Dopp Juice

As luck would have it, the two books I contributed to this year are being launched in the same week.  This is actually quite lucky because it means I can confuse everyone with it, and distract them from looking at one book with the other.

Here they are…

1) Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation

Edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman. (Get it.)

This is a very powerful and important book, and you should buy it.  I say this not as a contributor, but as someone who’s been holding space in the gender-variance advocacy world, who knows that most of you are craving more exposure and information, and don’t know how to get it without coming across as clumsy.  THIS IS A GOOD BOOK.  It’s a patchwork collage of 52 voices, many of whom are hidden in daily life, but all of whom are well-spoken and have something powerful to say.

I’m honored to add that my piece is the End Note. It’s a brief meditation at the back of the book about where I see us, and where I think we’re going.  An excerpt:

We are five years old. Eighteen. Thirty-seven. Sixty. We are starting grad school, starting companies, starting families, and starting trends. We are serving coffee and signing paychecks, nursing the sick and teaching children, building technology, growing food, producing masterpieces, and changing laws. We are woven into this culture and we are finding each other. We are sharing our notes, strengthening our stories, reaching out for one another, and welcoming everyone in.

And when we wake up in five, ten, twenty-five years, we’ll find that the queer issues we’re fighting so hard for today have been trumped by an understanding of the fluidity of gender. We’ll have learned that masculinity and femininity are not mutually exclusive, and how satisfying it can feel to represent both at once, or neither…

Buy the book to read the rest, and the REST! ALL of the incredible essays, stories, poems, naked pictures (yes, naked pictures), cartoons, and conversations. I’m serious. You want this one. Go get it.

2) Coming & Crying

Edited by Melissa Gira Grant and Meaghan O’Connell. (Don’t get it.)

This is the other book I’m in. You don’t need to read it.

The project itself, from a purely observational standpoint, is fascinating. Melissa Gira Grant and Meaghan O’Connell decided they wanted to have an intervention into publishing — especially published sex writing — and to bring more of the rich, raw, honest writing style that was surfacing on the internet (about sex) to the printed page. They used a service called Kickstarter to raise some money from the community before they gathered the writing, so they could self-publish it properly. Their goal was to raise $3,000. They raised $17,000. And now they’re starting their own media label.

(But just because the project is fascinating does not mean you have to buy the book.)

The book is erotica-meets-drama. It’s a book of sex stories with all the messy awkwardness and overanalysis left in. I wrote a story for it. It’s under my real name. It’s a very personal story. Let’s just accept right now that I’m never going to run for Senate.

If you are a member of my family, I strongly recommend that you (please) do not buy this book. If you have a purely professional relationship with me and would rather not feel weird the next time you see me, I also really don’t think you should buy it.

And if you’re anyone else, you know what? We’re in a recession. You need to buy groceries. Look! Shiny things! I think your grandmother is on fire. Don’t look at the book.

Also? It was a limited print run. They’re gonna sell out soon anyway. And who knows — they might not print any more. So you probably can’t get the book anyway. It wasn’t meant to be. No, you can’t see an excerpt. You never heard about this. Enjoy your day.

(Don’t get it.)

Love,
Sarah

Last week I launched my big new project, Culture Conductor, an exploration into the “how” of online communities…

• How to create them
• How grow them
• How keep them healthy

The site is a collection of interviews, stories, tools, tips, and wisdom from people who out there on the wild, wild internets doing this kind of work. It’s a place to share ideas and practical advice. It’s a place to find help and get work. And it’s a place to hang out with a people-geek like me.

Unlike pretty much every other blog I’ve ever made (and I’ve made way too many), this one was not built in an afternoon. It took a year. I’ve been carrying around and sifting through a messy pile of momentum and conundrums since last summer (if you go skim August 2009 – June 2010 in this blog, you’ll see a pretty clear evolution).  I figured out what I wanted to create from it all in early May.  And I’ve been working like a manic scattered crazypants since then to make it happen.

And here it is!  Or at least, here’s the beginning.

I hope you enjoy it with me!

