Maybe you’ve heard about this app, Girls Around Me, that has been getting some attention recently for being, well, creeptastic. If you haven’t, let me Google that for you, because I’m not really interested in linking directly to John Brownlee’s post, the one on Gawker, or any of the other ones that people have linked me to since Friday.

Go ahead, pick an article, read up – I’ll wait.

So, turns out John lives in Boston and I’m guessing he spends some time writing over in my neck of the woods, because when he put together some screenshots for his post, my face ended up in one of them.

Fantastic.

I first found out about this on Friday afternoon while I was finishing up lunch and getting ready for a conference call — a notification popped up that someone had mentioned me on Facebook. I went over to see what was up and found a link to the article, along with a message from a high school friend I hadn’t heard from in years, also pointing out the article.

I’ve gotten a number of messages, emails and texts since then, all from very well meaning people, most containing some version of the message: You’re in this creepy app! Check your privacy settings!

It looked a lot like Twitter DM spam, only it wasn’t. (Many thanks to my friend Sean for keeping things light and pointing out: at least it’s a good picture.)

My first reaction to this was, “I guess that’s what I get for checking in at my office.”

My second was, “wait, WHAT? What I get? For checking in at my office?”

Let me preface this by saying, yes, I think this is a creepy app, yes I’m glad that Foursquare revoked its API access, and yes, it has made me think long and hard about what value I find from using Foursquare publicly, and whether that’s “worth” whatever the trade offs are. For now, I’ve changed my settings on Foursquare to private, because I haven’t quite made up my mind.

On the one hand, I’ve made some Twitter-friends with people because we’ve both been checked in at the same concerts, and I’ve found it pretty useful at meetups and other social media conferences and events. On the other hand, mostly I just use it for myself, with a relatively small group of friends, so maybe there’s no reason to use it publicly.

I will say that the only “bad” thing that’s ever happened to me from using Foursquare publicly is that my face ended up in John’s article.

Here’s what’s getting at me though:

Moreover, the girls (and men!) shown in Girls Around Me all had the power to opt out of this information being visible to strangers, but whether out of ignorance, apathy or laziness, they had all neglected to do so. This was all public information.

That’s a quote from the Cult of Mac piece. And now I have a problem, because I’m not ignorant, apathetic, or lazy.

I’ve made a choice to participate publicly in the internet. I try to be careful about what I make accessible and what I share with everyone, and for the most part, I think I’ve found a balance that works pretty well for me. Have I slipped up? Sure. But, it’s important to me that I try out new tools and apps and that I understand how various social networks work, what features and functionality they have to offer. Some of that’s because I’m an information junkie, but mostly it’s because I’ve spent the past four years working in online community management and social media, so staying on top of this is pretty relevant to my career.

Now, I can understand why a lot of people don’t want to put any information out there about themselves, or why they only make it available to a select group of people. I also understand that you look at this app and the article and your first reaction is “Thank GOD he’s not talking about me.” I know when my friends and family reached out to me, it was only with the best intentions.

The whole tenor of this, however, has been that if you are in this app, if you have been posting information publicly, especially if you’re a woman, you’re doing something wrong. Shut it down, ladies – someone on the internet might see you. Kashmir Hill shares some good insight on this over at Forbes in her piece, “The Reaction to ‘Girls Around Me’ Was Far More Disturbing Than the ‘Creepy’ App Itself.”

This is where I get stuck. Checking in at your office, or a coffee shop, or The Independent (which is a great bar, by the way), whether publicly or not, doesn’t mean you’re “asking” to get stalked, or mugged, or anything else. People generally don’t ask for bad things to happen to them, and by and large, I don’t really believe anyone deserves to have something bad happen to them. At the same time, I don’t believe that most people are stalkers, or thieves, or otherwise out to do me harm, and the amount of mental energy necessary to view the world that way is quite simply more than I can spend.

Of course, I think it’s important to take precautions, to do what you need to do to feel safe when we live in a world that feels increasingly unsafe. But I also think it’s important to take a step back from time to time and think about what we’re actually saying. I couldn’t remove all the information about me on the internet if I wanted to, and it really wouldn’t be in my best interest to do that.

I don’t believe that having a public persona online needs to be a risky enterprise, and it seems like plenty of people are able to manage that without being attacked, stalked, or otherwise targeted. If we’re saying that’s only true for one half of the population, then I don’t think this is really a conversation about internet privacy as much as it’s a conversation about whether it’s safe to be a woman and live in public.

If the answer to that is “no”, then I think we’ve got bigger problems than ‘Girls Around Me.’

