Starting on Tuesday, June 15th, I’m throwing the office doors wide open. Most of the day, every day, I’ll have the chat in Admin Announcements open.

As always I am open to making this an even greater experience, so bring your ideas and/or concerns.

Stop in if you want to chat.

Thanks!

Alex

One of the oldest blogs at the Beach, the Community Bulletin Board, will be taken down and moved to a group.  We feel that being a group will make the bulletin board more accessible, therefore more useful.

So, if you have anything you would normally post on a community bulletin board, post it at The Beach Bulletin Board. Or, grab an email subscription to see the latest postings to the board.

Please: No listings about wanting to give away unruly children!

Thanks,

Admin

Mark your calendars for Hubpages Group Chat.  Wednesday May 26, 2010 at 4 pm EST.  We will meet on the Hubpages Group Channel.

Tuesday, May 25th, admin will be having another Chat With Admin session in the Admin Announcements group. The chat will run from 12:00 to 1:00 pm EST.

Come and join us for some lively discussions about the Beach.

Share the vision!

Beginning on Wednesday, May 19th, at midnight EST, the site will be down for a few minutes for Beach Maintenance.

As always, we advise you to regularly back up your blogs and to check them thoroughly after any sitewide maintenance.

Thanks!

Just a simple reminder that there is a tutorial in the Knowledge Base about Links and how to best share them as references materials in the groups.

The sharing and passing of knowledge at the Beach is incredible. You guys are examples of giving that should be held in the highest regard. Keep it up.

But, if we share links in the Update or Forum, those links get shuffled down and mixed in with all the group’s  updates and forum threads. It becomes difficult to sort through and find the relevant material we are looking for.

On the other hand, if we share them in the link directories of relevant groups, then the shared links become cataloged and easy to find.

Remember, when a link is shared, there is an opportunity to comment on the link. This comment can be used as an intro to the link. For that matter, so can the description of the link.

Let’s keep up the wonderful sharing, but do it in a way that is efficient and creates the best experience for all users.

The tutorial for best use of the links directory can be found at Crabbysbeach Links Tutorial.

Enjoy!

We will have a group chat on Wednesday May 19 at 5 p.m.   This will be a loose conversation regarding the blog posts or any other questions you may have.  Look for us in the Crabbysbeach chat room Hubpages Group channel.

Spend an hour with admin at the Admin Announcements group chat. Everyone is invited.

Share the vision.

If I was making a public speech right now, you would see me visibly quaking in my boots But, as I’m not, I’m hoping I can make this more of a success!

To some of you, I’m pretty well-known. Inkserotica aka Carrie White, a freelance writer, published frequently both on the internet and off, who occasionally crawls out of the Squidoo woodwork to make the occasional blog post/comment/rating or Squidoo Lens.

To others I’m pretty much an unknown quantity who has suddenly appeared out of nowhere to run Crabbysbeach alongside Alex. To be quite honest, I can understand your confusion. I’m hoping this post will go some way to explaining the events surrounding my sudden arrival to this rather lucrative spot

I’m very honoured to have been offered the opportunity to work alongside Alex at Crabbys. As you all know, he’s a highly intelligent, charming and fun guy to be around. I’ve had the privilege of working with Alex before now and I’m hoping this partnership will produce some interesting collaborations in the near future I’m also pleased to be able to work with everyone here. I know from experience that you are a terrific group of people;  all very supportive and accepting.

You’ll be pleased to know that I have exactly the same visions as Alex for the Beach and I shall do my best to help Alex get it there

As the members of Tenfinity know, I have had a vision, a knowledge if you will, that the next real power on the Internet is going to be small communities or groups working together in some fashion or another.

The power is here.

More and more groups, businesses, and like minded people are turning to the small communities to help get their voice heard, because on large platforms, a voice can be lost, and as individuals, our voices are seldom heard.

Central to all communities is the concept of voice. Voice is how we brand ourselves, deliver our message, and attract our followers, and on the Internet, there is no better way to accomplish all this with your voice, than with a blog.

A blog is merely a tool that lets you do anything from change the world to share your shopping list ~ Unknown

Blogging in a community has several distinct advantages over blogging individually, not the least being the support and traffic from the other bloggers in the community. The kind of traffic and natural promotion that comes from a community can give a blog a start up shot in the arm.

Traditionally a “community” has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location ~ Wikipedia

For the purpose of Crabbysbeach and how the word community is defined here, I’ll have to replace the word living with working. On the other hand, as much time as some of us spend on our communities, living could stay in the definition.

I recently watched an interview with Darren Rowse of ProBlogger where he was asked about the future of blogging. He mentions the word convergence in reference to bringing all the Web 2.0 social networking activity to one spot, or hub.

The reality is, that Crabbysbeach is a community and we have grown into a hub.

A Brief Look Back

Back in September of 2009, I spent three long days setting up Crabbysbeach in hopes of providing Squidoo Lensmasters with a platform where they could start blogging as a community. In the first week, there were 11 bloggers on a platform that was a far cry form the social networking gem it is today.

There was steady growth in numbers due to the promotional efforts of bloggers like 24websurf, those from Senior Squids, and Tenfinity.

When I plugged in the BuddyPress social network in a box, it was if someone had thrown on the switch to light a very dark room. The population increased dramatically and the activity had picked up unbelievably. Users were beginning to say things like ‘addicted’ and ‘I hang out here more than any other place.’

We were actually looking like a community.

But, I knew there was more. I knew that the puzzle wasn’t complete. My vision dictated that Crabbysbeach be a hub. A real community. A place where we not only like to hang out and have fun, but a destination where we can work. A place where shared information, learning, and pooled efforts could do nothing but enrich the experience of every member of the Beach.

