Category: General

More often than not you’ll read how you “should” be blogging daily to attract and maintain a community around your site. I disagree with this statement. I don’t think it’s important to blog daily. I just think it’s important to be upfront with your community and let them know your frequency and patterns when blogging. For example, I’ve often indicated that I blog whenever I feel like it’s important for me to do so and I have something meaningful to say. Therefore, I’m assuming that most people who read my blog regularly aren’t upset when I don’t update daily because they’re fairly knowledgeable about my blogging patterns.

If anything this is very similar to real life. For example, think about your friends. Some of them you may interact with daily and talk about everything and anything, whereas other friends you may only interact with every couple of weeks or once a month even. There is nothing wrong with this. One isn’t better than the other. It’s just a different type of relationship.

In addition, it’s important to understand what a community really means. If you’re the only one talking then you really don’t have a community but more of an audience. For example, I have a very small community of people who comment on my blog from time to time with the remaining larger portion being an audience who just like reading what I have to say. I don’t mind this at all and in fact I actually enjoy having a smaller readership. For example, I’m totally amazed at how I can close my blog for a month and reopen it later to find that I’ve got more readers. Actually I’m amazed that I can not blog for a week or more and still be gaining readers. It seems weird, yet I’m guessing it might have something to do with what I write. Again I’m not interesting in the quantity of my posts but the quality or meaningfulness of them.

Looks like Google’s purchase of Jeffrey Veen’s Measure Map has come to fruition in the newly redesigned Google Analytics. You can find more details of the hard work behind this in Jeffrey’s post entitled What I’ve Been Working On.

What’s even more exciting though is what Jeffrey is now working on. He has a team of 30 designers at his disposal to now redesign the user experience of Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, the Office-like tools, Blogger, Orkut, Picasa, Talk, and more! This is simply unbelievable. I can’t wait to see the function and feel of these apps after he redesigns them.

I just realized something today and it has echoes of what was said by Paul Graham when he spoke about what business can learn from open source.

When I’m writing or hacking I spend as much time just thinking as I do actually typing. Half the time I’m sitting drinking a cup of tea, or walking around the neighborhood. This is a critical phase— this is where ideas come from— and yet I’d feel guilty doing this in most offices, with everyone else looking busy. Working in crappy informal spaces is one of the things startups do right without realizing it. As soon as you get into an office, work and life start to drift apart.

What I realized is that this applies to me as well and I need to start doing two things to promote this.

1. Get out and walk around my neighborhood more, primarily as a means to let my ideas flow (like they did today for me).
2. Also to carry a small pocket notebook or scratch pad to record my ideas that come to me when I’m out walking about. 

A canvas sets a boundary for an artist which allows for a limited expression of endless creativity to be displayed.

There’s a belief that I have had for a while that I recently mentioned when talking about using WoW to learn about community building and teamwork.

I honestly believe that games have the potential to be so much more than just about fun. A young fox cub chasing a butterfly through a field is more than just having fun. It is learning how to hunt. So too do games have the opportunity to teach us more about ourselves, which we can then take back into the real world.

With this thought in mind and while visiting Raph Koster’s website today, I was reminded of a profession that might just possibly be the next stepping stone that I’m looking for. Raph mentioned that his game company is looking to hire more people and one of those people is a senior community manager. Now while I don’t think I can apply for their position, primarily because it looks like you need to work in San Diego (although I’m still not 100% sure), it still seems like I’m seeing a lot of connections between what I’ve done in the past and the requirements for a community manager. For example, let me go over some of the points in the job posting for Areae’s Senior Community Manager to show you what I mean.

The Senior Online Community Manager will have proven experience in building, growing and nurturing a strong, positive community.

Even though this wasn’t my “official” job description while developing and maintaining sites for Sierra and other publishers, this was always my internal goal. I was basically first and foremost a strong user advocate. I believed that for a community to truly exist, you needed two way communication. Therefore, it’s not just about you as a company communicating your message to your customers but you should be actively gathering the input of your customers as well. Yes via emails but more importantly by just observing and listening to the community on an active basis (i.e. reading forums, in game chatter, etc).

• Develop information roll-out plans to foster community growth through the regular release of product features.

I believe this is critical before a game is even released. You should have a plan to build up prior to release and a plan after release as well. All of it is critical to the overall game experience (which happens inside and outside the game). Did this happen with the community sites I built? Not often. Why? Because we often didn’t get the final say, even though the team I worked with knew more about their customers than they did (and one exec even mentioned this once to us).

