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The design proposals are in!

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August 1, 2007 in Business, CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News and Planning. 0 Comments

We’ve now received a good selection of design proposals for the online community. I’ve started the process of going through them, evaluating the designs and the costs etc. It’s all very interesting and inspiring!

Stay tuned for more updates!

Google + Sweden

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Tommy Sollén

June 12, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News, PR, Planning and web 2.0. 1 Comment

The popular blog about Google Maps - googlemapsmania.blogspot.com has written a post about our new map service.

“They have now implemented many points-of-interest, in an easy clickable way to use. This is how all Tourist Agencies should use their website to allow visitors to quickly see, what all can be done in a country. “

Wonderful!
Read the entire post here!

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post we will be implementing Google Maps in the online community as well. But perhaps not in the way you think…

Difficulties in scheduling resources during summertime

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June 12, 2007 in About, Business, CommunityOfSweden.com and Planning. 0 Comments

After a period of what I can best describe as the calm before the storm the wind is now starting to pick up in strength.

I’m working hard on all the preparations and one of many tasks is to schedule time and resources for the development and programming of the community. This is proving to be more difficult than first suspected and one reason for this is that we’re fast approaching the Swedish vacation period.

Swedes love their vacations and rightly so. After having spent most of the year in cold dark winter we live for the summer and the sun. That’s why most of our 4-6 weeks of vacations take place somewhere in june, july or august.

Because of this and the fact that our planned community supplier Trive is extremely busy we’re having a hard time to schedule the resources needed to meet our internal deadline. But it’s not over yet! A solution will be found.

Note to self: don’t plan development during the summer. Or just plan better and earlier…

“Phasers on stun” - Community Launch Strategy

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May 21, 2007 in Business, CommunityOfSweden.com, Planning, Tech and web 2.0. 1 Comment

I’d like to say a few words about our launch strategy. By just looking around at other new online communities it’s obvious that there are many ways to go. Launch everything at once. Private beta phase. Public beta. Launch a little, then a little more etc.

These are our thoughts

We’re planning a private beta
Then a public beta period (phase 1) which is the official launch
Phase 2 launch, end of beta
Phase 3, slower continuous development

It’s hard to wait with functionality to later phases when we know it will add a lot of value but there are a few good reasons.

First of all we don’t want to put all the eggs into one basket. Also I don’t think the users want an overwhelming amount of features to hit them at once. Better to let them discover the features one by one and give feedback on what works and what doesn’t. We can then take this feedback and compare to our own release plans. Hopefully they’re in sync, otherwise we will have the opportunity to adjust our plans for the next phase.
This strategy helps the development process. If we see a demand for a particular feature we can prioritize amongst what’s in the pipe line to accommodate our users. We want to respond to their needs and to show that we listen and care.

Nothing new under the sun here. I think this is how most other community drivers think. I just wanted to bring it out in the open so we can discuss it if you feel like it

Mashup is the new black

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May 18, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Meetings and Planning. 0 Comments

The planning group has had its third and probably its final meeting!

Last year I compiled a wish list of features for the online community and this list has been a big part of our planning up to this point.
During the meeting we focused on going through all of these features. We discussed them one by one and decided if each feature should stay or be cut and if it should be in the beta launch or in phase two.
During these discussions we also got to improve some of the features and we even came up with some very good new ones!
It was very valuable to get every body’s input. We complemented each other and came up with some great ideas!

One of the big web trends today is localization. This is something we will put a lot of work into. Every photo and travel story etc will be Geo tagged i.e. it will have a tag stating its geographical location. This makes all the content searchable in some interesting ways and the content can also be visualized in some amazing ways.
Check out this example at Nokia.

We will use Google Maps for these kinds of map and localization features. Using another web service for your own purposes on your own website is usually referred to as a “mashup”. It’s also a big trend on the web. We even went so far as to discuss if the entire online community should be a mashup website using for example flickr, youtube etc. While certainly it’s possible today we decided against it.

We already have some experience with using Google Maps at VisitSweden. We just released our new updated map of Sweden section on visitsweden.com and it uses Google Maps. Check it out and tell us what you think

I now have to put down these new ideas into a requirement specification document which is needed for the development. We’re almost there!

Creating Personas - the representation of an audience

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March 29, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Meetings and Planning. 10 Comments

The planning group had its second meeting on this past Tuesday. This time we held the meeting at our web consulting agency Webupdate(website only in Swedish I’m afraid).
I think it’s good for the group to meet at new places and this way we all get to see each others offices. And it’s more fun!

What is Personas?

We focused heavily on creating suitable personas for the online community. So what is personas? You might not know and I don’t blame you.
Here’s a good, although somewhat lengthy, explanation from wikipedia:

“Personas or personae are fictitious characters that are created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product. Personas are given characteristics and are assumed to be in particular environments based on known users’ requirements so that these elements can be taken into consideration when creating scenarios for conceptualizing a site. Cooper (1999) outlined the general characteristics and uses of personas for product design and development.

In the context of software requirements gathering, a user persona is a representation of a real audience group. A persona description includes a user’s context, goals, pain points, and major questions that need answers. Personas are a common tool in Interaction Design.”

