My Ideal Virtual Professional Community:
A Personal Checklist

Written for Classroom Use Only

© Arthur M. Geoffrion
September, 1998

I’m a busy person, and almost all academics and practitioners are likewise very busy people. Moreover, we all suffer from an information glut. It is going to take a very special kind of virtual community (VC) for me to bother with it.

The purpose of these notes is to give my short list of what it would take for a professionally-oriented VC to gain my serious attention. I believe that a VC having most of these features would attract not only my participation, but also that of many other people with similar interests. In other words, this is my prescription for VC success from the viewpoint of a prospective professional participant.

The ideas which follow come mostly from introspection, from reflecting on what numerous Web sites offer, and from the 1997 book Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities by J. Hagel III and A.G. Armstrong (please see my review). I hope that it will not be lost on the reader that, above all, I want my VCs to be ambitious. There is plenty of space left on the Web for narrower and less enterprising sites, but they will end up being "just another bookmark" among the hundreds that every professional already has.

The order of presentation below is not significant. The style is first person in order to emphasize the subjective nature of this material.

Note: The professional context I have in mind as I write this is Operations Research/Management Science, but I believe that my comments apply to many if not most professional contexts.  In the OR/MS (INFORMS) context, the checklist below can be applied to such Web sites as IOL, POL, the Roundtable site, Student Union, and in fact to the Web site of any INFORMS subdivision or of any INFORMS periodical. Not all Web sites aim to create a VC in the full sense of the word -- relatively few do -- but I believe that those just mentioned ought to have this ambition.  One might even go so far as to suggest that INFORMS itself ought to aspire to become a hybrid virtual/physical community with many of the properties sketched below.
 

Good Focus

The focus of a VC should be clearly stated and coincide with one of my major interest areas (these notes limit attention to topical VCs and ignore those with geographic and demographic definitions). It shouldn’t be too narrow or I would have to keep up with too many VCs in order to span my interests, and it shouldn’t be too broad or it will inevitably have a lot of content of little interest to me.

The way I expect this balance to be achieved is for the VC to organize itself into subcommunities and even sub-subcommunities as appropriate.  I don’t care which level I patronize so long as its focus and balance are right for me.

A VC’s statement of focus should include an honest list of the kinds of people it truly seeks to serve, and I want to "see" myself on that list.

A Reasonable Number of Good Participants

A VC should have enough regular participants to make the interactive aspects interesting and lively, but not so many that they feel "crowded". Reaching critical mass is by far the biggest challenge for the kinds of VCs likely to interest me, so I expect to see a very active member recruitment program.

I expect the active participants to be generally knowledgeable and to observe good netiquette. Explicit "Qualifications for Membership" and "Member Netiquette" statements are a plus.

Moreover, I want the participants to include many of the people I most respect in the VC’s focal area, because like many others I like to keep "good company". Thus I expect the VC to be visibly active in attracting the attention of such people.

Comprehensive White Pages

To facilitate personal networking , a VC should make it easy to find the email address and personal URL (where it exists) for nearly anyone -- not just "members" -- with a serious interest in the VC’s focus. This means that the VC maintains a searchable database of pertinent people and, possibly, of their interests (either supplied voluntarily through registration or spider-indexed from personal URLs). In addition, of course, this database would have fields for title, postal address, employer, and interests.

An important benefit of collecting such information about members is that some of it will contribute to the member profile database needed to support advertising and transaction fees. Probably this database should be the same one that supports the member recruitment program.

Well-Edited FAQ(s)

The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is an important type of "living" document that evolved in the Usenet universe. Since FAQ Editors explicitly encourage feedback, such documents over time approach completeness because readers point out omissions, and are self-correcting because readers point out mistakes. A good FAQ should indeed include the answers to common questions, so that discussion won’t bog down forever with the same old questions (part of a VC’s netiquette is that its FAQs should be read early on), but it should also codify basic factual information related to common discussion topics. When a FAQ gets long, it should be reorganized along hierarchical lines so that the first-level list of questions or headings is not overly daunting.

A well-edited FAQ can be a very useful, constantly growing repository of knowledge on the VC’s focal topic. It should also cover the organization of the VC and how best to take advantage of it, although the essentials of such information should also appear on the VC’s main Web page. These distinct missions might be carried out in a single FAQ, or might be split up among two or more FAQs.

