First Things First: Local ASTD Groups On LinkedIn - Do It!
If you're a manager or marketing/sales professional in the learning industry, it's worth doing a quick search in the groups directory on LinkedIn to see if there's an online group for your local ASTD chapter. Of course, if you're a trainer or instructional designer, this goes without saying. If you're a learning professional and aren't connected to your local ASTD chapter, it begs the question, "why not?"
But all this preamble isn't the main thing.
Another ASTD Forum Is Formed.
In my area (Orange County, California), our local ASTD Chapter didn't have a presence on LinkedIn for the longest time. A few months ago, after some cajoling from me, a few ear-bug placements and a hunger-strike and sit-in (okay, that last one is an embellishment) I'm happy to say our chapter board agreed to establish the ASTD-OC group on LinkedIn. (Shameless plug...join now!)
Truth be told, I don't think the board was ever opposed to the idea. I think it was just really a question of who would be willing to moderate such an unruly group? (To ASTD-OC group members: Just kidding.)
Yesterday I uploaded a post about the cool factor associated with being a group moderator. I made reference to the 1% rule. That's an anecdotal rule of thumb stating that about 1% of most groups could be expected at any time to be active contributor/creators of content. All the rest would either comment or be content to observe.
I had that anecdote in mind a few days back when, for grins and giggles, I uploaded a poll on the ASTD-OC home page to see if I can get a read on how many of our local chapter members contribute to any online discussion forum.
Today, I checked on the progress of that poll. It's totally unscientific, of course, and certainly not a robust sample size, what with all of 16 respondents to date. As of tonight's snapshot we've got about 31% saying they never contribute to any online discussion forum. (Pretty strong word, "never.") They either don't know how (12%), or don't like to (19%).
On the flip-side, there's an equal number of respondents on the upper end of the normal-ish looking curve that say they contribute to discussions at least once a month or better (31%). Included within is a group saying they do so at least once weekly (19%).
Initially I didn't think too much of it, seeing how it looks pretty normal, statistically speaking. Then I got a wild hair up my, uh, in my mind.
Ask the Community to Help Change Hearts and Minds.
I got to thinking about leveraging the community to help influence those at the bottom end of the curve to skew it more towards the top.
I'll let the poll run for another week to establish a baseline, of sorts. Then, we'll close it down and do the group-moderator-thing and promotional-activist-thing for the next month or so before opening up another poll to compare results.
On a personal level, I hope to reinforce existing skills and learn new ones that help spur groups towards a common goal. On a community level, I'd like to document the activities we use and compare which ones seem to have more impact than others. Hopefully you'll have suggestions for me. With your help, I'll document our mindshare here. Feel free to copy, re-post and share.
So, the first question I'll now pose to my group is, "what's our plan to win hearts and minds?"
