The growth of successful online communities is entirely dependent on the amount of interesting, useful, and engaging information that the site offers. People don’t collaborate just for the sake of collaborating. You have to ask them questions and pose problems that require cooperation to solve. That being said, what exactly IS APCN? Right now it is just a loosely structured collection of groups that focus on specific issues. I think there is tremendous value in the larger APCN community members exchanging ideas. So what should we turn APCN into? A place for lessons learned from exercises? A knowledge base for anyone interested in Africa? A place to share information in response to natural disasters and humanitarian assistance missions? A place for Africa, European, American, and other global partners to exchange ideas? A forum for bringing together Subject Matter Experts? I'd like to hear your ideas.
The growth of successful online communities is entirely dependent on the amount of interesting, useful, and engaging information that the site offers. People don’t collaborate just for the sake of collaborating. You have to ask them questions and pose problems that require cooperation to solve.
That being said, what exactly IS APCN? Right now it is just a loosely structured collection of groups that focus on specific issues.
I think there is tremendous value in the larger APCN community members exchanging ideas.
So what should we turn APCN into? A place for lessons learned from exercises? A knowledge base for anyone interested in Africa? A place to share information in response to natural disasters and humanitarian assistance missions? A place for Africa, European, American, and other global partners to exchange ideas? A forum for bringing together Subject Matter Experts?
I'd like to hear your ideas.
Well Jordan, you've been trying to get us to post comments and ideas here for some time and, although the silence is not yet deafening, this appears not yet to be a forum in which people are comfortable speaking, after all, isn't this a place for work?
Well, yes and no, is it for work, sure, its a place where folks from around the world who have an interest in working with AFRICOM can find folks who work with and for AFRICOM so we can get some work done, but more importantly, it should try to be a bit of a community where we can get to know each other, what we are capable of and how we can support each other.
So what kind of things should make this 'place' different from any other portal.
Here's some of my suggestion.
1) This is NOT a place to get the offcial postion of an organization, we have formal blogs, public information officers, message traffic, etc, where the FORMAL coordination can take place, but folks on this site are workers, and we have questions and we want to get INSIGHTS not official positions, so it's a bit messier here, so if I say something...don't expect that to be my bosses opinion. If you WANT to get an official postion, I'll help you get one, but don't read anything into comments and discussions on a site like this.
2) Having said that - feel free to post official positions here, just clearly identify them as such.
3) Somebodies got to be a moderator, discussions that start one place may go off topic, and should be identified as such and allowed to continue, and it oughta be a moderators role to help facilitate that, so don't be surprised if the moderator is taking an active role.
4)Don't be afraid to be the subject matter expert, if you're wrong, folks will let you know, so don't be thin skinned about it, it defeats the purpose of collaboration.
Well, that's a partial list and some ideas...
I am a worker and new to the APAN community. I'd like a place to find out about APAN training. I've been through all of the how to on the website, but I'm looking for any training materials on APAN that can be used to help a new audience prepare for a logistics experiment/exercise. Does something along these lines exist and what would I need to do to gain access to it?
Thanks,
Joe Noland
Hi Joe,
I would recommend checking out the APAN Connect group - community.apan.org/.../default.aspx
You can post questions directly to the developers here as well as access "How To" guides. We haven't developed any APCN specific training guides as the processes are the same across the whole APAN platform.