The Social Organization

Learn Community Management From Leading Practitioners

Each year at The Community Roundtable, we publish a report on what we have learned with our members during the previous year. Our members are leading community, social media, and social business practitioners at a wide range of organizations - from the very large to the small and agile. The report is a huge undertaking but we feel it is important to document and consolidate what the leading practitioners know so that we can help the market better understand the discipline of community management.

The State of Community Management 2011 is part research document, part reference document and it helps executives and practitioners:

• Understand the scope and complexity of the community management discipline
• Provide a training resource to new community managers
• Better plan for and support social business and community initiatives
• Improve the management of current social initiatives
• Find inspiration and new approaches to common challenges

This report could not have been developed without the perspectives of TheCR Network members, the insights from experts we have had as guests (follow them via our Twitter list), and the support of the report sponsors: Acquia, Enterprise 2.0, Farland Group, Igloo Software, Moxie Software, Rosetta, and Social Media Today. We have done our best to curate and assemble those perspectives, insights, and support in a way that provides you with a valuable resource. Please, in exchange, consider these individuals and organizations if they offer expertise or tools you need.

Click to view and download the report.

Women and Leadership in Technology

It's been an oft discussed issue: the lack of women in executive management positions in the technology industry. I don't really have an answer to this other than to say the industry in general has to mature a bit because the go-go-go and vaguely frat boy culture of most technology organizations makes them unappealing to lead for many women. I think, for that reason, a lot of women choose not to take part in the management of them, regardless of how well qualified they are. It's mostly a cultural, not an expertise issue from my perspective. I believe culture creates far more difficult barriers to change than anything else in organizations - and it is mostly un-articulated and not proactively considered or facilitated in so many companies.

But women are obviously in the tech industry and a recent TechCrunch article Why Women Rule the Internet really bothered me because it was quite focused on the opportunity for women in online shopping. While that is an opportunity, there is so much more - and so many more important aspects of the technology market - that women are also involved with. But the leadership challenges remain.

Having gone to one of the Seven Sister colleges what I know is that a hugely disproportionate percentage of leaders in politics and other industries are graduates of women's colleges. Women's college graduates:

• Make up 1/3rd of female board members of the Fortune 1000 
• Are twice as likely to earn Ph.Ds
• Are 20% of women in Congress

But women's college graduates only make up only about 2-4% of all women graduates. Clearly while women can receive a great education at many places, these schools do a better job at preparing women for leadership positions.

The problem with women's leadership in technology? Women's colleges like my own Alma Mater, Mount Holyoke, have been almost completely absent from the discussion despite educating Jean Sammet who helped develop FORMAC and Susan Kare who designed the first Macintosh graphics.

Traditionally, computer engineering and information technology has not been seen as a liberal arts discipline but with the advent of socially mediated technology as well and its ubiquity in everything we do, I think it is high time that women's colleges took on the challenge of educating and preparing women for leadership positions in technology. In fact, another recent TechChrunch article spoke about the need for both engineering and liberal arts backgrounds to be represented in order to build world class technical solutions and stated that only 37% of technology executives and heads of product have engineering degrees. This jives with my experience that only a portion of executives in the technology companies I've worked for come from engineering.

So where are the women's colleges in this field? Mount Holyoke, I'm looking at you.

What SXSW Taught Me About Building A Serendipity Engine

I just got back from the annual festival of musicians, geeks, engineers, film makers and, increasingly, marketers.  It is a great stew of people. This is my second trip and I thought that my trip two years ago gave me a pretty good foundation for navigating the event this year. However, like all complex systems it adapts and changes. 

This year was roughly 40% bigger than two years ago. That's a lot of change. I found the serendipity engine that I was so in awe of two years ago was not running at optimal capacity for me this year. It led me to some interesting conclusions:

• Productive serendipity requires boundaries - bigger is not necessarily better
• Serendipity requires unscheduled time by a large percentage of participants
• Serendipity requires aggregation

There was a lot of serendipity at SXSW this year - I looked up from drinks at one point and Ze Frank was standing in front of me. I love his stuff and that was serendipity but not really the productive variety - I'm more of a fan girl than someone who is interested in collaborating. Maybe I should have said hi but I left him in peace and continued the conversation I was having. 

The people that I might more likely collaborate with were harder to find. With more people generally, those specific individuals made up a smaller percentage of the total population. Also because the conference was so large, panels and events were dispersed all over town with few consolidation points.  Lastly and because the industry is growing, people were busy and had packed schedules so there were fewer people with the time and flexibility to mill around.

The social business lessons of SXSW this year was that aggregating a network that is not too small but not too big, giving them a catalyst, and then giving them the free time to mingle are all critical elements to productive serendipity.

That said, I managed to have some fantastic conversations, catch up with old friends, meet new people, and attend some great gatherings - it is no surprise that David Armano and Aaron Strout throw some of the best parties around. Thanks to all of you that made SXSW another great event.

 

Photo by Amancay Maahs