Blog: Community

Google Analytics
and other outside-your-web-community metrics tools allow you to see
useful stats about visitors to your website. You can see amount of time
spent on your site, return visitors, total page views, what pages are
being viewed, where people enter your site and from where, what page
they leave from, from where in the world they view your page, what
browser, etc. You can do a lot with these stats, like make more with
Google AdWords, for example. What about what’s happening inside your
site?

There is a lot to measure within a community site. Some of
the important metrics depend on what your site does. For example, if
your community is a software development community, stats and listings
on outstanding bug reports, feature requests, and open issue tickets
can be important. Taking this same data and plotting it over time to
see the average length of an open issue report could be helpful for
measuring and setting goals.

Too many schools are dropping the ball and not using the Internet to reach out to their alumni, but I’m proud to say my alma mater is not. Right now I’m watching my high school's hockey team (the Berkshire Bears) loose to Taft live at the rink where I spent my Saturday nights for four Massachusetts winters (as a spectator).

This is awesome! And you better believe that when they come asking for donations this summer that I will see what I can give back. Why? Because they are making me think about the good old days and providing me with some early entertainment on a Saturday night. This communications policy surely beats receiving letters requesting donations with my bills or updates on events being sent to my parent’s house in Vermont. Now they just need to figure out how to beat Taft (still down 2-0).

Here’s the email I received a few days ago about the webcast.

This Saturday, December 4th, settle back and watch the Berkshire boys' varsity hockey team face off against Taft, live on your computer screen.