The Future of the UWEBD Social Network

[Mark Greenfield]

My name is Mark Greenfield and I am the owner and manager of the uwebd social network on Ning.

Ning has recently increased their prices substantially and I need to make a decision about the future of this site.  I have not actively managed or promoted this site for the past several years, other than approving new members and monitoring content. I am willing to put the time and effort into revitalizing and improving this site if there is sufficient interest in the community. 

Please use the comments section on the post to share your thoughts.  I will need to make a decision soon. The price increase for Ning goes into effect October 1.

[Sanjeev Shukla]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for creating this portal and for all your efforts to connect the community together.  Have you thought of moving this site to some other platform?

--Sanjeev

[Mark Greenfield]

Moving this site to another platform is a possibility. The challenge will be the complexity with such a move. While it would be easy to start from scratch, moving the existing members and content is daunting.

[Michael Fienen]

I have migrated Ning sites to other platforms in the past. It is... laborious and painful.

[John David]

Would something like a slack channel work better than ning?  I must admit, I rarely visit this site that often anymore.  But I belong to several slack groups out there for various communities of interest.  And there are open source/free version tools like gitter.im as well which serve the same purpose.

[Dennis Guten]

Mark, I think a Facebook group or LinkedIn group would be a good choice. I agree that Twitter is not good for longer discussions. 

Dennis Guten

UT Dallas

[Dan Bashaw]

+1 on LinkedIn for this community. It would be good to keep the ability to have longer posts and conversations than #Slack or Twitter are optimized for.

[Mike Thornhill]

Hi, Mark.

Although I do not often visit this site anymore, I still find it (or the community, at least) to be of benefit. I also find Twitter of limited professional development use, but could see migrating from Ning to either a LinkedIn or Facebook group. Those also have their limitations, but they're within platforms I and many others already frequent, and might help facility more community interaction.

[Matt Dana]

The Slack suggestion makes sense to me. Wiggio looks like it's similar to Ning, but I haven't tried it.

[Dan Demmons]

HI Mark,
Thank you for creating and running this site for so long! Really appreciate it. In the past it was my go-to place when trying to elicit info from our colleagues on a number of elements related to our jobs as Web folks in higher ed. Haven't used it much of late, still think of it as my primary go-to space but maybe there is another option out there that won't cost you $$$? Ning seems a bit dated at this point.

thank you,

-Dan

[Charlie Lindahl]

Hi Mark.

I'd also like to thank you for your efforts in setting up this discussion group, and for the fun coffee cup (!).

I vote for moving to SLACK as a platform. I'd be glad to help in the migration if you need techincal help or just some fast fingers to type things in :-)

-- Charlie in TX

[Mark Greenfield]

FYI, in addition to the original listserv, there is a uwebd group on LinkedIn which is seldom used:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/46431 

[Justin Gatewood]

Mark,

I still have my <uwebd /> mug at home (although the text wore off years ago), and I thank you for providing this site to our community. I support the LinkedIn Group idea, as that platform is already specifically geared toward career and professional networking and development.

Regards,

Justin