Common tool in Interaction Design indeed. Good thing then we’ve got an expert in the area - Daniel Ilic.

Daniel Ilic about to start the Personas group exercise.
Basically we had a group exercise where we tried to imagine who the typical users would be, and how we could represent them in a couple of personas.

Our Personas

The result of this amazing almost five hour long meeting was five personas. Briefly described they represent:

DINKS - Double Income couples with No Kids
Active Family - Family with kids that enjoy active holidays
WHOPS - Wealthy Healthy Older People
Swedes, domestic
Swedes, expatriates - Swedes that live abroad

We’re working on refining these now and fleshing out their “personalities”.
I’ll likely try to get some feedback from all you readers later. It would be great to see that most of you fit into one of these personas and if not, modify them accordingly.

Next meeting will be about brainstorming all the amazing services for these personas.
I can’t wait!

“I Love Sweden”

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March 28, 2007 in Meetings and Planning. 0 Comments

Yeasterday the planning group had it’s second meeting.
It was an almost five hour long amazing meeting. I will write more about it later this week but for now I want to tell you about a brief encounter afterwards that made me happy.

It was a beautiful spring day yeasterday and I decided to take a long walk on my way home after the meeting had ended. Knowing myself and my stomach as well as I do I realised the need for a quick bite in order to quiet the rumbleing bellybeast and to enjoy the walk properly. So I stopped at a little street grill and there I encountered this very nice guy.

Check out the t-shirt. How perfect was this?
Click for a bigger picture.

Why an online community?

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March 15, 2007 in About, PR and Planning. 10 Comments

That’s a good and perfectly natural question to ask.
Why build a new online community in a time when they seem to be around every corner and under every stone?
Personally I could just answer; because it’s fun! It’s the best thing since sliced bread.
But of course like anything else worth doing there are good reasons behind it.

Here’s our marketing communications director, Maria Ziv, explaining how it all began:

The idea to create a community for people interested in Sweden as a destination was initially born more out of necessity than out of desire.

VisitSweden needed to solve the intricate problem of how to communicate with a large amount of people on a very limited budget. The situation did not become easier by the multifaceted and fluid product that a tourist destination like Sweden represents.

When marketing Sweden there are always vast amounts of beautiful things to share with your audience and a multitude of activities to present. In addition, the information is not static – it changes with every season.

When I sat down to formulate the strategy for the website as a whole I spent a lot of time looking at the information needs of our target audience as well as trends in the on-line community. Our target audience places a high emphasis on up to date and trust worthy information. It is also clear that information coming from their peers – people like themselves – is the information they trust.

Seeing that user generated content and social media is the most protruding trend in the on-line community at the moment, it seemed natural to fuse it with the needs of our target audience.

I couldn’t agree more. We’re hoping to create a place where potential visitors to Sweden can talk to swedes and others who have already visited Sweden. In this meeting of peers the decision process of going to Sweden will hopefully become easier and more fun!
But more of this and much more in future posts

First meeting - up up and away!

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February 26, 2007 in Meetings and Planning. 0 Comments

After being kidnapped by the Swedish influenza virus I’m now back, able and willing to write about what’s happening here in our Swedish online community project.

Big news! sound of starting gun going off

The newly formed project group just had it’s first meeting.
This group’s task is to set the foundation for the upcoming development project. This means putting in writing the answers of some very important questions. For example;

What’s the purpose of this online community?
What’s the goal, short and long term?
Who are the users?
How open should the community be?
Should there be any revenue streams?
Why should a visitor want to become a member?
and many many more questions…

Of course we already have most of the answeres floating around in the air but an open discussion is always healthy and to put them down on paper will help us later in the process.

The project members

I’ve put together this group by inviting some of the best people in their respective fields.
From left to right in this somewhat blurry picture; (click for bigger version)

Daniel Ilic, Creative Director from Webupdate
Hans Leijström, Community Expert from Trive
Me, Tommy Sollén, Project Manager from VisitSweden
Maria Ziv, Marketing Communications Director, from VisitSweden
Mårten Forslund, Account Director from Farfar

The goal of this first meeting was mostly to get to know each other and make sure we’re on the same page for the upcoming discussions. This group will have three more meetings in the coming weeks before development begins.

I feel we’ve got a bit of a dream team here and I think we’re on the right track!

In the next meeting we’ll focus on hammering down some of these questions and determine personas.

Community platform chosen!

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February 19, 2007 in Business, News, Planning and Tech. 0 Comments

It’s not easy to choose how the online community should be developed. Should it be open source? A more official tried and proven solution or something new and daring? Perhaps not even a platform at all but instead more of a mash up solution.

Finally the decision was made. We’ll be using StarCommunity from Netstar and Trive will implement it. It finally came down to the extensive experience Netstar and Trive has in the world of communities.

We’re both very excited about this project. An official press release is in the works. Stay tuned!

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Archive for the 'Planning' Category

The design proposals are in!

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Google + Sweden

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Difficulties in scheduling resources during summertime

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“Phasers on stun” - Community Launch Strategy

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Mashup is the new black

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