ASC Online Community - Recently Updated Pages

Better Together

LewisHaidt — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:36:40 CDT

Restoring the American Community
Robert D. Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein with David Cohen
Reviewed by Lewis Haidt

According to Robert Putnam and Lewis Felstein’s BETTER TOGETHER, a decade ago, the Dudley street neighborhood in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts more closely resembled a burnt-out, bombed Beirut, Lebanon than a prosperous American city. Today, a neighborhood garden grows fruit and vegetables for their local farmer’s market. Today, a state-of-the arc 95,000 square-foot community center is under construction. Today, the illegal dumping of thousands of junked cars in abandoned lots is gone and in its place, an urban village – where neighbors socialize, tend to gardens, watch their children and return generation after generation – blooms.

BETTER TOGETHER, the twelve examples therein chronicling where social capital grew, and the story of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) offers valuable lessons in building and creating viable Online communities. Putnam and Feldstein highlights two types of social capital: bonding and bridging. The former brings people together like “sociological Super Glue,” is generally inward looking and promotes cohesion. The latter highlights heterogeneity, is out-ward looking, more like a “sociological WD-40” and harder to create in an increasingly diverse, digital culture.

Social capital is the development of “network of relationships that weave individuals into groups and communities.” The book asks: why does social capital grow and sustain itself in each of the twelve examples and not others? What makes these organizations, projects, and businesses unique?

A focus on the initiative in the Dudley Street neighborhood provides some answers. Prior to Post-WWII suburban migration, Dudley Street was a bustling neighborhood. After decades of white flight, four main groups found themselves surrounded by a stagnant, imploding social reality: Cape Verdeans, African-American, Latinos and Whites (according to the 2000 census, Dudley was 56% African-American, 24 % Latino, 5% Cape Verdean, 4 percent white, 11% other). The catalyst for change was the creation of the DSNI. This initiative stemmed from a resident, Nelson Merced, the leader of a local, Latino organization, approaching the Boston-based, Riley Foundation for a grant. The Foundation did not fund the grant, but a board member visited the neighborhood and expressed interest in a much larger engagement and a new mission: to focus its many resources on one neighborhood, Dudley.

A group of city agency leaders along with the Foundation formed and presented their mission to the community. They met an instant uproar. The community demanded participation, feared “urban renewal” that would tear down their neighborhood and argued for direct control. The Advisory Group faced an immediate challenge. They chose to scrap their extensive, painstakingly-researched plan and start anew.

Here we see a critical lesson in building Online communities: creators must show flexibility and give users (community members) what they want. Within days, a new plan developed changing the board from 24 members with four community seats to thirty-one members, a minimum of sixteen community seats with twelve of those seats evenly divided by the African-American, Latino, Cape Verdean and white residents.

After this, the DSNI began a period of aggressive community-engagement: hiring a organizer to hit the pavement, doing the work of knocking on doors, finding out exactly what the community needed. A plan developed for the city to clean up the abandoned lots, a goal all segments of the community rallied behind. Again, we can learn an important lesson, easily overlooked: hard work and extensive research are the basic requirements for determining what users or communities need.

As early successes increased confidence in the neighborhood, the city offered a unique opportunity: 60 acres of eminent domain in the core of the neighborhood to be owned by a nonprofit land trust formed by the DSNI. This bottom-up ownership allowed the DSNI to create novel urban planning around affordability, anti-gentrification measures and local control. This shows the importance of thinking outside the box combined with positive relationships with potential partners. The bottom-up dynamic also shows parallels to the importance of incorporating novel user-generated components in Web 2.0 projects.

In their regular meetings, the DSNI residents imagined what type of neighborhood they wanted for the future. The concept of an “urban village” grew and the residents searched for project goals that resonated with as many different parts of the community as possible. Out of this process, the Food Project - the urban garden - came into being. These processes show the delicate balance one must find in creating an Online community: have a clear focus, yet one that appeals to as broad a section of your users/community as possible and to listen to, respect and embody the stories of your fellow community members in your projects.

What my group learned the hard way is that sometimes in takes extensive research, brainstorming (hours) and then you must ask people for critical feedback and refine your idea in response. While this is obvious at one level, numerous companies fail to follow this feedback dynamic a la Friendster. The same dynamic played itself out (in a different industry) with the music business. They failed to listen to their consumers, give them what they wanted (sharing a la Napster) until recently like Yahoo, Emusic and others, and hence lost a generation of consumer who were willing to pay a "fair price" (Itunes).

