OC Expert Interview: Lee LeFever, Common Craft

The Online Community Expert Interview is a monthly series that features Online Community thought leaders driving online community strategy and practice at their companies. This month's interview features Lee LeFever from Common Craft.

Lee has designed, built and managed online community websites since 1999, when he founded the online community program at Solucient, LLC (a healthcare data company). In 2003 he founded Common Craft, LLC, a consulting company that specializes in Social Design for the Web (www.commoncraft.com ) . Lee was the social designer for the March of Dimes Share Your Story Online Community in 2005 (www.shareyourstory.org) and has worked on community initiatives with Boeing, Microsoft and Geffen Records among others.

You've been working in the online community space for a number of years. What major online community and collaboration trends have you seen at your company? What are you advising your clients now?

Two big things come to mind:

1) In terms of overall trends, community is a big focus in the business world - and it feels real this time. When I started working with customer communities in 1999 I spent a lot of time describing the concept and evangelizing. There was a lot of misunderstanding, doubt and nay saying. When the bubble burst it added fuel to the fire. In the last couple of years, the tools have improved, there are many exciting new models and success stories and your average Internet user has a renewed, more positive perception of community. While there is still misunderstanding, it's exciting to see renewed focus and attention in the community space. Already this year there were two well-attended conferences focusing on community (CommunityNext and Community 2.0).

2) In my experience, there is a much needed focus on the role of the community manager. Companies are starting to understand that community isn't a technology that you plug in and leave alone - it's a way of doing business that takes time and hard work. In the best success stories, there is almost always a person or small group that understands community processes, sets expectations, and balances the needs of the community and the organization. Community management is an important skill we need to develop more in the future.

Do you have examples of a few major corporations / sites doing interesting things with online communities? Who are you paying attention to?

I've been really interested in Dell's Ideastorm. I'm hearing frustration from companies that relates to filtering community "noise" into actionable and valuable data. While Ideastorm may not be a traditional community, it is an interesting experiment in enabling members to propose/promote/demote the ideas that they value the most. Of course, the onus is clearly on Dell to close the loop and react to these suggestions in a balanced way as they did recently in agreeing to ship the Linux operating system.
Another example is Ducati Motorcycles who recently moved away from a traditional marketing department in favor of working with a customer community. The quote I've seen is that the community is at the"center" of the organization's structure. At Common Craft, we're currently working with Microsoft on community-based support and I've been really impressed with their level of commitment and focus on community as a part of their future business.

What are areas of growth in corporations in the use of online communities, from an investment, feature, or member growth perspective?

I'm excited about the evolution in modes of community participation. In the past, "community" was often enabled through a message board, email list, newsgroup, etc. While these are all very useful and popular today, they are now part of a much broader set of features that enable member participation in a community. Let's face it, discussion is intimidating online and off. We can now offer members a number of ways to participate that don't have the social pressure of a discussion (but may offer a gateway to discussion).
One way to look at this is through what I call "community currency". In this case, currency means the basic unit of exchange between members. It may be discussion, or it may be photos, videos, friend lists, social bookmarks, ideas, how-tos etc. These form the foundation of exchange and a chance for trust to develop as a community gets started. Another example is the ability for members to take small actions that enable the community to be better organized or more dynamic. Examples included adding tags to content, ratings, reporting spam, bookmarking, adding friends, joining/creating groups, etc. All of these concepts are part of re-thinking what community participation really means.

What should every CEO know about online communities?

I founded Common Craft because I'm convinced that online communities will represent a competitive advantage for organizations in the future. In my version of the future, the company with the most engaged and productive community of customers wins. It's hard work to really engage customers in this way, but once the relationship is there, the potential impact on innovation, anticipation of change, product development, marketing, etc. is huge and becomes a differentiator in the market. An online community is an invitation to get these new kinds of relationships started.