Introduction to Group Engagement - Tell us your group's story

I run two groups in CollectiveX, both related to Psychological practice. *Group 1* has been running for 10 months and is called the Psychology and Health Forum. This is a local group in the sense that members are all from the same city. In this case, the goal is to use CollectiveX to coordinate real-life meetings between members.

_In terms of CollectiveX features_ - the most important feature for this group is the Calendar. As group manager I try to keep it packed with events (that I organize or are organized by other groups locally) so members have a good selection of local professional development activities to attend.

_How members use the group_ - Majority of members are passive, both in terms of interacting in CollectiveX and also attending events. However, when you ask them if they wish to remain members they consistently say "yes". My experience suggests that this group is also fairly low in technical sophistication, hence they are somewhat reluctant to fully use the program (i.e., they rarely add events to the calendar themselves). Most of them rely on the email updates to stay in touch (very few understand RSS).

*Group 2* (Australian Psychologist's Network) is just forming and will cater for psychology professionals Australia wide. In this case the CollectiveX platform will be used to help professionals who are geographically distant network with each other and swap resources/expertise. The group is being launched to co-incide with recent changes to our healthcare system that now includes Psychological treatments as part of our health rebate system.

_In terms of CollectiveX features_ - I hope this group will use both the discussion forums and calendar to swap information and promote events. I also hope that members will use their profiles as an active advertisement for this practice and possibly create an informal referral network as a result. Longer-term, I am hopeful that members (having experienced the benefits of CollectiveX) will start their own CollectiveX groups locally. I expect that this group will face some of the same challenges as Group 1, that is, most people are happy to be observers.

*Tips/suggestions:*
I have been thinking a lot more about how I link within the site. For example linking regularly to tutorials in the forums where I explain the features of the site.

We also plan to send out regular email blasts where we raise discussions about pertinent topics in the currently psychology climate and encourage people to respond directly to these discussions. Adding polls/little surveys to the CollectiveX platform would be a great way to get members involved (e.g., "Who would attend a presentation on trauma?" - Yes/No/maybe)

Clarence and Team:

Engagment is more than what a group does, both inside and outside of their group. Engagement is also an 'emotion', a connection that evolves. And that evolution takes breeding. What I am challenged by right now in the CollectiveX model is the missing link - that once a person commits to signing on to a group or groups, what keeps them motivated to stay connected.

What I have seen is an impressive array of new tools, solutions that help the 'champion' reach out to a new or committed group member to stay connected. What I am not seeing, which concerns me, is the 'action', the 'fun' the 'excitement', the 'energy' that needsto come from/within/though the group.

What CollectiveX must do is to begin to assembly 'experiences', activities that mentor the group members. I don't care if your connect to a group through work, play or responsibility. Each need to be 'connected' through engagement, and from my perspective, that comes by having 'emotional connections' that resonate.

To accomplish this, you/we need to look at what stimulates action among people and offer some of that to them. CollectiveX should begin to assembly events, activities, experiences that the groups can access for their members to use. It could be as simple as creating the CollectiveX VIP card, a service that allows each of the groups access to simple things like: 1. The best museums in America, 2. The most popular chain restaurants, 3. Special services from Barnes & Noble, 4. eavy travel discounts (air/hotel/rental cars), 5. Special shopping sprees with a major clothing chain like Nordstroms, etc.

Whether the Group is Professsional or Recreational, all of them needs a sense of connected services that CollectiveX can deliver and aid them in keeping their groups 'engaged'. And this effort can grow and produce even greater 'connections' for the Collective. I would even expect that the CX groups would also be in the position, once their members are active, to offer up ideas and services that can be shared with other groups.

So, for me, the above is a simple example of what it will take to bring 'engagement' forward within the Collective X model.

All the best,
Joshua

My main CollectiveX group connects people internationally who have a common interest in innovative business that relates to Brasil and the USA. My members do NOT know how to network in general, so CollectiveX is not necessarily a comfort zone but rather a "place to be noticed among colleagues" where the majority of members hope in vain that another member is going to post or offer them an opportunity directly. It is VERY tough trying to get people to communicate with each other when they dont know each other - despite the natural and strong connection. That is why "Match.com" has a functionality called "wink", where the system automatically sends a virtual "wink" from a member viewing a profile to a member whos profile has been viewed. This creates curiosity (and confusion), and recipients of "winks" complain: "I got 20 winks but no one wants to meet me!". In many countries networking is not part of the culture at all, and in fact its very much a US phenomenon (especially online networking).

So what is needed to instigate interaction?