The chapter closes with an emphasis on just how hard the DSNI board works to maintain its connection and trust in and from the community. All board members are required to regularly engage the community, to make new connections and listen to their neighbors. This requires hard work. There is much that is unique to the DSNI's success, particularly its dense space, diversity, special individual, city, state, and foundation relationships and the nonprofit land trust. None of these can be replicated. But the lessons are applicable.

In other chapters ranging from groups improving neighborhoods in Texas/Mexico border towns, Portland, Oregon, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, themes repeat themselves: the importance of leadership - one person being a catalyst to start something, the hard work required to engage the community, the need to form partnerships with institutions of power whether government or non, the need for redundancy of networks (public gardens, community centers, boards), finding a balance between size and density (local is crucial, but must engage wider) and searching for commonality while telling and listening to the specificity of individual’s stories.

BETTER TOGETHER (published in 2003) doesn’t examine technology in detail beyond a superficial examination of Craigslist, which it grants creates some type of community, but may be closer to a tool for communities. The book only presents successes, which makes sense after the gloom and doom of Putnam’s BOWLING TOGETHER, but like Lehman pointed out, glosses over the most intractable social problems around gangs, homelessness, health care and others. Also, the book came out before social networking sites exploded.

Last Monday's lecture by Nalini Pachinta Kotamraju from UC Berkeley, "Living Like Me: A Lifestype Approach to Online Communities" also highlights a critical, subtle difference in terms of social capital and on and off-line communities. The former has as its center a lifestyle-foundation. That is, social capital may be built from people's participation in Online communities, but their engagement first stems from them being consumers focused on lifestyles issues and having the technology means to connect Online. Thus, if their needs as a consumer are not met, they will leave your site (ask Friendster) and simply depart "your community." In the real world, once people invest themselves in communities and the social capital-positive feedback loop develops, they don't so easily leave.

The book closes with the concept of “multistrandedness.” This is the best concept I’ve learned and it refers to how social networks create redundancy of contacts through multiple institutions, organizations and spaces. This is a concept all Online communities should consider. How will the sites and projects you build create multiple ways for users to connect to, overlapping one another, deepening the user’s connection to your community?

THE SAGAURO SEMINAR: Civic Engagement in America. BETTER TOGETHER was the final product of the Saguaro Seminar, "a gathering of leading thinkers and activists from many fields who for three years collaborated to develop a national agenda to build social capital." Saguaro "focuses on expanding what we know about our levels of trust and community engagement and on developing strategies and efforts to increase this engagement." The sites offers research on social capital on contemporary issues like Katrina recovery and volunteer levels of incoming freshman.
BOWLING ALONE: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). BETTER TOGETHER came out of Putnam's work here.
HABITS OF THE HEART: Individualism and Commitment in American Life by Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven Tipton. (1985) University of California Press. A seminal book addressing many of the same issues.
THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt. (2006) Basic Books. A synthesis of Positive Psychology's findings that examine why it's so hard to create social capital (divided selves), overcome religious fundamentalism (something called "the myth of pure evil") and transcend the "red/blue" divide (Roger, check out Chapter 9, "Flatland and the Culture War").
I just stumbled across this Annenberg Online Journalism article, "Online communities: Growing an Internet garden," which makes some good points.

Lewis Haidt

LewisHaidt — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:05:21 CDT

After graduating from Vassar College, Lewis Haidt worked at the William Morris Agency, 20th Century Fox and an independent producer. While at APOC, he interned at The Los Angeles Times interactive division and in the new media division at the local PBS station, KCET. While attending USC, he also received the Walter and Cecelia Raymond merit Scholarship. After APOC, Lewis launched an online video network (CrushedPlanet.com) while working in the marketing department for Harry and Joe Gantz, Emmy-winning producers (Taxicab Confessions). Lewis also covers technology/social media new for H-Magazine. His particular interests focus on social media and the emerging digital commons movement.

Facebook: lewisha
Twitter: lewisha

Allan Baclayon

baclayon — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:54:37 CDT

Josie Witte

JosieW — Thu, 10 May 2007 13:14:03 CDT

Erin Pates

erinpates — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:36:57 CST

Epic 2015 Scenario

vfricke — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:03:19 CST

some Some of you may know it, if not please have a look at a suspense future scenario Epic 2015 about the history and the future of the internet and the news media. Blogging to the extreme from Google and amazon to Googlezon.

Liz B.

lizb — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 16:53:59 CST

Erin Williams

erinwill — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 14:09:48 CST

Erin is entering her second year of the Communication Management program at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Taking the slow road (part-time, or one class per semester), she hopes to finish the program in the spring of 2008.

By taking this class, Erin hopes to be able to revamp the USC Alumni Association's Online Community and transform it from a simple repository of alumni contact information into a site where alumni can truly "keep the connection, lifelong and worldwide."

