Personality - Three tasks for discussion in the groups:
- 1) places where P2PU has a voice (say if you like it or don't)
- 2) examples of places that have a voice you like
- 3) ideas for a p2pu personality
Additional report back notes:
- Chloe: "you can be yourself, you can be with your friends and learn together, and you can be safe while doing that here."
- Nadeem: "It's not (just?) about voice, it's about authenticity."
Alan, Jane, and Phil's group
1) where we have a voice on p2pu
- Philipp has a stronger voice with the community via email and at events (the dark side)
- Events
- the mailing list
- weekly newsletters with song themes (used to) (how many ppl on announce?)
- weekly course emails
- blog
- twitter/social media, individual people's twitters
- home page
- course profiles
- schools
2) examples that could be p2pu
- dreamhost newsletter
- FeelGood World, because its fun: http://www.feelgoodworld.org/cheeseworld/
- threadless
- http://photojojo.com/
- Google's way of communicating with the world (compared with Apple's approach)
- Announce new features / experiments through personal blogs
- Videos from the teams who built the stuff
- Failfares
- We need a way to talk about our failed experiments in ways that are funny, show we can roll with it, and that we learn from our mistakes.
- tina fey - smart, funny, but this is conveyed via self-deprecation
2a) examples of voices that aren't like p2pu
- mozilla
- ego
- too geeky
- takes themselves too seriously
- wikimedia reports, sue gardner
- extremely technically dry, facts
3) ideas for a p2pu personality ty
- Not one personality, but many; personality that says this is a community
- Don't take ourselves too seriously; make fun of ourselves
- Shots at our personality
- snarky but not too snarky, we're snarky with good will
- Smart / passionate people (want to be seen as "thought leaders" without ever using that word)
- We're good people
- diverse, but like-minded
- sincere; taking learning online seriously
- self-deprecating; humility; not a big ego
- confident
- we have expertise, but we're not experts (no one is!)
- there are people here!
- We're experimental... your experience here might not be perfect, but we're a community and want to work with you.
- no one figurehead
- goofy (sometimes), not geeky
"it's okay if not everyone likes us"
Suggestions
- If we're a community, we need lots of pictures of people (preferably in groups... preferably skipping through fields of daisies... singing kumbaya...) (kidding.)
- Rotating slogan banner with catoonified peope who proposed them!! (suggest and get enough votes... link to something related (their profile, course, a blog post).
- e.g. "we have expertise, but we are not experts" (no one is!)
- e.g. "goofy but not geeky"
- e.g. "P2PUers are peoples too."
- e.g. "The wompitent nonprofit" -1
- For the individual, is an opportunity to promote whatever they want
- Announce features through personal blog posts and videos of the individuals who built them, did them (like Google)
- Both good and bad (failfares) - we need a way to talk about our failed experiments in ways that are funny, show we can roll with it, and that we learn from our mistakes.
Bekka & Chloe
The metaphor of P2PU as a house is very powerful - you access it from 3 levels, the outside, the front door and the rooms inside:
- It's safe
- Warm
- Inviting
- Quirky
Group: Neeru, Niels, Nadeem
We dont want to be like:
- We dont want a voice like "those angry non-profits"
- We dont want a voice like the Red Cross which tries to make you feel really guilty.
- Dont like Quirky.com - make corny jokes
- P2PU humour is "clever"
- ( fine line btw "clever" and "corny" )
- Blackboard online !!
Who do we really like
Google is your Fre-enemy
Do we want to be like marmite?
Our personality comes across on:
the mailing lists - where people interact the most
We dont like our personality on:
- The front page - dont like the wording (sounds like a american-centric project)
- The first message that people receive on the site should really emphasise the community.
Our personality needs to be :
- We think our personality should be like a collection of Rock Stars / Blues Artists
- Danger is that when non profits sound warm, they sound incompetent and the other way around. Competant vs Warm we need to be Wompetant
- Everyone trusts we are ontop of things
- Not inhibited
Group: Stian, John, Dany
Two Specific actions
- Add photos / examples to homepage CTA - personal stories
- Be radical
P2PU - Examples we like
Blog - personal stories
Gang-stars jokes
T-shirts
Stickers - "I love learning"
P2PU - Examples to improve
Twitter - mostly serious tweets... no jokes, no goofing off
Gang list had personality
Get Involved -
More art, it should be emotionally attaching
Examples in other organizations
Canonical
Very informal in some places "Hey man, we're going to save the world"
Formal at others -- business side
Twilio
"No Shennanigans"
"Ready to Roll"
Kickstarter
Github
Drinking Scotch
Smoking Cigars
Classy Git
Octocat
Dodgeball tournaments
Bad examples in other organizations
MIT Open Courseware
EDUFire
Khan Academy
Group- alison, delia and zuzel
Some observations
Each school has a different personality - some lean to playful others more formal and traditional
p2pu first impression impt and needs to reflect diverse community and schools and subjects.
First page need state we are experimential beta and evolving
Comunication needs to clear but friendly and open
P2PU does not have a singular personality.
p2pu should multiple personalties- more focus on range of course and vast community-make it more about the people learning and runing
the community aspect is lost on the website
We should not define a voice- make the website simple so that different voices representing different communities define their own voice.
Eg SOW will be different from SOE and SMF.
1. Keep it simple so that different communities voices can be determined by themselves
2. Community input design the wire frames and look of the site-