1) Trust - This could be achieved for example by one member offering a lead or connection to another. If the lead is accepted and well rated the expectation should be set so that the recipient should help the initiating member with something within a limited period of time. The initiator accepts and rates leads and connections he/she receives. As the two help each other further, and as each individually help others out a point system is used to demonstrate a high level of interchange and trust. At specifically critical levels members "earn" something from CollectiveX: A sponsored book or subscription relevant to the groups subject. Tickets to an event related to the groups subject. Discounts/coupons to products/services from advertisers or sponsors. etc etc.

2) Opportunity - Job leads, speaking opportunities, marketing opportunities, opportunities to author an article or blog entry, business partnership opportunities, product/service sales opportunities. Of course it must be easy to submit this information. A automated tool could be built into firefox and/or outlook/gmail where an email, or webpage snippet could be captured and sent into a users queue for determined distribution inside the community(s). Bottom line....if there is no opportunity why should a member keep coming back? For news? No. I get news on my own and control it with other better suited tools. CollectiveX is for other more specific uses.

3) Communication - Members need something to say to each other to break the ice. That means that they have to be explicitly asked questions so that the answers are potential points of commonality with other members. That commonality must be quickly and easily discovered and viewable. Not work oriented stuff, but rather cities/countries where they have lived, sports they play, teams they support, kids they have, countries they were born in, non-profits they support, their college etc etc. The fact that Rob and I both have kids and are into technology and networking is enough for us to have spoken a few times. CollectiveX needs to be able to support the creation of arbitrary profile fields created by the manager and members, and a private messaging system that averts email so members can reach out to each other in a non-public manner without a spam block. Just check out the kind of functionality that VBulletin and GoingOn network have. At the same time keep things simple. One of the great things about this platform is that its still simple, even though at times its hard to find how to do a few select actions. Bottom line....if my members don't interact and communicate then they wont benefit, and therefore have no reason to return and engage.

Sharing - My members would like to aggregate, entitle, summarize, and share reference material: PDF's, Word Docs, Videos, Audios, Excel, PowerPoint slides, web pages, links, articles. Look at Box.net, Zotero, Jeteye, Clipshare, NewsVine, del.icio.us, netvibes. That means that I need to be able to organize this information the way that my constituency needs to view and access it. That means let me create, and lay out tabs (pages) of my own and layout and organize the content in these tabs. Also, CollectiveX does not need to be the inventor of all of the tools/widgets in the world. They just need to allow me to use all of the existing tools widgets in the world within the community. This is a requirement on the web today.

There is more but have to think again....

Jonathan,

Great post! Sorry that it's taken me a few days to reply. I won't be able to address all of your suggestions in this reply - some of your suggestions will require additional thought and analysis by our team. A major challenge that we face when evaluating new features and enhancements is "how will it affect our groups."

*The diversity of the CollectiveX platforms presents unique challenges.*
Example: We have to balance how to provide tools for large groups, that don't negatively affect the experience of smaller groups and vice versa; and how do we add features for private groups, that don't negatively affect public groups etc. How do we offer tools for business-oriented groups, without alienating social oriented groups.

Most importantly, how do we provide feature depth without overwhelming our users with options that make them feel that they need an instruction manael. Unlike many other online networks, the average CollectiveX users aren't tech savvy teens with a firm grasp of Web 2.0 features such as tagging, etc. -- they are adults of an average age of 39.

We embrace these challenges and understand that our ability to solve them will determine how successful we ultimately become.

Alright, now that I got my rant out of the way:-) Let's discuss some of your suggestions:

You suggested are presented in bold type below...

*1) Trust – This could be achieved for example by one member offering a lead or connection to another.*

I agree, we will be expanding our member objectives and key connections features to provide ways to facilitate direct interaction between members. We'll also do a better job of explaining these features to members with our next update of member profiles.

*2) Opportunity – Job leads, speaking opportunities, marketing opportunities, opportunities to author an article or blog entry, business partnership opportunities, product/service sales opportunities. Of course it must be easy to submit this information. A automated tool could be built into firefox and/or outlook/gmail where an email, or webpage snippet could be captured and sent into a users queue for determined distribution inside the community(s)*

Good idea... not sure if our user-base would grasp how to accomplish this technically... but it's worthy of future consideration.

