Page 174 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet174that didn’t work and applying those learnings to the next project or pivot. A good example of this on CPN was our weekly Culture tweets series,15 which featured five accounts to follow that week. We quickly realised that traffic was poor compared to the amount of time it took to search and write up the lists, so after onlya handful of installments, we pulled the plug. The lesson? We learned that a monthly series would have worked more effectively, which is something we’ve applied to lots of new, similar projects.Flexibility means knowing when to break from the rigour and routine but also knowing when to stop.The importance of face-to-face relationshipsQuite early on in the development of CPN, we realised that we had at our fingertips a whole host of knowledgeable, chatty and engaged readers and members, but knew them only as Twitter avatars or faceless email signatures. In much the same way that viewing a work of art online doesn’t beat getting to see the intricacies of its brushstrokes in real life, an online community needs a physical and human touch if it’s to become anything more than an online chatroom.This is something CPN initially did well. We hosted meetups in London pubs and ensured that any chats or phone calls were turned into face-to-face meetings where time andlocation allowed. We also made efforts to join other meetups and events that brought arts and culture professionals together, to put the network on their radar and ensure our fingers remained firmly on the pulse of the wider arts conversation.However, it became something CPN neglected as the community grew more self-sufficient.We (wrongly) didn’t see the need to encourage the human element if readers and members were already doing it among themselves. Itwas the easy option for us as curators of the community and one the network will change in 2015 as we look to reignite a culture of events and meetups.We also want to be better at bringing that face-to-face element to the regional and interna- tional readers of our community, who (rightly) won’t spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on a train/plane ticket to London for only a quiet pint in a London pub. Already we are experimenting with Google Hangout technology to test out the concept of international or cross-country online meetups.CollaborationCollaborating with other sites, events and communities is very important for any publi- cation or community starting from a standstill. In CPN’s case, we had no members, readers or content, no initial marketing and an editorial team of two. We needed other ways of making a noise and bringing people to our website. Con- tent sharing and marketing contras (agreements in which money doesn’t change hands) are twoThe Guardian Culture Professionals Network: a case study in professional community publishing