Community Guy – Jake McKee

The how, what, why of Egorcast

Alex blogged about our "casual development" efforts over at Big in Japan in three posts:

• Part I: The What about Egorcast
• Part II: The How about Egorcast
• Part III: The Why about Egorcast

Check out the what, how and why about Egorcast.  It was a fun little project mashingup Twitter, Jaiku, WordPress and Jott!

Introducing EgorCast

At Big in Japan, we have devised a plan to release "casual apps" once a month. These apps will span the comical (MyEvilCyberTwin.com) to the functional. The idea is to design, develop, and launch an entire application in about a week, showcasing some key concept of agile development, social strategy, and the future of web functionality.

Our April release is almost ready for primetime.  We started coding the application on Friday and had our first release this evening (at DemoCampDallas2). It works, and we should be launching soon. Allow me to introduce you to EgorCast:

Projects: LEGO MMOG Community Support

Back in December, Big in Japan began a project with LEGO on their recently announced Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). The project was only revealed to the world a week ago, but has been in discussion, development, and planning for a long time.

LEGO has partnered with NetDevil to create the game, and Big in Japan is helping out with community management skills. (Yikes, I really hate that word… you don't "manage" communities) You see, this game takes a different tact to most games. We're helping LEGO to engage various enthusiast groups in the actual development of the game. It is a LEGO game, after all!

Details are still thin due to confidentiality issues, but if you're interested in finding out more, or pitching in on the project sign up for updates at:

www.lego.com/mmog

More and more details are going to be revealed in the coming months, so stay tuned. From what I've seen of the early development, this is going to be one fantastic game.

(On a related side note, check out this hilarious fan-created comic)

Six Techniques for Safer User Generated Content Campaigns

I’ve worked with my vendor partner, friend, and all around great folks at eModeration to develop a fun whitepaper: Six Techniques for Safer User Generated Content (UGC) Campaigns.

The paper details techniques that creators of UGC sites (brands and marketing agencies alike) to help protect both their brand reputations and their users; while creating a site that is fun and engaging for users. While there are a great many methods to find this balance, the paper focuses on six key, and often under appreciated techniques:

1. Craft your guidelines – create “community guidelines” rather than “terms and conditions”. Use accessible language so that users will understand the rules of the site. After all, the clearer the guidelines, the more likely users will abide by them.

2. Build automated filters – the first line of defense against offensive, litigious, illegal or hijack-marketing content should be smart filters. Filters should not replace human intervention – they will never understand slang trends or cultural sensitivities, for example – but they will get rid of the more obviously “bad” content and help to offset some of the load on the human moderators.

3. Embrace your technology – use some basic mathematics and logic-informed algorithms to build tools that human moderators can use to review content. For example, keep an eye out for a single user that is making numerous submissions within a given time frame. Look at a user’s site history – how many times have they been in agreement or dispute with the moderator? Is there a particular piece of content that is driving significant volumes of traffic – and is it for the right reason? Is it because of undesirable content?

4. Enlist your users – most site users want a positive experience. Given the opportunity, many of them will help to protect the safety and quality of a project. Enlisting users can not only help moderators, but can engage users in the site itself. Make sure to develop tools and processes that make it easy and rewarding for “good” behaviors to help protect against the “bad” behaviors.

5. Make moderation actions visible – contrary to traditional thinking, human moderation does not work best when hidden from view. In fact, hiding moderation techniques can give an implicit invitation to a user to try to abuse or get round the system. If these controls are visible and clearly laid out, it can discourage people to post bad content. Moderators have a job not just to remove content, but also to work with the community to educate users as to what is and isn’t acceptable. Some users make honest mistakes, so should be allowed to make amends and resubmit content.

6. Moderation tools need love too – test the usability of the moderation tools, alongside site testing. You don’t want to find that you’ve created a site that’s difficult to moderate once the site has gone live. Smart interface design can significantly reduce moderation time (and cost). You moderators will love you if you show them the same love you’d show your users!

All of that, and it even features some cool British English! What more could you want?

Download Now!

UPDATE: The discussion begins!

