10 tips for productive online conversations

I’ve been trying to have online conversations for a while now, in different spheres of my life, and here are my top 10 tips for running online forums and groups.  There may be more along later, but these are the ones that occur to me first.
1. Aim for an intimate public conversation
Conversational style is a [...]

Late to the party

Up till now, I’ve lived most of my online life in the blogs and pseudonymous geekworlds of LiveJournal and Vox.  All very well for my burgeoning social life but less satisfactory as a way of connecting in the public world.  I decided to take steps to change that, and in under a week I am [...]

Building online communities, 2: Tools of social presence

Ah, summer.  My writing ambitions got squashed under a pile of family holidays and back-to-school frenzy, but here we are again. 
In my previous post, I discussed the need to establish social presence online: in other words, to communicate a sense of personality and individuality within the online medium. This is true for both the community [...]