A callout to the silent members/readers of PMC

Rami,

Since you asked me to put my "thinking cap" on, here’s an idea that could bring in new participants.

Create a program called “Project Management Central – Topical Events.” These events would be advertised through PM.com e-mail campaigns and would be scheduled discussions on specific themes (e.g., Domain knowledge) that would be open for a limited time frame (e.g., one day to a week).

The Discussion group would show up under the current Discussions page:

- Project Management Central
- Project Management Central Topical Event – Domain Knowledge (closes on m/d/y)
- …..

The campaign would tout specific discussions that would be occurring in the themed event, along with the experts that would be participating. These discussions would be pre-created pinned “Topics” in the discussion group. The participants would also be able to create their own topics, no differently then we do now in PMC. There would be a “please read me” pinned topic that would describe the event and the rules for contributing. Part of the message will be an invitation to participate in general discussions on PMC as well. After the event is over, it would be locked and archived for reference under discussions.

The beauty of this type of approach is that it leverages existing feature/functionality within PM.com (to my understanding), not requiring additional development. Although it would be advantageous to have new dynamic features, we could expand the horizons of PMC with the current foundation.

Okay, “thinking cap” has been turned off.

Luis -

Unfortunately we seem to have three camps of community members:

1. The silent majority
2. The few who do contribute but minimally (e.g. "Thanks for sharing")
3. The fewer still who actively, regularly contribute - whether through blogging, starting discussion threads, or responding to discussion threads

While those of us in #3 might increase our participation, we are hitting the law of diminishing returns.

It would be better to try to convert some of those in the #1 camp into the #3 camp.

Kiron

Dear Kiron

Interesting your reflection

In your opinion how can we convert some of those in the # 1 and # 2 camp into the # 3 camp?

I totally agree with you Kiron, we are really hitting the law of diminishing return.

Luis -

I'm not too concerned about the #2 camp - they know who they are, and there are few enough of them that it wouldn't result in any significant growth in the actively contributing pool for them to switch over.

The #1 camp is the one worth focusing on. I think it needs to start with understanding why they choose not to participate more actively. Is it a question of unconscious exclusion or just a lack of perceived value?

I don't buy the argument that it's not enough time as most folks have sufficient time to actively participate in some online communities so it feels like more of a prioritization decision than a time management one.

Kiron

George

That's a goof suggestion and I believe they started incorporating a similar approach on this platform called "Hot Topics".

However, while this is a very good suggestion, I see it increasing participation but I don't anticipate it will attract new members. At least this is my point of view.

RK