2009-05-01T13:55:38+00:00 82 790 Today, you cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the power of online communities and groups. The fact is, there are 80 million communities and groups online. Most of them existing within 2,000+ Social Networks. 250 million people are registered and active in at least one online community or group. Whilst the majority of online communities and groups have been created by individual users on Facebook, Ning, MySpace, XING, LinkedIN and Bebo, companies and brands are also playing and positioning themselves in this powerful social media channel. P&G have built over 2,000 communities over the past 7 years whilst Nestle has only a handful. Maria has been building off-line communities since 1992 and online communities over the past 5 years. As the former Director of Community Building at XING and now founder and CEO of [www.linqia.com][1] and [www.themoderatorcommunity.com][2], Maria will share with you the 6 essential ingredients for launching and maintaining vibrant, active and profitable online communities and groups. Her speciality and focus is on monetization and identifying value drivers to ensure the end users experience is a positive one. [1]: http://www.linqia.com [2]: http://www.themoderatorcommunity.com http://www.slideshare.net/mariasipka/collaborative-communities-by-maria-sipka 2009-05-03T15:07:27+00:00 2009-05-06T11:00:00+00:00 4.6 2009-04-23T14:50:56+00:00 On May 5 & 6 the next conference is taking place at Kampnagel in Hamburg. Organised by SinnerSchrader, the next conference is one of the most important networking and trend conferences within the European web industry. 2009-05-06T00:00:00+00:00 http://next09.com 82 Hamburg, Germany 2009-05-05T00:00:00+00:00 2009-04-23T14:50:56+00:00 3.13 Online community specialist For 10 years I specialized in customer acquisition and retention programs for B2B clients. The core of my work was understanding the psychology of how people make purchasing decisions and their experience after they had made a transaction. This entailed a full service marketing/communication agency with in-house strategists, copywriters, designers and photographers. Over the last five years I have adapted these skills and experience to social networks specifically in the area of building, launching and maintaining online communities. The two key areas of focus are optimization and monetization of the community to meet the needs of the members. Linqia http://www.linqia.com 1616 http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariasipka Barcelona, Geneva, Silicon Valley Maria Sipka http://www.themoderatorcommunity.com 4.6 /avatars/1616/thumb/Maria_Facebook.jpg