6. Final Projects

jws1981 — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 23:35:42 CST

Popol Vuh Site / Fan Site incl. participatory ellements

vfricke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:38:00 CST

music fan site / a music online community site: strategy for the official site (band info below) including participatory ellements:Creative strategy concerns the official website, a "My Space site" , and a You Tube strategy.

Objectives

- strategy for and create a mock up of music fan site

- introduce band to online communities like "My Space" (there is an existing fan site but it is not the best) and "You Tube"

- suggest the best strategy for the official site:

website incl. blogg /social ellements?
message board?
social community?
Webblogg?
how to consider the particpatory ellements?

note: probably it should be a combination of serveral aspects.

The actual online community site could contain in its basic ellements

- social media component ( fan site or message board)
- streams of selected music (everything exists, see also below)
- video posts (exist on You Tube, I can organize more stuff)
- photo gallerry ( i provide with lots of Photos)
- rellevant links ( f.e links to Werner Herzog Film sites, iTunes, Amazon, most important Popol Vuh sites, links to Bands like Popol VUh, Pandorra Radio)
- interactive gaming ellement
- rss feed

Some info on Popol Vuh

The german electronic rock act Popol Vuh was one of Germany’s foremost and most innovative acts in the 70s. On an international level, Popol Vuh are considered one of the most influential German “progressive rock” avant-garde acts of the Seventies. Popol Vuh are considered as pioneer of the electronic genre, and their music had considerable impact on everything that became popular under the heading of ambient and trance music in the Nineties.

For a younger generation of musicians, like Brian Eno or, more recently, Aphex Twin, Alex Patersson (The Orb) or Jim O’Rourke (Sonic Youth), Popol Vuh with their Moog III synthsizer albums Affenstunde and In den Gärten Pharaos were considered influential, pioneering electronic musicians and forefathers of ambient and trance music.

Popol Vuh went down in the annals of German film music history with their soundtracks for legendary cinema classics by director Werner Herzog.
Having released 2 legendary Mogg Synthesizer cult albums in Europe in 1971 and 1972 they turned "cosmic space rock". Mainly, they are known for soundtracks for the Werner Herzog cult movies "Agguirre" ( 1975), "Nosferatu" ( 1976). "Heart of Glas" ( 1978), "Fitzcaraldo", "Cobra Verde" (1981). see more here.

official site (on the SPV label)
sound samples
discography
see 19 albums on amazon

You Tube links to videos:

1971

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DON-CogKcfk

1971
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9q19C220Vvo

1973
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DON-CogKcfk

Interested to do this as your group project?

Then get back to me via vfricke@usc.edu and we do it together.

Johannes Fricke

vfricke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:33:57 CST

Johannes Fricke (Waldthausen) is a current Communication Management Graduate Candidate at the USC Annenberg School of Communication. With a background in arts and media planning, he joined the Annenberg School in 2005 to improve his management and strategical planning skills. Focus within the program: creative strategy, integrated marketing communication, campaign development, new media planning. Special interest: social networks, multimedia-/ and mobile content planning. Other interests: The future of arts, new media and urbanism.

Having obtained a degree in Arts Management in Berlin, he worked as a conceptioner in the creative strategy unit of Dan Pearlman Design, Berlin. In 1998 he hosted the Performance Club "berlin biennale lounge" at the 1. berlin biennale. He obtained curatorial apprenticeships at P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York ("Greater New York 1","Children of Berlin") in 1999/2000. In 2003-2004 he served as curator in residency for arts and media content at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He freelanced as contributing editor for the berliner magazine and worked for Lukas & Sternberg Publishing in Paris.

Currently, he serves as Associate Curator for Sprueth Magers Gallery, Munich. Some recent work: Thank you for the Music (London Beat), see works. Next Show (2007): "Imagine Los Angeles-Contemporary Arts from Los Angeles". He contributes to Burda Media's DLD blog and is a consulting member for DLD´s arts and new media programe.

Executive Summary

Tgiles — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 16:01:09 CST

Get Your Game On will create a brand for women who want to play teams sports. These women often competed in high school sports and our community will allow them re-connect with this missing part of their identities. Our site will allow women to:

• Find teams in their neighborhood.
• Choose from a broad away of team sports.
• Interact with their fellow On-line Community members in fun and engaging ways.

This will result in women forming communities, playing games offline and HAVING FUN. Our site will allow these participants to rediscover the joy of team play, revel in their successes or losses – experience the joy of playing team sports again after years off – and invite other friends or colleagues to join them.

These women work long hours and often feel alone in large cities. The promise of fun, light-hearted companionship is a powerful marketing tool. This promise will lure participants in. Our site will appeal to their practical side by restricting participants to over-30 and not including men. Men will be omitted so there is no dating personal dynamic to the community. On a strategic level, a specific target market with built-in restrictions will heighten brand differentiation.

