Apparently, it’s much simpler to use Social Software than explain it
Some of us folks in the social software field need to take a lesson from 11 year-olds & Steve Jobs.
Apple Specialists are at the heart of our reputation for extraordinary customer service. You love people. Have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Apple. And can translate technology-speak into everyday language. You’re ready to not just serve up information, but also inspire the next generation of Mac, iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV fans.
- Job posting for an Apple (Store) Specialist & the Steve Jobs philosphy of why a customer should care
In my previous post - Early social software adopters eager for extra homework, I bragged about how quickly and effortlessly Sara's Grade 6 class not just adopted, but embraced their new social software site. But this week, was about The Project & actually working in their Deliverables - modifying Cynapse's Best Practices Guide For Elementary School Students.
I don't get "getting feedback on interim deliverables"
Mayby you can shorten the text to make it seem less,... daunting.
i don't get it ????????????
What does surfacing and interim mean?
I guess it makes sense, but 1/4 of your day is a pretty long time - 3-4 hours' worth!
What does fragmented mean?
What is RSS?
What's IDC?
What's 2.0 enterprises?
Kids usually don't care about publishing!
2.0?????????????
What is tacit knowledge
-- from Collaboration - What is it and Why is it needed ?
what does infrastructure mean?
What is this adopting, exactly?
What's facilitate and aggregate.
well what are we talking about?
-- from Driving Adoption
Can you reply to their comments, like an Apple Store Specialist - translating technology-speak into everyday language 11 and 12 year-olds can understand?
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Early social software adopters eager for extra homework
I never thought assigning homework would be so easy but, this is social software in elementary schools.
... a simple process: find leaders (the heretics who are doing things differently and making change), and then amplify their work, give them a platform, and help them find followers-and things get better. They always get better.
Who wants more homework?
Previously in There are no screw-ups, just Versions, I primed Sara's elementary school classmates on how to give their own Lunch & Learn. Since then, I prepared the initial wiki page content for their project assignments.
While I have provided face-to-face training in the past and even hundreds of techies via e-learning (onilne realtime education), I have never experienced so much energy in a classroom. And what's even more amazing to witness is, it's not not bound to the 40 minute lunch-time session we share. Sara's classmates are contributing to their Cynapse site. While they help with homework and contribute fave songs, movies, books, etc., their blogs, wikis & threaded comments are the best. They're just playing around and naturally having fun!
It was that easy: "... amplify their work, give them a platform, and help them find followers-and things get better. They always get better." So I never handed out their project assignments. They volunteered and even complained that some had more features to cover than they did. Life is good - so far.
I've offered my help for any questions they have - provided the questions are posted on the site for others to benefit. I've also offered to help them - as best as I can, in creating video blogs (vlogs), recorded how-to interviews, presentations and recorded demos. These would all be "nice-to-haves". The only "need-to-have" is the updated wiki page deliverables - Cynapse's Best Practices Guide for Elementary School Students.
Help your friends out by posting questions/comments on their assigned wiki pages - before their Lunch & Learn date and I'm sure they'll help you out with yours!
-- my $0.02 (CAD)
The first update after school was this Beatles song. Check back next week to see how they start delivering.
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There are no screw-ups, just Versions
Cynapse's Version control alleviates collaboration and adoption fear factor - at least among 11 and 12 year-olds.
My last post - Kicking off social software in Sara’s elementary school illustrated how Six Graders - 11 & 12 year-olds, were quick to adopt social software in their elementary school. Now that they had some fun over the holidays, the real work needs to start.
In order to make myself perfectly clear, I created an internal wiki page for them called The Project's 5 Ws. Basically, the students had already agreed to:
The Deliverable is the modified version of Cynapse's Best Practices Guide, entitled Cynapse's Best Practices Guide for Elementary School Students. The Students will work in teams and collaborate on modifying the existing content to suit their own scenarios / use cases / user stories, so that other students can benefit from their experiences and ease their adoption of social software.
Deliver The Deliverable within 3 months & their elementary school will continue offering the social software service.
While I've only presented 3 Lunch & Learns so far, I fully intend to retire in the very near future. While I do love presenting, demoing & fielding their questions, or, concerns, I think it's time for them to step-up & take over. There are 13 features - like blogs, wikis, calendar events, status logs, etc. for the students to document. I explained the concept & values of Agile self-organized teams & gave them until next week to decide which features they want to adopt ownership for. So next week should be my last official Lunch & Learn. From then on, the students will take turns presenting, demoing & fielding their own questions, or, concerns.
