THE SCMS is an official CHAOSS Metric!

This past January, our friends over at CHAOSS announced the newest round of community metrics to go into their community analytics system, GrimoireLab, and nestled in those new metric updates was a type of metric that has not yet been featured before in CHAOSS... Our Social Currency Metrics System (SCMS)!

Then on May 4th, we were told that we had been accepted alongside side software developer Ria Gupta for the Google Summer of Code, to write the SCMS directly into GrimoireLab as a metric! 

In this blog we'll explain why we’ve been added to GrimoireLab, why we think it matters for you, and most importantly what the next steps are in this exciting new process, so you can implement the system, for free, starting today!

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Why the SCMS was added,
​and where it will take you

As part of an open-source industry built upon contributions from hundreds of online community members, users of CHAOSS' metrics platform need to understand their impacts on a "culture."

Software companies invest in community managers and developers who, in turn, need tools to understand how well their communities are growing and how people are seeing their influence in those communities. ​
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Quantitative analytics track footsteps without the person.

GrimoireLab and other projects at CHAOSS have done a great job of informing you of your community’s health by building metrics that reliably point toward success.
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​But quantitative data is only a "behavior-tracking" strategy. Relying only on it to determine community health is like tracing a person’s footsteps in the sand to see where they went, but never asking them where they're going, or whether they want you to follow them.

The numbers, trends, and other metrics CHAOSS offers provide a way to infer the community's status and where a community is going, but they are guessing at feelings, opinions, and voices that are clearly better found in qualitative data.

The obvious and typical answer is to implement periodic surveys and pulse checks, but as we've stated in our blog on the 3 pitfalls of surveys, qualitative data is hard. Collecting it is a big part of the battle.

It's not enough that it's difficult and time consuming to collect.  Once you have it, it's hard to know what's important, whose voices are silenced, and where the bias is. And then there’s sifting through it, finding reliable objective results in it, and knowing what to do with the findings.

The SCMS approaches this problem directly.  

In our view here at SC.O, virtual communities are inherently socio-cultural.  If communities are social in nature, they should be measured and studied social-scientifically.

So we built the SCMS to simplify the same processes anthropologists use to study cultures, and created an interface that makes it easier and faster for business leaders to get qualitative results out of passive-user-sentiment. 

At the heart of a community’s value, it’s not about what people have done, but how community members express themselves in the process of doing.

People participate in communities for intrinsic reasons and those reasons are typically stated in their wants, opinions, and feelings as valuable, capturable data.

Unfortunately it’s also "said in the moment" as it’s happening.  It’s fleeting. You won’t see it in a once-quarterly survey or focus group no matter how many gift cards you set up.  ​In other words, there’s value in measuring how people think and how they communicate in the moment.

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To do this The Social Currency Metrics System augments your quantitative data using a framework based on the theory of Social Currency, to measure moments your community exhibits trust in you.

If you're interested in learning more on the system and setting it up for free let's get to next steps.  Here's how it works in Grimoire Labs.

"At the heart of a community’s value, it’s not about what people have done, but how community members express themselves in the process of doing."

​​~ Samantha Venia Logan

What's next for us, and for you?

There have been some amazing and wonderous developments before we've even been able to launch SociallyConstructed.Online's brand.  But now, with so much momentum, we've got a lot coming down the pipeline: 

1st, remember that Software developer, Ria Gupta, you heard about?
She just started her own full series releasing every sunday detailing how she's building the SCMS in Grimoire lab on here, her personal blog, and on the CHAOSS Blog!

2nd, listen to the new CHAOSScast podcast!
The CHAOSScast podcast just launched with Georg Link, Matt Broberg, and other magnificent panelists so give it a listen and the SCMS is the second episode premiering Friday May 29th!

Venia will also be a regular panelist on the podcast so join us to talk about all things community analytics! 

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Listen now!

3rd,  start up the SCMS for FREE using the new instructions over at CHAOSS!
We are providing this system as a methodology for free because we truly believe that augmenting your data with qualtiative social listening will make a better, safer, more secure online community. ​

And of course if you'd like to learn more, get a personalized demo, or have us set up your SCMS, we offer a free 1-hour consultation as well! ​