Ning came up during discussions at MCN this week. I thought I would summarize what I got out of this discussion of a few weeks ago as a starting point for further discussion.
1. First, I note that the comments I received, and other items discussed on the MCN-L list, can be searched. The URL is at the bottom of each message on this list. You can also go to http://www.mcn.edu/resources/index.asp?subkey=80 to find out more about this resource 2. Several people have joined some group on Ning. No person who responded to my query or the subsequent discussion spoke of this as being of particular significance. Ning is being used, but isn't generating excitement. This accords to what I thought I was hearing going in. Two Ning groups that were mentioned: a. online museum group, The Museum Educational Social Network (MESN) on Ning for a few years at: http://mesn.museumpods.com b. Museum 3.0: what will the museum of the future be like? - http://museum30.ning.com/ Facebook is often used, to equal lack of effect. The obvious Facebook group is us--the Museum Computer Network: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18561723800 and a host more. Once one joins a group on Facebook or Ning, what then? I also have to mention archimuse, maintained by the folks who do the essential "Museums on the Web" conference, among other projects. There are almost 1500 registered users. If we at MCN could learn to do as well by our presenters, it would be a major step forward in terms of making conference materials accessible and part of ongoing discussion. The site is built with Drupal--the same tool used by many of us at our own institutions. In between conferences, there is an ongoing stream of news and information of interest. http://conference.archimuse.com Speaking of Drupal, Howard Rheingold recently opened his "Social Media Classroom." Combining wiki, forums, chat, and other media, it is worth requesting participation at http://socialmediaclassroom.com - but, even more than archimuse, there is no social networking aspect to the site. Something that would be most helpful to those of us looking for peers in specific geographic areas or with specific skills, interests, job titles, hair spray brand, whatever. Finally, one person mentioned www.museumprofessionals.org which uses web-based forums (vBulletin). I feel that there are lots of interesting things happing to support Communities of Practice, ranging from social networking sites to group-edited wikis. If someone puts the right combination of these pieces together, something very exciting will be possible. I wish I knew what combination and to what purpose ;-). Hope this helps, ari On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Ari Davidow <aridavidow at gmail.com> wrote: > Is anyone using Ning or grou.ps to help pull together intranet > activity or Community of Practice (or general community)? I keep > hearing about these tools, but have no sense how they are being used > or which, of the many issues I am grappling with, they address (if > any). > > In theory, having a single place to gather resources and do many times > of sharing and discussion would be great. In practice, I wonder if > wikis, on the one hand, or Facebook at another extreme, aren't doing > enough of what we want. > > Thoughts? > > ari >
