will help – or complicate – the development of the community. In my last blog, I discussed some common functionality that will help build online community that can be used as a basis for determining the community’s functional requirements.

 On each of the above topics, note that there is an off-line corollary for community norms. Developing these types of community norms is not unique to online community. Those studying group and community formation from a psychological perspective know that these elements are crucial.

My discussion of the above norms just begins to scratch the surface on how to incubate and feed online community. In future blogs, I’ll continue to discuss these elements in more detail and give more specific examples of how these norms are manifested online and offline.

In my next blog, and third on online community, I'll discuss the roles and responsibilities necessary for successful online community.

There is a lot of talk these days about online community and a lot of businesses popping up to serve this market. Tools out there to help online community range from the big guys like groups.yahoo.com and groups.google.com, to newer entrants into the market like meetup.com.

As those that know me know, I have been involved in building online networks of communities since 1998 when I first got involved with General Powell’s nonprofit, America’s Promise. Subsequently, I built PricewaterhouseCoopers’ global practice specializing in helping corporations, nonprofits, and government organizations create and utilize private online networks and online community.

At the time, even thought software packages enabling online community cost a small fortune, it was my position was that the technology problem was not particularly complicated and that organizations should not have to spend a fortune to build online community space for their members, clients, or constituents. But at the same time, the popular tools of the time (and still to this day) like groups.yahoo.com were (are) inadequate and ineffective in serving the needs of online community.

Over the past ten years, community tools have generally gotten better, and the prices have certainly gone down. It may have taken almost ten years for this notion to take hold, but it is exciting to see the proliferation of open source software and businesses springing up to support online community (including my company, iBelong Networks).

But what is still generally missing is incorporating the elements of best practice in online community into online community software. As is my opinion with most online technology, the successful of online communities is more than simply a bunch of cool features.

So to continue the theme of my earlier blogs, I want to emphasize that although the minimum software requirements for online community may not be particularly advanced, like so many things in starting a small business, the success lies in productizing the technology with a stellar implementation process. Below, I will highlight a few of my findings in studying online community strategy, process, and technology for almost ten years.

What is an online community?

An ONLINE community is essentially the same as any OFFLINE community. An online community is a group of people who share a common interest, common practice, and a commitment to share and expand their objective. Their objective may be to further the knowledge base within a certain area, to get a candidate elected, or to share information on an entertainment star.

The biggest difference between an online and offline community is that an online community can be geographically disperse and represent multiple layers, organizations, or communities while still being very active. This activity is typically through a diverse set of online functionality, including:

  Transcending the online and offline worlds.

The most successful online communities transcend the online and offline worlds. These communities have off-line goals, use tools to organize and communicate online, and perform some sort of activity offline. The following is an illustration of this model.

Successful online communities.

In addition, in studying successful online communities, I found that the characteristics for successful online communities is not much difference than offline communities. These include:

• Clear, demonstrated need: In order for a community to really take off, there needs to be a good impetus for the community to coalesce. And it is this need that will keep things going. For example, Youth Service America is a large offline community focused on engaging young people in service and service learning. YSA has identified a global need to engage young people in service and they have successfully used their online community, SERVEnet.org, to manifest their offline community in an online world.
• Existing formal or informal networks: Existing communities have formed where there is an existing need – whether it’s online or offline, formal or informal. By applying additional principles of community to these existing networks, they will have the tools to thrive. 
• Community leadership: Just like offline communities, there needs to be a community leader. This leader can take a formal high-profile role or can take a behind-the-scenes role. Either way, successful online communities need a leader who is passionate about helping to facilitate the achievement of the community’s goal.
• Organizational sponsorship: Although not necessary, most successful online communities tend to have an organizational sponsor. The sponsor’s role may be to provide financial resources, offline mobilization tools, or simply legitimacy. For example, SERVEnet.org is the largest online community of volunteers and nonprofit service professionals. I credit the success of this online community to the sponsorship of its companion offline organization, Youth Service America.  
• Manageable size and scope: The most successful communities tend to have a very specific objective and not want to do and accomplish everything for everyone. This is particularly true in their infancy. But as communities grow, they tend to take on more goals. This tends to work out as long as this growth is organic and is supported by other factors of successful communities.
• Culture amenable to sharing and communicating: This may seem pretty intuitive, but obviously a necessary condition for a successful community is that the culture of the potential community members will need to be amenable to sharing and communicating. There are plenty of instances, where this is the case, as a natural course of business. For example, government agencies have tried to set up knowledge sharing amongst their contractors. Without some sort of contractual obligation, contractors tend not to want to collaborate, lest they reveal business secrets.
• Technical competence and access to necessary technology: As technology tools get easier to use and users are more tech-savvy, this becomes less of an issue. But unfortunately, as functionality of technology expands, good usability often takes a backseat to cool features.  So it’s important to make sure that the software’s usability matches the sophistication of the target user group.

