building community

Neighborland is a new ideation crowdsourcing startup that gives citizens a “fun and easy way for residents to suggest new businesses and services that they want in their neighborhood.”

Founded by Candy Chang, Tee Parham and Dan Parham, and funded by the Tulane Social Entrepreneurship program with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, it launched in alpha mode this June in New Orleans.

Co-founder Dan Parham shares his thoughts on the new venture. » Read more

I learned yesterday that there's the “old GM” and the “new GM” according to Liz Boone, Global Director, Digital and Social Engagements at General Motors. Like many companies affected by the downturn and forced to make some difficult decisions, GM is still rebuilding. After declaring bankruptcy in 2009, it is no surprise that any and all spend is under the utmost scrutiny. » Read more

Governance is the word for open source in 2011. Governance breaks down to two topics, structures and process.

The same elements that make for a stable democratic system also make for good open source governance. This doesn't mean you need a balance of powers, or a judicial branch. It means you need the rules of governance clearly stated, and a process that will allow the best ideas to get prompt action from those running the project. » Read more

At opensource.com, we often talk about ways to build and nourish communities. But sometimes what you do right is less important than what you’re doing wrong. We dug through our archives looking for cautionary tales that show how communities break down—or never begin to flourish in the first place. » Read more

Unless you've been living under a rock, or don't really care about U.S. sports, you probably know that the Green Bay Packers are the champs of Super Bowl XLV. What you may not know is that despite hailing from a town of a little over 100,000 people, the Green Bay Packers are one of the most popular teams in the National Football League. So popular, in fact, that the current waiting list for season tickets informs new registrants that they might receive their tickets by 2074.

The Green Bay Packers have remained a successful franchise for multiple reasons, » Read more

Recently, fellow opensource.com writer Chris Grams remarked that our collection of articles and tips on community-building was getting rather large. Perhaps we had the material to write a set of best practices for building communities. So here’s my stab at it. » Read more

Abstract Logix is changing the music industry experience for musicians, fans, and retailers. How? By embracing the open source way and using a community-focused and collaborative approach.

We interviewed Souvik Dutta, founder of Abstract Logix, to get a better understanding of how the open source way is helping to create a stable business and how they produce, distribute, and promote music collaboratively. Abstract Logix helps to enable gifted musicians around the world spread their audio art. They offer a groomed selection of innovative music from artists who are rarely represented in traditional retail shops.

How do they do this? » Read more

Over the last two decades, I have been a member of numerous types of Internet communities and a drive-through visitor at countless more. The technology has varied: email listservs, Usenet, chat rooms, blog commenting, forums and message boards, RPG. Within theses communities the written and unwritten rules are as diverse as the underlying platforms, and these elements combine to make up the culture and communication styles of each group. » Read more

Esse quam videri. That's the first thing I saw when I went to see what Paul Frields was up to on his blog. Fun fact: it's also the North Carolina state motto and something I talk about at new hire orientation here at Red Hat. But then I thought about that phrase, and I thought about the responses to the interview questions below. I came to the conclusion that Paul is one of the few people I know who actually exemplifies the meaning of this Latin phrase. "To be, rather than to seem." » Read more

I've always been a fan of the Mozilla Foundation, and not just because of the Firefox web browser. As catalyst for some of the great communities in the open source world, Mozilla is something of a recipe factory for what to do right when it comes to building community. As it turns out, Mozilla's Director of Developer Relations, Chris Blizzard, is a long time friend of mine. » Read more