John Magee

Flow the comments. Not like on Questions. Instead: commenter name does not appear … the respective comments flow … create visual distinction between individual comments (space and/or discreet thin grayish line) … keep segmentation by nationality and country … keep ranking.

Why? So that members can segment. So that it’s easier on the eyes. And because if UC might morph into a full-fledged tool for global teams. Flow of comments becomes like a live, on-going focus group:

“Ok, cool. We can go into Exercises, choose a topic or exercise or whatever, then segment based on nationality or company or team (password-protected) or even discipline (engineering) … and read all of the responses. This has tremendous value!”

Current order is: Twitter, IN, Email. Please change to: Email, IN, Twitter.

Why? Because we want to maximize WOM – word-of-mouth. Awareness-building. Colleague-to-Colleague:

“Hey Joe … hey, Susan … hey, Hans: If you’re not a member on UC, you need to be now. I put the link to Join below. Get going. It’s very helpful!”

I suspect that folks use email before LinkedIn and before Twitter. And LinkedIn before Twitter.

If UC takes off it will offer members a huge treasure trove of insights: great content + valuable discussions via Questions + pragmatic exercises via Exercises. Members will want a search function.

There are plenty of free plugins for WordPress. None of them will ever be as clean and elegant as one you create or have already created. Please let me know if you have a search function, and if not, if you are able and willing to create one.

With Questions and Exercises, and with your coding, UC is moving in the direction of a full-fledged stand-alone tool for global organizations. As you know I have gone back and forth re: my business model:

“Offer content only, John. Don’t offer functionality which is non-core.” or “Offer Questions and Exercises, John. They enhance UC greatly. WordPress has the functionality. And you see how David can take it to the next level. There’s little risk, John. If Members don’t use it, fine, then take it down.”

If UC moves more and more into that direction … full-fledged stand-alone tool … I want integrity of functionality.

“integrity”: integrated, out of one mold (as the Germans would say), one look and feel, internally consistent. Your work, David.

I see in the Admin Panel the term Email. I’m not sure what that means. I suspect that you are anticipating me asking you if it is possible to generate emails from UC sent to UC-members. Is that the case? If so, that would be tremendous.

Why? To update members about UC News: new content, new functionality, new members, new companies, particularly interesting discussions on Questions, insights which members want to share with each other … and reminders of when their membership is about to end so that they are motivated to re-join.

Email UC-to-Members would be our preferred, perhaps only, mode of communication to them.

I may have mentioned this before. If we get a sizable, and consistently growing, number of members, and if a good percentage of those members participate thoughtfully in the Questions section, where there commenter-name is clickable taking them to a URL of their preference, the next logical step would be to set up a kind of member directory.

Why? So that they can network with each other. We would create a simple, clean, elegant member profile that they could fill out. Members would determine themselves who should have access to it: members-only or open access.

Then we would set up an alphabetical directory. And perhaps with segmentation options: nationality, location, company, sector (i.e. automotive), discipline (i.e. engineering):

“Ok, this is great. I’m an American. I interact all the time with Germans. In the automotive sector. Especially with engineers. Hey UC, give me a list of all members here on UC who fit that profile: German + automotive + engineers.

Oh, and I’ll be in Munich two weeks in October. I not only want to check out Oktoberfest, I wanna meet with other UC-members, especially those who match my search parameters.”