Earlier this year SWLA Connected was launched with one of our partners. SWLA Connected is a citywide private community for residents, city officials and law enforcement representatives of Southwest Louisiana. Residents sign up through a verification process and based on their home address they are auto-subscribed into one of the 50+ private areas within Southwest Louisiana. City officials and law enforcement representatives are invited into separate collaborative areas which push data into the residential communities.
Residents can share events, blogs, classified ads and issues across their broad area or within their own neighborhood. Residents can also form ad-hoc collaborative social groups which can be discovered and joined by other residents.
City officials and law enforcement representatives broadcast announcements into areas and neighborhoods to share information as it becomes available. Residents in these areas and neighborhoods can receive these updates as push notifications.
From an application perspective, similar functionality is available whether you use the iOS and Android mobile apps, or the website. The backend uses a customized edition of Concursive's ConcourseConnect. In this case the partner provided geographic shape files of all the areas in Southwest Louisiana, and a resident's geolocation is used to identify the particular shape area in which the resident lives.
As for the business model, there is a lot of technology and most organizations don't want to jump in on their own from scratch, so Concursive does partnerships with media companies, cities, churches, fraternal organizations and chambers to quickly pilot and deploy custom communities.
Concursive has an extensive platform for deploying community software, while the partner has a genuine interest and leadership in promoting and managing the community.
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First a few product plugs… if you're not using social software in your business or organization, then you've got to give it a try!
ConnectElements.com is the simplest way to get started. Setup an account, then collaborate with groups of people which make sense to you. You can easily share private updates with your colleagues. ConnectElements also has a mobile app with push notifications for urgent messages. Upgrade to Projects and then you've really got a streamlined collaboration system around all of your short and long-term projects.
For those who need more, ConcourseCloud.com is an inexpensive and private social network for your business, department or organization. It is hosted in the cloud and runs on your own private slice. ConcourseCloud gives you a truly private social network. Pricing is very competitive.
If you're looking for a Java CRM, look no further than ConcourseSuite CRM. ConcourseSuite CRM is an all-in-one sales force automation and account database for your organization. Concursive offers untimed trials for up to 5 users, and our pricing can't be beat for unlimited users and full source code. Download the trial edition or contact us and we'll setup your own CRM.
Finally, if you're looking for your own branded community, with features ranging from collaboration, to information directories, to GIS integration, to mobile apps, then you'll want to explore our Communities and Hubs products. ConcourseConnect is a white-label platform which allows you to build your own product or community with just the right features, and quickly.
Here's to 2015 and “Communities That Matter!”
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Concursive has begun upgrading customers with ConcourseConnect 6. What's new is a focus on building modern web pages, easier customization and more options for mobile.
First off, we've redesigned our rendering engine with ZURB Foundation in mind. HTML output is now much simpler and cleaner. Our portal technology nests rows and columns, and uses the Foundation grid system to create powerful multi-device layouts quickly and easily. Foundation gives our sites a responsive framework so that web pages look good on desktop, tablets and phones. Implementing Foundation also allowed us to refresh our templates with a new, modern look. Under the covers there's Foundation web components and JQuery. We've updated the HTML content editor to TinyMCE's HTML5 editor. The Concursive image library plugin for TinyMCE has been redesigned with thumbnails and enhanced capabilities for colors, fonts and sizes. All of Connect's modules and portlets have been updated for Foundation.
Next, we wanted customers and partners to be able to customize Connect using configuration packs and plug-ins. Connect achieves this through run-time discovery of configuration files, components and portlets. Adding your own functionality has never been easier.
Finally, with ConcourseConnect 6 you can launch Apps, mobile-first. User registrations, user settings, push notifications and module functionality are all accessible via the restful API.
ConcourseConnect is the customizable and configurable platform for Connect Communities and Hubs. ConcourseConnect is also packaged for Concursive's Team Collaboration and Intranets and includes everything you need to start your own community.
Inquire about your own customizable community or launch your own social business community site with ConcourseCloud which has just been updated to ConcourseConnect 6.0.
