Building collaborative online platforms is hard. To make a platform that is truly compelling, and rewards the right kind of behavior and teamwork, requires a careful balance of effective design, workflow, and understanding the psychology of how people work together.
Jeff Atwood has an enormous amount of experience doing precisely this. Not only was he the co-founder of Stack Overflow (and later Stack Exchange), but he is also the founder of Discourse, an enormously popular Open Source platform for online discussions.
In this episode of Conversations With Bacon we get into the evolution of online communities, how they have grown, and Jeff’s approach to the design and structure of the systems he has worked on. We delve into Slack vs. forums (and where they are most appropriately used), how Discourse has designed a platform where capabilities are earned, different cultural approaches to communication, and much more.
There is so much insight in this discussion from Jeff, and it is well worth a listen.
Oh, and by the way, Jeff endorsed my new book ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’. Be sure to check it out!
