Tumblin' with CraftySpace

In your library’s social media spaces, don’t be “The Library.” Be “David, the dude who works at the library.” Be a person, not a billboard.

Our fifth Drupal 7 alpha version was released a little over a month ago. Today [July 9], we’re proud to announce the release of the sixth (and hopefully final) alpha version of Drupal 7.x for your further testing and feedback. 

On or about August 1, 2010 (or when the upgrade path is working, whichever comes first) we will create a new official Drupal 7 release. If this list is fixed, it will be a beta release. Otherwise, it will be another alpha release.

Yahoo has released a style guide, The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and
Creating Content for the Digital World, in direct competition with the AP Styleguide.  It will be in stores (yes, in digital & physical formats) on July 6th.

Are you thinking about building your own online community? Perhaps you want to get paid to manage an existing one. If you’re new to the role of online community management, read on – I’ll outline what you can expect.

Here’s something fun to do – browse through a list of libraries in your state, and poke around on their websites for a bit. If your state is anything like mine, you’ll find some nicely-designed library websites, and many others that … well …  come up a bit lacking.

It’s great that you’re thinking about building an online community – but please make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, and in the right way. Make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.

[The] third Drupal 7 alpha version was released just over a month ago. Today, we’re proud to announce the release of the fourth alpha version of Drupal 7.x for your further testing and feedback.

Online communities tend to fail for the same few reasons:

Lack of focus and understanding – There’s often too much focus on features and technology (most of your potential members are not interested in these but for some reason they’re top of your priority list).

Failure to ask ‘how’ – How will you attract members and get them talking? You spend days/weeks/months building the community website rather than building community (they’re two different things). Talking to people and building relationships is more important than the website itself. A community website without members is an oxymoron.

Failure to ask ‘why’ – Why will people want to join your community? What’s in it for them? Is it fun?

In this article, I want to focus on the very last point; is your online community fun? If it isn’t, or if you decide to build a community around a topic most consider dull, you’ll struggle to succeed.

Does your organization have a personality? You bet. Do you know what it is, and how to express it in different venues? Probably not, I’m guessing. Libraries are a great example of this. For many of us, the in-the-library personality is expressed as a fun, casual, maybe even sometimes inspirational one – smiles, helpful staff, colorful books, etc. That adds up to a light, informal, casual-but-hip organizational personality.

But when you visit the library’s website, you get a different personality entirely. Frequently, the website isn’t fun at all – instead, it’s all columns, formality, staid colors, and no friendly chatter at all. Very different personality from the in-the-library experience, isn’t it?