Leveraging Social Software for Social Networking and Community Development at Events

Shelly D. Farnham, Ph.D. Founder, Research ConsultantWaggle Labs / PathableCommunities and Technologies, 2009

Partners and coauthors: Peter T. Brown, Jordan Schwartz

Core Problem

People go to events to meet others

Professional events are increasingly technology enabled

How to best leverage advances in social software to improve face-to-face networking at professional events

Agenda

Background Pathable Questionnaire field study Lessons learned over 17 deployments at

events

Why Professional Networking Matters “networking is an important career management strategy in the era of the boundaryless careers [6, p. 283].”

Forret and Dougherty (2001)

Increases access to valuable information, resources and opportunities – in other words increases social capital

Correlated with finding jobs, promotions, salary

Professional Networking Online Access to people over time, over distance, all at once Increased access to diverse and weak social ties

62% of employed Americans “networked” workers 73% of managers/professional use Internet or email

constantly or several times a day 35% of “networked” workers use online networks

Pew Internet and American Life

150 million in online networks, 15 million on LinkedIn

Social Networking at Events World wide over 1.2 million professional events

each year, adding up to a hundred billion dollar industry

Why? Learning Meeting people!

Forming connections with clients and colleagues Face-to-face for developing trust face-to-face for informal idea and knowledge sharing via

conversation

Building Community at Events In early interviews with conference organizers,

they listed building community as a primary goal

Why do event attendees and event hosts at professional events care about building community?

What is Community

"I define "community" as networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity.”

– Barry Wellman (2001)

Cupcake Society

Why do event attendees care about community?

Sure!

Hey, I’m a member of

the Cupcake Society

too!

Can I borrow some sugar?

Sure!

Take my

recipe, too!

Community groups enable transitive relationships Powerfully increase social capital through simple act of joining

community Communities of practice: group of people interested in content

domain, shared practices increase effectiveness of members

Designing Pathable: Leveraging Social Media for Face to Face Professional Social Networking

Whom do I most want to meet, in the limited time available to me?

How do I meet them? How do we become a “social tie”? How do we become a community?

Who is here? Who do I want to meet?

So

cial Netw

orks

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blogger

social technology

Creating Semantic Layer to Social Space

Our Approach: minimal profiles, based on tagging

Add tags or keywords to self E.g. “research, social computing, art”

Optimize design for converging on terms Across people, important terms emerge Tags used as search and browse pivots Tags used as conversation groups Clustering, abstraction, and match-making based on

co-occurrence

Tagging provides semantic layer to social space!

Early Exploration at Seattle Mind Camp 3

75 people provided tags for self, organization, related people, related events

Pathable Community and

social networking tools for conferences

Community Dashboard

Profiles Attendee directory Match-making Messaging Feeds (blog,

twitter) Wiki Schedule

Attendee Directory

Profile

Edit Profile

Host Manager -- Dashboard

Host Manager -- Attendees

Face to Face Integration Using existing technologies:

Mobile Badges Printable calendar Visualization

Personalized Badge

Match-making Best matches possible, with minimal effort in

profiles Based on predictors of successful matches:

Common interests Same roles

Job title Host provided categories

Co-location By geography By events

Existing shared groups and communities Weighted sum to produce ordered list

Design Themes The event host is a connector and community

moderator Coauthor profiles Communication broker, event defining access

Social tags are used as pivots of awareness, connection, and communication

Professional match matching based on tags for improved people finding

Incorporate communication back channels Face to face integration

Related Work Crowdvine, Eventvue

Online networks for events, less emphasis on face to face integration, no recommendations

IntroNetworks Online network for event, recommendations, extremely heavy

weight Ntag, Spotme

Mobile devices, expensive, no pre- and post- online network Proactive displays, e.g. Neighborhood Window

Expensive equipment, required proximity to screen Pathable:

Online directory/community, host as community moderator Online and face to face integration, for pre- during and post-

networking Practical, inexpensive, using day-to-day technologies

BarCamp Seattle Questionnaire Study Research questions:

how important is social networking and community development at events

can Pathable help? Procedure:

BarCamp Seattle is a free, two-day conference held for people in Web 2.0

280 people registered for the event using Pathable 78 people total (76% male and 24% female) completed the

questionnaire, 18 at the event and 60 afterwards online

Self-report Measurements Networking behaviors

Goal in coming to event How many new people met Number of friends and colleagues Perceived professional social support received from people at event

Pathable usage Psychological sense of community [Wilkinson, 2007]

adapted for events “A feeling of fellowship runs deep between me and others at BarCamp” “I feel loyal to the people at BarCamp” “My friendships and associations with others at BarCamp mean a lot”