I was actually searching for ways to open the Beach up to those opportunities when the recent wreck happened. As I have stated before, I wasn’t going to bring the Beach back online without improvements, and I believe I have succeeded.

A Look At the Now

Today, a week after coming back online, we are at about 99% functionality as far as bugs and being the actual community I envisioned for us.

The worst of the bugs, you will never see, but just like the ones you do see, I am diligently seeking solutions so that we can have a nearly seamless stroll from one part of the Beach to the other.

Alex

On the surface, the social networking aspect of our community has been greatly enhanced. Features like the Profile edits that include photo albums, profile badges and profile signatures give us more depth in our persona.

We also have the ability to sync Twitter and Facebook updates into and out of the Activity Stream.

The Activity Stream has filters so we can segregate the activity we view. We can even narrow it down to certain group activity.

There are two new chat functions at the Beach. One is a text chat and the other is a video chat conference room. You can find the regular chat on your navbar, and the video chat named The Beach View, is in the pulldown at the sidebar.

The text chat is particularly powerful and plays into what power lays underneath the surface of our community. Not only can we chat publicly and privately, but we can chat on different channels such as username and groups.

Groups and the Forum hold the real key to making Crabbysbeach a true hub. The power of any one group to be an information sharing workplace has been increased tenfold with functions like wiki, document sharing (including editing and storage), attachments, attached blog, and RSS feed from external blogs.

I wholeheartedly encourage the creation of groups and using them to their fullest potential. I am somewhat surprised that some of you haven’t taken the initiative to start more groups, especially a strictly Squidoo group, or a Hubpages group. In fact, Factor Y will be moving to the Beach and starting anew in a few days with Rich as co-admin doing most of the work.

We already have some really fine groups, one of which I want to give special recognition to. Books At the Beach was an idea that I approached Kim (kimmanleyort) with and pretty much dropped may half of the ball when she grabbed it. I apologize publicly to Kim for not giving her the total support she deserved. But, Kim diligently worked the project and created a most unique use of a group.

If you take a look around the The Beach and really look at the tools such as the RSS feeds for just about every activity, the Twitter / Facebook streams, and the power of the groups , you cannot deny that through convergence, we are achieving true community definition.

What Is On The Horizon

Look for virtual tours of the Beach to appear in the Welcome group in the next few days.

We will be beta testing a points generator for the rest of May in hopes of starting a fun little monthly competition. Points will be given for certain activities on the Beach and the user who has the most points will be given a Squidoo lens created by Correen (Clouda9).

There will be a group that will serve as a knowledge base for the Beach. (Thank you Michey for this suggestion). References to plugins that may or may not work, issues with some themes, site bug workarounds are just a few of the issues that will be stored in this group so that admin isn’t bogged down answering the same questions over and over.

Admin would like to see someone start a reference group that is dedicated to being a library of sorts. Software, manuals, etc. could be stored here for site wide sharing. We’re not talking about ebooks that are loaded with self-serving links, but maybe HTML courses, or free SEO books.

Increased promotion of Crabbysbeach. We have a FaceBook fan page and we plan on making it more than a link dump. We would like to make it very interactive and build an interest in the Beach through the fan page.

We will be looking to join a network of communities; if we can’t find one, we will create one. That simple. This will be strictly for the purpose of support and branding.

Again, I want to emphasize that there will be no advertising on the Beach proper and I encourage all of you to monetize and make some cash as you see fit. I have no problems at all with making money here.

Well, I do, and would greatly appreciate it if some of you would show me how.

I may be asking some of you to participate in another experiment in the near future, one that is based largely on the experiment we have conducted here at the Beach.

Stay tuned!

We

The admin role of the site has suddenly doubled in the last week or so and I haven’t been able to respond effectively to your needs, spend time hangin’ with my Beach bum pals and palettes, or work on my own personal projects.

In light of all of this, I decided to seek out and find someone to work with me to make Crabbysbeach twice as fun. I want to officially welcome the talented Carrie White (Inkserotica) to the role of Site Co-Admin.

Carrie and I have worked together on several projects in the past and are currently working on an ongoing project . Through this relationship, we have found that we both share the same vision on a number of topics, including the power of smaller communities and how Crabbysbeach could be a leader in the new era of the Internet.

Carrie will not operate as my Girl Friday or go-fer. No, Carrie is working at my side, as my equal as we will shape the path of the Beach that conforms to the path of our shared vision.

As time passes, we will see Carrie become more involved as she uses her legs to get herself about on the platform, but know that I am at no point going to be less involved than I have been in the past.

In Closing

Crabbysbeach started as an idea, became an experiment, and is now poised to be a model for communities to look to as a reference for thriving success, and none of this could be possible if it weren’t for the awesome likes of each and every one of you.

Is our success and position as a leader in working online communities due to the fact that we are unique? Paula Atwell (lakeerieartists) mused about this point recently in a comment at one of her blog posts that spoke of  the advantages of blogging communities:

We have an advantage of already knowing each other and having similar goals online therefore our activities are interactive by nature. This is definitely an exciting place to be right now.

I can only partly agree with what she is saying here, maybe because I have a Pollyanna view of the human race. While you guys do rock and have made this trip on the Beach a pleasant and easy one to make, I believe the spirit of this community can be replicated elsewhere.

I’ll end by saying thank you to the community for all of the patience, support, and willingness to make Crabbysbeach a fun destination, not merely a daily pit stop.

This is your community, keep having fun with it.