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The Chat room has the amazing ability to be able to have scheduled events that overlay on the main site to encourage people to partake.

The problem is we don't really seem to have anything to schedule! Space.stack exchange schedules around launches to watch together, some other sites schedule around live streams of related topics.

This serves two fold, one, it builds up the community feeling having everyone together chatting and discussing, it encourages users to stick around and maybe partake in more discussions and reviews. Two, it gives us a chance to build a solid user base, communication and inter user relationships are very good at encouraging repeat visits and could do wonders for the site!

What events do you think we could schedule to encourage users to use more of the sites features than they may realise?

Post some suggestions below so we can vote on them!

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  • Also note that our regular users are spread across many different time zones. You and Michael are in the UK, several users are spread across the US (-5 to -8 hours from you). I am in Asia (+8 hours from you), so scheduling may be a bit of a challenge.
    – jmac
    Sep 10, 2013 at 0:42
  • @jmac - You could schedule two events within a 12 hour period.
    – jmort253
    Sep 14, 2013 at 21:54
  • I also want to add that if anyone wants to host or promote one of these, please take the bull by the horns and go for it! I can schedule the events so they show up on the bulletin board. just ping me in The Workplace Chat. Now, I won't be running these, but may participate depending on the day and time, so someone will have to take the lead as being the facilitator and take ownership of coordinating all the details. Good luck! :)
    – jmort253
    Sep 14, 2013 at 22:00

7 Answers 7

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Resume review session:

"Have questions on your resume? Want some general feedback?"

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Collaborative Editing sessions to edit questions from the Evaluation review queues, assuming that info is still available somewhere. A session dedicated to picking one or two questions and improving them could be good for increasing the utility of our site.

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    This is what i meant by Review Sessions, but i think you worded it much better than i did!
    – user5305
    Sep 9, 2013 at 19:49
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    I really really like this idea. We can grab questions by number of views/day, and start editing from the most viewed questions on down. This would give us a good base to work from, and help us solidify some questions that can be used as general duplicates.
    – jmac
    Sep 10, 2013 at 0:44
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    One word of caution is that after a certain number of edits, posts will roll over into community wiki mode. Discussing the edits in The Workplace Chat and tweaking the content in the room may help reduce the risk of this problem. Hope this helps! :)
    – jmort253
    Sep 13, 2013 at 1:35
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General career advice/discussion:

Lots of people seem to have "what should I do with my life/career" types of questions. I suspect a time acknowledging this might be interesting at the very least.

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    I really like this idea because it gives our site more purpose. We have lots of people who come here with questions that may not fit the Q&A part of the site, but I wonder how many chat discussions could lead to questions that could be posted after the fact?
    – jmort253
    Sep 12, 2013 at 0:25
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Outrageous Work Stories

Most of us have them. They are clearly off topic in questions and answers, but should be fine in chat.

After all, isn't this what goes on at the physical water cooler?

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Blog Ideas and Blog Action Items:

Our progress towards having a blog seems to have died down, but a chat session dedicated to re-energizing this idea may help move it forward, especially if people commit to writing actual content.

While pledges to help edit or submit ideas are great, only real, tangible action will bring this idea to life. The writers are the most important. missing pieces of this puzzle, and without them, this idea won't see the light of day.

One of our top users, Bethlakshmi, has submitted content on the Trello Board, so we are farther along than when this idea first surfaced over a year ago, and there are plenty of ideas for an actionable person to choose from if he or she needs something to write.

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Job Hunting/Networking Sessions

If you are willing to share your real name (via resume) or the like, you may as well go whole-hog and focus on networking. For better or for worse, a lot of our users seem to be in the software industry in some form or another, and many seem to come here when looking for a job. Creating contacts via the site and sharing leads may have value.

(Bear in mind, I don't think I'd do this one myself, but it may fit the theme of the site at any rate)

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  • In today's market where finding a job can arguably be a pretty daunting task, this would be a great way to provide value. I'm wondering if Stack Overflow Careers could somehow be leveraged here? Or to keep with the Workplace SE spirit of welcoming all professions, perhaps some other methods could work? Sounds like "Workplace Careers".
    – jmort253
    Sep 19, 2013 at 4:13
  • Great thoughts @jmort, that would be a natural extension in the future. In the meantime I think focusing on SO Careers and the Software Industry is probably the most practical, and something some of our regulars would be interested in as well.
    – jmac
    Sep 19, 2013 at 4:29
  • It does have me thinking though, that a natural extension to a site about careers and the job hunting process would be an actual companion site for searching for jobs in any industry. Come to the Q&A for the career tips and knowledge, then go to the career site to land a new job.
    – jmort253
    Sep 19, 2013 at 4:32
  • Discussed in chat starting here
    – jmac
    Sep 19, 2013 at 5:24
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New User Welcome Sessions:

We could have a scheduled weekly or bi-weekly session where we welcome the new users to the site, if we can get them to take part in features such as chat early on it should help us both guide them into correct use-age of the site and cement their love for the site that will undoubtedly follow

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    With this dont forget there is a min rep required to talk in chat.
    – Michael Grubey
    Sep 9, 2013 at 14:42

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