Women will be able to chat with one another and share their own individual or team photos. The site will encourage women to post photographs from the past, from their high school teams and earlier. The site will allow them to utilize personalization features based around the team sports metaphors: checkered flats, starting gates, whistle, referee shirts, scoreboards. If women desire to stay On-line, they will have many layers of content with which to play.

Over-30 women are stick of the social networking hype. These women also miss the team spirit experienced in their teenage years. They are competitive, disciplined, professional women and they want to PLAY. FIT OR NOT will allow them to play, to revel in the joy of team sports activity, to form community on and offline with like-mended women and to grow organically from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Get Your Game On

Tgiles — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 15:59:46 CST

Terri Giles, Clint Schaff, Lewis Haidt

At Get Your Game On we believe that all work and no play makes Jill a very dull girl. So we have created an on-line locker room where women can find teammates, build a community that resurrects their winning spirit, and connects them to other women who want to play. Our focus is fun and helping women to live a more healthy life by participating in organized sports and activities.

Want to play? Be part of a team again? Reconnect with the ghost of your athletic past?

Don’t worry that some of the dazzle has gone out of your dribble or that your spike lacks spunk. This is real life not the Olympics. We know that you won the state championship 20 years ago and that you have been busy since. But don’t you think it is time to grab you cleats, gloves, rackets, balls and bats and start sweating on the field instead of in the board room?

Suit-up and join us at the premier community for women players that will help you get off the bench and Get Your Game On!

Roles:

I. Executive Summary: Lewis/All
II. Mission: Terri/All
III. The Market: Clint
IV. The Opportunity: Terri/All
V. The Community: Lewis
VI. Marketing: Clint
VII. Operations Lewis & Clint
VIII. Financials: Clint & Terri
X. Appendices: All

____________________________________________________

I. Executive Summary

II. Mission

About your Community

Mission and Values

i. What is the purpose?
ii. How will this clear purpose facilitate credibility and trust in the community?

Strategy: How is it unique?
1. Goals, Objectives, Competitive Advantage
2. SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat

III. The Market

A. Competitive Evaluation
B. Detailed look at other Communities in this space
RateMDS.com
Bookof Doctors.com
i. What are they?
ii. What are the attributes of these communities (interactions, programming, technologies)

IV. The Opportunity

A. Who is the user?
b. Describe them?
c. Why do they need this?
d. Can they get it anywhere else
B. Research
a. What do you know about this audience?
b. How can you learn more about them?
i. Research Plan
ii. Research cited
C. How do you design a community to meet their unique needs?
i. What about this topic or audience provides guidance for community design.

V. The Community

What is the vision?
1. How does it relate to your Mission
Detailed description of your community as a product?
1. Topic: What is it about?
2. Audience: Who is it for?
3. What does it provide?

i. Interaction model? Users talk to each other, publish content, Share? Peer Production
ii. Programming/Content Plan
iii. Sections, services, Special Features

Creative Brief: Can you describe the Community

i. Creative Concept 1. Design
2. Layout
3. Style
4. User interactions

How will you get people to participate

i. Incentives? Rewards?
ii. How will users build Trust?
iii. What is the role of identity? 1. What assessment signals will your community promote to create transparency and promote trust.

VI. Marketing

What is the campaign?
1. Traditional media? Viral? Social? SEO
How will your community:
1. Lean about your site?
2. Find your site?
Will you “link” or partner with other content or communities?
Possible Names:
1. Possible Names: salus : health, safety, well-being, salvation /salutation.
  salus : safety, help or assistance/ health, wellness, wholeness.
  salveo : to be well, be in good health.
  sanitas : health, soundness of mind, sanity.
  sanus : sound, healthy, sane.
  sospitas : health.
  valens
2. ygeia (health in greek)

VII. Operations & Policies

A. How will you run your community?
a. Technology?
i. What technologies will you use?
ii. Can you buy or do you need to build your technology?
B. Staffing
i. Who will you need to run the community? 1. Job descriptions
2. Skills? Interests ii. Organizational Plan
1. Who does what?
iii. Operations Plan:
1. How does it all fit together?
C. Logistics
i. Unique issues to your idea? 1. De-centralized management a. Remote, low cost 2. centralized management a. office, other expenses D. Policies? i. What are the policies or rules that guide your community?
ii. What are the implications of these choices/
iii. Do users have to “accept” to participate?