As you likely already know, The Community Roundtable, WOMMA and ComBlu will begin offering training and certificates for three levels of community management later this month. (Full disclosure – I recently joined The Community Roundtable, and while I haven’t been involved in this project, it probably goes without saying that I wouldn’t be a member if I didn’t think they were providing a valuable resource to the field of community management.)

It seems as though reactions to the new training program have been fairly mixed, at least within our own little bubble. Jeremiah Owyang and Connie Benson (who’s an instructor in the program) have some good posts about why this program matters, and what it is or isn’t setting out to accomplish. Without belaboring the point, there are a few things I want to add to the conversation here:

First, don’t worry about the certificate.

All due respect to everyone involved, but I think the certificate part of all this may end up being a bit of a red herring – what really matters is the training itself. Plus, I think certification implies a level of technical competence in a field that may not be as relevant for community management as it might be in other areas, especially on the web.

I also think fears that a certificate or some kind of formal certification will have a significant impact on the way community management positions get filled are probably unfounded – as anyone who’s hired a community manager can tell you, experience counts for a lot.

No really, you can teach empathy.

I won’t pretend my English degree qualifies me to dive into the nature vs. nurture debate, but I really was surprised by the “you can’t teach empathy or compassion” reaction to the idea of preparing people for a career in community management.

I’m not trying to be glib, but I honestly can’t think of that many people I would describe as completely devoid of empathy. Perhaps I’m grossly underestimating the number of sociopaths interested in a career in community management, but I think by and large, the first step to being a successful community manager is, you know, actually wanting to be a successful community manager. (Okay, maybe that was a little glib.) It’s by no means the only necessary skill or qualification, but it does strike me as a pretty important one.

In all seriousness, I think empathy is often a function of context, both in terms of setting and subject matter. Health is something I’m pretty passionate about, and I’ve spend a lot of time immersing myself in the world of patients and practitioners, attempting to understand the challenges they face here in the US, and around the world. That’s not something I knew anything about when I started working in this field as perfectly healthy 23 year old, but the more I learned about the challenges and obstacles people encountered in accessing and providing care, the easier it became to empathize with situations outside of my own personal experience.

So, yes, there is some basic kernel of empathy that you need to have in order to be able to say to yourself, “Wow, that must be hard,” but I’d like to believe that most of us do possess that, and if someone wants to activate it, and spends the time and energy identifying opportunities to exercise that skill, I really do think there’s a strong likelihood that they’ll succeed.

Why not help them learn how to identify those opportunities?

Speaking of which, let’s stop reinventing the wheel.

When I first heard about this program, I thought, “I really wish this had been around four years ago.” Many (if not most) of us who have been doing this work for a little while are largely self-taught community managers. We learned from our experiences and our failures, and from whatever we could find out there on the web from other community managers. If you were lucky (and I was very, very lucky) you may have had an opportunity to learn from managers, coworkers and employees who all had some experience in the field as well.

Here’s the thing about experiential learning, though – it’s invaluable and hard won, but it is hard won. And honestly? Not everything needs to be hard. Let’s help make it easier for people trying to figure out things like what metrics they’ll want to track, or the basics of social listening tools, or how to put together an editorial calendar that’s appropriate for their organization.

When you have to figure out–and advocate for–all these things on your own, it takes a lot longer to get them done. That’s time not being spent on your Someday list of to-dos and features.

Selfishly, I want to see more of what’s on that list for other community managers. In my mind, that’s the biggest potential for a program like the one The CR, WOMMA and ComBlu have put together: it can help all of us move forward as an industry. We all learn and benefit from innovative community solutions and creative implementation ideas – so let’s get more of them.

What’s next?

Clearly I’m a fan of the idea of “community management training” generally, but it’s worth pointing out that the syllabus for the WOMMA Community Specialist level is pretty impressive – it looks like three weeks of solid fundamentals from people who really know what they’re talking about.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see what’s covered in the Community Manager and Community Strategist levels and where things go from there, but on the whole I think training is something we should all be talking and thinking more about. As our communities and organizations grow, our community teams will need to grow with them, and how we build our own teams and mentor those new to the field matters: the success of our industry depends on us doing it well.

The past few months have been busy. Even when things haven’t been busy, they’ve felt busy, because that’s what starting a new job feels like. This summer I accepted a new position with an organization called GHDonline. GHDonline is focused on improving health care delivery through global collaboration and they have a large community of health care implementers from around the world who come to the site to exchange knowledge, information and resources to help patients and improve care. It seemed like the natural next step after nearly four years of building online communities over at WEGO Health, and while the transition hasn’t been easy, it’s been interesting, challenging, and actually pretty fun.

