Urban Permaculture UCBX Fall 2008

First things first

First check to see whether a group working in the same area as you already exists or not. There are many groups of 2 people on the web - and you don't want yours to be one of them. If you're sure no one is working on the same area as you, then go ahead and create one of your own.

Preparing for your new group

Here are a few questions that you may want to ask yourself before starting a group on WiserEarth (or if you already  a member of one, or have started a group yourself). While you don’t need to answer all of these questions in detail (or at all), these may help you to create -- or be a member -- of a more involved or dynamic group.

1. Articulate more about your group and its overall mission and aspirations.   

• How do your group members want to make a difference in the world?
• What’s your measure of success for your group? (e.g. level or quantity of conversations/activities/ actions/number of members?/bringing your group's ideas and actions into your local communities).
• What sort of online participation will provide meaning to you and/or your group members? 

2. What numbers and types of members do you have in your group or are you hoping to attract to the group?  (e.g., activists, anyone, geographically-diverse – 1-10. 10-100, 100+)

3. What type of interaction would you like to see within the group? (e.g. discussions, sharing of best practices, calls to action, organizing events, post-event networking, fund--raising...)

4. How often would you like to see communication between members occur in your group? (Hourly, daily, weekly, real-time.)

5. What other types of external information or other online activities would you like to offer to your group? (e.g. news, articles, reference material, external blogs or wesites)

6. What other activities would you like to be able to do on your group that you don’t currently do online? (e.g., how could you bring things that you currently do offline into the group itself, such as event planning, organizing, voting?)

7. What other types of online tools or resources do you currently use or would find useful in helping your group? (e.g. collaboration tools (e.g. Wikibooks), directories, social or professional networking tools (e.g. myspace, MeetUp, LinkedIn), online calendars….)

8. What will the structure of your group look like? (e.g., how will you divide roles of the administrator and members? You might consider the sustainability of the group; it might work well to have multiple group members cover these roles and to increase activity in the group while increasing ownership).

Once you have answered these questions, you will have a pretty good idea of what you want to achieve with your group. Alternatively, you may want to invite your prospective (or existing members) to debate the objectives that you have set for the group (and any other aspirations you have). Getting your community involved with the setting objectives for the group itself will help to create a more more active and engaged members.

After creating your group

And finally….Have you Heard of the 1-10-100 Rulethat applies to groups? It says that:

• about 1% of your member are those that start the group
• 10% of members will participate actively, and actually author content whether starting a thread or responding to discussions in progress.
• 100% of the users benefit from the activities of the above groups. Many of the group members may never actually post anything in the group but they are still able to learn from the content that is posted.

So don’t be disappointed if you seem to be doing a lot of the groundwork at first – it may take time to engage a number of active members. To find the 10% of people who may become the group's active users:

• Invite people who you know will want to get involved with your group and who may be able to contribute their specialist knowledge or know-how.
• Find out other people on WiserEarth who are interested in your issues and invite them to join your group.
• Send regular updates to your group members alerting them to the latest postings and discussions on the group (all messages are now viewable directly from users email accounts). This way, users don’t have to continually go the group home page to see all the information, but can go there if they are interested in a specific posting.