Our Community

I sit on the Forrester Tech Marketing Council, a group of approx. 110 marketers from companies that sell primarily to BT (70%) and/or Marketing(30%).

We just wrapped up our bi-annual meeting at this week's Forrester Business & Technology Leadership Forum where we discussed everything from lead generation to key next hires; from community building (think www.complianceonline) to public relations agencies.

The council meetings foster dialogues between individuals from like organizations who want to hear how others are addressing their most difficult marketing challenges. This year, the facilitators left more time for open discussion - something we've been clamoring for - and the group couldn't get enough.

So, we want to take the dialogue online. To a community. OUR community. If an online community, by definition, is "an interactive group of people joined together by common interest," then we're ready to take our group online. But we don't have a home. Yet. Forrester hasn't built out a social network group/community site that would enable us to engage with our peers online when we choose. Instead, we're limited to the personal relationships we've managed to build and email discussions. It's especially difficult for the newer Council members who can't really benefit from the older members' perspective.

The inmates now run the asylum. So we're going to build it. Or attempt to. Thomas Eorgan from nTara has agreed to help and I'm out researching freeware community options. If you have any suggestions or would like to assist, I'm all ears.