I won’t pretend to have it all figured out, and I’m sure each transition from one community to another has its own unique quirks and challenges, but I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned so far:

• It’s not all about you. The nicer version of saying this is: when you’re in transition, so is everyone else around you. Your old coworkers, your new coworkers, you old community members, your new community members…you get the idea. Everyone’s going to have an adjustment period, and I think trying to keep that top of mind as you leave a community, and get started somewhere else, can be pretty important. Be nice, be patient, be yourself.
• You’re going to make mistakes. Somehow, these mistakes will seemed more frustrating when during the transition period from one community to the next. I should know better, I thought. Maybe so, but how you handle the mistake is usually the most important part, so take a deep breath, get some good advice, and then figure out what to do about it. It’s easy to feel like the stakes are high in early interactions with new community members, new moderators and new team members, but that doesn’t mean those first emails and conversations will define your relationships completely.
• You know more than you think you do. Sure, every online community is different. We’re all unique and beautiful snowflakes. But most online communities face the same kinds of challenges – if they didn’t, how could we have such a great community of community managers? Some of these common bonds are pretty obvious, What kind of content and conversations are most interesting for members? How can we create richer engagement? How do we keep members coming back?  Other connections are harder to anticipate, but you’ll be surprised what jumps out at you, and what you didn’t realize you already knew.

I think what I’ve learned so far is most applicable for those who, like me, are going through this process for the first time, so I’d love to hear what other advice you would give to community managers getting ready to start up somewhere new?

Some things have changed since my last post back in July. If you could only see my draft folder, friends…

While I’ve got a couple of posts in mind that I want to get up here soon (community transitions, community metrics, and community managers & control are all rattling around in my brain right now), after the #cmgrchat a few weeks ago, and yesterday’s Facebook prompt from WEGO Health, I thought sharing a little bit about my new workspace would be a good way to get the blogging juices flowing again.

It’s a little blurry, but you can see the vitals:

• Laptop: portability is key. Also, now that I think about it, the last time I regularly used a desktop computer it was one of those old iMacs that had the handle on top of the monitor…Yes, it was exactly like Rory Gilmore’s. Don’t hate.
• Second monitor: absolutely necessary for all those metric-tracking spreadsheets, but also incredibly helpful for having immediate access to a steady stream of tweets throughout the day. Don’t worry, my new coworkers already tease me about this.
• Notepad: Yes! I am a big fan of pen and paper notes. It can be frustrating because I type so much faster than I can write, but I find the trade-off is worthwhile, particularly for in person meetings. Not having my laptop means fewer distractions, which does help keep me focused on the task at hand. I also don’t like the physical barrier the laptop creates between you and the other people you’re meeting with – I think it’s harder to connect when you’re sitting across from someone and there’s a big screen is in the way.
• Multiple coffee receptacles: Or, you know, maybe I’ll start drinking tea again one of these days. (Ha.) Sadly, the green tumbler is currently empty, but happily the black mug is now half full of espresso. Whee!
• Water bottle: Multiple coffee receptacles makes staying hydrated super important, right?

We just launched the beta version of our brand new video site: WEGOHealth.tv

WEGOHealth.tv is all about presenting the authentic voice of online community by sharing advice, information and wisdom from Health Activists.  I cannot even begin to describe how incredible it has been to work with our Health Activist Video Stars and to see their videos in the making.

While I’ve found all of the videos on WEGOHealth.tv inspiring, I thought I’d share on that has me tearing up, no matter how many times I watch it.

Click play to watch Breast Cancer Health Activists Alicia Staley, Casey Quinlan and Jamie Inman discuss WIRED and representations of breast cancer survivorship and mastectomies in popular culture:

I hope you’ll take a minute to check out our new site at www.wegohealth.tv – I’d love to hear what you think!

Are there specific health topics you’d like to see Health Activists address on WEGOHealth.tv?

This month’s WIRED starts off with a great little article, “Transparency for All”, about the open data movement that’s helped get government data out of the archives and into searchable internet databases.  (Link coming when the article is available online). The Sunlight Foundation is probably the most well known example (at least, here in the States), of what can be done with that data once it’s been made available to the public.

In the article, Jesse Lichtenstein highlights some other, and unfortunately less positive, examples of the open data movement’s results to date.  While the implicit goal in making all of this information publicly available is to “level the playing field” and allow everyone to benefit from this increasing knowledge base, Lichtenstein argues that open data initiatives have also exposed a growing “data divide.”

