Mark Heiman from Carleton College presented a session titled “Social Networking Software: Meeting the Expectations of the MySpace Generation.” The presentation was covered by one of this year’s guest blogger. This is Martine Lafleur’s second post.
Mark Heiman’s presentation kept me on my toes with great graphics, just the right touch of cynicism and good storytelling (not just slide reading).
Here is the story:
After hearing from their Alumni service the dreaded words: “we are meeting with vendors” to add interaction capabilities to the web site, the web team at Carleton College pleaded to have time to evaluate the project before anything was signed. And, they succeeded.
First question that came up: why not just use Facebook? Recent Alumni are on Facebook.
Two major reasons:
1) Being part of the ecology/sharing capacity of the Internet was the project’s goal. Facebook does not share with outside sites…
2) By talking to their alumni, they discovered they already had a strong community since the alumni loved the conversations they were having on the College’s forums but needed more interaction.
Carleton College already had a strong community but they needed to create more interaction.
One of the vendor selection criteria they had on their list was that the tool should do external content integration. All the products seen so far did not allow a seamless integration of, let’s say, an alum’s posts from his or her blog hosted on WordPress.
Then they found ELGG! An open source social platform, “a system that firmly places individuals at the center of their activities.” ELGG words not mine) they selected even though the product is not at a 1.0 status and the community is still scarce.
From what was shown at the conference, the tool seems really interesting and fits perfectly their philosophical approach: being part of the ecology/sharing capacity of the Internet.