Quick Backstory:
This is a finicky evaluation of online project management systems, taken slightly out of context. I originally published it a few weeks ago via “Dopp Brain“, my email newsletter, which I’m writing for more often than I’m blogging right now. If you miss hearing from me, go sign up for that. I’m working on some infant/sensitive projects right now, and am preferring to talk about everything just a little less publicly for a bit.

But somebody just asked me about this overview, so I’m making it public now.

~~~~~

When we last heard from our hero, she was neck deep in trial accounts for online project management software…

Man, that was not a fun game.  But it was absolutely worth the digging.  Here’s what I learned (besides the fact that I am the Donald Trump of Project Management System Evaluators):

FIRED

Basecamp: It’s everybody’s golden child, but damnit, I can’t stand it.  Something about how the information is laid out just doesn’t fit how my brain works.  The Writeboards, which should be a centerpiece, are so far out of the way and take extra time to load that they feel like a disconnected afterthought.  The dashboard and calendar views are unreadably cluttered, and the task lists are clunky.  Fired.

Wrike: Oh, this one had so much potential, it broke my heart.  Completely fresh layout — they organize everything by Folders and Subfolders rather than Projects and Clients, so you can decide how your own work needs to be structured.  They also allow you to record the same task in multiple folders, so it’s cross-referenced against what it needs to do.  The only downside? It’s all about tasks.  And it takes a few too many clicks to enter a task to warrant that single focus.  There is a space for notes and discussions, but those are hidden away and hard to find — which is bizarre and completely unecessary.  I thought i was going to strangle it for that, so… Fired.

DeskAway: This one and I almost got married.  I had loaded up all my projects and we were halfway to the chapel (my tux looked great) when I realized that its Dashboard view of the All Tasks Due Today doesn’t let me mark tasks as done.  SERIOUSLY!  It’s just a summary — you have to click through to each task in this weird convoluted way to mark a task as done — so there’s no homebase area that you can hang out in and just be productive.  The other thing that bugged me was that the list of “Overdue” tasks included Today’s tasks.  You don’t get to tell me that something due today is overdue. And by the way, I lied, I don’t really like Bob Dylan and I don’t want to live in your stupid house with the stupid white picket fence and look at your stupid face all day long and this engagement is OVER. Fired.

Pelotonics: By this point, I was jaded.  I knew my standards were too high, and I was a little too familiar with the ejection button.  There was no passion here.  Just a bland dinner, a glimmer of hope (integrating with Evernote? Sweet…), and a quick dismissal based on a flat excuse.  I can’t add a new task from the Dashboard view. There. I said it. None of the other systems would let me do that either, but it seemed as good enough an excuse as any to end that date before we got any further.  It’s not you, it’s me. Let’s just be friends.  Trust me. You don’t want to get involved with me anyway. I’m bad news. I kill systems.  Just ask the others. Go. Now. Before we do something we’ll regret. You’re fired.

After I drowned my system incompatibility sorrows in several regrettable rounds of Chat Roulette, I got back on the horse.  I’m a reasonably attractive, successful consultant — I have a good personality, damnit!  There are plenty of fish in the sea!  Maybe I’m just using the wrong pickup line. Should I change my soap?

To cut to the chase, I put on my best “fine, i’ll be more agreeable this time” face and put together a hybrid solution:

HIRED

Remember the Milk for task tracking.  But not all tasks.  Just the tasks that aren’t part of any scheduled projects and still need to get done by a certain day.  I added the widget to my Gmail sidebar and configured it to only display tasks that are due today or are overdue.  I can check things off as I go, and I can add new things super-quickly when they come up. It works fabulously.

PBWorks Business Edition for project notes and collaboration.  It’s a wiki built for project management, and it’s yummy. I can have a different wiki for each project, and pull in guest collaborators for specific spaces only.  Bonus features: it has task lists (though they’re not any better than all the other system tasks lists I fired), and I’m using those to keep track of project requirements.  It also has this really sexy conference call feature, where it will call as many people as I want to have a meeting with on their telephones and bring them into a zero-hassle conference call.  And the best part about a wiki is that it has all the content I need, and none of the content I don’t need.  Win.

Google Calendar for scheduling work sessions. I’m blocking out time on my schedule for working on different projects. Old school, I know, but it works.

