Yes, @craigconstantine. This does make it much more clear.
Did I miss reading something when I joined so that I didn’t catch the who’s it for from the beginning?
There’s a lot of public content here, so people “arrive” in all sorts of places. Some people simply read, and leave.
Some people—such as yourself—want to engage more, so they create an account in order to log in. Doing that is meant to be minimally intrusive—you create, log in, and continue exactly whatever-it-was that you were trying to do, when you decided to create an account.
Some people decide to become supporting members, and the process is similar. They can hit the link to “subscribe” from many different places.
You’re asking about some “signage” that people would see before taking those steps. That signage is placed as prominently as possible under “Who’s it for?” and “Tour” up on the header. And there are links to things like the “Site map”, “What’s inside for our members”, and “Our culture” scattered about.
I’m always interested in making everyone’s “on boarding” experience better though, so if you have a specific suggestion, I’m all ears. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Perhaps PodComm Journal channel.
Ok, I’ve created a Supporting Members only space for this, #journals
@DannyvLHealthHats I’ve moved your two “dailies” that you posted in this topic, over to that new area.
Everyone, please reply asap if you have any other comments about this. I’ll let this topic (the discussion of making the new thing) auto-close in a few days.
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This topic was automatically closed 3 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
Here are my notes. I grouped conversational notes to make it a little easier to follow. Brainstorm conversations always follow a logical path, not necessarily a straight line.
I learned a lot through this process. Thank you 
KEYWORDS
I felt it important to share keywords that ran throughout the video conversation: people, dailies, group, community, supporting, imagining, thinking, create.
These words set a tone for this space, how this experiential space would feel. The following recaps, perspectives for creating the category [container] for this space:
PURPOSE
We want to support people doing 60-second type podcasting, straight-up podcasting stuff. And we want to be able to support people who want to do things like dailies. It is a place where if you are practicing writing - share something in writing. If you’re practicing podcasting - share an audio. It is a place to practice, to learn in a community.
DISCOURSE
Discourse, the platform supports seeing, creating, and replying. There are basic controls around who can see contribution, who can use discourse, who can start a new topic. And participate in giving feedback, responding to it, and replying to the questions and work of others.
AUDIENCE
It should be for supporters, being mindful that complexity and noise have a negative connotation. When posting in public, it’s easy to turn off notifications. Potential contributors are moving over from Forward Link, a non-public post-workshop space to keep the conversation, the learning going.
FORWARD LINK [DAILIES]
Doing dailies is a reason to keep coming back to Forward Link. There is value. The thing that keeps you coming back is the commitment you made. Calling posting dailies puts the thought in your brain. Do something daily. It’s showing up consistently. Post something, answer some prompt, support a colleague, try something different. It’s the obvious intention. Even if you can’t always do something daily, it’s no big deal. The purpose is so crystal clear.
The one thing that makes the dailies work, the feeling it is safe to put something out into the community. Safety comes from knowing the people who signed up, paid for the workshop. There is a commitment. Akimbo creates the safe space amazingly well.
If anybody can see what you post without any restriction, a mental barrier surfaces as to what you can put on a page. It’s freeing to know nobody’s going to care what you post out. They will be generous about what they see and what they think of it.
Another element of the Forward Link dailies that worked well was tagging another person’s work. There are options for how to manage tags. If you mentioned somebody by username, the system would send them a notification to see what you’re working on.
What makes cohort, courses, and Akimbo great is there are just enough coaches and support individuals to keep track of the people. Everyone knows what they are doing; it’s a very micro group.
PODCAST IDEA [DAILIES]
The original idea was that dailies would be visible to everyone. Anyone could see the work. However, have restrictions on creating new topics. You would be committed to the community. A concern, humans will not be able to keep up with what’s going on.
The major thing, you joined a community where you can reply to questions, share work in a dedicated community. A place where you go first. A place to create your dailies in whatever form is relevant to you and your work and start interacting with people. There’s a default path where you can post something every day.
It’s a place for those still in the dreaming stage of podcasting, learning how to podcast, and interested in being around people who are doing the same. A broader community space for those who are podcasting prolifically, those who are just coming in, and those who are just interested.
LOGISTICS
Who would you want to engage with? Randos, who might find the community? Or do you only want to engage with people who have paid? Who can see your daily posting, and who can engage with you?
Or there could be an option to select somebody who isn’t a supporting member. For example, a famous podcaster may want to participate in somebody’s notebook. They would then be added to a specific user group with controls around who can see, create, and reply - creating an inner hedge wall. You have to ask before you can go over the wall. This hedge wall would be a hidden category unless a supporting member asked to use it. You could rally other people to join you in this type of group to access other notebooks - an exciting thought.
Being inside the paywall would set an upper limit on inside membership. It ultimately could become invitation-only. You need to be active in the community to connect and find somebody to send you an invitation. Otherwise, it will be too busy. There will be micro-groups of 3-4 people for active topics. They are going somewhere with what they want to write and the podcasts they record. If you are producing something spectacular that you would like to publish, cut and paste and post publicly.
There are many options. We could set it up when you mentioned somebody by username, and the system would then send a notification so they can see the thing you are working on.
There are hidden categories such as staff areas that are blocked. You receive an error message when the link is clicked. All supporting members can see the category. When a member is mentioned by name, the system sends a notification. If you mention a random user, a non-paying member, it won’t notify them.
We could also set the category so that supporting members can see it instead of requiring them to join a group before seeing the category.
GROUPS
Dailies [or whatever we call it] is a space to practice and build something. It can be a category a home for these topic types and restricted to a particular group. Group membership can be restricted further as necessary. When you would like to join this group, you send a request. Your supporting member, you would be allowed to join the group.
Groups are super easy, and we can always make more groups. Like three people working on a book, others doing host on mic, others are doing interviews. There could be a group for each, and then you could tag each other as needed. We could use groups in combination with a dedicated category.
People could also use a group allowing supporting members to receive notifications or leave the group. This flexibility keeps people engaged with you and will go with you on your journey.
Putting it all under a category is important for adjusting notifications. We need to make sure supporting members have options to go on mute. Members can also mute individuals.
It will work well to have a group in the mix.
COHORTS
We can also have cohorts that align with Akimbo POD or other workshops. There are probably 20 or 30 courses. There’s no reason why we couldn’t make an altMBA 45 group. You could tag friends you know from other courses.
Group lists are a way to see if your cohorts from other courses are in the community. It’s a great way to give people additional tags. It would feel like how people used the homeroom or bird group tags.
Another thought, shake things up once a quarter. Find a way to shuffle people into new groups randomly. Every three months, you set an expectation; the system will put you in a new category, group. There would need to be an announcement; click here to see your groups and see where you are now. Or if you are so motivated, you can move between groups on your own. Random shuffling could expand community engagement. It will not be for everyone. It could gradually move people away from the Akimbo structure into the broader podcaster community.
NAVIGATING FRAMEWORK
The idea is you always start with a default group. A group you always know, you can tag your cohort. You’re likely to get some level of engagement, ownership. It gives you a place to start by default, a default tag. It helps you start reaching out to people and reading their work. If there is no place to start from, there will be a tendency to avoid reaching out and tagging someone.
There is a challenge with getting used to the system. It is one of the critical challenges in the podcaster community; there isn’t a cohort cycle.
There is no course, no homeroom. How do people self assemble? You can’t jam them into groups and not have the option to exit. And from Akimbo learning, it doesn’t work well when you randomly ask people to join a group.
If people want to use journals, notebooks, 60 seconds, dailies, whatever, this group’s name, then you know it’s safe. You can feel comfortable messaging that group because people have opted in and can exit easily.
It also is a way to lower the nervousness of using the features. You can feel more comfortable tagging 20 people without worrying. Somebody will generously respond.
ONBOARDING
Set the community up for growth with random half-hour calls with Craig. Encouraging new supporting members and people who connect with Craig learn why people join the community and better help them navigate to connect with others they may know, new groups, topics of interest to get them started in the right direction. Or are we making the problem worse by inventing more ways for people to use the platform?
It’s not moving from point A to point B cohort. We all go together. There needs to be a more important conversation about onboarding as the community grows. For now, onboarding will be managed by hand. As it gets bigger, we will need a team of volunteer greeters.
SUMMARY
A lot of good discussion on this call: creating groups, ways to use groups, ways to keep this new journals, notebooks, dailies thing, all in a right way. It has to be a managed safe space; to keep it from becoming a noisy cocktail party in the next room. It needs to be easy for people to engage, to want to engage, not disengage.
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