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app
ConnectElements is for creating private groups and projects in a flash! The ConnectElements app helps businesses, organizations, teams, or even individuals better connect and collaborate with colleagues, clients, partners and friends.
The app has features within each group and project space for posting activity updates, creating calendar events, sharing photos, and managing tasks. Once a group is created, the founder of that group can invite others – an email is generated and the recipients follow the instructions to join in. Users can use either the mobile app or the web site to participate. Download the app to get started or head over to ConnectElements.com to learn more.
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fratsoro is for fraternities and sororities wanting a mobile app that goes way beyond the brochureware most have or the sprawl of Facebook. It helps greek organizations better connect, communicate and collaborate with their broad network of stakeholders in an approachable, easy-to-use, cohesive environment entirely optimized to their specific needs.
The app has public-facing features whereby houses can share a range of information. From the basics of who they are, to ever changing updates on social activities, to promoting upcoming house activities.
But fraternity and sorority life is also greatly about private communications, activities and working together. Accordingly, the fratsoro app provides private spaces that support house officers in their duties as well as areas for the broader house membership. These spaces are by invitation only, are easily managed, and provide tools including calendars, activity streams, photos, member lists, and alerts.
fratsoro is built on ConcourseConnect. The app is the first app to use Connect's team management, profile space creation, and user settings APIs for mobile. The feature-complete APIs enable any app to take advantage of mobile collaboration and social networking.
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The team at MakeRacket made the SXSW Party Mapp to be a fun, simple app that helps you find good parties going on during the SXSW Interactive and Music festival, both Official and UnOfficial. According to Carlos of MakeRacket, "I mean, we were making a list anyway, so why not share?"
The app is built on a powerful, flexible, and scalable mobile platform from Concursive Corporation. The Concursive platform is dynamic enough to power mobile communities for bands, non-profits, and enterprise customers.
Working together, MakeRacket and Concursive conceived, designed, built, and submitted this app in days, and yet, it is capable of managing data from thousands of users. Please note that "SXSW" and "South By Southwest" are registered trademarks of SXSW Inc.
"Silly App. Serious Power."
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Having a platform for designing social-local-mobile hubs is very convenient. While Concursive has enabled thousands of private business in deploying their own collaboration and customer relationship management solutions, we've also helped businesses and organizations in launching community driven hubs, with all the features of collaboration: activity updates, blogs, wikis, document sharing, and project planning tools to name a few.
Soft launching this month is BeFit757, built on top of Concursive's platform. Joe Antle, Concursive Vice President, says "BeFit757 is the most complete solution for helping connect health and wellness providers to groups of people, employees and colleagues, who are pursuing formal wellness programs."
The public solution works like this:
Businesses and Organizations list themselves at BeFit757.com – this sets up a profile for the business or organization. Profiles are then filled out online, either by the profile manager or site staff. Profiles include text, graphics, video and links. The profile content explains the mission and background information.
Once the profile manager has been trained, the business can order a mobile app which connects to their profile. The profile manager is in control and creates push notification challenges to the app users. These are goals or challenges in which the manager sets using their expertise and users can choose to accept and participate.
To get started with BeFit757, download the BeFit757 App from the Apple App Store. It will show you the challenges and link you to the companion wellness apps as well.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/befit757/id586353625?ls=1&mt=8
Joe adds, "Formal efforts such as those sponsored by affiliate groups and trade associations, employers, providers seeking to add a group dimension to their offerings, and health insurance companies wanting to support and add a collaborative element to their wellness initiatives are especially likely to benefit from the affordable, easy to use and group focus of BeFit757."
I think this is a unique and well thought out example of a community that can grow.
Be fit and stay healthy!