In addition, I asked them to start blogging about their everyday experiences, including those using/adopting Cynapse's cyn.in social software. The more content they contribute, the easier it will be for everyone to succeed.
In conclusion, I gave them a very quick introduction into Cynapse's content management - wiki editing & version control. I meant to record my demo but unfortunately, didn't have the connector for my laptop, so I used the teacher's laptop instead - which didn't have Jing - screen recording software, installed. I suggested it would be a nice surprise if we were able to deliver less-than-5-minutes How-To videos - like the one above & offered to help them out.
What do think? Will this small group of 11 and 12-year-olds succeed?
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Kicking off social software in Sara’s elementary school
Emerging Early Adopters: With only 10 min demo, 11 & 12 year-olds pounce on social software in their elementary school.
Social media tools enable them to be connected, extend their outreach, and ensure that all members can have a voice within the tribe.
-- Seth Godin, Tribes Q&A
edu.
Given my previous post on Max, I was a bit delayed in getting edu.cyn.in - Cynpase 's cyn.in Software as a Service, launched. However, since my Update on pitching social software to Sara’s elementary school post, we did manage to sign-up 34 members - exactly half of which were parents. (This also helps support the grassroots approach to social software adoption.)
On one of the last days before school broke for the holidays, I was left with only ten minutes of demo time. So I decided to quickly peruse the site structure which has a Space for the elementary school and sub-Spaces for the Students and another for the teachers and parents. I explained to the students that parents & teachers can view, but not write, in their Student Space, so they need to be sure that whatever they post is appropriate. Furthermore, they can't even view what's in the teachers' & parents' Spaces. However, everyone can post (read/write) in the Home and their school Space. Basically, the students are allowed to write whatever their conscience allows for.
edu.cyn.in Statistics - General
Having explained the Big Brother philosophy and with precious little time remaining, I gave them a quick tour on how to navigate the site & then showed them Cynapse's Status Logs. This is almost the equivalent of Twitter except:
- there is no Following, so there's no need to Follow whoever is in fashion
- the messages are threaded, which allows members to Comment on a specific Status message, as well as, Reply to those comments.
My only objective was to enable the kids to stay connected during their holiday break. Once back, I'd go into more detail about the different features and then get The Project - referred to back in my Update on pitching social software to Sara’s elementary school, underway.
edu.cyn.in Statistics - Contributors
We're now at the end of the holiday break, and some of the kids are well beyond Status Logs. It's also interesting to note, that these early adopters - 11 and 12 year-old kids, are following the same patterns as their elders. Back in an earlier post - How to be a hero with stuff like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, delicious, wikis and more, under Step 4: Getting Viral, I refered to Rubicon Consulting & Online Communities and Their Impact on Business: Ignore at Your Peril, where they found 10% of the community members contribute 80% of the content. These Most Frequent Contributors (MFCs) are second to word of mouth when it comes to influencing others. Which is the basis for my grassroots approach to social software adoption.
edu.cyn.in Statistics - Commenters
Out of the 34 signed-up members, 50% (17) are parents - none of whom, aside from myself, have contributed any content yet. Of the remaining 17 students, nine (9) have contributed. So with an introduction of less than a total of 60 minutes spread over two weeks, the student-MFC numbers (over 26%) better those in the above study of 10%. And that's over the holiday break!
My guess, and hope, is that once school starts up again this week, and I start my usually Monday Lunch & Learn sessions the following week, that even more of the students will be contributing content. Once I layout the The Project Plan and dates, I'll have the students present their own Lunch & Learns about their adopted Features. As their knowledge increases, my guess is their adoption will increase with it. As the student adoption rate increases, my guesss is that the parents and teachers will follow shortly after.
What kind of social software adoption rates have you experienced? Are they better/worse/in line with the MFC study?
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 4
Partnering, building communities and pitching social software to Sara's elementary school.
Cut win-win deals. A partnership seldom takes place between equals. As a result, the more powerful side is tempted to squeeze the other party. The weaker side, for its part, will begrudgingly accept such deals and try to get what it can. Bad idea. Bad karma. Bad practicality. If the partnership is a win-lose deal, it will blow up because concrete walls and barbed wire cannot hold a partnership together. Only mutually beneficial results can. In the long, the bitter seed of resentment planted at the start of a partnership will grow into a giant, destructive weed.