Event attachment Satisfaction with event

Measurement Cont’d Event attachment

Adapted from Rosenbaum et al. study of a suburban diner People who experienced social support and community through

diner, developed place attachment – bond between person and place

Expected similar transfer of affect for events:

Three factors: dependency, commitment, identification

Sense of Community

Place Attachment

Sense of Community

Event Attachment

Primary Goal in Coming to Event

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Have Fun Be Inspired Learn Meet Others

Primary Goals in Coming to Event

Per

cent

People Came to BarCamp Primarily to Network, and then to Learn

Correlations between Event Features and Intention to Return Will Come Back

Event Feature Next Year

Years to Come

r

r

Number of people met .26 .12

Professional friends at event .31 .01

Satisfaction with sessions .63 .59

Satisfaction with conversations .80 .62

Professional suport .41 .39

Sense of community .44 .78

Event attachment

dependency .62 .73

commitment .67 .79

identificaiton .31 .49

Bolded items are statistically significant at p < .05.

Sense of community and event attachment highly correlation r = .81

Pathable Usage Everyone registered through Pathable, about half actively used the system

60% actively browsed directory 47% actively browsed messages 19% actively sent messages 43% intended to use directory after event 55% intended to use communication features after event

If they said they came to event only to learn, less likely to use Pathable (t = 2.6, p < .02)

The higher the usage, the more they said it helped them meet people (r = .65, p < .001)

No correlation between usage and count of people met Usage correlated with count of professional friends at event (r = .36, p < .01)

**percentages for those who indicated at least somewhat or quite a bit

Impact on Professional Network

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

low high

Impact of Pathable on Size of Network

Num

ber o

f pr

ofes

sion

alfr

iend

s at

eve

nt

Pathable Usage

Impact on Attachment and Sense of Community

2

3

4

5

6

Event Attachment (Ident) Sense of Community

Low

High

PathableUsage:

Impact of Pathable Usage

Rat

ing

on L

iker

tSc

ale

Impact of Usage by Feature

Pathable helped attendees meet others the more they browsed the attendee directory

(r = .37, p < .005) the more they browsed attendee messages

(r = .43, p < .005) the more they sent messages

(r =.54, p < .005) the more they used the match-making feature (r = .66, p < .005)

Lessons Learned Across Events Seventeen deployments over five months

Evening mixers One to three day conferences

Review of what worked, what did not

Figure 9. Life cycle of Pathable activity before, during and after event

Life Cycle of a Pathable-enabled Event Gnomedex

Can create an active community with minimal effort

Two emails Seeded initial

profiles Seeded

conversations

Adoption Rates

Higher for conferences vs. mixers

Higher for smaller events (200-600 vs. 2000)

Higher if seamless with registration 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Mixer Conference

Perc

ent o

f A

tten

dees

who

Pos

ted

Prof

ile

Type of Event

Most Attendees Will Post their Profile in Pathable Directory

Pathable Group Messages

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Mixer Conference

Type of Event

Ave

rage

Mes

sage

s R

ecei

ved

People Converse More in Pathable for Conferences than Mixers

Searching Attendee Directory

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

private public

Event Directory Setting

Search in Event Directory is Most Well Used Feature

Sear

ches

Per P

erso

n in

Dir

ecto

ry

Average total number of directory searches per event: 6882

Seeding the Community Ensure the community feels full from the start Model the desired behavior

Invite the organizers, speakers, volunteers to complete a profile first

Author the speaker/high status profiles Seed representative tags Seed type of conversation hoped for Send personal invitations

Leveraging Match-making Features Nurturing tags

Use badges Use color coded categories

Provides overview Easy point of conversation Examples

Job types: developer, designer, marketer

Interests: blogging, podcasting, and mobile

Person types: creative vs. geek

Personality: introvert, extrovert Integrate with face to face

Introductions Birds of a feather meetings

People Loved Badges

and blogged about them!

Conclusions Networking and community development primary goal Professional networking and sense of community strong

predictors of event satisfaction, event attachment, and intention to return

Pathable helped Features helped attendees meet others, especially use of match-making

feature Usage had positive impact on sense of community, event attachment

It is quality, not quantity, that matters counts of people met had little impact on satisfaction quality of conversation, usage of matching-making tool, and count

of professional connections had an impact

Issues Requirements for success of Pathable

Event organizers must actively adopt role of community organizers

Important to seed community profiles and conversation Important to have seamless integration with registration system Event duration must be long enough, and desire to meet others

strong enough to motivate people to complete profiles Study issues

Correlation is not causation Perhaps people with stronger sense of community more likely to use Pathable Did find usage is correlated with desire to meet new people, and users

reported it helped them meet new people Generalizability to other types of events

Features Tagging still a new idea for many people Profile fatigue

Next Steps

Personalized scheduling

Twitter integration

Matching based on complementary interests

Custom profile questions

Twitter