We’re more than a week into the 2008 31 Day Comment Challenge and at the time of this writing, coComment is tracking 135 conversations by 92 group members. There are far too many individual comments to try to read them all! However following conversations that interest you will still lead you to many voices you haven’t heard before.
Through this process I’m learning a lot about community. It appears that we’re basically in agreement that blogging is not a solitary pursuit. I think one of the main reasons we all start professional blogs is to take part in conversation with others in the profession, to learn from and with each other. Unfortunately the “Field of Dreams” metaphor doesn’t hold true here. Readers won’t come just because you’ve built a place for them. Community doesn’t just happen; it must be built one conversation at a time.
The Comment Challenge is proving to be an excellent impetus to build community. I’ve been trying to pick out key features of the community as I’ve been watching it grow. Here are a few that have caught my attention.
- Purpose. Just as there is a reason why the community where you live exists geographically, online communities need a sense of purpose. In the Comment Challenge we share a common purpose – (as stated by Kim Cofino), “to become better blog citizens by actively participating in conversations and sharing our learning, especially with those new to blogging”.
- Culture. We are building and sharing a culture of learning. When you read through the conversations, you see it stated over and over that we are learning this, that and the other thing. What we’re seeing here is that our learning is embedded in our common purpose. For instance, we’re all struggling with the various tools we’re using to track our conversations, but we are doing it together as part of moving toward our common purpose. I haven’t run into anyone yet who has said: “Ok folks, I’m having trouble with coComment. I’m going to wait for the in-service, then try and find some time to learn it, and then I’ll be back to take part.” It has become part of our culture to learn how to use these tools in situ.
- Interaction. Many of us are seeing increased traffic to our own blogs, “click-throughs” from the comments we’re leaving on the blogs of others. Interaction involves risk-taking, but the professional tone and supportive manner I am seeing everywhere I go is building confidence in the individual members of the group, in turn adding to the strength of the community.
For me a lot of the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place; a picture of a vibrant learning community is taking shape!
Technorati tags: comment08, coComment, Comment Challenge, Kim Cofini, building community
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This puzzle image is very cool. How did you create it? Is there a tool that generates those kinds of images automatically?
Thanks for visiting Christy!
My puzzle image wasn’t generated automatically – I did it in Photoshop. I took a screen capture of coComment and added a fill layer (50% grey). To the fill layer I applied a jigsaw texture and then copied that layer. I used an overlay blending method on the first jigsaw layer and then merged it with the background. On the jigsaw copy layer I used the magic wand to select a few random puzzle pieces and then expanded the selection by 5 pixels to reach right to the edges of the puzzle pieces. I then used the New Layer via Cut function. I used the move tool to move the selected pieces off the puzzle. Then I just did some finishing touches. I added a drop shadow to both the puzzle and the pieces layer and I used the Lasso tool to move the pieces around a bit.
Hope this helps! Have you had much experience with Photoshop?
Very fun effect. I’ve used Photoshop a lot, but never to make a puzzle. It’s a great image for the challenge, although I think my puzzle has more pieces missing still!
Christine, I agree; I too still have some puzzle pieces missing, but what a thrill when one clicks into place!
If you’re going to try this effect in Photoshop you’ll need to locate the puzzle texture. It didn’t show up in my list. I had to load it from the presets/textures folder.
I agree with Christy and Christine — totally love your image of the puzzle. I’m mostly locating the posts using the RSS feed from Technorati and fortunately most of the people are writing their comments on these posts. But then tracking the conversations using cocomment. I keep forgetting to press share
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The Comment Challenge is a great example of community building especially from the concept that you get out what you put in. Those that are more actively engaging in commenting are achieving the greater learning and connections with each other.
Sue, agreed – I have a feeling that some of the connections we’re making will last far beyond the Comment Challenge.
I see that there are a number of people who’ve registered for the challenge but haven’t commented yet (or maybe I should say, haven’t tracked their comments yet). I think I’ll see if I can bring a few of their “puzzle pieces” to the table. I’m off to visit those blogs and as Kate Foy so descriptively put it – “scatter some comment pixie-dust”.
Sorry I’m so late in getting back to this conversation. Apparently I forgot to track it, and I couldn’t remember where I had seen this image. I’m not great in Photoshop, but your directions make sense. I think with your directions I could do it, although it might take a few tries to get it to look as good as yours does. Thanks for the explanation!
I was reminded of your post when I found Flickr Toys today. Their jigsaw image seems to create similar images to yours. It’s not quite as cool, but I think I might take the shortcut!