In addition to the VC’s own FAQ(s), I would expect a hot-linked compilation of related FAQs, preferably with evaluations of them.

Well-Run, Lively Discussions with TSSs

There should always be multiple, lively, well-moderated, threaded discussions in progress within the VC focus, and anyone should be able to launch a new one. Some threads will be very brief, initiated by a specific question like: Does anyone know …? How can I …? What is the best way to …? Where can I find …? Why is it that …?. Other discussion threads will be much more substantive and enduring.

The Moderator’s role is crucial to seeding and nurturing on-line discussions of substance.  For example, he/she should be ever ready with stimulating Op/Ed pieces and items culled from other sources to provoke new discussions when activity slackens. Organizing the discussions by type and topic is also important.

Bulletin-board style discussions are mandatory.  HyperNews is one possible server-side program to support this, with the advantage that it does not require any client software beyond a Web browser. Chat-style discussion should also be offered if the VC focus is such as to attract the sort of people with whom I want to chat and good chat hosts are available; otherwise, I am dubious about the value of real-time chat. Listserv and news group technology also can be used to support discussion.

An Archivist should keep complete, well-organized, and easily-searchable discussion archives indefinitely because such archives are a valuable store of knowledge, opinion, and experience. Archiving is a perpetual process that need not wait for individual discussions to finish, since one seldom knows when any given discussion will cease to evoke responses.

The most important discussions, especially those of considerable duration, should have their own TSS (Topical Summary and Synthesis). This document, produced by an Editor, aims to capture and organize the best thinking of a discussion or related group of discussions.  So long as a discussion persists, its TSS is a dynamically evolving document.  After a discussion concludes, its TSS becomes its permanent record but is not a replacement for the archives mentioned above.  My "Shared Destiny Initiatives" document, which I maintain for INFORMS, is a kind of TSS.

Although a VC’s on-line content is the primary source, the diligent Editor may choose to send a TSS to noted experts and invite them to contribute their views. Besides strengthening the TSS, this practice increases the general appeal of discussion participation.

For the sake of completeness and as a service to the VC membership, the diligent Editor may also choose to add links in a TSS to other pertinent on-line resources, including forums, listservs, and news groups and their archives.

Efficient One-Stop Shopping

Here I use "shopping" somewhat loosely to refer to things within the VC’s focus that I may want to consume at some cost in money or time. For example: books, conferences/seminars/meetings, consulting and other services, continuing education offerings, data and information sources, periodicals, software, and perhaps even speakers for an event being planned. There needs to be a well-organized and searchable database of information on each of these (yellow pages and more).

A VC should help its members to identify quickly the options that best suit their needs, especially by making available evaluations, reviews, and the comments of consumers (including VC members). And it should facilitate transactions by convenient access to providers and possibly even help negotiate an advantageous price. It follows that there needs to be explicit provision for member-member and member-provider communications (e.g., by HyperNews and email), and also an explicit program to encourage members to share their experiences.

If HyperNews is used for member-member experience-sharing and member-provider communications, it should be possible to economize on the number of separate forums needed by controlling first-level headings.

In the case of books, a practical approach is to set up an Amazon.com subsite (Amazon enables this with its "Associate" program) with the books hand-selected by respected persons active in the VC focal area. Prices are good, reviews are often available, and anyone can contribute a review that will be listed on the book’s Amazon.com page.

Comprehensive, Well-Organized, Well-Annotated, Quality Resources

The resources offered by a VC should be comprehensive within its stated focus, organized for easy navigation by members, annotated well enough to eliminate most unproductive resource-fetching, efficiently searchable where browsing is not practical, and screened for quality. Some resources will be original to the VC and some not. Some will be on the VC’s server and some on other servers. Suitable ideas for resources often arise from the FAQ- and TSS-related discussions mentioned earlier.

I expect a VC to devote major organizational effort in this direction.

Some major categories follow. In each case, there needs to be explicit provision for members to discuss these resources and to suggest better ones if available.