*3) Communication – Members need something to say to each other to break the ice. That means that they have to be explicitly asked questions so that the answers are potential points of commonality with other members. That commonality must be quickly and easily discovered and viewable. Not work oriented stuff, but rather cities/countries where they have lived, sports they play, teams they support, kids they have, countries they were born in, non-profits they support, their college etc *

We now offer custom profile questions. You can set them up in your Manager tab / Group Settings sub-tab under Member Profile Customization. We will further enhance profiles in the future with pre-set profile template styles for informal, corporate and workgroups.

*4) Sharing – My members would like to aggregate, entitle, summarize, and share reference material: PDF’s, Word Docs, Videos, Audios, Excel, PowerPoint slides, web pages, links, articles.*

I agree, our first step towards facilitating group sharing can be found in the Headlines and Links section of the group summary page. We plan to extand sharing to other areas including the Files & Media area. We will be adding photo and video galleries to the files & media area soon. Users will be able to upload photos or aggregate them form external photo services such as Flickr. Videos will be completely aggregated from external sites such as Youtube, Revver and Metacafe. This is a good example of not re-creating what already exists externally.

Any thoughts? Everyone... feel free to chime in.

In addition to the custom profile questions, I'd like to suggest the ability to conduct surveys. The surveys would consist of one or two questions asked of the general membership somewhere on the main group screen, where users can quickly answer the (multiple choice) question and see the summarized results.

i'd like surveys as well or at least the ability to integrate poll widgets

In answering what benefits and features will grow CollectiveX the most it is important to first ask who you want your customers to be, not who they are. Where are the opportunities, and what differentiates CollectiveX from other sites like goingon.com, multiply, etc. That is, it is important to ask how you WANT to affect groups rather than asking which groups will be affected. One is intentional, the other consequential.

For sure the simplicity in CollectivX is a plus. At the same time I have seen platforms that help a user "self define" themselves" that allows the platform to hide complex configurations and features etc. You might consider approaching solutions for tech-sophisticated vs. tech-unsophisticated users by offering this ability to hide complexities.

To resolve the issues regarding large vs. small groups, private vs. public groups, and business vs. social groups you merely have to write a list of the issues that each pair is concerned with, and describe what each wants:
EX:

ISSUE LARGE SMALL
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Searching: pervasive scoped
across all fields and discussions only in discussions

Once you have identified the issues the next step is what you want to do about them.

Regarding trust, opportunity, communication, and sharing there are many more feature opportunities to explore, most important of which is allowing groups to add the feature they want themselves. CoolectiveX does not need to create all of these features. Rather, CollectiveX needs to allow/facilitate features to be added in (widgets etc). Dont be a speedbump in the quest for community owners to add features. Help them do it. Give them places to put these features. The wb has changed an we are now in 3.0 which means total simplicity, and use/integration of 3rd party services. The more CollectivX facilitates an observes the use of these tools by members, the easier and cheaper it is to discover and decide on which features tie in to the benefits that users want that will create the most value for CollectiveX.

@Jonathan - We plan to open up a CollectiveX API in the not too distant future.
CollectiveX doesn't focus on group-type or size as much as we focus on providing the best platform possible to enable groups to Share, Coordinate and Network. We want to be the best at those three areas. In doing so, it is important that CollectiveX remains intuitive to its users regardless if they are tech savvy or not. We constantly evaluate ways in which we can make basic functionality visible and advance functionaly available under the hood.

PollDaddy... very very cool! Thx!

Clarence - Our group consists of around 500 members. 170 or so are signed up on CollectiveX and the number is growing slowly. Our members range in age from the mid 30s to their 80's. We are a men's church group and meet face to face on a weekly basis with around 70-90 members gathering for coffee and sharing.

The Discussion section is the most widely used.

Members are quite concerned about security which you cover quite well.

While not a software issue I wish I were able to convince our guys to be more descriptive in their profiles. Most treat their profiles as if they were preparing a professional resume rather than give us some insight on who they are.

The feature I would like to see enhance is scheduling in the calendar similar to the way Microsoft handles scheduling in MS Outlook. Entering an event that has multiple ocurances is the issue. As it is now I won't use it.

Howard -- Thanks for the feedback.

I'm curious, what is it specifically about the recurring events user interface that you find unusable? We went for something similar to how it works on the Mac. Is the MS Outlook one easier to use in your opinion? What you would like us to change in our interface?

Joe - I gotta give a big WOOPS!!!! on this one. When we started using CollectiveX you could only schedule an event one day at a time so I did not use it and have not looked at it since. Obviously it has been changed to do what I was looking for. That is great - - !!!!

Thanks, Howard!

I'm glad you like how it works now.

Now that our press release is done, we plan on launching a monthly newsletter to keep our users informed about recent upgrades, etc.