OK many of us know that online comments suck, but why do they suck and how can we make them not suck? I went to a conference to explore that topic.
One of the better pieces of advice I’ve heard from people within a single industry is that there’s a lot to be learned from cross-pollination… going where people are who don’t necessarily share your preconceptions and learning about what is important to you. I’ve been out of the community management game from a job perspective for a few years now but I remain interested in how to achieve great user experiences and community engagement from a library perspective, and interacting with the tech world with that same mentality. The Coral Project is a group trying to do just that. Their seed funding comes from journalism originally, but their lessons apply all over the place. If you’re curious I suggest signing up for their low-volume newsletter or reading along on their blog.
This weekend they had a conference. I usually look forward to all day weekend conferences the same way you’d look forward to a complicated dental appointment but this was a GREAT event: well managed; well-attended, well documented. I don’t want to go over anything you could read elsewhere but I’ll point you to the important bits.
- A Storify that summed up and curated a lot of the tweets
- Notes from the actual conference if you want more information
- Photos so you can see some of what I was seeing (of particular note is the GIANT screen which was very helpful, not visible is the amazing wifi)
And then, doing my librarian thing, I extracted URLs and Twitter handles from the notes and organized them. You can follow links to things you might be interested in here. Corrections welcome.
Coral & Conference Ppl
Coral: https://twitter.com/coralproject
Andrew Losowsy https://twitter.com/losowsky
Matt Carroll https://twitter.com/mattatmit (local organizer)
Sydette Harry: https://twitter.com/blackamazon
Greg Barber https://twitter.com/gjbarb
Anika Gupta: https://twitter.com/DigitalAnika (local organizer)
(more staff at this URL)
Lightning talks
- Andrew Haeg https://twitter.com/andrewhaeg
- Nick Diakopoulos https://twitter.com/ndiakopoulos https://twitter.com/AnecbotalNYT/
Panel
- Sam Ford https://twitter.com/sam_ford
- Jamie Nesbitt-Golden https://twitter.com/thewayoftheid
- Whitney Phillips http://twitterc.com/wphillips49
- Jason Lemieux http://twitter.com/gopostmatic
Post-Lunch Panel
- Moderator Anika https://twitter.com/digitalanika
- Joseph https://twitter.com/jmreagle
- Amanda https://twitter.com/amzam
Second Lightning Talks
- Cynthia Peacock, The Engaging News Project https://twitter.com/EngagingNews (direct twitter?)
- Dan Whaley, hypothes.is https://twitter.com/dwhly
- Leonard Bogdonoff, 18F https://twitter.com/rememberlenny
Collected URLS
- Coral: https://coralproject.net/
- Civil: https://civilcomments.com/
- Comment IQ: http://comment-iq.com/
- Eric: http://eegilbert.org/
- GA Tech: http://comp.social.gatech.edu/
- Nate: http://natematias.com/
- Silent Sex: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10402.html
- Why We Can’t have Nice Things: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/why-we-cant-have-nice-things
- Witness: https://witness.org/portfolio_page/sam-gregory/
- Joseph: http://reagle.org/joseph/
- Kiva atheists vs christians: https://www.kiva.org/: http://religiondispatches.org/atheists-and-christians-compete-to-give-more/
- Hearken: http://www.wearehearken.com/
- Connie Schultz – reporter “doing it right”: https://twitter.com/ConnieSchultz.
- GeekWire top 200: http://www.geekwire.com/geekwire-200/
- The Skimm: http://www.theskimm.com/
- Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/)
- Chinese “lost phone” story on BuzzFeed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/how-i-became-a-minor-celebrity-in-china-after-my
- Engaging News Project: http://engagingnewsproject.org/
- MIT Systems
- Nota Bene : http://nb.mit.edu
- Eyebrowse : http://eyebrowse.csail.mit.edu (social sharing)
- Murmur : http://murmur.csail.mit.edu (new mailing list software building inclusivity in)
- Wikum : http://wikum.csail.mit.edu (long threads into summaries)
- Tipsy: http://tipsy.news
- Web annotation working group: http://w3.org/annotation