The data divide strikes me as the obvious next iteration of the digital divide - more information is not inherently more beneficial if that information cannot be used, or even accessed, by the people who need it most. Of course, Lichtenstein (and the image above) are talking about publicly available data – the kind of information collected by governments and public organizations.  Health Map is a great example of open data being used in the health space. (Bostonians and New Englanders might also enjoy Jonathan Dobres post “all about the weathah” that shows some other interesting things you can do with public data.)

What I see more of in the health blogs and communities I visit, however, is a push towards access to personal data. Amanda writes about some of the various aspects of this movement much more eloquently in “How Tech is Making Us More Efficient Health Activists” and Ergascientia offers a great example of what we can do with this kind of personal data – he’s used it to track his cigarette cravings as he quits smoking. In 13 Hours without a cigarette he graphs what his cravings looked like over time.  He’s got graphs for each day so far, as well as a post defining the scale he’s used to rate his cravings.

Of course, there are also entire online communities, like CureTogether and PatientsLikeMe, and countless apps, dedicated to helping patients manage their health conditions with thoughtful tracking and monitoring tools.

I’m a big believer in the idea of DIY-healthcare.  It empowers patients to partner with their physicians, and fully participate in their health care.  It’s your health, and no one else is going to do it for you, right?

I do wonder though, whether elements of this movement are only truly accessible to those of us among the “data elite.”

Even as we bridge the digital divide (and obviously there’s still a lot of work to be done there), we will still have to face the challenges of a data divide.  If you don’t know that you have a right to this information, or you don’t know how to translate the information you have into something meaningful, there’s only so much you can do. I hope that as we see more and more calls to “Gimme my damn data!“, we’ll also see more education for patients and their families about what that data can do for them, and how they can begin to make sense of it.

Are there resources out there to help patients increase their data-literacy? Where do you point people when they have questions about the open data movement, or their own health data?

Image courtesy of opensourceway on Flickr

Yesterday, while reading Richard Millington’s great post on how most online communities are designed for lurkers, I felt a familiar impulse: the knee-jerk reaction to come to the defense of lurkers.

I’m sure you all read Richard’s post too, and I think he makes a fantastic points – it’s easy, especially for new communities, to prioritize new members over active contributors. Most communities are optimized to get folks signed up. After that, it’s all up to your community team, and their strategy, for getting people truly involved.

Still, I’m a fan of lurkers.  Here’s why I think they matter, particularly for health communities:

1. Lurkers read. Vanessa DiMaura wrote a great article about this last January – lurkers are often “active readers”, and they see themselves as a part of the community even if you haven’t been counting them.  They’re loyal members of your site, have a stake in what you do, and see your content as relevant and valuable to their every day lives. In a community of patients or practitioners, providing information and conversation that helps members find support and solutions is often an important goal in and of itself, and lurkers help your community accomplish that.
2. Lurkers share. Whether they share your community’s content online in trackable ways, or they mention it in person, they’re spreading awareness of the topics your community is most passionate about.  When you’re writing about a misunderstood illness, or important new research for your disease, more eyes is a good thing – even if they don’t jump into the conversation right away (or at all).
3. Given the right opportunity, lurkers will engage. They’ve been reading your blog, or following your conversations, for a while now. They’re the long-time listeners who become first time callers. In online health communities, the ability to remain anonymous is often important. But if you add community polls, ways to like or vote up content that isn’t tied to a login, or other “low barrier” engagement tools to your site – more of your lurkers will be able to speak up.

Maybe I’m a fan of lurkers because it feels like rooting for the underdog, but I believe that lurkers are an important part of any online community.  Not everyone is ready to share their story right away, and many in the online health community describe the process of revealing their diagnosis and identity online as a coming out process – it’s a challenging decision, and there are very real risks.  But when lurkers become contributors, they can become some of strongest advocates for the community and it’s mission – they understand where their whole audience is coming from, not just the section of the crowd that speaks the loudest.

Image courtesy of gregthemayor on Flickr

A few recent Twitter chats have reminded me, however, that online communities are just one of many places that trolls set up shop.

During the ramp up to the #dearjohn campaign, Sady Doyle wrote up some fascinating ground rules for a social media campaign – lessons learned from her tireless work on #mooreandme. Her two major points? Stay on message, and don’t feed the trolls. (I have searched extensively in her tumblr archives for this post – damn, can that woman write! I can’t find a link though, so if you have on, let me know in the comments!)

Around the same time, Courney (@kirbybits) presented an astounding analysis of the blog comments she received after posting about her reasons for not attending PAX East this year. The data she presents is fascinating, and unbelievably disheartening.

