Nikolaj Lykke Nielsen's Profile

Professor Warwick (who incidentally has a device implanted in his left arm that enables his nervous system to be connected to a computer) and his colleague Ben Whalley from the School of Pharmacy recently created a robot that is controlled by cultured rat neurons. The next step in their research is to use a human neuron cell line, a type of “wetware.”

As reported in New Scientist, some 300,000 rat neurons grown in a nutrient broth and producing spikes of electrical activity were connected to the output of a small robot's distance sensors. The neurons proved capable of steering the robot around an enclosure. Here’s the New Scientist video of the robot courtesy of the University of Reading:

What do you see on the horizon for online communities in the next 12-18 months.

We will also see more and more social features creeping into corporate communities. Friending people, joining groups, status messages and other social features have been more popular on sites like Facebook; however, we will start to see more companies embracing these features that put the focus on the people in their community.

Q: What role do you feel online communities play for businesses, in the context of the current economic environment?



A: Online communities provide not only a great way to answer to business and product relegated questions, but also provides the camaraderie that every entrepreneur can benefit from (and that most small business owners seek). Starting a small business is a tough and sometimes lonely task. You are out there alone trying to get funding, trying to build a team, trying to find new business partners, etc. Starting a company is a lonely business.



Places like the Intuit Online Community provide a place to share, learn and interact with others. All of this is especially important during these challenging economic times when entrepreneurs feel as if they are on their own. The Intuit Community is a place to connect with other small business owners.

Q: Many community teams are struggling with which metrics to measure to assess the health of their community, as well as to quantify and qualify value back to the organization. Can you share your guidance on metrics, and any thoughts you might have on the importance (or lack of) for proving "ROI"?



Wow, I could write a novel on this subject. In my opinion, there is nothing more important than having clear goals and measures to evaluate the success of those goals. I propose there are three main groups of measures you should be reviewing weekly (for the community manager) and monthly for the “Stakeholders”. (Stakeholders include your management team as well as management from any other groups that are involved in the funding, benefits, or strategy of the community) Here are my groups and a description of what they include.

1. Business Measures: These show how you directly move business measures via your work. These HAVE TO BE specific to your company. There is no one size fits all for discovering these measures. Let me explain. For example: A support forum allows questions and answers. The metric might be “answered posts” and “views of answered posts”, but neither of these is the metric the business follows. To be a good business measure, it needs to be in the business terms (is it on one of the business scorecards?). In this example you would gain agreement that one answered question = one call avoided into the support call center. You might then decide that 1% of all views of the answered content is also considered one call avoided. This would give you a number of calls avoided per week/month/quarter/year. That is the level these metrics need to go to be relevant to the business stakeholders.

2. Community Health Measures: This group generally shows the activity on the site. These include the common measures of new registrations, posts, page views, visits, unique visitors, search data and sentiment. In these measures you are looking for trends and the actions that drive activity. For example… if you had a very high month… was it because you had a brilliant new product released or because your brilliant new product had a huge flaw that made people angry? You must understand the causes of change for these measures to have true value.

3. User Behavior Reports: In order to truly understand and connect with the community, you need to know what the behaviors are and when they change. For example, you know that John has been a power user for the past year posting 5 answers a week. For the past 3 weeks, you have not seen John. This should be a huge red flag for you to reach out and check on John. A truly gifted community manager will notice these things. It enables you to thank those that go above and beyond and bring back those that might be disillusioned.

Q: Lastly, any advice for those interested in becoming a community manager?



This is a fantastic and dynamic field! I think the rules are still being made and it changes almost daily! For this and many other reasons, I recommend this field to others often. I have found that those that come into this field from a passion for customers and for improving business do much better than those that come with a campaign mentality. Here are a couple of lessons learned to consider:

1. Learn from many sources: Books, websites, benchmarking and certainly talking with those that have done this before.

2. Don’t believe anyone that says there is a one size fits all answer for community. No such thing.

3. Start by joining communities and observing. What works? What doesn’t? Your observations as a user are great data for your gig as a Community Manager.

4. Drive your organization to CLEAR goals before beginning anything.

5. Build a strong relationship with your community and then when you make mistakes, they will forgive you.

6. Get to know your users as people (goes with above).

7. Never overpromise to either your Stakeholders or your Community. It breaks trust.

8. Keep one eye on the new tools, but don’t get caught up with a shiny object when a tried and true forum for example would do better for your goal.

9. Don’t be afraid to learn as you go.

10. And the most important… Don’t ever over sell your abilities. I have met several people that make their resume sound like they know/have done more than they have.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about the strategy behind BusinessWeek's Business Exchange? What are you trying to accomplish?



Start with the tenet that in business, as elsewhere, knowledge equals power, and emphasize that relevance is vital. Acknowledge the fact that important information is not limited to any one site (or even one’s own site of reputable and knowledgeable writers and editors). Recognize that there is no more precious resource to a business person than time. And then inject the formidable power of social media to amplify and organize all of these factors.

People ask me, “Is Business Exchange a content aggregator or a social network?” My answer is, “Yes.” Certainly, Business Exchange (“BX”) is a site that aggregates business information in the form of articles, blog posts, reference items and jobs organized by topic. But, we do not impose our idea of what those topics should be – our users suggest business oriented topics (currently 1,600+) that are of interest to them thereby creating a topic folksonomy.

Q: What were the most challenging lessons you learned during your first 90 days on the job?



I am now well over two years in the job and I continue to learn new things, and new challenges emerge pretty much weekly. But I have to say that in the first 90 days I realized that there was no guide book on how to do this and that trial and error was a major part of finding success. So I would say that coming to terms with that was a bit tough, especially since I have always known how to do my job and do it well. This was new territory because there are so many aspects of community management that you simply do not control. I wanted to see membership take off, and by many standards it did but I wanted it to happen more quickly. It’s very challenging to sit back and wait for others to act. You are depending on people to make your project a success and they are not on your payroll. It requires a different mindset. Once I really understood that, I was able to chart a course of action.

Q: What 3 pieces of advice would you give to those considering Community Management as a career?



1. You must have a thick skin. If you cannot walk away from derisive comments and constant, sometimes unwarranted criticism, you cannot do this job in the way it needs to be done.



2. Study the craft. It is important to learn from others and pay close attention to the developments in this space.



3. Be prepared for change. This is a position that means different things within different organizations and your responsibilities may ebb and flow.