I’ll finish this topic in my next blog when I discuss the process of setting community norms and common community roles. In the meantime, the overall point I want to make is that only a fraction of this blog’s real estate was given to the actual technology behind successful online community. And even though I am a technology entrepreneur developing online community through iBelong Networks, I am the first to admit that having good technology to create and sustain online community is only the necessary condition—but good technology is not nearly sufficient.

In order for online community to be successful, there needs to be an entire strategy and process around mobilizing and maintaining online community – to facilitate achievement in the offline world. Unfortunately, a lot of the technology products created by entrepreneurs that I have seen, have great technology, but no means to support that technology through a community strategy that is integrated into its business model. This may work if the business strategy is to immediately sell to a Yahoo or a Google who can throw a lot of traffic at the technology and pray for community. But a sustainable business relies on fulfilling a consumer or client need and making a commensurate amount of revenue and profit.  

A few years ago there was a popular book that purported to bridge the divide between men and women called “Woman Are from Mars, Men Are from Venus”.  Perhaps you are fortunate enough never to have someone quote you a passage from this book, or give you a copy to encourage your communication skills.  In any event, the book’s central thesis – you have to understand how the other half thinks to truly communicate, seemed apt to me yesterday as I reviewed this post from TechCrunch.

The gist of the story was the passage into death of an unfortunate start up called FilmLoop.  The story itself appears to be a sad one – a start up raises significant venture capital, and is then merged out of existence – apparently squeezing out the founders.  Certainly, there is a cautionary tale there for any entrepreneur who is looking for venture capital. But, to me, the more interesting and instructive thing were the many, many comments following the blog entry.  Hence, the Mars/Venus moment. 

The comments fell into two general camps: entrepreneurs who saw the story as another example of how VCs are evil and a smaller group, mostly of VCs, explaining that the VC at question was really just doing his job.  But, the emotion behind the entrepreneurial comments --- Wow.  The commentators really do get exercised, particularly on the VCs are evil side of things.  As you read the comments you’ll see what I mean.

What might not necessarily be obvious, though, is how many entrepreneurs who approach venture investors for funding really do have the attitudes represented in the FilmLoop blogstream.  I see it all the time, both in the initial meeting and (sadly) sometimes after an investment.  These entrepreneurs go into the process expecting to find evil, and often that’s exactly what they find.  The question is whether they find it because it is there, or because they make it happen. The answer of course is that it depends……

One thing that I do know for sure is that an entrepreneur who tries to have a relationship with the VC that is not based on transparency will fail miserably.  My father used to say “you can’t snow the snowman” (generally after I offered a lame excuse on why I didn’t do my homework), with the point being that he was older and had seen it all before.  Well, make no mistake, an experienced VC has seen a great many things, and worked with a wide range of people.  Rightly, or wrongly, a VC will ferret out the withholding of information or management of facts.  That’s one of the things that makes a good VC – “pattern recognition” – making connections quickly.

Of course, an entrepreneur might say that all the VC is doing is making an uninformed snap judgment……

In the interests of fostering greater communication, let’s spell out some of the truisms that entrepreneurs and VCs often hold of the other:

Entrepreneurs think VCs are evil because:

• They want control.
• They will fire me the first chance they get.
• They provide their investment solely to get a return.
• They don’t take enough time to understand my business.
• They react badly when told bad news.