In the case of publications, I am especially interested in award-winning work and so want easy access to full historical information about which publications won which awards. The same for runner-up and honorable mention work. I would like the full text of such works to be on-line. In addition, I want published book reviews from all available sources to be well integrated into this Digital Library.

In the case of oral presentation materials, at least, the content is increasingly likely to be other than plain text. See www.informs.org/Presentation/ for an example of a digital collection of such materials.
                                                                                  .

 Custom Content The Digital Library just mentioned should be supplemented by other custom-written materials in order to fully serve the needs of the VC’s participants. These materials can exploit the rich possibilities of the on-line media. Some possibilities:
  • Compilations can save participants a lot of time, and are especially appreciated when they approach exhaustiveness within their intended scope. This property is greatly advanced when the compilation is based on a database that users can maintain voluntarily through submissions.
  • Tutorials can be worthwhile, especially if interactive or done in ways not commonly found in print.
  • Current news feeds tend to be so voluminous that distillation and reorganization per the VC focus usually is advisable.
  • "How to" documents on using the Net effectively should be in demand given its rapidly changing nature; e.g., using it to reduce the cost of work, to improve quality and productivity, and to accelerate projects.
  • "IT Watch" pieces on new technologies soon to be ready for practical application (e.g., intelligent agent technology).
    •  In general, the specific nature of such materials depends on the VC’s focus.
          Library of Pertinent Downloadables Downloadables include databases, freeware, graphics, reusable software components, shareware, software demos, sound clips, spreadsheets, video clips, and more. This library should be designed so that new content is highlighted, evaluative materials are cross-referenced wherever available, and VC members can easily contribute items that they wish to share (but quality items from outside the VC should be sought actively).
          Links to Other Pertinent On-Line Sites Any on-line site that has a significant intersection with the VC’s focus is likely to be "pertinent", although considerable discretion should be exercised in deciding which to link. Sites giving current VC focus-related news ought not to be overlooked, especially if links can be engineered to yield a high concentration of relevant information (perhaps with the help of pre-packaged queries).

    Sites of interest often will be Web sites, but there are other possibilities: listservs, Usenet news groups, forums on AOL or CompuServe, IRC channels, FTP sites, telnet sites, etc. Links based on such services as Deja News and Reference.COM can greatly facilitate accessing the current and archival content of discussion sites. The point is to reduce the need for Net browsing and searching for other sites, and to approach resource comprehensiveness.

    Because of the vastness of the Net and the great variability of quality, I generally expect more than descriptive annotations for these links; I expect thoughtful reviews of other sites and perhaps even quality ratings. The same goes for items in the Library of Pertinent Downloadables that come from outside the VC.

         Public Event Calendar

    A calendar of public events pertinent to the VC should be available for loading (as well as use) by any member, subject to screening by a VC administrator to avoid off-topic contributions and blatant commercial promotions. The administrator should also make sure that the calendar does not omit any important events.

    An archive should be kept of past calendar contents.

    Personal Calendar Database

    To facilitate personal networking within the VC, members should be able to enter their own personal contact information for a rolling 2-3 month period into a database for easy retrieval by others. Information about travel and email absences would be especially desirable. For example, a member who plans to attend a conference should be able to enter date, hotel, and phone number information.

    Job Opportunities

    If the VC focus is congruent with a standard employment category, then it should host a job market that serves both employers and candidates in as comprehensive a way as is practical – that is, members should feel that they needn’t patronize other on-line job markets that include the VC’s focus if they patronize this one.

    In the absence of congruence, it suffices to offer a rich selection of job-related resources and to leave the market-making to others.

    Convocations

    Purely virtual communities can never be fully satisfying on a human level. There need to be opportunities for members to meet one another in the flesh. These could be VC-sponsored meetings or VC gatherings arranged within meetings sponsored by others. These need not be VC-only affairs, so long as VC members dominate.

    Professional-Quality VC Management

    I expect assurances that the VC is managed by devoted, professional-level people because I know that no VC can meet my expectations in the long term without such people.

    Professional-quality management is very difficult if not impossible to obtain from volunteers on a sustained basis, so I look for evidence of commercial viability through advertising and transaction fees. For these to flow at a sufficiently high level, I look for a value proposition to credibly support these fees.