-- The Art of Partnering, Guy Kawasaki
A couple of posts ago, I wrote about building communities to help drive my start-up's outside-in software development and my working relationship with the good folks at Cynapse. And while my last post was - for the most part, about getting to be a TechCrunch50's semi-finalist, I did end with my desire to sow the social software seeds in my daughter Sara's elementary school.
As a passionate software entrepreneur and social software evangelist, it breaks my heart when Sara tells me she's bored learning how to use Word and Excel in Computer class. Now please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about her teacher - a fine and qualified professional. I'm not complaining about the curriculum, nor about the state of our education system. In no way would I ever expect the school to provide social software education. But nothing says that I can't.
So I approached the school and offered just that. I prepared a marked-up version of Cynapse's Flash marketing material & evangelized the virtues of, not only the mechanics of learning social software but the life lessons - I truly believe, it can teach the kids.
Our 30 minute meeting became an hour and a half and ended with a few action items:
- The school would have to agree to a trial period with the understanding that, if successful, they would continue the program.
- Cynapse would have to agree to barter three months of free hosting in return for a modified version of their Best Practices Guide for Elementary School Students.
- The students would have to volunteer for the extra-curricular activity and agree to collaborate on the Guide. Delivery of the Guide deems success.
Since the meeting, the school has delivered on Action Item #1. In addition, Cynapse has delivered on Action Item #2. So later this week, I'll be presenting my offer to Sara's Grade 6.
I've since elaborated on my initial presentation by incorporating some keywords mentioned during our meeting and added the narration. But after playing it back for Sara, she thought it may be "too much" and I should try to be more funny. 
The problem was, I tried to create something that would appeal to too many audiences - students, school staff and maybe even parents. So in the interest of outside-in development, I created two more videos which have passed the Sara Test. Once, approved by her teacher, I'll start with those & save the one above - hopefully, for another time.
Please feel free to share any thoughts, or, experience around social software in schools.
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 3
Using social software to avoid building something that someone - other than me, thinks is awesome.
Once you have the community, let them tell you how to improve your product by exposing your engineers to the cheers and jeers. This type of feedback is one of the greatest values of a community.
idea - who
In the spirit of openness, I just want to state that this post is a plug for the wonderful folks at Cynapse and their awesome and even at times inspiring, social software platform - cyn.in.
The underlying theory behind outside-in software is that to create successful software, you must have a clear understanding of the goals and motivations of your stakeholders. Your ultimate goal is to produce software that is highly consumable and meets/exceeds the needs of your client.
- Wikipedia based on Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-based Products, Carl Kessler & John Sweitzer
Now Guy, Carl & John can't all be wrong - developing software solutions in an ivory tower is no longer an option. As any external & internal stakeholder will tell you, you need feedback - especially in the world of global development & delivery (GDD). So how do you connect all these people from all over, with different skill-sets, different perspectives and most importantly different roles and rights? For example;
As a Developer (Internal Stakeholder), I would like to see Customers' (External Stakeholders), comments on how they interact with the system, so I can better understand what value they're trying to achieve.
As a Founder (Internal Stakeholder), I would like to collaborate with other Founders on our financial planning by sharing discussions, files and bookmarks, so we can communicate in a more timely and efficient manner than email.
Both of these scenarios involve the sharing and disseminating of information. However, not necessarily across Developers, Customers and Founders.
Having software development & start-up in my blood, I was thrilled to see the state of cyn.in. What the solution lacks in features, as compared to some of the competition, it makes up for in design, ease-of-use, quality and support.
I think the business model is great - its got something for everyone. For the techies, the open source model is a great way to use & potentially contribute to the code. For the folks looking for a free open source solution to experiment with, the VMware image provides the cheapest simplest in-house solution. And for those who want to avoid any hardware/software/networking issues and assure themselves of timely & helpful support, then the Software as a Service (SaaS) offering is the route to go.
For now, the one weakness is lack of documentation and knowledge base contents.
Since I consider myself a cyn.in early adopter, I hope to contribute to the requirements process - with my own spin of course In addition, I'll be blogging / tweeting about how we compliment certain features in their infancy with other solutions to achieve our desired results. Why am I doing this? Well, in the interest of transparency, I get a preferred SaaS deal for helping out and I better position myself as a potential reseller & service provider. However, most importantly, I actually do enjoy this stuff. And I will especially enjoy myself if I can contribute in a meaningful way to what I trust will be a distributed software development effort in an outside-in agile environment.