• Build positive relationships with key community leaders and product advocates.

This is actually one of the beliefs of my In Giving You Make Yourself Stronger approach which is why I’ve always disliked the “exclusive” route that game magazines take with game publishers. You should be giving and supporting to the whole community around you as much as possible, not just one exclusive group. The more you give and draw attention to those who truly love your games and products, the more they will give and draw attention to you in return.

• Help provide development direction by being the voice of the player community.

Indeed! And this is what I meant above about a two way communication for a community relationship to work. The funny thing that I’ve noticed in these situations is often times those who the complain the most in the communities around you are often the ones who truly love your product the most. Of course, while it’s important to listen to the feedback of your customers, it also important to ensure the original vision of the game, therefore you can’t listen to everyone if they start suggesting things that will dilute the primary focus of the game (i.e. “Ya we should have dragons and rocket launchers!”).

• 3+ years of experience managing large online communities
• Previous experience launching and building new online communities

Yes to both of these. I worked for a firm in town for 3 years and we built and maintained community sites around various large gaming publishers (with Sierra/Vivendi being the largest). These community sites were often a combination of product sites (with frequent content updates) and moderated forums.

Now funnily enough, I’ve actually been posting my resume online at Craigslist over the past few months looking specifically for an online community “developer” position (you can see my cover letter shown below) but maybe what I should be looking for is an online community manager position, since it would allow me to focus on more of the things I love (i.e. communities, culture, interacting, connecting, etc) rather than the backend coding stuff.

Experienced Online Community Developer Seeking Startup To Help

What I’ve Done

I’m a professional web developer with over 10 years of experience developing online websites and communities. Most notably I previously worked as the Senior Web Developer for a small web firm in Vancouver that assisted in the development of online communities for some of the largest computer gaming publishers in the world such as Sierra/Vivendi, Activision, and Konami on some of their biggest brands, such as Half Life, Star Trek, and ESPN. I was also a focal point within this small company, assisting and providing advice in a wide variety of operational areas and roles, be it with web development, community development, standards/process development, information architecture, usability, branding, proposal writing, computer support, business advice, and more.

What I’m Looking For

I’m looking for a full-time position within a Vancouver startup company, or a small established company with a startup culture, with which I can pass on my knowledge and experience on a company wide level. Of particular note, I’m looking for a company that has a very open, sharing, and caring culture within it whereby all team members can actively participate and contribute towards the development of the company. I am not, however, interested in startups which are looking to ‘flip’ or ‘sellout’ quickly but instead are committed to building a product or service with which a long term sustainable community can be built around.

What I Can Offer

If you’re a startup looking for an individual who can assist your company in a diverse variety of roles, including business advice, than I believe I’m that person. If you’re a company looking for an expert / specialist / rocket scientist with unbelievable skills in one specific area then I’m most definitely not that person. If you’ve read 37 Signals book called Getting Real, I’m what they would define as a “quick learning generalist”. Therefore I rapidly learn skills whenever I need them, usually to the point that I have an above average working knowledge when utilizing them. It is this ability which allowed me to be so effective as a team lead, since it allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the various professional roles that I was leading (i.e. graphic designers, web developers, web programmers, etc) similar to how an orchestra conductor must have fairly good understanding of the various instrumentalists he is conducting.

Therefore, in closing, if you’re looking for someone who is part web developer, part company evangelist, part community manager, and part startup business advisor, I believe I can most definitely help you.

Nollind Whachell
nollind@whachell.com

PS. If you’d like to get a better feel for me and learn more about my community and cultural interests, feel free to visit my web site at the address below.

http://nollind.whachell.com/

Hmm, and a final note to self, maybe I should be categorizing a lot of my previous posts that relate to community and culture development. That way when people come to my site, they can easily see a train of thought focused around a specific subject (i.e. gaming, community, culture, etc).

Dave seemed to be a little down this weekend and I understand how he feels. The questions he asks himself are often the same questions I ask myself.

In thinking about what he had to say though, I reflected back on a few things. I thought about two recent posts. One being Touching The World and another entitled Inspired where I said the following.

I don’t want to be informed or entertained. I want to be inspired.

And I also glanced at my About page, particularly the following quote.

I’m passionate about changing the world and making it a better place through the propagation of positive cultural values within the communities and/or organizations we are immersed within, be they online or off.