• Allied
• Techscrape
• Netimperative
• Calico-Media
• Best Engaging Communities
• Internet Retailing
• Snow Patrol
• The Retail Bulletin
• Julian on Software
• marktd
• Green Blog
• IT Week (UK)
• Phil Muncaster
• mad.co.uk (requires registration)
• Centopia
• Two Point Touch

New Woodford Reserve site launches

Ah, horse racing and Kentucky Bourbon… not much goes together quite so nicely.  Some time back Woodford Reserve (a sister brand to Jack Daniel’s) bought a racehorse and created a program called Woodford Reserve Stables. The concept was to race the horse and track the activities along the way.

Over the summer I helped to concept a renovation of the Stables site, moving it from a site based around static, rarely updated information with little user interaction to a site that truly engaged users in the innerworkings of training a racehorse. Or two. Or three.

The site combines multiple blogs, and easy to update content so that the horse’s trainer as well as the Woodford staff can quickly post a load of content. It’s only been up a short time, and it’ll likely take a few weeks to pull in the Woodford Stables users to the new site, but there’s already a number of users jumping into the conversation.

I also have to comment on the design – I was blown away by the work of Aaron Stahl on this project. His designs were absolutely perfect for conveying the feel of horse racing. It feels like a Stables without getting too kitchy.

Pop over and check out the site: www.woodfordreservestables.com

New Social Sharing site launches

Before joining Big in Japan I worked with Slingshot and Dr Pepper to create a cool social sharing site. This site has soft-launched this week, so …drum roll, please…. I’m proud to introduce you to Liquid State. As the site describes it, Liquid State is:

The site is a new direction for many brands, creating a site that has very little overt branding. Instead, Dr Pepper has created a place for fans and brand to mingle on the same terms. Oh, and it’s all Flash based for added coolness.

Huge congrats to both the Slingshot and Dr Pepper teams!

Big in Japan’s Fancast Service

If you’ve noticed my blogging slowing a bit lately, it’s because we’re starting up a new project for Dirt (the upcoming FX show). This project is a continuation of our work with FX using our Big in Japan Fancast system.

Fancast is one of the Big in Japan social tools that gives users and brands a unique way to connect to each other. The Fancast system is based on the highly popular PodServe podcasting platform, and combines a highly scalable Ruby on Rails application framework with a VoIP-based traditional phone system capable of handling more than 30,000 traditional telephone connections.

This summer the Big in Japan team began working with the producers of nip/tuck, the Golden Globe winning drama, on their community interaction efforts. The show is cable’s top-rated series among adults 18-49, and has a reach of more than 2.6 million viewers.

When viewers visit the nip/tuck Fancast, they’re able to leave a display name and their phone number. In less than a minute, they get a call on their phone inviting them to participate with the nip/tuck Experience. From here they can do one of two things:

• Interview one of the show’s stars – Each week five of the best questions are selected by FX and presented to that week’s star to answer. The questions and the answers then get mashed up by the Fancast system into one audio file and becomes available to download via a podcast or accessible for online listening.
• Leave feedback, comments, and theories – nip/tuck fans are never afraid to tell you what they think about the show or what they think will happen next week. Now they can hear what other fans are thinking too – again, via podcast or listening on the nip/tuck Web site.

FX promoted the launch of the nip/tuck Fancast primarily using television advertising. Check out the screen shot of the section with the Fancast system. Kimber (Kelly Carlson) is waiting for your question, what are you waiting for?

Does it work? According to Arbitron/Edison Media Research more than 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, half of whom are under 35 years old. Using the Big in Japan Fancast, the nip/tuck producers can empower their own community of 2.6 million viewers to deliver content via iTunes to more than 30 million iPod listeners. Converting just 2% of those iTunes users would deliver 600,000 viewers to the program. Additionally, FX has the option of inserting advertising into the consumer generated content as they moderate and process it allowing for additional marketing channels for their advertisers.

For more info on Fancast, drop me an email or visit the Fancast pages:

• Fancast Overview
• Example Fancast Concepts
• Fancast Datasheet

New Project Launch: True Ventures!

Big in Japan has been working together with renowned design shop Mule Design to create a Web site and blog for True Ventures, the venture capital company that is behind such groups as Automattic, GigaOm, Hive7, and Meebo.

We had a great time working with the Mule team (that sounds so funny, but they love the name), and are very proud of our work. So what are you waiting for? Check out the site!