In addition to Enterprise Support, another SaaS benefit is being seamlessly migrated to the latest release - which by the way is as gorgeous as the Adobe AIR desktop client. If you're currently a cyn.in Version 2 user, then moving to Version 3 should be one of your priorities. If you're not, then Version 3 offers every feature you'd expect from a social software platform - minus some functionality. For example, while there are calendar Events, they lack the ability to invite members. Until that's enabled, we supplement cyn.in Events and with Google Calendar. In my opinion, a minor price to pay.
For whatever cyn.in lacks in documentation, they more than make up for it with their Enterprise Support. Despite being timezones away, I can always count on a timely, concise and helpful experience. There's seems to be no question too small, or, bug too big for them to answer in the same courtious manner. And in those special cases when I do come across a missing feature, it's nice to know that my input is used to help contribute to their development process.
A key feature for this start-up community is the ability to control user roles and their permissions. Currently, we use Personas to help us in our development effort. In the near future, we'll be ready to search for actual users to assume their own personnas and help us define and satisfy their needs. When that time arrives, I'll describe our community's site hierarchy and permissions for members to better understand how they fit in.
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Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life – Part 3
My outside your firewall, shared listening and engaging Community Product Manager service offering for social software vendors/providers.
Sharing does have its advantages
According to wikipedia
Shared Services refers to the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group where that service had previously been found in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an internal service provider. The key is the idea of 'sharing' within an organization or group.
As the title suggests, this is the third and final part of my Lessons Learned series and where I'll propose the business model I've come up with. Here's my previous related posts:
- How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle
- Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life
- Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 1
- Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 2
- I will assume the overhead costs associated with:
- Monitoring the social software market. Using Radian6, I would create a Topic Profile including keywords for social software vendors / providers like Socialtext, Atlassian, Blogtronix, MindTouch, Cynapse, Liferay, Vignette...
- Filtering out and tagging relevant buzz about product features and directions across the market
- Offering free service exporting tagged content and publishing on blog
- Offer monthly fee-based services where I would:
- Net out tagged content with respect to product features and publish on permission-based site (Say for example there's a few posts about "permissions". I would then write a 1-liner describing the "permission feature" and link to the original supporting content published Step 1.3)
- Offer hourly, or, tiered fee-based services where I would:
- Collaborate with respective social software vendors' / providers' (Customers') Product Managers to determine which features described in Step 2.1 should be elaborated
- Engage with original content authors and elaborate on product features selected in Step 3.1
- Privately share results of Step 3.2 with respective Customer Product Managers
- Collaborate with respective Customer Product Managers to determine which features described in Step 3.3 require further assistance / services
Other variations
I could resell Radian6 Seat licenses - governed by certain permission restrictions and share my Topic Profiles for those:
- Customers whose only pain is the cost of Radian6 (who can then determine later on if they want Steps 2 and/or 3)
- Potential colleagues who would collaborate on Steps 1, 2 & 3
What do think? If you're a social software vendor/provider, is this a service that may be of interest to you? Do you currently have a Product Manager? If so, is your Product Manager able to keep up with the social content? Do you see the any value in consolidating the redundancy? Do you see where it really is just a matter of per·spec·tive? Where ...
one piece of content can yield dividends for many investors
I'd love to hear from you folks in the field & prove there is a way we all could succeed at doing more with less.
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Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life – Part 2
per·spec·tive n. Subjective evaluation of relative significance; a point of view.
Perspective
In an earlier post, How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle, I reiterated a common theme I noticed in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social Software. That theme basically stated that many social software providers' ability to execute may suffer due to their lack of resources, or, size does matter - according to Gartner. To address this issue, I posted my Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life where I proposed the services of a new player - the Community Product Manager. And finally, after receiving some much appreciated feedback, I followed-up with my Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 1 where I clarified the distinction between a Community Manager, Product Manager and a Community Product Manager. In this post, I'll focus on what I discovered during that trial week by presenting some concrete examples and how I think it fits into the big picture.
Recently, there's been a lot of news about Space Junk;
In June 1983, the windscreen of the U.S. space shuttle Challenger had to be replaced after it was chipped by a fleck of paint measuring 0.01 of an inch that impacted at four kilometers per second.