 VCs find entrepreneurs frustrating because:

• They do not want to share control with the VC.
• They get in the way of the company having the best management, whether or not it is the entrepreneur.
• They are not focused on growing and selling the business as quickly as possible.
• They don’t appreciate how many directions a VC is pulled in.
• They react badly when told bad news.

Clearly I’ve selected a small sample to illustrate the point, but aren’t so many of them mirrors of the same thing?  In other words, do we really have in the interaction between VCs and entrepreneurs a Venus/Mars divide?

As I have mentioned above and in earlier blog entries, an entrepreneur who is looking for venture capital must understand the limitations in the VC’s world, and the limitations on his world view.  He shouldn’t go into the interaction with unreasonable expectations, but he should look for one very important thing: acknowledgment.  Acknowledgment from the VC that the entrepreneur has prejudices and concerns that will shape how he works with the VC and how he “hears” what the VC says.  In turn the savvy entrepreneur must give the VC transparency and trust, otherwise the interaction between the entrepreneur and VC is doomed to fail.

This is not to suggest that there are not people involved in this dance who are truly “evil”.  Like anything else there are bad apples – people who in this context look to game the other.  But, in my experience in the industry that is the exception, not the rule.  More often, people do not take the time to communicate clearly, and allow their unspoken prejudices to govern their reactions.   My best advice is to look for a business partner that acknowledges and appreciates your prejudices and acts to counteract them.  In other words, don’t skate around the issues that separate entrepreneurs and investors, but instead hit them head on.  Not only will you be more likely to find a better initial fit, you will also be more likely to have a successful partnership over the longer term.

As a small, rapidly growing business, sometimes it seems like we can’t hire fast enough. But it is my feeling that making the wrong hire is an even worse fate than being understaffed. In tight job markets, such as the Washington, DC area, hiring the right people can seem nearly impossible. In this blog, I’ll discuss some of the trials and tribulations of my recent hiring battles – and hopefully share some positive conclusions!!

Over the past year since starting iBelong, I have been having nightmare flashbacks to my experience in starting my first company almost ten years ago. It seems that life in a startup is nothing if not a balancing act – and the process of hiring is no exception. This includes balancing:

• Experience versus ambition
• Intelligence versus work ethic
• Short-term salary versus long-term reward

The above trade-offs are not etched in stone. Most top-performing employees will have elements from both sides of the equation. But in hiring for a start-up, I find that depending on the role, the optimal profile often leans toward the right side of the above equation (ambition, work ethic, and long-term reward).

In hiring for large businesses, like IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers, it was my experience that there is a broader profile for a good fit. With the broad needs of a large organization, we could always make room for a “good person”. But in a small company it takes more than experience and intelligence to be a net positive to the organization. This is not to say that experience and intelligence are not required to make a start-up work. On the contrary, if we are looking for a dot net developer, we required candidates with experience and intelligence, as a necessary but not sufficient condition. In addition, we need someone with ambition and a very hard work ethic. For a large company, ambition may not necessarily be a pre-requisite for getting the job – and getting the job done.  

It is particularly hard in the local Washington DC area economy when recruiting to find the optimal balance of traits for a start-up. Candidates with experience and intelligence have a lot of employment options. And with the federal government hiring so heavily in the IT space, many candidates that are out there don’t need ambition and work ethic to make a healthy salary.

Given the cost of making a hiring correction in a small business, in terms of low employee morale, damage to customer reputation, and the cost of hiring and training a replacement, it is my opinion that small start-up businesses are better off being slightly understaffed than making the wrong hiring decisions.

So how do you find people with ambition, strong work ethic, intelligence, AND experience? Well, I would love to hear your opinions! It is my experience that there is no substitute for personal referrals. Every top performer I have had has come from a personal referral. Unfortunately, this process is very time consuming and doesn’t often yield the volume it takes to staff an entire business. But it has rarely failed me.