Top tips for engaging online communities

From the Press Association PR & Communications Newlsetter today:

1. The trick isn't a trick - be useful, or be helpful or fun. These tools are incredibly powerful, but they are not another way to shout at people

2. Listen and respond

3. Be honest and be human

4. When dealing with a crisis: listen to what is being said collectively, formalise that into a list of questions and answers, put it online and point people to it

5. Empower individuals to be individuals within the umbrella of your brand/organisation

6. Try to create a safe space for people to learn that behaviour, an internal wiki or something similar

7. Support people and review your policies regularly

8. Talk to people they will help you

9. Never drink and tweet!

10. Don't be scared

May you negotiate peacefully the intricacies of being online!

in the Golden Pavillion garden, Kyoto Japan, 1967

Trending oilelefant.com, Part IV

Slideshare traffic figures show the same trend as web traffic figures posted before: monthly readership (calculated as total reads over months posted) increase from my previous papers, through Interactive Net Mapping business processes, to those on the web and social media.

The power of context, Part V

The tropical storm threatening the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) oilspill cleanup shows up very well in Google Earth (download GE here) by simply using:

• EPA's Deepwater Horizon - Gulf Spill Response KML shown previously
• Google Earth latest release's legend that comes complete with ocean data
  

The power of context, Part IV

Two anecdotes on remote sensing and environmental monitoring highlight some issues in measuring and predicting the current Gulf of Mexico oil rupture.

A bit of GIS history

As I watch ESRI's 2010 User Conference remotely - green or what?! - via social media and my favorite bloggers like spatialsustain and spatiallyadjusted, this entry from allpointsblog caught my eye:

The power of context, Part III

Ruth Lang created this excellent mashup for the 2010 FIFA World Cup - which coloured all the countries at the beginning and gradually greys them out as they are eliminated - only Spain and the Netherlands are left as at today. This was a labour of love, needing for example some tweeking to work in the Firefox browser, and a testament to SVG.

Trending oilelefant.com, Part III

The effect of trade shows and publications as well as social media can clearly be seen in the web traffic figures through June 2010.

The power of context, Part II

In preparation for tomorrow's TEDxOilSpill meet-up in Cambridge UK, let me highlight two among the many, many postings on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (I also wrote about here and here).

The power of context...

... can be seen in a simple weekend exercise: look up your favourite area on your handy 3D online maps, and you just might get a slew of features, some of it unwanted...

bp oil rupture, Part II

Here the latest from bp itself at the current NOC show in London.

Presentations and social networks

I posted and saw posted a trio of presentations, so perhaps it's time I related them to you.

bp oil rupture

News swirling around the incident in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) compels me to draw out some salient facts and gather them here to help the uninitiated (I did this yesterday for my in-laws). This blog title is from the last slide of the video in my last blogpost.

The Big Easy button

Building geoinfo from the ground up is patent in this Gov2.0 presentation on citizen-focussed geoweb at the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center toward sustainability in the Big Easy:

The drummer and the dancer

Drums closing the FIFA World Cup kick-off celebration brought back my African drumming days in N Texas and S California:

The stunning beauty of maps, Part II

The beauty of maps is topical not only thanks to British Library's show Maginificent Maps. Gary Gale waxed rhapsodic on map as art, and Thierry Gregorius mused on what a map might look like after visiting the same exhibit.