X. Financials

A. Is this a business, avocation or non-profit? a. How will you make money
i. Advertising? Display? Search?
ii. Sponsorship?
iii. Subscriptions?
iv. Donations?
v. Grants?
b. Basic balance sheet
i. Cost, revenue

X. Appendices

A. Examples (mock-ups, page designs, examples)
B. Additional Research
a. Copies of any important documents.
C. Other supporting documents

Global Free Culture Communities/Social Movement - Knowledge Goods Ecology

LewisHaidt — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 13:08:36 CST

Access to Knowledge (A2K) - treaty being promoted as part of Knowledge Ecology Goods/Free Culture movement

Adelphi Charter - a condensed, short vision of global knowledge goods/free culture movement

This movement (Clint wondered about whether people will support it in the US) has been building world-wide for the last decade and the organization, CPTech, is a leading player in the global activist network. They've just received a major grant from the MacArthur Foundation and are rebranding as Knowledge Ecology International. Next year, I expect them to cross/"tip" over into the US political mainstream.

The college, international Free Culture movement is active and planning numerous projects (I'm involved with stuff @ USC). Here's our blog and inspired by our class, a wiki. If you want to join the wiki, let me know.

One free culture project the USC group is spear-heading has the potential to radically challenge the RIAA and empower college bands. It's in preliminary stages, will pick up momentum next semseter and we could definitely use the help. If anyone's int. in attending the first Free Culture mtg. next semseter, let me know.

The ( RED ) CAMPAIGN

vfricke — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 03:58:51 CST

THE RED CAMPAIGN

JOIN RED

( YOU) RED

(Y O U) RED FRIENDS

DATA.ORG

ONE.ORG

xanga.com

JessieCheng — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:38:24 CST

Critical Thinking – Online Community Evaluation Framework

It’s important that each of us to form opinions about what we like and what we don’t like about Online Communities. I’d like to get us started building our critical vocabulary by having each of you evaluate an online community.

Please come prepared to lead a brief discussion on your site and post and evaluation of your site to our class Wiki.

Site: ______________Xanga.com____________________________________

URL: ______________www.xanga.com_______________________________

PRODUCER: Who created the community?
Marc Ginsburg, Dan Huddle, John Hiler. They created Xanga.com in 1998.

MISSION OF THE COMMUNITY: What is the subject? What is the purpose? What need does it fulfill?
Xanga.com first began as a site for sharing and exchanging book and music reviews. Today it is a website that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles.

MEMBERS: Who participates? What is the focus of their discussion?
The sites are used popular among teenagers. Teenagers mainly focus on their daily lives, people around them and their interest, such as pop music.

IDENTITY: Do people reveal their identity? Bios? Alias? Avitars?
Xanga users are referred to as “xangans”. Most users reveal their identity as bios and alias that they created their own profiles using their nicknames usually.

WHY: Why do people participate?
People participate to connect with other members and view their journals, updates, writings, pictures and sharing.

TRUST: Do the members trust each other? How is trust created?
The members do not completely trust each other as there are always risk attached with cyberspace. Having xanga’s safety functions, trust are built and generally accepted by xangans.
In June 2006, Xanga created safety.xanga.com that links to tips for parents, youth, and law enforcement. Links to the safety tips can be found in every xanga page Xanga Footprints is another nature that benefits xangans a lot that it allows users to identify usernames of signed-in visitors to their site.
The flagging system was launched in April 2006 serving as a reporting system that allows allow users to report sites that violate Xanga’s terms of use. Flagged sites might be shut down immediately if violations are found after review by Xanga’s employees.
Xanga.com has a lock and blocking feature to restrict access of certain unwelcome or unauthorized users to view or comment their sites.

INCENTIVES: Why do people participate? What is their reward?
People participate to connect with other members. Their rewards are the feedback and comments to their posting from other members in their network. Also, xanga.com has a rating system so that popular xangas receive high ratings.

POLICY: What policies or rules govern the community?
There are certain policies governing the community: First, children under 13 are not allowed to register for Xanga accounts. Second, profile information is requested from every user such as user name, password and date of birth. No nudity and pornography are allowed. All users have to agree with to follow the xanga rules in order to become members.

ORGANIZATION: What are the major sections and organizational elements of the community? What are the contents vs. the functions available on the site?
The community is divided into 5 major sections, weblogs, blogrings, videos, photos and profiles. The community combines with contents and functions that members use the blog both to post journals and to share other information like videos. Xanga pages are organized through locations, functions (e.g. videos, photos), and interests (blogrings). Searching is available through keywords.

INTERACTIONS: What is the method of interaction? How do users interact? What is the “quality” of the discourse?
Users can view others’ journals as long as they are viewing the public xanga or they are the identified “authorized users” in the network. Users can post comments to other users post and give “eprops”. Users can also give ratings to xanga pages. The general quality of the discourse is subjective because users make a lot of personal journals and comments.