Emma, aka “Girl Friday,” aka “Queen of the Wikis” for tying it all together. (*joyful choirs erupt in praise*)  Emma’s a kick-ass project organizing consultant who is keeping the wiki and calendar updated, and making sense of new projects as they come in. You might also know her from KinkOnTap, the weekly webcast about culture, sexuality, and politics that she co-hosts and organizes.  She’s an awesome one, she is.

And there we have it.  That, plus some Gmail and Freshbooks is the organizational ground I’m standing on.  So far so good.

Genderfork.com — a volunteer-run community expression blog about gender variance that I founded two years ago — has exploded. In a good way. We’re getting far more submissions than we know what to do with, and the comments have started overflowing into tangential discussions. It’s time to grow.

Last week, we put out a call to the community, asking who’d like to help advise us on the creation of open community forums. We figured 10 or 15 people might raise their hands right away. When 70 did, we closed down the invitation and marked the group as Full. (Yep. Definitely a need for forums.)

Kicking off that discussion this week, we asked everyone involved a bunch of questions about where they’re coming from, what their interests are, and what they’re most inclined to talk about in a community forum about gender variance. We also included a question about how Genderfork has affected their lives and their own identities so far.

The responses hit me hard. This is the kind of site that has a big but quiet impact. To hear people put that impact into clear terms was hugely helpful to me, and moving.

Here were some of them….

* * *

“The biggest thing Genderfork has done for me is give me permission to not fit. For a long time I’ve felt like expressing an alternate gender without being trans in some way detracted or disrespected the life experiences and narratives of trans people. Genderfork has helped me embrace a gender identity that isn’t cis and isn’t trans and is still completely valid. Genderfork has helped me to feel real.”

* * *

“Genderfork is great! It’s helped broaden my idea of gender and taught me about the different labels we put on ourselves and each other. It’s a supportive little community that is very kind. I’m very glad it’s here on the Internet or else I think I’d be totally lost.”

* * *

“Genderfork hasn’t helped me with my identity formation, per se, but it has been crucial in how I’ve grown to accept it. Without the blog, I’d still probably be closeted about my third gender and feeling quite bad about it.”

* * *

“The blog helped me an amazing amount. I used to be just very, very confused. I didn’t even think it was possible that I could have a problem with my gender! Then I found the blog (I wish I remembered how), and it helped me a lot to figure out that I can be very happy even if I don’t present the gender traits of my sex.”

* * *

“Genderfork helped me to realise that it was ok for me to not be a woman or a man. I think before I realised that I was unhappy sometimes living as a woman but that I didn’t think I would be able to transition and live as a man full time either. I think genderfork helped me see that those are not the only two options and encouraged me to explore who I am a little bit more (still exploring, still having great fun doing it).”

* * *

“Genderfork has been invaluable, not in the formation of my gender identity, but understanding how that identity was defined. I already knew how I felt, but it took seeing other people relate to that, then label it, for me to understand what it was. If it wasn’t for genderfork, I’d still have that general feeling of ‘wrongness’ when acting or dressing as my gender identity.”

* * *

“Genderfork (along with the nudging of some friends of mine) opened my eyes and really gave me a safe space to examine and explore my own identity. I intellectually grasped the social construct of the binary, but was blown away by how many of the quotes and profiles here especially hit home for me. Seeing all the different labels or refusals of labels that people came up with was extremely educating in terms of showing me how wide this community really is. Also, being able to have a space where i know there are answers to the questions that answered anywhere else, and seeing, below every submission and profile, a flood of “Me too!” is really empowering.”

* * *

“As far as gender identity construction is concerned…well, Genderfork took me as a very confused individual and left me as a very confused individual. But it a good way! Knowing that there are alternatives to the oh-so-constricting binary is definitely an improvement from where I was. I’m still working through a lot of things, but it really helps to know that there are like-minded people out there in the world, and maybe even closer to home than I originally thought.”

* * *

“It’s shown me there are others out there who are like me and yet entirely unlike me at the same time. It’s helped guide me toward the ways to outwardly express my inner identity.”

* * *