So here's my fleck of paint: For the purposes of discussion, I purposely selected trivial content in order not to distract from the point I'm trying to articulate. For now, you'll have to trust me about the volume of content flying around in cyberspace
Here's some content I found using Radian6 during the trial period and a few different perspectives:
Scenario 1: Broadcast of new feature to anyone listening for Socialtext
Tweet from pascal_venier on Feb 28, 2009 02:48 PM
Studying Socialtext wiki automatic "Email notification of Recent Changes" to your inbox. A nice feature. http://twurl.nl/ypcmoj...
| Perspective | Possible reaction |
|---|---|
| Anyone connected to Socialtext | May retweet |
| Competitor's Customer | Compares to current experience and may contact support, or, retweet |
| Competitor's Community Manager | May need to ask Support about feature and if it exists, may tweet their own spin |
| Competitor's Community Product Manager | Compares to current feature-set & if it exists then tweets their own spin else documents 1-line User Story. For example: "As someone interested in the contents published on a particular wiki, I'd like to receive email notifications of updates on a scheduled basis, so I don't have to visit the site to ensure I have the latest content." |
Scenario 2: Broadcast of feature request to Liferay & anyone listening for Liferay
Tweet from helmblogger on Mar 03, 2009 12:34 PM
@Liferay Our business problem... "News" both organizational and departmental. Need to display "all-in-one" and "by department".. thoughts?...
| Perspective | Possible reaction |
|---|---|
| @Liferay (Perhaps Community Manager) | Depending on their role, may forward to Support, or, Development |
| Anyone listening for Liferay | May retweet & contact Support too |
| Competitor's Customer | Compares to current experience and may retweet & contact Support too |
| Competitor's Community Manager | May need to ask Support about feature and if it exists, may tweet own spin |
| Competitor's Community Product Manager | Compares to current feature-set & if it exists then tweet their own spin else documents 1-line User Story. For example: "As an author, I'd like to publish hierarchical content, so that groups based on the hierarchy have permission to read it." |
Scenario 3: Blog post targeting sought after project management features and referencing a few social software players
The Best and Worst Project Management Apps posted Feb 08, 2009 05:17 AM
... But there are a number of organizations that command large amounts of cash who need to procure project management systems for their divisions around the world. This includes NGOs, Government Agencies, International Schools, Non-Profits and more. In these harsh economic times, businesses should be looking for ways to tap into new markets. Most emerging economies still have nearly 100% room for growth, if only developers take into account their needs and circumstances.
Do any project management products exist that are ready to serve this multi-billion dollar sector?...
| Perspective | Possible reaction |
|---|---|
| Anyone listening for Basecamp, Zoho, Google Apps, Zimbra, ActiveCollab, ProjectPier, OpenGoo, Dot Project, Cyn.in, Confluence, Rockclimbr, Drupal, Yammer, Noodle, Present.ly, Collabtive, Trellis Desk, Achievo, or, Product Planner | May comment, or, tweet |
| Anyone associated & listening for any of the above organizations | Compares to current experience and may comment, tweet, or, contact Support too |
| Competitor's Customer | Compares to current experience and may comment, tweet, or, contact Support too |
| Competitor's Community Manager | May need to ask Support about features and possibly comment/tweet their own spin |
| Competitor's Community Product Manager | Compares to current feature-set & possibly comments/tweets their own spin else documents 1-line User Story for each missing feature. This example is really about architecture: "As an emerging market decision-maker for social software selection, I need a self-hosted solution, so my users need only intranet access since Internet access is not always available." |
Assuming the organization has a Community Manager then there may be an overlap in responsibilities with a Community Product Manager. However, this can be easily addressed with a little bit of collaboration. However beyond the overlap, a Community Product Manager could potentially extend the above scenarios by:
- Reviewing User Stories with their counter-part Product Manager & determine any course of action
- Engaging with the source and/or user community to elaborate and document the feature requirements
- Supporting the Product Manager in the feature development lifecycle thereby completing the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life (see post title)
Panning the River of News for gold
However, the most important pattern that emerged and lesson I learned was the one of Perspective. No doubt, even with the help of Radian6's River of News, there's a lot of work involved in mining for gold nuggets in cyberspace. But the beauty of striking these nuggets is that they're environmentally friendly - they're reusable! As illustrated in this post, one piece of content can yield dividends for many investors. It's just a matter of perspective.
My next post will propose a Community Product Manager business model. I'd love to hear any of your ideas and will be more than happy to attribute and share them here.
Reflection
Do the above scenarios and quotes help in providing concrete examples of where a Community Product Manager can add value to your development process? Do you need more? Do you have any examples of your own you could share with me?
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Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life – Part 1
Distinction between a Community Manager, Product Manager and a Community Product Manager
Feedback
First of all, thanks to all of those who shared their thoughts with me on my last post - Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life. In general, there were two common threads:
- Disticntion between a Community Product Manager and a Community Manager
- Can't justify business case for that role
Despite my attempt at defining the former, most thought I was offering the services of a Community Manager. To be clear, my understanding of a Community Manager is based on Chris Brogan's post Essential Skills of a Community Manager. Here's a quick summary: Community Managers
- are like a good party host mixed with a fine restaurant host.