CONTENT: Do users contribute text? Photos? Sounds?
Users contribute text, photos and sounds to Xangas. Users customize their xanga page with personalized background, music, pictures, videos, profile and journals.

MODERATION: Are there moderation tools?

Yes, users can lock and delete a topic or post.

TONE: What is the tone of the interaction?

The tone of the interaction are usually casual. Xangans write journals to express their opinions and talk about their daily lives, so their tones are generally casual like talking to friends.

FREQUENCY: How often do users post?

Xanga allows unlimited postings. Usually active users post in daily basis. Many users post when there are something special happen during the day and worth sharing with other members.

MARKETING: How would people learn about this community?
Users’ referral.

REVENUE: Is their a commercial justification for this community? Do they sell advertising?
Xanga strongly relies on advertising, in the form of banner ads that appear on the top of most pages on Xanga. The first xanga ads were posted in 2001. Today the ads are changed to a larger leaderboard format.

IDEAL TO STEAL: What aspect of this community would you want to steal?
Users’ pictures, personal information like hobbies and news. Those information can be useful for kidnapping.

Jessie Cheng

JessieCheng — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:36:20 CST

Social Network Links:
Emails: mincheng@usc.edu; chwmin@yahoo.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/angelmoonster
Xanga: http://www.xanga.com/ANGELMINSTER
(Pls send me a message first then I will add you to my protected list)
Blogger
http://angelminster.blogspot.com/

Hi This is Jessie. I am a new Comm. Mang. student. I came from Hong Kong 6 years ago for college and graduated from Cal Poly Pomona last year. My background is Marketing and International business.

I worked in an automobile manufacturer as a Project Coordinator in Shanghai, China in 2004. At that time I had a chance working with several international corporations like GM, Ford and Daimler Crysler. I also involved in website development and administration. The experience was invaluable to me who is interested in international business especially the marketing field. After I graduated in 2005 I was hired as a Marketing Executive and Logistic Consultant in a Freight Forwarder Company, participated in the company's Website Renewal Project and inquiring new customer accounts.

I am interested in different cultures so I go travelling every year. This summer I visited Shanghai, Taiwan and Japan with my family and friends. I took the picture below in The Bun of Shanghai. In my leisure time, I do paintings and shopping. The right side is my painting "The Grassland"

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers

baclayon — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:30:40 CST

Allan Baclayon

October 16, 2006
COMM 599
Elizabeth Osder

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers:
Exploring Participatory Culture

by Henry Jenkins

Background

Henry Jenkins is one of the leading scholars in media studies and popular culture. He is the author and/or editor of nine books, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. More recently, he’s published Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.

Fans, Bloggers and Gamers is definitely appropriate and useful for this class because fan culture and online community go hand in hand. Though the content is already dated, the content throughout Jenkins’ works is valuable to understanding audience participation in and around online communities. Moreover, the information to be gained from his studies will be highly relevant to our final group project in terms of reaching out to an audience of gamers who exemplify aspects of participatory culture, especially as it relates to gender and the subculture of female gamers. With such a comprehensive look at fans, this book clearly offers an outstanding idea to steal: knowing your audience is of the utmost importance when it comes to developing participatory culture.

In looking at the bigger picture of his works, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers offers somewhat of a bridge between Jenkins’ Textual Poachers and Convergence Culture; its underlying purpose is to understand and connect fan culture and pop culture, emphasizing their frequent collisions in the changing digital landscape. The book is divided into 3 parts: 1) An overview for Fandom and the ways in which fans interact with media. 2) A section relating to how fans are utilizing new, digital resources. And 3) The author’s personal perspective on public policy and the rising complications that faced changing media forms.

Inside Fandom

This section utilized four articles which spoke on behalf of audience participation. It outlined many of the ways in which fans appropriate media and translate it in order to produce new meanings which fit their interpretations. These articles were among the first major scholarly works to give a voice to the fans who felt that “fans themselves, not program producers, are best qualified to arbitrate conflicting claims about character psychology because they care about the characters in a way that more commercially motivated parties frequently do not” (Jenkins, 56).

Here, we were exposed to what Jenkins’ describes as textual poaching, which refers to fans who take personal control of media through active participation and engagement. The most prominent example from the section was Jenkins’ studies on Star Trek fans, documented in “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten” and “Out of the Closet and Into the Universe.” Among other methods of engaging with the Star Trek series, fans would dress and act like characters, design home made costumes and other items from the show, and even draft different versions of storyline based on their interpretations. One popular interpretation of the show depicted a homosexual relationship between Captain Kirk and Spock.

