introNetworks

Social Networking Platform for Private Online Communities

Fire the Gardener! Why Nurturing Your Online Community is Critical to Greener Relationships

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Japanese_Tea_Garden,_San_Francisco Let me guess – you launched a private community and it was a dismal failure. Or you’re too stubborn to admit that it’s dying a slow death. Here is what happened – you hired me to build you a beautiful garden. I come back in 3 months and everything is dead. I tell you to fire the gardener and you ask – what gardener! So in 3 months you haven’t watered, fertilized, pruned, or otherwise taken care of the garden and you were magically expecting a beautiful basket of fruits and vegetables? That’s exactly what happens with many private communities. Regardless of the provider – not really but I’ll get to that in a minute – it’s NOT just about a cool tool…. I am often asked about the ongoing care and feeding of an online community and I have found that making the analogy to tending a garden resonates with everyone. We all have had the experience of trying to grow a tomato or keep a house plant alive. It’s not easy. There are tricks, there are a ton of tips, but until you have actually done it successfully, it can be really frustrating. Plant it and it will grow, is similar to build it and they will come. Neither are true. Right? You have to do more than just build it or plant it. You have to nurture, cajole, seduce and dedicate precious time to assuring success. That tomato doesn’t grow itself, it needs help. Your community will not grow itself either. [Read more…]

Alumni Revolution creates MentorMatch

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ar banner It’s a little bit early to be sounding the clarion bells, but we are just so excited to working with these folks that we couldn’t help writing about them. Alumni Revolution is the next step after Democracy Prep, a network of open-enrollment, high performing, “no excuses” public charter schools operating in Harlem, New York and Camden, New Jersey. The mission of Democracy Prep is to educate responsible citizen-scholars for success in the college of their choice and a life of active citizenship. A simple philosophy guides Democracy Prep staff, students, and alumni alike:
Work Hard. Go to College. Change the World!
The Alumni Revolution is designed to take graduates from Democracy Prep and provide them with mentors to help guide them through the challenges of College life. When the founder, Seth Andrew, of AR first talked to us we felt like we were a perfect fit – and figured that out in less than ten minutes. That conversation led to the creation of MentorMatch, launching in February 2014. Over the past few weeks we have been working diligently with Seth and his team to fine tune our Visual Matching Engine to accurately capture the aspirational dreams, experiences, skills and hobbies of the scholars (They call them Revolutionaries) and mentors that are being recruited to help in this effort. The site will take advantage of two powerful capabilities of the platform. First, it will capture information in multiple dimensions that will assist in automating the matching process itself. Second, the network will allow for any mentor or Revolutionary to be placed at the center of the network so that Alumni Revolution can broker the very best pairing for both people. By way of background information, Seth showed me his TEDx talk where he described the mission that Democracy Prep is all about. After watching it, I became one of their newest fans and this project instantly became one of the jewels in the crown, as the impact it will make won’t be measured for years to come, yet, the potential to help them find and match perfect mentor/mentee pairs is amazing. Take a look at his talk and you will see how much passion he has and how this project has become so successful. We are proud to be working with Alumni Revolution and look forward to the launch of their site in February.

Business Relationship Expert David Nour Joins our Board

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David Nour

Visionary Executive Brings Extensive Track Record of Strategic Business Growth to Leading Relationship Visualization Technology Company

introNetworks today announced that David Nour has been appointed to its Board of Directors. Nour brings over two decades of experience in working with technology companies. He will help guide introNetworks’ growth with a focus on expanding its relationship visualization platform partnerships and maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of its go-to-market strategy. “Relationship Economics is exactly what our platform has delivered to past clients such as TED, NASA, Xerox and the Clinton Global Initiative, and I can’t think of a more appropriate expertise to join us at this stage of our company’s evolution,” said Mark Sylvester, introNetworks CEO. “I’m pleased to have David’s thought and practice leadership in strategic relationships join our Board, and am excited for our team’s opportunity to work with him.” Nour is currently CEO of The Nour Group, Inc. focused on enterprise growth through strategic relationships, disruptive technologies, and adaptive innovation. He has pioneered the phenomenon that relationships are the greatest off-balance-sheet asset any organization possesses, large or small, public or private. “introNetworks is the definitive leader in visualizing intelligent and highly-relevant relationships,” said Nour. “All indications are that they will continue on a growth trajectory, and I look forward to bringing a strategic and relationship-centric growth perspective at the Board level to help manage and leverage emerging opportunities.” Nour is a senior leadership advisor to clients such as HP, Siemens, Amerinet, and KPMG. He is the author of several books including the best selling “Relationship Economics” (Wiley), “ConnectAbility” (McGraw-Hill), “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Raising Capital” (Praeger) and “Return on Impact” (ASAE). His unique perspective and independent insights on business relationships as well as social and mobile innovation have been featured in a variety of prominent blogs and publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Knowledge@Wharton, Associations Now, Huffington Post Business, Medium, Entrepreneur and Success magazine. He annually delivers 50+ global keynotes at leading industry association conferences, corporate meetings, and academic forums. Nour is often a guest lecturer at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and Georgia Tech’s College of Management. He is currently an active member of the Society of International Business Fellows (SIBF), the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), and the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG). A native of Iran, David came to the U.S. as a teenager with a suitcase, $100, limited family ties, and no fluency in English. He earned an Executive MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and a BA degree in Management from Georgia State University.