When I put this all together, I realized what I wanted to do (and it’s small enough to be a mantra of sorts).

I want to touch the world and inspire people.

Now as for the exact details of this work, I’ll still have to figure out that next step. However as Dave said in his post and something I’ve spoken about before, I believe this has a lot to do with stirring meaningful emotions within people and making them feel connected to something larger than themselves, yet something that they themselves are an integral part of.

One thing I do know for sure though is that the direction I’m wanting to go in seems to tie in much more closely with a creative artist, poet, writer, or musician than a technical developer or consultant. It’s funny because I used to draw, write stories, compose music, and write lyrics when I was younger. Yet I haven’t done any of these things in many many years.

Is this my inner self trying to pull me back on a path that I deviated from long ago? I think it might be.

PS. I want my work to not only inspire others but in turn to inspire me as well. Therefore if I can find some way to cumulatively gather this new creative work around me (online and offline), it should hopefully inspire and motivate me daily (as well as others around me).

I’ve actually seen this video before but I was just recently reminded of it by a friend, thus I’ve decided to share it this time. Enjoy (and crank the volume up as the music with it is great)!

Update: Also check out the Free Hugs Campaign website! 

My little yearly tribute to Earth Day using photos from the amazing photographer Phitar.

I was doing some research on how to define a lifestyle when something reminded me of a book I had read a while ago entitled The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs. In scanning the introduction, I saw the following quote which jumped out at me.

“Simple living is about living deliberately. That’s all. You choose your existence rather than sailing through life on automatic pilot.”

This touch a chord in me because just yesterday I had said the following about the importance of reflection in storytelling.

“Without these moments of reflection, it would be like a captain of a ship that never checks his position or heading during the voyage.”

I’m not sure if it’s just a coincidence that both quotes relate to sailing but what resonated within me was that you should be deliberately choosing your directions and destinations in life instead of just drifting with the wind or current. More importantly, it’s necessary that you constantly check where you are (i.e. time to reflect) so that you can be sure you are going in the deliberate direction that you want to be.

Hmm, coincidence again? I just looked at the word “deliberately” and notice the word “liberate” within it.

Gitanos the Gypsy, Outside Ironforge, The World of Warcraft

Speaking of storytelling, character development is one of the things that I really love doing (probably originating from my role playing game days as a kid) and can never seem to get enough of it. Seriously, I’ve even considered creating a site just focused on MMO character development for the World of Warcraft (and potentially for EVE Online as well) to show players how they can create a really well rounded character to personify within the game. This can involve everything from how they speak, their mannerisms, their flaws, to even how they dress.

It’s not as easy as it sounds though because games like the World of Warcraft can make this quite difficult to achieve since your wardrobe is often limited by your level (and I’m not talking armor types here). Portraying a young noble hero is one thing but trying to look like an evil villain can be downright depressing until you reach some of the higher character levels in the game. I’m totally against this limited approach to the game and I wish Blizzard would add something to the game to allow for at least equipment colorization (similar to how you could dye your character’s clothing and armor in Neverwinter Nights).

I mean no wonder people in the game have very little interest in role playing a diverse community with unique characters (even on RP servers) because it’s extremely difficult to visually represent the personality of your character. Even if you do finally achieve a level where you can get the right equipment, it’s a lost cause anyways. Why? Because as soon as you obtain a few more levels, you’ll need to replace your armor and equipment to be able to handle the higher level creatures and dungeons. For example, here’s a couple of pictures below of my character, Malavar, around 40th level, when I felt his outfit fully captured his villainous nature. Of course, levels later he had to give it up if he wanted to continue forward with higher levels.

Malavar, Inside Orgrimmar, The World of Warcraft

Malavar, Crossing Deadwind Pass, The World of Warcraft

The only way around this problem that I can see at the moment is to set out to create a social character from the very start. For example, I’ve got one character I’m fooling around with now that basically has no ambitions to get above 15th level (since it’s fairly easy to obtain this level quite quickly). Instead the goal of the character is to be like an NPC near the town of Goldshire in Elwynn Forest who acts like a sage or guide. Boring you say? Well not really, as you’re always interacting with an ever changing flow of people who are new to the area and people seem to enjoy seeing a regular face all the time (i.e. “Norm!” from Cheers). In effect, the unique experiences you have with these people becomes its own reward.