Going Digital

Whereas most of Jenkins’ early works were written at a time where fans would have to build communities via standard mail or conventions, Jenkins’ research quickly began the ethnography of online participation. Using new tools, technology, and a more “horizontally integrated media,” consumers were now more than ever interactive producers, distributors, publicists, and critics. In articles such as “Interactive Audiences” and “Pop Cosmopolitanism,” Jenkins was able to describe a “cosmopedia,” an emerging term defined as an “expansive self organizing groups focused around the collective production, debate, and circulation of meanings, interpretations and fantasies in response to various artifacts of contemporary pop culture” (Jenkins 137).

To give examples of how the digital age has affected fan and pop culture, Jenkins turned to articles such as “Love Online,” “Blog This!,” and “Safety Net.” These articles emphasized the use of new technologies as a method of reaching out to the masses and converging cultures. The online space allowed people to communicate in brand new ways and the articles do a tremendous job of supporting how online communities provide a space for groups of people to basically make sense of media texts and integrate it into a part of their daily lives.

Columbine and Beyond

With a retrospect on the Columbine tragedy, this last section outlined the different ways in which public policy and changing media forms conflicted with one another. Jenkins described the ways in which he himself had become a political and social advocate against the censorship of computer and video games. His articles in this section such as “Professor Jenkins goes to Washington” and “Coming up Next!” are largely autobiographical, speaking about his experiences in Washington and in the media as he defended gamers and the games themselves.

Perhaps the most encouraging part of this section (and one of the best things I learned about while reading this book) was his descriptions of the ways that video games are being developed for educational purposes. In “The War Between Effects and Meanings,” Jenkins describes games as “teaching machines” that people are developing and/or modding for different purposes. Games such as The Sims can be transformed into a learning tool where gamers can play the game and get help learning a new language at the same time. Even with a violent video game such as the Grand Theft Auto series, Jenkins defended the game as an advancement towards video games’ potential to encourage “serious reflection about choice and consequence.”

Julie Smith

jws1981 — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:46:41 CST

This is a template page

In the infamously wonderful movie "Jerry Maguire," Jerry describes himself as the guy on the left in celebrity photos. As a junior publicist for Turner Broadcasting, I'm working towards that identity. At this year's Emmy Awards, I got a glass slipper closer to the goal. Please don't strain your eyes, but I'm the spec in the white dress behind Sandra Oh. Dreams come true one red carpet step at a time...

An Atlanta native, I spent 4 years in the Dirrty Durham attending Duke University. My freshmen year I entered a tent in K-ville and emerged four weeks later as a Cameron Crazie. In addition to my love for basketball, I also strengthened my love of the media, taking journalism courses and co-creating/co-anchoring a campus-wide news & entertainment show. After two internships with CNN, one for the Bookings department in Atlanta and another for Judy Woodruff in DC, I moved back to Atlanta following graduation to do a rotational training program at TBS headquaters. I worked on a regional home improvement show, assited the new techologies division of strategic planning, and learned the art of PR promoting the studios. Upon completion of my program, I decided my future lay out West and packed up for the wilds of SoCal. I landed in the publicity department at Showtime Networks, promoting the pay cabler's original programming and working with an amazing group of people. An opportunity then came knocking from my employer alma mater at Turner's LA satellite office. I rejoined the team and am now publicizing original content for TNT, TBS, and Turner Classic Movies in addition to pursuing my MA in Comm Management at USC.

I currently live in Brentwood and enjoy commuting from work to school two nights a week in addition to long walks on the beach and hikes in the hills.

The Google Story

DamonW — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:50:40 CST

Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time

David A. Vise and Mark Malseed

The Google Story, claimed by its author David Vise as the first biography of Google, is a book of behind-the-scenes stories of the most favorite search engine in the world. In this book, David Vise chronicles Google's birth and growth. Not like a business know-how handbook, this book explores the two founders' personalities underlying Google's philosophy and never-ending innovation that led the company to the tremendous success today. Readers will learn about how Google got started from Larry Page's goofy idea of downloading the whole Internet onto his computer; and the bumpy road Google came through in the early days; and how Larry Page and Sergey Brin with amazing business acumen and computer wizardry built a fast-growing technology empire while sustaining their guiding vision: Don't Be Evil.

Main points of the book that are relevant to the class:

Google's Motto: Don't Be Evil.
Google's discipline: Anything that compromises the relationship of trust they have with their users would be unacceptable to them, even if it generates a lot of money for Google. From the very beginning to today, Google has been standing by this statement and trying to provide users with as much free, reliable information online as possible. Google's advertising system also upholds their motto by rendering unbiased search results.