“I wouldn’t say Genderfork has helped me form my own identity as much as it has shown me how diverse other peoples’ genders can be. It’s also helped to show me that it’s not abnormal to have a non-binary gender identity.”

* * *

*gulp* Okay. We’ll keep walking.

Sometimes I email people.

Like, a lot of people at once. I do the “bcc” thing, and I hand pick the people who I think want to hear about something, and then I remember after I sent the email that I forgot a bunch of people. But it works well enough.  Sometimes an email to a lot of people is the right medium for what we’re doing.

Then again, sometimes blog posts are the right medium. Or tweets. Or personal emails. Or facebook wall posts. Or text messages. Or (gasp!) a phone call (but let’s not talk about that). I try to stick to whatever medium is right (except when it’s a phone call, and then I’ll try to come up with something else, anything else, that will substitute. But again, let’s not talk about that).

When I send out a big email, it’s usually because:

• Someone sent me a really cool job or gig that doesn’t fit me very well, and I want to pass it on to other good people.
• I want to hire assistance for something, but I don’t really want the whole world to know about it.
• I want to tell people what’s changed recently in my consulting work, so they know what I’m a good fit for and what I’m not interested in.
• I want to tell the story of my consulting work — what I’m learning and doing and accomplishing and messing up along the way — without feeling totally public and naked about it.
• I want to talk about a new personal project I’m working on (usually relating to gender or sexuality or queer culture, or maybe creative writing) and see what people think before I make it public.
• I want to announce something I’m doing or hosting or organizing or traveling to (or whatever) to people I care about.
• I want to pass on information about something amazing that I care a lot about.

And… as you can probably tell from that list, these emails are starting to feel a little bit like having a newsletter… just, minus the “consent” part.

So let’s get consensual about this.

If you would like to be part of my inner circle of advisors, or if you want to hang out within catching range of the job/gig leads that I pass on, or if you find the neurotic journey of a consultant interesting, or if you think the stuff I do for the queer world is making a difference and you want to know about my next big thing before it happens, or if you’re just my friend who never gets to spend time with me and is looking for some insight into why I won’t answer my phone…

You can sign up to get emails from me here:

Subscribe to Sarah Dopp’s Brain

Email:

Visit this group

After you hit “Submit” above, Google will probably email you to make sure you really meant to do that. Just tell Google, “Yeah, I did,” and then you’ll be done with it. (And if you have any problems, tell me.)

In exchange for your consent, interest, and trust, I vow to:

• …not send you things that feel impersonal or spammy.  If I’m sending you something, it’s because I think it really, really matters, and I will tell you exactly why.
• …never ever ever sell/trade/share your email with others, or let anyone else hijack my list to use it for their own agenda.
• …not email you more often than I think is respectful. That’s subjective, I know. In reality, it will probably only once a month or so — maybe less.  I’m not setting a schedule.  If it starts getting more frequent than that, I’ll be extra careful.
• …keep it a one-way announcement list.  This isn’t a big huge discussion group. If you respond, you’ll be writing directly to me, not to everybody.
• …never take it personally if you want to unsubscribe.  In fact, I probably won’t even know.  I don’t keep track of that stuff.

Past and current clients, friends, family members, genderfork fans, queer open mic regulars, conference acquaintances, former lovers, co-conspirators, and total strangers are all welcome.  Just remember: this is me talking about what I care about.  If you don’t share the same interests, you might not find this very exciting.

But if you do, you probably already think this is awesome.

(Sweet. Me too.)

Love,
Sarah

I just spent two weeks on my couch, staring at the wall, nursing a bad case of bronchitis, desperately trying to convince myself every morning that I was healthy again, and then falling over ten minutes later.

This was poorly timed. I had just asked the internet/universe for new clients (and it was delivering); I needed to promote and host January’s Queer Open Mic; I had to host, edit the audio recording, book the next guest, and kick off some written content for Deviants Online; there were a handful of loose ends at Genderfork that I was dropping the ball on (including a physical interactive art exhibit that we were sponsoring and needed to build); and there’s also a big sorta-secret dream project that I’m determined to kick off this year, and I had planned to announce it in January to find out who wants to help.  But instead, I’ve been curled up in a ball, unable to think or do.

Pretty much all I managed to pull off in this time was gathering a few new (less linear) perspectives. Here’s one:

