Goodbye '09

I'm hoping to squeeze my last blog of '09 in, just in time... a quick summary of what's been a great year for me on the professional front.

We kicked off the Australian Community Managers' Facebook Group which has grown to 80 members and represents a diverse mix of talented individuals from companies, orgs and agencies alike. Two roundtables were hosted, the first in Feb 09 by the wonderful Venessa Paech at the Lonely Planet offices in Melbourne. The second was hosted by myself at the FD offices in June 09. If all goes to plan expect the 3rd in Canberra in Feb/Mar 2010 once we can work out how one can actually communicate via the web with public servants. (And this is pre clean feed!)

The current community I 'manage' grew from around 140,000 (*scratches head*) to 175,000 which was reflected in participation and new member engagement. As I blogged about, community growth is a challenge and whilst senior managment might chase metrics - at the coalface there's always more a community manager could do to manage rapid growth which should be viewed as a potential threat to the ecosystem, and planned for accordingly. It's a wonderful community and I feel very proud to be part of it.

In August we hosted the first FD Moderators Meet and flew in 25 of our volunteer Mods. The event was a real success. It was great to put faces to names, chat about the community IRL and give our Mods a sense of the larger framework that a 'small' biz unit like EB works in at a media org like FD.

I really enjoyed participating in the largely UK-based [e-mint] newsgroup founded by Rebecca Newton. I was fortunate to chat to her recently about her predictions for the growth of Behavioral Management Software as discussed in a great post by Holly Seddon about 2010 community management predictions.

I participated quite a bit in the LinkedIn Online Community Manager discussions, and also Connie Bensen & Jermiah Owyang's Community Manager/Evangelist facebook group and can strongly recommend them as a starting point for any community managers out there.

Rich Millington's blog Feverbee, as always deserves a round of applause, so thanks again for churning out such brilliant posts throughout 2009. If you only read one blog about community building/management, this should be it. (/end gush)

Other community management highlights of note for '09 - I attended an Advanced Online Communities workshop with community guru Nancy White, whilst she was visiting Australia. I certainly could have spent more than a few hours picking her brain! Thanks to Matt Moore at Innotecture for making that happen.

On a personal front I'm pregnant with my second child and will be taking some time "off" from April 2009. Needless to say I have a few things planned for 2010 (other than producing said offspring), so stay tuned!

Have a great New Year's Eve. See you in 2010.