c #license:CC-by-nc-nd-3.0 Reasons to not use Facebook (or other hosted portals):*You are the product

• no control over data
• data is not exportable
• what happens when the hosted portal disappears
• during down periods, the community may not want to pay for service
• having a centralized location for the communty separates it from "social media" in general

 The Communtiy Toolchain (types):*Telephone and phone trees

• Emai
• Social Media
• Forums
• Mailing Lists
• Calendar
• Wikis
• Chat/Instant Messaging

 Open Source Options:*Buddypress

• Mailing Lists
• Melange: mentoring/training for Google Summer of Code
• Drupal (Lightswitch)
• Oxwall (wall.fm)
• Groupserver
• Mailman
• Mediawiki
• Calagator (aggregates calendars from other sites) (also see http://www.shift2bikes.org/cal/)
• EtherPad
• Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware

 Proprietary (free) solutions (free is sometimes not free)*Yahoo Groups

• Facebook
• Google Groups - Good Searching, Stable URLs,
• Google Hangout (small-scale conversations)
• Google Calendar
• Linked In
• Flowdock
• Twitter chats
• Ning
• Hootsuite
• Skype
• Google+ Hangouts
• Google Talk
• Nation Builder (out of the box community management)
• Sharepoint

Collections of tools:*http://cpsquare.org/wiki/Technology_for_Communities_project

• http://cpsquare.org/wiki/Other_tools_directories

 Problem Points in Managing Community*Managing Multiple channels of communication (community infrastructure) (Mailing lists, irc, contact forms, blogs, forums, knowledge base)

• combining tools (e.g. Wiki + forum, or Forum + email notifications, or Wiki comment + notification) helps control infromation overload
• Scaling communty
• Empowering members of the community to multiply your own forces by giving support to your most active users
• you have to "leave the room" so that your super users can regulate the community on their own
• Does the community define itself or is it defined by the tools used (or corporate control of the tools)
• Have strategies for building community that doesn't rely on tools
• If you take care of all the easy stuff for the community, there's nothing for new community members to do

 When Choosing Tools, Consider:*Events

• ongoing communities.
• Code camps
• Different user's technological abilities
• Different sized communities

(keep an eye out for OpenCloudConf coming up this next year where many of these tools will be discussed)