.Dogster at CommunityNext Conference
John, Steven and I spent Saturday on Stanford’s campus at the CommunityNext conference which was an exceptionally well spent day.
We were asked us to convey the Dogster, Inc. story. We tried to sum up 3 years in 25 minutes, so we got right to the heart of what really mattered to us and what we think would matter to anyone doing something similar. It was to a packed house and the reviews were quite favorable.
You can download all our slides. They’re licensed under a Creative Commons agreement
- »PDF version suitable for downloading. (3.5 Mb)
- »Flash version for web viewing. (6 Mb Opens in new window)
The overall impression we got from the gathering is that we’re no longer a lone voice championing the merits of letting your community define what your service should be. We heard it again and again from Threadless, SuicideGirls, Fred Stutzman, even Heather Lutrell, the president of the advertising network IndieClick finds the best sites to connect their advertisers with are those that put their community first. We also got to spend some deep conversation time with amazing people, Biz Stone (twitter), Brian Oberkirch (like it matters), Eric Marcouillier (mybloglog), Markus Frind (plentyoffish.com, (he’s also our newest hero), Heather Champ (JPG), Scott Beale, (LaughingSquid), He-man Shah (Crazyegg), Mike Jones (Userplane), and CommunityNext organizer Noah Kagan.
[Photos courtesy of Scott Beale / Laughing Squid]
Congrats on the fine presentation. You showed how to do it right. And community guidelines tells people what kind of experience they may enjoy!
Thank you guys so much for kicking ass on your presentation. You guys really helped make this event bad ass from the start. I remember just playing around with that empty wiki months ago. Hard to believe we finally did it. Tears, yearbook signatures and all the best=)
Noah
[...] Dogster’s Presentation at Community Next is terrific and in it they talk about “helping users achieve their goals rather than co-opting them to further your own.” I paraphrase, but that’s the gist of it. I couldn’t agree more. The presentation is excellent and highly recommended if you believe community is important. [...]