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16 social networking apps, different social networks
Going social doesn't mean just a web site these days – it also means mobile and local. Each social network we bring online, using our ConcourseConnect social platform, features a mobile API for third-party clients. There's sharing to Facebook, Foursquare Check Ins, Topics and Voting, plus much more! Here's just a sampling of some of the communities built on ConcourseConnect and an overview of how they use mobile:
Connecticut Innovation iHUB: CTiHUB currently has two apps. A main app for the CTiHUB community to connect and collaborate, and a second app for the SBIR and Global Trade Summit. This second app is attached to the iHUB but is focused on providing an awesome experience for their biggest event of the year. See what's happening with the news feed, see the latest photos, see the sponsors, see the businesses participating on a map, and see the event agenda. It's our first event app.
d'Art Center: Norfolk's d'Art Center app features over 40 artists in a unique downtown location. Check In with this app, learn about the artists, see the latest photos and see what events are coming up. This is one of our directory-style apps to showcase a number of artists (entities) all coming together and featured in a single app.
There's more to explore. See Concursive on the app store!
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Today we have an awesome rebranding of our site… but it's more than just that. It's a declaration that Concursive is a top contender in the Social Mobile Local (SoMoLo) race with a proven process, reference customers and a compelling platform for Social Hubs. Our leadership and commitment to communities didn't happen overnight. We followed the right trends, used the right technology and streamlined the go live process, giving Concursive's platform the right ingredients for a successful community.
Trends: Social and Collaborative – Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Social Media; Mobile; and Local.
Following trends isn't something one wants to get caught up in alone, however adapting and evolving over time and using trends as an indicator of direction can be beneficial because it's not always clear at the time if something will present an advantage over previous methods.
Some trends that provide a clear advantage: social businesses and mobile applications.
On social business, Nilofer Merchant wrote The New How to share the secrets of unlocking collaborative innovation. In her blog Rules for the Social Era, Nilofer writes a series of posts on being fast, fluid, and flexible in the social era… allowing everyone to own a part of the big picture, and to embody a culture of innovation.
At the recent AIIM 2102 conference, Dion Hinchcliffe's Keynote “Mobility First: New Opportunities" was covered by Keith Swenson who noted "the shift to mobile computing is the most dramatic technology transition in history. Ever."
Concursive is well informed about these trends and you can use the Concursive mobile app for news and links on social business topics and more, while on the go.
Technology: Built for communities from the ground up – profiles, RESTful API, geolocation, search, CRM and more.
Having a successful software stack for Social Hubs means that the technology is flexible, secure, scalable and maintainable… Concursive's stack meets all those requirements. Concursive's feature stack is there to enable you to build what you want using Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Mobile and Local capabilities the way you see fit. Just want a mobile app? no problem. There are thousands of ways to configure your Social Hub and each is fully supported. Concursive also has Social Hub templates so that your Social Hub is based on years of experience.
Process: Getting started with Concursive can happen blindingly quick. Once you've seen our examples, learned about the components, and reviewed Concursive's information on getting started, all it takes is contacting us.
Think Concursive for Your Social Hub.
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When you've reached a point in which you are ready to start a new web site, Concursive can help by setting up a site for you with all of the content management and social networking features we offer.
The most basic question we always ask up front is what kind of site do you want?
The options are:
Web site
Setup a public site and collaborative web presence all in one. This is the option if you want to host a web site using Concursive's platform and you may or may not want any or all of the collaboration features.
Social networking
A public special interest site that fosters collaboration around a particular theme. Users will setup profiles and communicate using a variety of collaboration tools. Community managers can create ad-hoc collaboration spaces to further group activity around shorter-term events.
Enterprise social computing
A private site used for employee collaboration using features like activity streams, blogs, wiki, documents, forums, photos, groups and projects.
Social directory
A public site fostering collaboration around a directory of places, things and people highlighting reviews as an important feature. After choosing this site type Concursive will help you define profile types to extend the available directories.
Customer support area
A public site that supplements an existing website with rich community features and an idea forum. Create an FAQ, discussion board and manage an idea forum.
Client projects
A private site to collaborate and exchange information and documents with clients. This setup features a full activity stream and other collaboration modules.
Regardless of which type you choose, each of the types has full access to all of the content management and social networking modules that ConcourseConnect has to offer. Choosing a type just gives us a sense of the direction you want to go in and for the most part doesn't lock you in to any specific functionality of the platform.
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