It’s Nip/Tuck Day!

Today is a big day for our Big in Japan team. Together with FX Network, we’ve launched the Nip/Tuck Fancast.

The Fancast is live on the Nip/Tuck site, or you can access it directly here. We’re really proud of this project, and would love to get your feedback. It’s running smoothly and we don’t expect any problems. If you have any feedback, please drop us a comment in this thread. We’d love to hear what you think!

LEGO Ambassadors

It dawned on me that I’ve never really blogged about the projects I’ve worked on at LEGO. The first one I wanted to share is the LEGO Ambassadors.

The LEGO Ambassador Program is a community based program made up of adult LEGO hobbyists. The mission of the LEGO Ambassador Program is to develop a tighter bond between the LEGO Group and the LEGO Community, by forming trusted relationships with a select group of the leaders of the adult LEGO community. The program is designed to provide a continuous exchange of information, ideas, and community feedback between the Adult LEGO community and the LEGO Group. There are currently 20 LEGO Ambassador "seats".

LEGO Ambassadors are the “representative voice” of the community. This means that they will act as true ambassadors for the adult LEGO community into the company, as well as finding and delivering information of relevance to the community out of the company. LEGO Ambassadors have the opportunity to become the eyes, ears, and voice of the adult LEGO community inside and outside the company. They help keep the community informed of current LEGO Group news, internal background information, and other subjects of interest for the adult fan community. Additionally,Ambassadors help bring the opinions and desires of the community into the company.



During each cycle, Ambassadors will be asked to participate in projects from three main areas:

Community Development: Based on the cycle-specific “Ambassadors Agenda” that is set at the beginning of each cycle, Ambassadors will work together with the LEGO Community Team to help grow the adult fan community. The Ambassador Agenda projects are based on the overall community needs and desires, with a goal of expansion and solidification.

Ambassador selection is based on a written email application, that outlines why the applicant feels s/he should be accepted. Selection is based on a review of the application against a long list of objective and subjective criteria, and based in no small part on participation and contribution to the LEGO community overall.



Participation and contribution comes in many forms – creating great events, forum postings that help other fans out, organizing a local club, enthusiasm about building, sharing with LEGO elements, or a range of other qualifications. The key ingredient for an Ambassador is the ability to communicate effectively, representing and exciting the community groups they interact with.



It’s important to note that a closer, more formal relationship with the LEGO Group doesn’t negate the ability of an Ambassador to speak freely, even critically on LEGO subjects. Informed critiques from the community through Ambassadors to the LEGO Group is as valuable as other forms of enthusiasm. Ambassadors are not LEGO spokespersons, but instead trusted allies.



The term of service (or cycle) for an Ambassador is approximately six months. Every Ambassador has to re-apply every cycle. An Ambassador might be in the program for 2 years or more, but all Ambassadors reapply every 6 months. There is no upper limit to how often a particular Ambassador may serve.

The program is based on applications and not recruitment. This means, for example, if no one from South America applies, then there’s no chance that South America will be represented. The goal is to have both the best talent from the community as well as a representative distribution among countries. Due to the community nature of the program, all Ambassadors must be conversant in the English language, although not necessarily fluent.

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This program is coming up on its second cycle, and is doing quite well. The first cycle was as much about learning what the Ambassadors would be interested in as well as figuring out how to sell this program to colleagues internally.



Overall, the program is proving very successful. It’s also been a great help to me, as the community liaison to have a small group that I can turn to for feedback on various subjects. I use a private email list and they have non-disclosure agreements they’re required to sign, so I can toss out pics of new sets, or ask about ideas for marketing programs, or any number of other things.



But the key benefit is that there’s a funnel effect. I can work with the community leaders on information sharing, information gathering, and new projects which they in turn share with the community at large. In the next cycle, we’re actually adding something comparable to the Supreme Court Chief Justice. This will provide an "organizational leader" (rather than hierarchal leader) who is equal in hierarchy but who has a few additional duties to help keep the group on track. This will further extend the funnel model of involvement for me.



As you can tell, there’s been a great deal of work on balancing the program to benefit both the company and the community…. thus sticking to my mantra: Everybody goes home happy.