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Laurel Papworth – The business of online communities

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 29 2006.

Session description

It seems that everyone is talking about user generated content and online communities these days. But how will citizen journalism, user-generated content, the Blogosphere, tagging, ranking, and Wiki knowledge reshape branding and your business? How do you manage and scale this community and then hand control to your users (and how do you explain to the boss what you’ve just done?). Gain an understanding that dialogue is the new content and learn how to maximise the benefits (and minimise the pitfalls) of creating online communities in this presentation.

About Laurel Papworth

Laurel Papworth PortraitLaurel Papworth runs a consultancy specialising in maximising value from establishing online communities.

Back in the nineties she had key roles in major projects such as NewsPro (digitising Fairfax Newspapers in 1994) and Optus Networker (the first WAP product in Australia in 1999). As part of establishing Optus Convergent media, she managed optus.com and optus.net editorial and technical teams. The last 10 years have been spent outside Australia, working for such major players as Telkomsel Indonesia, UUNET Europe and Cisco Asia.

Laurel is a leading expert on user generated content. She set up an online community for Cisco using user generated content from project managers to manage knowledge transfer across Asia. She’s also been an administrator for Stratics.com, a massive MMORPG site that handles the official online newspaper, forums etc for Ultima Online and others.

Excited to be back in Australia, her current projects include consulting to a major international studio and entertainment group in preparation of the launch of a children’s TV program across AsiaPacific that addresses childhood obesity and health combining animation with online communities.

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