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posted 09/27/06 by Anthony Governanti Getting the most from your Community experience - Part 1

I'd like to take a moment to share some tips and tricks for maximizing your civil community experience. First off, if you haven't become a member of the Civil Community yet, go here now to get started. Once registered, there are several things you can do to get a more rich experience as a member.

Build you profile
The first thing you need to do once you're in is complete your extended profile. Your profile is an integral part of being a member of the community for several reasons:

1. It communicates to other members more about you, your job, and where you are in the world

2. The site uses the information in your profile to help build your network of other users that share common interests and background

3. The site also uses this information to keep you informed of events and resources that are available to you in your area or product interests.

At the time of this posting, there are just over 1000 registered members in the civil community, but unfortunately, less then a third of those members have completed their profiles. So take a couple of minutes to edit your extended profile and fill in the data, it will be worth it.

Build your network
Now that your profile is complete, you can begin to build your network of peers. The site has a great system for being able to quickly search on other members, and quickly add members to your network.

A couple of things to do:

1. From the home page of the community site, once you've logged in, select the My Network tab on the top menu

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This will show you the members that are in your network, as well as members that have you in their network. Since this may be your first time, you won't have anyone in the network, don't fret though, its easy to add them.

2. Search for other members by using the Search Network feature. This works like a typical search engine, and allows you to quickly find other members based on simple criteria. Here I've searched for other members that live in New Hampshire (NH), my home state in the US.

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3. Add peers to your network by selecting a member from the list and using the Add member to network link. Notice that I can also send this member an endorsement. Endorsements are used to give a "shout out" if you will for other members, and if they approve the endorsement, it will be shown in their profile to other members.

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In this case I may want to say that "Paula is a real cool person who knows her stuff when it comes to technical writing." This helps to build community, and Paula can in turn choose to endorse me, and now we've built a connection through the site that other members can see and get involved in. Also note that you can recommend a member to someone else making it easy to build a network of peers that share interests or common backgrounds.

Create or join a group
You can also create a group, and invite members of the community to join that group. These groups can then be used to have public or private discussions, where you can meet and discuss topics within the community. I created a group for Civil 3D Gurus, but you can see some of the others that are in use at the time of publishing this post.

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Ok that should be a good start to getting the most our of your experience in the community. Do these things, and I guaruntee you'll enjoy the experience more, and will want to keep coming back for more. Next time I'll explore tags and how they are important to you as a member.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

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