New RSA online dashboard - do take a look + online communities guide pages

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Susan A. Bennett on December 8, 2011 at 19:28

Sorry I found this cluttered and uninteresting.  Is it not possible to have a front page pointing to the area with conversations people want to follow

Permalink Reply by Matthew Kálmán Mezey on December 9, 2011 at 9:55

Hi Susan,

It's certainly true that a dashboard like this can look rather busy the first time you see one. But - in my experience - when people persevere and take a look once or twice more, they find that it's pretty straightforward and helpful.

Maybe take another look in a week or two?

Just click into any of the comments that look interesting, if you want to go deeper.

I'm not sure I follow exactly what you're saying here: "Is it not possible to have a front page pointing to the area with conversations people want to follow."

Can you clarify for me? There are certainly limitations in how things can be displayed, when pulling activity from lots of different places.

The dashboard shows RSA-related conversations on Twitter and on the RSA Fellowship ning social network (I removed the flow of RSA staff blog comments, to make it easier to see the blog posts themselves - but maybe a separate widget with just comments would work...?).

Are you suggesting that the page should show conversations by topic or thread? (And things like videos or blog posts should be moved elsewhere?)

Many thanks,

Matthew

(RSA Senior Networks Manager - Online & International)

Twitter: @MatthewMezey

Permalink Reply by Matthew Kálmán Mezey on December 9, 2011 at 10:42

I did get an off-list comment from Paul Ettinger - of www.streetlife.com - saying "Matthew, I liked the online dashboard."

Though he did add: "A lot of information!" ;-)

 

Matthew

Permalink Reply by Susan A. Bennett on December 9, 2011 at 16:17

I think the major problem that the information is organised under medium rather than subject so say I was looking for everything on manufacturing I would have to trawl tweets, blogs, events, etc.  As someone who does not have enough time to live 'virtually' I need quick access to what I need to find, and although I applaud your efforts to catch all the marvellous activity being carried out by Fellows/RSA this style does not suit the way my brain assimilates information - most probably its my not engaging 110% with virtual world!

Permalink Reply by Adrian Ashton on December 9, 2011 at 18:06

thanks for your efforts and time on this to date matthew - the Fellowship is an incredibly diverse and sprawling body of people with myriad interests and who are active in all sorts of spheres and worlds (although not all are on-line or doing social media) so trying to bring it all together in a single platform is a herculian task

I'm with Susan that the dashboard is a tad over-whelming - it puts me in mind of something like hootsuite, the difference being that as a single user taking feeds from various sources is fine as they're all largely limited and I can choose which to add, whereas here its taking everything from everyone in everyway all at the same time.

is there a way to personalise Netvibes so that if I created a profile and personal log-in, it would remember my preferences and only show certain feeds or feeds that were 'filtered' by key search terms perhaps? that would certinaly make it more attractive and of interest...

but it's friday evening, and as important as reflecting on this new initaitive is, I'm sure there are other matters to attend to that are more pressing than discussing social media in a web forum when there are pubs open... ;-)

Adrian

Permalink Reply by Paul Nash on December 11, 2011 at 9:59

I like it Matthew.- given the complexity of what you're trying to pull together then it's a good start. do net vibes give you any sort of feed back on how it is used? Something to help you evaluate and then evolve the next iteration? I must confess I've never gone into it in that much detail.

Permalink Reply by Matthew Kálmán Mezey on December 12, 2011 at 17:02

Hi everyone,

In response to Susan's point about making dashboards topic-related rather than medium-related, it had completely slipped my mind that I am in fact about to try to set up a dashboard on one specific RSA-related topic.

If that experiment goes well, then maybe we could go down that route with more such pages.

And..., I also forgot to mention that for quite a while I've also wanted to set up a sort of general horizon-scanning dashboard for digital engagement-type material. A space for some key thinkers about social media, charities etc. Such a dashboard could make it easier for us to plunder other people's best ideas and innovations ;-)

I do currently seem to have a bit of a Google Reader (RSS) problem, which I need to get to the bottom of, if I am to make further dashboards. I no longer seem to be able to merge the RSS feeds from a number of related blogs using a Google Reader tag and then make the feed from the tag public. (It's the make the feed public bit that I can't seem to be able to do. I can still merge and tag feeds).

Have I missed how to do it, in Google Reader's redesign - or do I need to use another service, as Google has dropped outgoing feeds from tags? (If so, any suggestions on an RSS reader service that can do this? Would Yahoo Pipes do it, easily...?).

While we're on the topic of web dashboards, one RSA region has apparently been thinking that something along these lines might be a good idea for their region. So that might turn out to be fruitful.

And by e-mail, one of the RSA regional web champions suggested that iPad-friendly versions are worth looking at too. Dashboards on the goals of the RSA was another suggestion.

And Adrian's point about personalised feeds is something I'm less sure about. Didn't the BBC go down this route - but at an RSA-busting budget...? And, yes, maybe it does all pale in comparison to a good pint ;-)

To answer Paul's point, Netvibes does now seem to offer some kind of premium version - presumably with metrics on who's using what. I've not signed in to this, or dug into it. Anyone know more about it? (I might sign up for the 14-day trial, at some point!)

Matthew Mezey

(RSA Senior Networks Manger - Online & International)

Twitter: @MatthewMezey

Permalink Reply by Susan A. Bennett on December 12, 2011 at 17:09

A lot of hard work but very useful!