Community Development

What is Community Development?

The CoSolvent Community Server (CCS) is designed to allow a community of otherwise unrelated stakeholders (e.g., experts, vendors, customers, and staff) to interact freely across firewalls and over physical distance.

Typically, the sponsoring organization is limited in the amount of control it can exert over this type of community. Individual stakeholders can decide whether to join, and they can choose how they will collaborate if they elect to join.

Given these challenges, iPOV recommends that the community sponsor consider implementing a "community development program" to adapt CCS to the business workflow and encourage a community culture that serves the mission and the membership. This is a somewhat different challenge from the traditional task of ‘selling’, 'getting buyin', or ‘training’ users to use a new system.

Community Development Consulting

iPOV can help clients assess community needs to deploy more effective configurations, policies, tools, and training. iPOV can also advise clients on ways to configure CCS to mesh with the client's operational workflow. Finally, iPOV can help clients to motivate, train and empower community members to participate most effectively.

iPOV quotes community development consulting services on a case-by-case basis. Some clients need very little help. Other clients may want to outsource most of the effort and responsibility. Either way, iPOV estimates that it takes about 4 to 6 person-months of effort to properly establish a significant new community.

iPOV's Experience

iPOV has worked with document and video-sharing in business applications for over a decade. We have strong technical knowledge of video production and sharing and several hundred projects' worth of experience in getting user buy-in and seizing high-ROI business opportunities:

Tips and Techniques With more than 500 eLearning design projects under its belt, iPOV understands the challenge of teaching non-professionals how to use video for knowledge capture and communication. Our tools, techniques and procedures are inexpensive, practical, and validated.
Getting User Buy-in iPOV has heard all of the excuses and fears that keep people from using video. Our solutions minimize the potential for participant fears and embarrassment. We can help build a library of examples that will excite and reassure the reluctant members of the community.
Finding Opportunities iPOV has a catalog of sample applications to help clients 'see' the value of collaborative video sharing. iPOV can help clients find the hidden opportunities for immediate ROI

The Community Development Program

iPOV's strongly recommends that every CCS system deployment should include a planned program of Community Development. While the optimal program may vary greatly with the size and nature of the community, the following list of steps is likely to apply to most situations:

  • Identify Business Goals - When a sponsor commits to construct an online community, they usually have several business improvements in mind. However, it is possible (perhaps even likely) that the community stakeholders will come up with different ideas. As the community developer is listening for opportunities and problems, they should also be probing to find the potential uses with the best ROI.

  • Find Stakeholder Champions - It is important to identify potential stakeholder champions as early in the process as possible. Oneth of the best ways is to talk to a lot of potential stakeholders about possible community activities. Some people will have good stories, more enthusiasm and better ideas. They are the ones that may be engaged in the early testing and feedback.

  • From Problem to Need to Solution - It is difficult for a community sponsor to know about the issues and concerns of individual stakeholders. Yet, the opportunity to resolve those concerns is often the most compelling reason why a stakeholder might be motivated to participate. The following process is designed to elicit the problems that can be synthesized as needs and ultimately solved by the deployment of the CCS.

    • Listen to Community Problems - iPOV's strongly recommends that every CCS system deployment should include a planned program of Community Development. While the optimal program may vary greatly with the size and nature of the community, the following list of steps is likely to apply to most situations:

      • Ask community members to talk about their problems.
      • Continually probe to find the ones that are most urgent.
      • Test the issues in conversations with other stakeholders.
      • Continue until a common set of concerns is identified.

    • Match Needs with Technical Capabilities

      • The flexible rules in CCS can be restructured to implement specific workflows.
      • iPOV can help sponsors by customizing CCS features to meet specific needs.

    • Design and Deploy

      • Customize site themes and graphics.
      • Localize site for necessary languages and cultures.
      • Add explanatory text, images and links to site folders and items.
      • Add links to external Web sites and software applications.
      • Embed business rules and access policies to protect community information

  • Build Best Practice Prototypes - iPOV can help community sponsors and members to develop working examples of the folder structures and supporting information that matches the organization's natural workflow. Ideally, these examples will be built with input from some key stakeholder champions.

  • Document Best Practice Prototypes - When the stakeholder champions are satisfied with the design and operation of the examples, iPOV can help to document these as best practices.

  • Targeted Training - iPOV can assist the sponsor to develop formal training materials and courses to explain the CCS and the best practices to the potential community members.

  • Mass Enrollment - The typical community will have stakeholders with differing computer skills and network access. Most of the members will learn CCS easily. However, an inevitable 10-20% will have some difficulty and there may be 5% or so that encounter serious problems. iPOV can help the sponsor organization prepare for the enrollment process and iPOV can help bring in the last stragglers. iPOV understands the problems that people encounter with web video, especially working through firewalls.

  • Long Term Support System - As the previous tasks are completed, the long-term prospects for the community will become clearer. It will be easier to estimate both the likely community turnover and the need for long-term technical and community development support. iPOV and the sponsor can jointly determine a budget for iPOV's long term involvement.