"We don’t know how get people excited about this abstract idea."
"We don’t know why women aren’t applying."
"We threw a meetup but no one came."
"I didn’t deserve to be there."
I hear these complaints all the time.
They are signs your community needs to refactor. Building (or patching up) your community requires thoughtful and strategic design. Successful communities have asked themselves:
- How do we invite people to participate?
- How do we design for folks to feel welcome?
- How do we build opportunities for people to connect and share?
- How do prompt folks to personalize the community to meet their needs and contexts?
- How do we empower individuals to carry the mission forward?
That is community design.
Hi, I’m Vanessa. My mission is to build healthy communities that last—on the web, in the office, and informal settings too. As a learning designer, researcher, and community-builder, my process breaks down into the following steps:
My Street Cred:
- As the Learning Lead for Peer 2 Peer University, we’ve developed some of the healthiest learning communities on the web, including Play With Your Music and Badges for Lifelong Learning.
- My projects have been featured on Lifehacker, the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- I’ve worked with and designed communities for littleBits, Mozilla, MIT, Creative Commons and the Open Knowledge Foundation.
- I frequently write and speak on learning design and community at spots like Confab, Kickstarter, the New School and the MacArthur Foundation.
- My Master’s degree is in Educational Technology from Harvard University, and I’m a former Research Intern at the MIT Media Lab in motivation and engagement.
- You can find a full .
Who is community design for?
- Folks designing conferences, events and meetups
- Organizations who want to build diverse teams
- Community managers who are looking to build healthy communities
- Product people who need help with community design