I used to write — poems, stories, essays, daily journal entries, thoughts on napkins, whatever I could use to spew ideas on. I also blogged almost daily here, and was thrilled by my ability to publish something to the whole world with just a click. My writing slowed when I got into building more websites “just for fun” — there’s a lot of creative energy that goes into getting the CSS and HTML, the content and audience, just right.  And now I organize.  My creative needs are met by arranging people, ideas, and spaces together like I used to string together words or snippets of code.  The result is still a piece of art — something I can point to and say, “I did that, and it’s beautiful, it’s even more interesting than I imagined it would be, and it has an effect on the people who encounter it.”  Only now the art is much more alive.  It grows and changes and takes on its own personality and it needs to be constantly fed and nurtured to survive.

I’ll be honest: poems were way easier.  They certainly didn’t care if I got sick.

About a month ago, when I was having a crisis of direction, I called my dear friend Melissa and demanded, “What do I want to be when I grew up, again??” She said, “Sarah, you’re a poet who raises armies and brings people together, and sometimes those poems look like websites.” And sometimes those websites look like armies. And sometimes those armies look like poems.

Genderfork was a photo-a-day project in which I posted photos from flickr to represent my unusual sense of style.

Genderfork is a community space for 13,000+ devoted readers a month, and it’s managed by a staff of ten.

Queer Open Mic was my writing deadline and my creative home — I went there to perform every two weeks for a group of friends in that tiny cafe, whether I was ready to or not.

Queer Open Mic packs 80 grateful performers into the back of a bookstore each month, and they thank me afterward for making them a home.

Deviants Online is a baby now, and I’m excited to see where it will grow.

And there’s this other big project that I want to talk about — it’s not ready yet, but it will be real soon.  As soon as I catch up from being sick.

And my clients, I love you, and I love that you trust me to advise on your organizing — that music you play to your audience and the way you inspire them to dance.

I live for this stuff. I work to build and I build for work. I’ve been sitting on a couch for two weeks agonizing over how disconnected and depressing it feels to not be creating.

But one thing is loud, bright, and obvious from where I’m standing now: It’s gonna be a damned good year.

Last week I asked some of my recent and current clients to offer up a short paragraph that describes what it’s like to work with me, in an effort to update my website’s sidebars.

What I got back was overwhelming.  If you need me, I’ll be over in the corner being bright red and hiding under a jacket.

“I just love Sarah Dopp!” is a pretty common phrase uttered around our office.  Sarah is amazing at what she does—she’s fast, efficient, and detailed oriented—yet she remains humble. No question is ever too stupid to ask Sarah, no task too small.  But the most important thing about Sarah is that she gets our organization, through and through.  Unlike others we’ve worked with in the past, we’ve never had to question Sarah’s advice or intentions, because we know she inherently shares the same set of beliefs as our organization.  And there’s nothing quite as refreshing as working with a consultant like that—a consultant like Sarah Dopp.

— Amy Lafayette
Community Engagement Coordinator/Web Specialist
Planned Parenthood of Northern New England

The first person I hired to set up my website made all sorts of promises and delivered on very few of them. The site languished. As soon as Sarah took over, she sent me lists of everything we should try to do to improve traffic, and immediately set me up to track visits and to easily send her updated tasks. Whenever I have an idea, it goes into our planning grid. We prioritized the tasks and are gradually implementing them as the budget allows.

She has made numerous changes to QlownTown, improving keywords, membership setup, access to the daily cartoon, text and more. She gives me helpful feedback on my ideas and provides great ideas of her own. She always works in my best interest and—very important—can be trusted with confidential information.

I finally have someone I can partner with to take my website to the next level–and beyond!

— Don Smith-Weiss
Cartoonist
Qlowntown.com

Working with Sarah has been a real pleasure, she is fast, direct, communicative, funny and kind to those of us who know very little about the particulars. She brought her skills to our design and concept seamlessly, and made some serious magic.

— Nancy Schwartzman
Filmmaker and Activist
WhereIsYourLine.org

Rarely are people this gifted in technical troubleshooting, editing, and understanding the nuances of communicating with target audiences. Sarah Dopp, it turns out, is a one-stop-shop. Our team loves her! Of all consultants I have hired and collaborated with in my career, she is by far the most thorough, efficient and pleasant to work with. Always focused, prepared and completely tuned in to the project.