Google Ads: It's all about being relevant to the users.
The original business idea was aimed at licensing the underlying search engine technology to a variety of other Internet companies and enterprises. However, intense competition and harsh customers held Brin and Page back and forced them to turn to an alternative.

To keep Google afloat without compromising their lofty principles, Brin and Page decided to concentrate on profiting by allowing advertisers to reach their growing and loyal legion of users. Google would continue to keep search results free-just as television networks offered entertainment and news for free-and would look to make money by selling unobtrusive, targeted advertising to businesses on the results page. Seeing banner ads and click-through rates falling, they instead ran targeted "text only" ads that were triggered by users' specific search requests. To keep search results free of paid ads, they displayed a bright line or a shaded light blue box on the results page that separated the free search results from the ads, which they would label "Sponsored Links."

Soon they ranked ads by relevance based on a formula that took into account both how much someone offered to pay and how frequently computer users clicked on the ad. More-popular ads rose to the top; less-popular ones drifted downward. So, it was consumer pull, rather than business push, that would determine where ads appeared.

The technology-based business also allowed advertisers to sign up easily online themselves. And the text ads could be up and running on Google within minutes after a company provided its credit card number. The transaction costs of money and time were remarkably cut down to a few minutes and clicks.

Scalability of Products
Prior to each new product rollout, Brin and Page scrutinized the product's potential for rapid scaling up so that they could maintain a competitive advantage through size and distribution even as others mimicked and matched the ideas.

AdSense exemplifies the vital role that scalability plays in product design. By embedding a Google ads box on a web page, web publishers could immediately participate in the advertising system of Google and begin sharing ad revenue with Goolge. In this way, Google's product reach can be easily scaled up in the long tail of Google's algorithm.

Using Influencers to Build Buzz
Danny Sullivan founded Search Engine Watch, a website publishing newsletters on current search engine technology and the marketplace. He was among the first few people who were aware of Google when it launched in 1998, and then followed the growth trace of the company. By 1999, when Brin and Page decided to find another business model rather than licensing their technology, Sullivan had become an expert in the search engine market and was sought after to provide expert commentary on the new approaches taken by various search engine companies.

So Google's two founders sought to forge a relationship with Danny Sullivan to leverage his influence and expertise. Google's cutting edge technology and new business model garnered Danny Sullivan's positive mentions and salute on his Web site, an important vote of confidence that spread out globally. In this way, Google marketed itself without spending money on advertising.

Click Fraud: Google's Unsolved Problem
Google chief financial officer George Reyes has described click fraud as the most significant threat facing Google's highly successful business model and long-term profitability. Yet, Google doesn't have financial incentive to put sufficient resources into battling click fraud, since the search engines profit from its existence and it mostly goes undetected and unreported by advertisers. (A bit disappointing.)

Click fraud challenges Google's pay-per-click billing method. Although cost-per-action method is being employed by Snap.com,which works pretty well so far, the method can't justify itself sufficiently in that search engine companies have to share the business risk with advertisers. In a sense, it's like a billboard operator won't be paid by the advertiser if none of the viewers buy the advertising product.

Google's advertising business is operated online, which may introduce risks in the first place. It lacks sufficient controls to prevent shady Web sites from signing up merely to generate ad revenue through self-clicking. By contrast, Yahoo reviews each new site manually, with people involved. Although Google is satisfied with their current self-policing, the technology pioneer definitely needs to do more.

Ideal to Steal

1. Don't be a slave of money. Don't hurt your users. Take care of them and the business will grow by itself. Make money smartly.
2. Stay relevant to your users. Know your community members and provide what they want.
3. Forge good relationships with opinion leaders. Make the best of word of mouth.
4. Use rules and policies to create a healthy environment, and stimulate self-policing inside the community.

ASC Online Community - Recently Updated Pages

Better Together

Lewis Haidt

Allan Baclayon

Josie Witte

Erin Pates

Epic 2015 Scenario

Liz B.

Erin Williams

6. Final Projects

Popol Vuh Site / Fan Site incl. participatory ellements

Johannes Fricke

Executive Summary

Get Your Game On

Terri Giles, Clint Schaff, Lewis Haidt

Roles:

I. Executive Summary

II. Mission

About your Community

III. The Market

IV. The Opportunity

V. The Community

VI. Marketing

VII. Operations & Policies

X. Financials

X. Appendices

Global Free Culture Communities/Social Movement - Knowledge Goods Ecology

The ( RED ) CAMPAIGN

xanga.com

Jessie Cheng

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture

Background

Inside Fandom

Going Digital

Columbine and Beyond

Related Links

Julie Smith

This is a template page

The Google Story

Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time

Ideal to Steal

Related resources and links

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers:
Exploring Participatory Culture