At a recent industry Twitter chat, there was a lot of talk about trolls, and some speculation that users could potentially “hijack” the hashtag, causing embarrassment for the chat sponsor (@AstraZenecaUS) and preventing other players in highly regulated industries, like health-care, from trying “new” things.

While there were a few consumers who participated in that chat that clearly disagreed with AZ and seemed to have broader disagreements with pharma generally and direct-to-consumer advertising specifically, their messages didn’t seem to have a huge impact on the overall discussion.

After the chat had ended, however a few folks seemed to debate what exactly it meant to be a troll online, and whether these particular consumers who disagreed met the requirements. It got me thinking about what, exactly, those “requirements” might be. In a lot of ways, it’s like Justice Stewart’s definition of pornography – I know it when I see it.

But, having some objective guidelines are good too, right? After thinking it over a bit these past few weeks, I reached the following definition of troll-dom:

Trolls want nothing from you (or others in the community) beyond a reaction. They don’t want to compromise and nothing you say or do can win them over.

For me, the litmus test is to ask myself these two questions:

• What does this person want me to say?
• How do they want me to respond?

If the only answer I can imagine garnering a positive response is: “You’re absolutely right!” – I think it’s time to nip that conversation in the bud.  That’s the biggest indicator to me that someone (on or offline, actually) probably isn’t negotiating in good faith.

But, like I said, my experience with trolls has been (fortunately) limited – I’d love to hear from other bloggers, community managers and group leaders out there about how you define troll-ish behavior in your communities, and the most effective ways you’ve found to squash them!

While most of what I learned about community management came from, well, being a community manager, there are a few things that really helped me out along the way.

In (roughly) chronological order:

Having lawyers for parents - few things prepare a person for making logical, persuasive arguments better than a lifetime of practice debating with lawyers.  It sounds a bit silly, but I’ve realized that everything I learned from years of trying to convince my parents to let me take the car, or extend my curfew, were the same skills I use now in working with community members and companies looking to get involved in social media – anticipating concerns, seeing multiple sides of a situation and proving yourself to be a trustworthy mediator are all important tools in the community manager’s kit.

Wearing an apron to work – Most community managers I’ve met have had some prior experience with customer service.  Mine was working “rush” at a college bookstore.  I had the apron, the nametag, and a whole slew of people angry at me personally for denying their requests to return books without receipts. Turns out, working in a customer service role is always an adventure – and that’s true whether you’re talking to people face to face, over the phone, via email, or on Twitter.

Studying English in college – Spending four years answering the question, “What are you going to do with that? Teach?” wasn’t a blast – but over the past three years, I’ve been consistently surprised by how relevant my degree has been to working as a community manager. On the most basic level, four years of writing essays is pretty good practice for finding an effective written communication style.  But one of the most important things I learned as an English major were the analytical skills necessary for close reading: identifying key themes and making connections between texts, authors, and different time periods.  As a community manager, I’m still reading closely, it’s just that now I’m looking for common themes and conversations about specific health topics, or for connections between different health communities.

Of course, there’s nothing like learning by doing, but it never hurts to have a good foundation to build on.

I’d love to hear from other community managers out there – what do you think best prepared you for this role?

See, I’m a Navy brat. And, like a lot of Navy brats my age, my father spent a decent portion of my early childhood years in the Middle East during the first Gulf War. Since those aren’t exactly the kinds of tours you can bring a young family along for, my mom, older sister and I remained state-side. Needless to say, as a working, essentially single-mom, my mother didn’t have a lot of time on her hands for things like bike lessons.

Still, bike riding abilities aside, I like to think I turned out okay. And I’d be a fool to think my parents didn’t have everything to do with that.

My father attended the Academy during Vietnam and was in the Navy for… well, however long they let you be in the Navy.  Despite retiring from active duty over ten years ago, he’s continued to find ways to serve the men and women in the armed forces in his day to day life.

His service has shaped our family in such a way that I truly cannot imagine what life would be like without it.

I’m grateful to my father for so many things, but on Veteran’s Day in particular, I’m grateful for his service to our country and to those that continue to serve.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that to be a military wife is no easy thing – I’m grateful to my mother, a Navy ROTC member herself, who always found a way to make that life our own.

While my father is my favorite veteran, I believe that all servicemen and women deserve our thanks and support today.

I’d encourage you to visit returnthefavor.org to find ways that you can do just that. If you’re able, please join me in making a donation to the VFW Foundation and help them reach their goal of $111,000 for November.  You can donate here.