Making Amazing Connections at Siggraph Asia

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SiggraphAsiaFor those of you that are lucky enough to be in Hong Kong for Siggraph Asia you will want to watch this short video to make sure you don’t miss a single connection while you are there. To get the most out of your time onsite, you will want to make sure that you have signed into the eventNetwork. If you don’t remember your login or password, send us an email to – or enter the email that you used to register for the conference with in the Retrieve Password field on the front page, then you can get started. We have been to hundreds of conferences and know how hard it is to make connections, especially if you are new to the industry. This video will give you some great tips on how to find people, how to send them a message to meet onsite and how to find people once you are back home. Click here to login to the eventNetwork.

How To Ensure a Vibrant Online Community

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What Is Community? I just finished rereading this important deck by Rachel Happe of The Community Roundtable, originally posted in 2011 and am reminded how much every single concept in the deck is as true today as it was then. Frankly, I am disappointed that, with so much quality information out there, people are still making major mistakes and setting unrealistic expectations of what an online Community will do for them and their organizations. There are hundreds of examples of people doing it right and when you look at Rachel’s well presented points, you may wonder, why are people still flailing, and failing?
Community is a group of people with unique shared values, behaviors and artifacts
My experience is in talking to people interesting in adding a Community, they fail to understand how to optimize for shared values  and behaviors, in fact many times, they think that the Community is all about pushing content and getting people to talk, rather than helping them discover, uncover and celebrate the unique shared values and the diversity of behaviors and experiences that make up the collection of people involved. Whether it is 50 or 50,000 – considering these basic fundamentals gets lost.
Things that define Community:  a common interest or context, a sense of shared purpose or fate and common set of needs.
I would argue that in the beginning of an online community design, these concepts are discussed, yet soon fall to the wayside as the tactical deployment, design and launch of the community takes center stage. When a community is floundering, I look to see if the common interest or context is still clear, is it clear to new members, how is the sense of shared purpose communicated and is it still relevant six months or a year later – and has it been reviewed, probably not. The solution is simple. Look at the slides from The Community Roundtable, see how easy it seems to do it right – yet, why are so many communities having an identity crisis when, at one point, they actually discussed these critical design decisions, yet somehow have failed to realize any benefit from those decisions. You may not think about community all the time like we do, however, when you do, please make sure you consider that there really are only a few secrets to building a vibrant community according to The Community Roundtable, then ask yourself are you doing all of them to the best of your ability?
  • Observe Your Audience
  • Keep a Regular Schedule
  • Be Welcoming
  • Provide a Guide
  • Be Valuable
  • Be a Connector
  • Bring Catnip
  • Have Rules
  • Lead from the Back
  • Encourage Your Cheeseheads
  • Ride The Waves
  • Don’t Ignore
  • Be Multi-model
  • Protect the Fish
I could easily write a paragraph about each of the above. Look at the slides and see the images she chose to illustrate each concept and use your imagination. How do you relate to each concept? Could you be doing better? If you don’t have a community now, how would you address each of these ideas in your own organization. Even if you think you are doing a great job now, review the slides to see if you could be doing even better. The Community Roundtable is an amazing resource for those of us who provide platforms and for those that take care of the thousands of people that populate them. We thank them for their generosity in publishing these materials, then frequently reminding us that something published two years ago is relevant, timely and a perfect thing to share with our readers. Thank you.  

Are private communities worth the effort?

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David Nour, of the Nour Group asked us to comment on a post in the ASAE – The Center for Association Leadership internal discussion area. The post, titled: We Terminated Our Private Community – Was It the Right Decision?  was from an Association that had abandoned their private community (not one of ours) and moved over to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They complained about the effort to maintain the community and asked for comments from others.  There were several that spoke to the need to have a clear purpose and resources dedicated to ongoing engagement. 2013redashbaordHERO David, who runs one of our communities at http://renetworks.intronetworks.com  is a noted speaker, author and growth consultant in the field of Relationship Economics, crafted a great response to the post, which with his permission, I have reposted here.

“The overall social strategy needs to be revisited annually, including the desired strategic outcomes from a private community. It works to elevate perceived member exclusivity, benefits (based on different membership levels), thriving discussion groups & forums, sharing of best practices from best practitioners, making relevant member connections before, during, and after events, and most importantly, touching them with value-add throughout the year and not just at your annual meeting.

The challenge for many associations who have deployed private communities in the past has been the flawed assumptions of a) build it & they will come – without consistently creating unique value propositions of why should members care or participate, b) funding it with the necessary resources (human, capital, time & effort) to nurture it, and c) monetize it with sponsorships, content curation, or infusion of thought leadership! You build anything on a sand trap and neglect it and it will “fail.” Conversely, if you learn from what didn’t work, segment your members based on their needs, modularize your capabilities (including a private community) toward those needs, anticipating their future needs (fantastic use of a private community), rewarding staff for win/win interactions, and transforming their touch points to smart ones so you can continue to learn from their behavior, is the receipt for making an online community succeed! We’ve had ours for the past 3 years, it has 1,500 active participants and we’re continuing to invest in nurturing it with a refresh of the strategy in 2014.” David, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. If you would like to talk to us about how a private social network could improve your organization, click the Contact Us button and we will have a conversation.