- must be experienced communicators
- are ambassadors and advocates in one
- are bodyguards and protectors
- must build actionable reports
- cultivate internal teams for further support
On the other hand, there's Pragmatic Marketing's Product Manager definition which can be illustrated as;
Pragmatic Marketing Framework
In my opinion, while a Community Product Manager is in between these two roles, it's much more aligned with the Product Manager's, except, it's outside the development organization's firewall. Which means, a Community Product Manager could potentially assist the Product Manager with the highlighted areas illustrated above.
In an earlier post, How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle, I reiterated Gartner's findings that many social software providers / vendors may suffer from lack of resources. And while I received a bit of flack for the "size matters" point, I still believe the Community Product Manager role need is there - to some degree, which I'll save for another time.
In my next post, I'll focus on the content by presenting some concrete examples of what I discovered over the past week & how I think it fits into the big picture.
Reflection
As always, all comments are welcome.
Thanks again to those who shared their thoughts and a special thanks to Alora Chistiakoff over at Social Computing Magazine for suggesting a few concrete examples will help clarify matters.
Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life
More on infusing community and product management for social software development. Read on and email me at steven@stevenmilstein.com if you want to participate in my free trial offer.
Circle of Life
Background
I recently posted How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle where I mentioned 38 social software companies reviewed in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. I then went fishing for Comments by tweeting all those names and more (see tags listed below), with a link to the post. Good, or, bad, almost immediately, three of them left comments plus one sent an email plus another responded with a few tweets. I'm guessing that means their listening for their brands. I'm also guessing that the others may either not be listening, or, are too busy to get engaged - even with the post being resyndicated at Social Computing Magazine the very next day! As a result, I feel its time to stop blogging about it and start delving deeper into my theory.
Definitions
Social Content 2.0: Content derived from the spontaneous, effortless, contagious and insightful use of social software. This content flows independent of the networks, platforms and tools themselves and is solely driven by the interests, concerns, opinions and experiences of the community and their desire to contribute.
Community Product Manager: A new type of product manager whose primary task is to listen, engage and represent the stakeholders outside the software development organization and help communicate this nurtured Social Content 2.0 into the agile development process.
Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life: Harvesting Social Content 2.0 from both the outside and inside of the organization to feed further development and support of it's products and/or services, in turn producing it's next generation.
Tools supplied by Radian6
I'll be using Radian6's social media monitoring solution to harvest the social content.
Free Trial Offer Iterative Process
- Select social software vendors based upon their interest, ability to assign owner on the inside to collaborate with me and timeliness in replying to my offer
- Configure Radian6 for social software market place and filter for selected vendors
- Discover the content and it's contributors for five business days
- Analyze trends, keywords, level of engagement for five business days
- Blog about market-level results on my site
- Blog about vendor and product level results on vendors' extranet, intranet, or some other private space
Service Offering - Post Trial Offer Iterative Process
- Collaborate with traditional product manager representing outside stakeholders
- Participate in development process as required
- Engage with community contributors as required
- Reflect with respective community contributors
Trial offer
So how pragmatic can a Community Product Manager be? If you're a social software vendor and prepared to collaborate with me, let's measure the fruits of our labour. To be clear, my resources are limited, as I'm sure yours are too, and I cannot possibly agree to help everyone that responds. So if you're as serious about this stuff as I am, then please do not hesitate to respond and lets get going. You can email me at steven@stevenmilstein.com.
SERVaaS - Service as a Service?
If all goes well, then I hope to have a better understanding of the demand for Community Product Managers and the viability of offering the above services. Once I have a few customers in place, then taking it to the next level is already the subject of sleepless nights in Montreal and will have to be saved for another post down the road.
Reflection
What do you think? Are you in development? Do you think there's a place in the software development lifecyle for Community Product Managers? Or, are you a stakeholder on the outside yearning for a(nother) voice on the inside? Either way, please comment, share with a colleague, customer, developer and help get those email requests coming in.
Many thanks to the good folks; Amber Naslund, Cory Hartlen , Marc Whitchurch, Chris Ramsey and Marcel Lebrun at Radian6 for all their time and consideration.
And another Thank You to Alora Chistiakoff over at Social Computing Magazine for reaching out to me and offering my first resyndication.
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