In early March I joined the Anita Borg Institute (ABI) staff as the new Communities Program Manager. Since then I’ve been learning all I can about the multiple ABI and Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) online communities, including Systers and its associated email listservs; social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter; and our wiki and discussion forum. I’ve been working with ABI Program Director Deanna Kosaraju and our Board of Advisors’ Communities Committee, Carole Dulong, Rebecca Norwood, and Robin Jerries, to strategize and plan for online community growth around and beyond the Grace Hopper Celebration. I’ve attended several conferences on social networks and online community management to learn best practices from the experts. I’ve been recruiting and getting to know our fabulous online community volunteers, who you’ll be hearing more about in the coming weeks. But enough about me! I want to share some updates about our online communities, so that you’ll be better able to make the most of them.
Last year’s Grace Hopper Celebration had a significant online presence including the discussion forum and Facebook group for pre-conference planning, the wiki for speaker and attendee notes, a live chat room, volunteer bloggers, and an official conference Twitterer. This year we will have all of that and more: Watch for information on pre-conference online activities to help you plan, prepare, and make the most of GHC 2008. In addition, the CONNECT project will help you make the most of professional networking opportunities at the conference.
We have also expanded our online focus beyond GHC to offer more year-round community resources. We recognize that many students and younger technical women are more active in Web 2.0 communities like Facebook than on traditional listservs and mailing lists. So in addition to the Grace Hopper 2008 group on Facebook we’ve added an ABI fan page with current information on ABI activities. Our Twitter community can follow both GHC updates and ABI updates. Our discussion forum and wiki have been reorganized so that they can be used year-round to discuss topics of interest, share notes and learnings from ABI workshops and events, and make connections with other technical women.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about what you’d like to see in our online communities. And we’re still looking for community volunteers to help with blogging, the forum, wiki, Meebo chat, and other online activities. Email me at Community at anitaborg dot org or send me a message on Facebook or Twitter. For more information, see: