Using a Knowledge Marketplace and Ideas factory to generate community activities. - Michael Norton

I’ve used a Knowledge Management technique called a Marketplace to help at the start of building communities in the past.

Using two simple questions.

• What they want from the community
• What can they offer the community

This normally helps identify the topics of interest to the group and what they already know.  Allowing you to create some quick wins and match people and the knowledge up and share this to the wider community.  Giving the group a great kick-start.

So taking this idea to a more established community I combined the marketplace exercise with an Ideas factory tool.  (A tool that allows members to vote and comment on the idea)

At the end of 2013 I sat down and asked the members of the community what they would like to do for the next 12 months.  Using the Knowledge Marketplace technique originally in a forum I asked members what they could offer and what they wanted from the community.

This resulted in a considerable number of want and offers which we then took into a wiki and started to theme them.  This gave us 9 activities to work towards from the year.  And importantly members who would like to help out.

These 9 activities where added to the Ideas factory and members were asked to vote on the priority of these activities.

We have only completed 5 activities out of the 9 so far.  Most of these have been led by members of the community.

Two webinars sharing their experience on a particular topic an online walkthrough, an online chat and the creation of an editable flyer that everyone can use.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the other activities come together.