Energiser Bunny in-residence Tim Norton (he of the multi-facets) and Steve Adams from Made From New Zealand facilitated a session looking at building true online communities of love. From humble beginnings….
Tim Talked about the Silicon Welly experiment – they created a brand around the name, and then enabled other to come in and use, utilise and share the brand.
Build communities that are free to join – Start Up – find other ways of paying for creating them – third party sponsorships, boot strapping etc etc. It’s all about conversations happening between real people and via that building a active, vibrant and dynamic community.
Really interesting thoughts around portal plays – the power of aggregation – This sessions smart man shout out – @kiwitwitter (who also) explained Twitter to the uninitiated!
Talked about madefromnewzealand and the community strategy around that (video below). Join communities together and give them a strong aggregated voice.
Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. 
A New Zealand group who I thing represents this concept well is intersect.ning.com
A group of young “green” Wellington professionals. Already at about 450 people who are committed. I just wish I was young enough to join!
[...] happen everywhere, people like to be heard, companies who can listen and respond will drive engagement with their customers and in turn gain insights into future opportunities to improve what they offer their [...]
Hey Ben,
As always – ahead of the play!
Thanks for the mention – would love a review of the site in a couple of weeks once we build the community aspects into the site properly.
Made From has brought me on to help build the community, maintain twitter, facebook, youtube, blogs etc which is going to be fun – just getting started but any feedback or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Next time your up in Welly make sure you come catch up with the Silicon Welly crew
James Stewart
Community Manager
Made From New Zealand
@James – sounds good – I’ll be at the W2W event 1st Friday in November