My organization can either pay me for 10 hours of frustrating work to troubleshoot something, or I can call Sarah, who will solve my technical problems within minutes with humor and incredible expertise. She is pleasant, accessible, thorough, and knowledgeable. All her suggestions are well considered and appropriate for the scope of whatever project is at hand. I have yet to get any advice less than brilliant.

— Valerie Vass
Director of Community Engagement
Planned Parenthood of Northern New England

Sarah has the remarkable ability to distill a project down to its essence, even as that project changes, which they always do. Building and developing on that essence is where Sarah truly thrives, and I’d have been lost so many times without her magic moonshine.

— Hugh Howie
Producer
hughhowie.com

And on that note, I’m currently available for new clients. :)

I’m really excited, and really proud, of what’s starting to happen with Deviants Online.  Not familiar with it? No problem – here are the basics.

Deviants Online was started because, while there are plenty of social media resources for mainstream businesses, there just aren’t many (or any!) for us “deviants” – queer folk, artists, sex geeks, undergrounders, and others that don’t walk the straight and narrow. We wanted to create a way for us to network, learn from each other (and from guests who are experienced at handling the personal / professional / volunteer blend), teach each other, and talk about best practices for handling social media and online networking. Think – a Facebook tutorial for the queerly minded….a Twittering lesson for those who value their personal privacy but want to get the word out about their projects…ideas for blogging artists to get their work in front of more people…and other sexy things to do with Google.

While we’re having the workshops monthly in San Francisco, we wanted to make the conversations available to others who can’t attend, so we’re happy that we’ve got the edited recording of the December ’09 meeting up for your listening enjoyment. We give attendees a chance to chat “off record” and we edit out any mentions of identifying information that slip during the gathering, so what you’ll hear combines the amazing resources & information that come up during the discussion with a healthy respect and protection of personal privacy.

>> Listen to the first workshop here! <<

We’d love for you to join us in coming months – you can see a full schedule at the website. On January 12, Meitar “maymay” Moscovitz will be our featured guest for the next workshop. While we encourage donations to cover the cost of the meeting space, please don’t skip it if money’s an issue for you – we value your presence and energy far more than your money!

Any questions? Just ask…and please come check it out!

I think I’m ready to consider my next large contract, but only if it’s exactly right.  And I mean that: I’m perfectly happy right now hanging out in Small Contract Land, and I won’t let anything big into my life unless it’s absolutely the right match for both of us.  But maybe that perfect match is out there somewhere, just waiting for me to wink in the right direction. Let’s find out…*

Passionate Multi-Talented Consultant Seeks Online Community that has Lost its Way

Me? I’m a smart, tech-savvy online community organizer who gets really excited about making good stuff happen in the world.

You? You’re the extended online community of a company that appreciates you and wants you to be happy, but that doesn’t quite know how to take good care of you yet. You have a lot to offer and you can tell this organization wants you to shine, but for some reason, somehow, the pieces just aren’t lining up.

At your core, you’re a real catch (and you know it, too). You enjoy lively, informed discussions and you sincerely care about helping people. (In fact, you often have so many ideas about how the world could be better that you can hardly contain yourself! It’s okay, I understand that.) You’re creative and multi-faceted with lots of hobbies and interests, and you bring what seems like lifetimes of experience to the table. Anyone would consider themselves lucky to have you, but it’s disappointingly rare for you to be with someone who grasps exactly how precious and invaluable you really are.

If you let me in, I will be that someone. I will listen to you, find out what you need, and do whatever I can to provide for you.  I will ease your internal conflicts and nurture the parts of you that want to make the world a better place.  I will help bridge that gap between your needs and your organization’s needs, and I will empower you to make a meaningful difference in the way they approach their work.  Under my care, you will grow stronger and healthier, making it possible for you to also grow bigger.

