Ron Lichty put together an event in the Bay Area that I wish I could have made. He brought together about 150 people to hear a panel of online community folks to discuss community and collaboration, moderated by Eugene Eric Kim of Blue Oxen.
The panelists were: Sylvia Marino of Edmunds, Zack Rosen of Civicspace labs, Tony Christopher of community project for the FAA and NASA, Scott Wilder of the Quickbooks online communities.
Ron has posted a synopsis of the event that is almost like being there.
There are tons of great insights, but I particularly liked how Eugene started the discussion:
Eugene noted that community and collaboration software has enabled communities to self-organize online. But he advised the audience, “You can say ‘I want Wikipedia.’ But that doesn’t mean you can put up a wiki and have it ‘take.’ You can’t organize self-organization.�?
Good stuff- go check out the synopsis...