Went to the SDForum / SoftTECH event on online communities last night in the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio.
The photo shows the panel of speakers: Scott Wilder from QuickBooks, Tony Christopher from Digital Places, Sylvia Marino from Edmunds, Zack Rosen from CivicSpace, and the chair Eugene Eric Kim from Blue Oxen. Eugene is going to next week’s Wikimania so we’ll no doubt meet there again…
There were some questions about integrating other technologies such as VOIP and SMS into online communities; Zach gave an interesting description of how Asterisk could be integrated into an online community; I briefly mentioned Regi’s Boards Beep project on boards.ie which generated a good bit of interest.
Met a bunch of people there, including Kare, Nancy, Kaliya, Billy, Clay, Ron, and Chris. Had a good chat with Kieran from CivicSpace about the SIOC Drupal module.
It was actually a joint meeting of SDForum and SofTECH.org. Ron produced, Bob Suess contributed to the meeting development.
You sat next to me at SDForum Event on Architecting
Community and Collaborative Solutions
and thoroughly enjoyed our brief conversation, and your modesty
about what you have accomplished in supporting such a rich,
active and diverse group of online communities.
I trust the rest of your vacation is relaxing as well as stimulating,
and look forward to getting your blog and perusing your sites.
That meeting was a goldmine for someone like me who has
been reading and watching from the *outside* for some years,
and who is now dipping my toe into supporting my community
of diverse voices in Sausalito. Seeing how you have helped
special interest groups flourish around the world is awe-inspiring.
I’d like to share with you the news as our community learns
how to use online tools to thrive offline, as Kieran Lai (Zack’s
colleague from Civic Space labs) has advocated.. Got to meet
generous Kieran that night too.
He has introduced us to David Williams who will explore helping us set up and perhaps even operate this community.
And, also living in my Marin County, Judy Bell (who sat closer
to the back that evening) who operates the Marin Shakespeare site,
among other activities and who has already met with me and
Pam Wycliffe about creating a web site with several blogs,
poll and other community-building features.
Also further back in the room was someone who could well
have common interests with you, former Apple employee,
Harvey Lehtman, now a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future.
Another bonus, panelists, Scott Wilder lives right here in Sausalito
and may add his ample insights from managing communities at Boarder,
Intuit etc .
I am copying the mentioned people, and others.
Enough for now. Again, thank you so much!
- Kare
*Opportunity is often inconvenient*
You’re right jbell, I think the upcoming.org event didn’t list SoftTech in the title; I’ll update my blog post now.
Thanks Kare, it was interesting talking to you and I hope to follow the developments of your blogging group in Marin. The Drupal system as used by CivicSpace (represented by Zach and Kieran) would probably be very suitable for your requirements (blogs, polls, etc.) - I am using it at irishblogs.org and a few other sites.
May I use the photo for the meeting notes?
j
Certainly!