for W3c validation

Being interested in social networking, this topic immediately caught my attenton.  Here’s some notes-

Tara Hunt talked about Commodity vs Community. Don’t be a commodity.

Community:

• Takes time and patience
• requires introspection, commitment and honesty
• Need to stop outgoing messages & start listening to incoming messages (make yourself available)
• Be open more than you are comfortable
• Put community first- before profits
• There will be chaos
• It’ll be rewarding

Tips to Success:

1. Increase the “win” for your customers
2. Create open communication between customers
3. Be real (I can’t stress this enough)
4. Get a personality
5. Reward your customers
6. Be extraordinary

Betsy Aoki talked a little bit about the QnA community she is building. Let the community speak for itself- take the high road.

Elisa from BlogHer mentioned the following points that I found interesting-

• building community is circular
• It’s not enough to just ask the community what they want
• Make sure to realize that not everyone will love your community- transparency is key (this topic keeps coming up)
• Set the right expectations (super critical) from the outset
• Community will tell you where to go- and go with you
• Strong communities will self-police- take advantage of it (and benefit from the power of the community responding on your behalf)
• Know your audience
• Debate is good (as long as it doesn’t get into personal attacks)- people are engaged and interested. Have guidelines that promotes civil debates.

Once I have time to actually add my own thoughts on the subjects covered at the Blog Business Summit and spend some time putting them into words, I’ll post a summary- maybe not until this weekend though.