But I need to tell you up front: I’m not interested in a traditional relationship. If you’re looking for the perfect partner who will meet all of your needs for the rest of your life, you’ll have to keep looking — that’s not me.  I have a rich and varied lifestyle with room only for hot, life-changing affairs, and I want us to live in the moment on this one. I’ll come in to your life, strengthen you, heal your wounds, and make the connections you’re craving. I’ll show your organization exactly how valuable you can be to them, and I’ll teach both of you to take care of each other directly, so you won’t need to rely on me. And then I’ll let you stand up on your own.

Are you okay with that?  I know the goodbye will be hard, but I think you’ll agree with me that it will have all been worth it.

A little more about me… I’ve founded and nurtured several online communities that grew in size and scope over time by natural interest. I’m fascinated with what drives people to contribute to things, and obsessed with helping them find ways to do it. I’m excited, engaging, optimistic, and interesting. And I also work my butt off.

I’ve been blogging and building websites for over ten years, and have expert skills in HTML and CSS, as well as strong social media savvy. I’m also a formally trained technical writer with a knack for making complex things easy to understand.  I’ve been making a living as a technology consultant for over five years, and I work well in lots of different environments, including from my home. I’m in San Francisco, but you can be based anywhere.

The arrangement I’m looking for would involve a contract (I’m not an employee) at respectable business rates.  My ideal commitment would be about 20 hours a week over a period of 6 – 12 months, but I want to make sure all your needs are being met, too.

If you know the matchmaker who can arrange this affair, please send this to them, and I will owe you a hundred hugs.

And if that matchmaker is you, I look forward to your reply. Please email me here:

info at sarahdopp dot com

…and we can further explore our compatibility.

With great appreciation,
Sarah

* a hat tip to Havi for this format. (Have you read her stuff yet? She’s wonderful.)

I believe that some communities need managers (or facilitators or moderators — there are a few different flavors to this role).  I also believe there are ways to hold that space respectfully, in a way that takes care of everyone, while still being very strong.  As promised, I want to offer you some of the “moves” I’ve learned over the years in this role, with hopes that you can use them to help guide your own community spaces.

There’s just one problem.  Every time I try to write this blog post, it keeps growing to the size of a book.

So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to let it be a series. Last week I gave you the prologue.  Now here’s Part 1: “Aikido Moves for Online Community Management: The Basics,” complete with even more intro material for context.  There will be a Part 2. I promise.

My Training

I’ve been building websites since ’97 and have held the reigns on a number of community-rallying projects.  There are two in particular, though, that I can attribute most of my lessons to.  They are:

The Writ – An online writing workshop and publication that had 2,000+ members and an ever-changing staff of volunteers. It started in 2003 and was just officially closed a few months ago, because it was time.

Genderfork - A community expression blog about gender variance that has 10,000+ readers a month.  It’s run by a staff of 10 volunteers who all have clear responsibilities for maintaining the site. The broader community contributes through submissions and response comments. It’s been around since 2007.

I built both of these spaces from scratch, with the help of friends and community members who wanted to see it succeed. And it’s important to note that in both of these communities, our goals were to:

• make as many people as possible feel welcome and comfortable, especially newbies.
• stay focused on a specific topic.
• collaboratively create something bigger than we could build as individuals.
• nurture and encourage quality storytelling and art.
• inspire and guide community members to support and help each other.
• represent ourselves in a positive way to the rest of the world.

So pretty much all of my advice comes from advocating for this culture.  There are lots of other community cultures that are just as relevant, but I can’t speak about them from experience.

What’s an online community and when does it need a manager?

I’m happy to report that I answered this question in detail last week.  If you’re not 100% clear on what I’m about to talk about, please go read it.  What follows is the beginning of an advanced discussion.  Last week’s post is the 101-level introduction.

Why Aikido?

Aikido is a martial art that involves a lot of rolling around on the floor.  I’ve taken a few classes, I’m not an expert, and if you’re interested in going deeper than the light metaphor I’m offering here, I encourage you to — there’s a lot to learn from it.  But for our purposes, let’s just look at a few basics.  When practicing Aikido, you…

• blend with the motion of your attacker and redirect their force, rather than opposing it head-on.
