dream job

Jeff Utecht has an interesting post - Online Community Manager: A New Position in Education - that resonates. It overlaps a little with my now redundant position but better represents what SHOULD have been put in place.

Here are the core roles, adapted a little to represent any educational setting...

1. Community Advocate
As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to represent the school/college/university/project community. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and being active in understanding what community members are saying on both internal and external websites. Secondly, they engage community members by responding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in private and in public.

2) Evangelist
In this evangelistic role (it goes both ways) the community manager will promote events, student accomplishments and updates to community members by using traditional marketing tactics and conversational discussions. As proven as a trusted member of the community (tenet 1) the individual has a higher degree of trust and will offer help and support.

3) Savvy Communicator and  Shapes Editor
This tenet, which is both editorial planning and mediation serves the individual well. The community manager should first be very familiar with the tools of communication, from forums, to blogs, to podcasts, to twitter, and then understand the language and jargon that is used in the community. This individual is also responsible for mediating disputes within the community, and will lean on advocates, and embrace detractors –and sometimes removing them completely. Importantly, the role is responsible for the editorial strategy and planning within the community, and will work with many internal stakeholders to identify content, plan, publish, and follow up.

4) Gatherer of Community Input for Future Product and Services
Perhaps the most strategic of all tenets, community managers are responsible for gathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way and presenting it to the leadership team. This may involve formal recommendations from surveys to focus groups, to facilitating the relationships between stakeholders (in an e-learning setting this includes between IT and educators/ students). The opportunity to build stronger relationships through this real-time live focus group are ripe, in many cases, education communities have been waiting for a chance to give feedback.

Jeff outlines a set of responsibilities (school focused) and indicates his willingness to apply for any position that's established.

Me too - it's very nice!

CC FlickR image by baratunde