LIFT community

We were 18 Wednesday to brainstorm on how to keep the Lift community alive and vibrant between conferences.

Here are a few of the networks Lifters are part of:
Lift, facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, SutidVZ, Twitter, Barcamp, Flickr, Dopplr, Rhizkom, Amazon, YouTube, 12seconds, JPGMag, Delicious, whitehouse.gov, Mixin, Internations, Rezonance, Nettime, Kiva, Net Impact, ASW, TED, Coach surfing, Lift Entrepreneur Group, Imaginary Serial Entrepreneur Club, Aha, Geocaching, coworking, professional associations, research communities, IFIP, family, Geneva Genealogy, teacher-parent associations, university alumni associations, sport associations...

What draws people to participate in a community? Value.
Content, shared needs, shared interests, selling, pitching, projects, meeting, match making. Belonging.

So, no silver bullet, but here's the idea:

Each member can sign up for a number of tags/interests and set alert levels (daily, monthly). Anyone can post an idea, a project, a question on the Lift blog, identified by tags. All members who signed-up for one of those tags will be alerted based on their preferences. They will then go on the Lift sit knowing there is something of interest and can take part in the conversation.

In parallel, Lifters can/will organize themed Baby Lift meet ups in their home towns. Getting people to talk and share. Geneva is an easy one, but it is up to the locals to get things going. These events will be announced and tagged so that Lifters can be alerted.

In addition, we need to improve the web site. notably through a search engine. Members need to be able find each other and information in a easier way.

What do you think? Any other ideas? Contact me!
We will keep you posted on what happens.

Beth Krasna, LIFT06 speaker and member of the LIFT advisory board will be presenting « a framework for new business models » on June 18 at the FER for the 10 years of Rezonance in Geneva. Find out more about this event here.
More information about Beth’s fascinating work on her blog.