• protect your attacker from injury as you defend yourself.
• stay in control with minimal effort.
• remain balanced and focused.
• roll with the punches.

I find this an incredibly useful metaphor for online community management.

And a few more disclaimers…

1. The thoughts below are limited in scope and context.  They are not comprehensive, and you should not assume they will all apply to your situation. They might not. Sorry.

2. I wish I could tell you I’m coming at this from a place of stability. I’m not. Even as I write this, a discussion is underway in the Genderfork community that might push to have my curation guidelines and original mission statement completely restructured.  This is actually okay.

3. I’m also aware that a lot of people will have plenty of reasons to disagree with me on some of my points.  Go for it — I’m always up for hearing how things can be done better.  (Just, you know, be nice about it please. Thanks.)

“The Basics”

Okay, ready? Here are what I consider to be important foundational moves.

1) Don’t punish people for stuff they haven’t done.

Be careful about comment and moderation policies, and make sure they’re addressing real needs rather than pre-emptively striking against imagined ones.

I anticipated that Genderfork would get a lot of hate mail, and I strongly considered turning on the “you have to be pre-approved to leave comments” setting to guard against it.  If you’ve ever left a comment only to see a “now waiting for moderation” message, you know what a slap in the face that setting feels like.  Fortunately, I decided to wait and see if I really needed it.  70,000+ total visitors later, we still don’t get a single shred of anti-queer hate in our comments.  ZERO. NADA. GOOSE EGG.  (Okay, well there was that one day, but it was super-isolated, and there was a miscommunication, so I say it doesn’t count.)  I now have it set up so that people can even comment anonymously — no name or email address required — because I know they appreciate the option, and they respect the privilege.  Still no hate.  Magic.

2) Set the tone, and the tone will maintain the tone.

Okay, so lack of hate isn’t really “magic” — it’s the tone we set from the beginning.

Have you ever shown up to a conversation that was already in progress?  What did you do?  You listened to what was going on, how people were interacting, and where they were in the discussion before you joined in.  You drew all sorts of conclusions about expectations and protocol just by taking a quick inventory of the situation, and then you went with the flow, adding your perspective in a way that seemed to fit.

That’s what people do when they show up to online communities, too. They take a brief scan around, they pull in whatever cues they can gather, they decide if they want to join in, and then they do so in a way that fits all the factors.  Think of the quality of comments on Flickr versus YouTube.  Flickr takes community management very seriously, and people have gotten the message over time (whether consciously or unconsciously) that being respectful in comments is important.  On YouTube, the expectation is more or less that people will be idiots.  So people are idiots.

Take note of what kind of conversation people are experiencing when they show up to your site. If you monitor it carefully enough in the beginning, it will begin to (mostly) monitor itself.

How do you set the tone? By contributing in the style that you’d like others to contribute. By offering some simple, clear guidelines on how people should treat each other and why. By suggesting to the people in your inner circle that they engage in a certain way. By showing up and being personally involved to positively redirect things when someone goes off course.

3) Stay detached from emotional conversations.

If your job is to keep the community healthy, then your “at ease” stance needs to be slightly above any emotional discussions.  You’re at your most helpful when you’re keeping a bird’s eye view on things and can understand everyone’s perspectives.

This might make you feel like the community’s not really yours.  That’s right. I’m sorry. It’s not. It’s theirs. You are the steward and caretaker, and when you’re hanging out there, you’re on duty.  Like a bartender at a good club, you get plenty of perks from being in the room, but you still need to stay behind the bar.  (And, preferably, sober.)

If you find yourself emotionally involved in a challenging situation, that’s your cue to go find someone else to advise you — someone who understands the community but isn’t involved in the drama. You can’t hold the Smite Buttons and be angry at the same time — that’s just not fair.

But even if you are angry, and you are getting advice from someone more balanced, you still probably need to keep your venting off the Internet. People need to trust you, and blame-heavy ranters are hard to trust.

So go off and kick trashcans, let a friend keep an eye on things while you’re gone, and come back when you’re ready to be sane again.  You just saved yourself from a mutiny.

~~~~

More soon.

Love,
Sarah