Project Profiles
RebelBase gives you the tools to collaborate with teams and a community as your users build projects. A central collaboration tool is the project profile.
The Project Profile
A project profile is like a social media profile for an evolving project.
As a team publishes its responses to the questions posed in the builders, its work appears in a project profile and becomes available for others to see. Teams can share links to their project profile with anyone they wish and invite them to give feedback on the team’s work.
As teams share their project profiles, they should remember to ensure that they’ve set the proper privacy controls so that the people they share their profiles with can see their work. To learn how to manage a project’s privacy settings, see the Projects — Building a Project section.
Collecting “Notes”
To collect targeted feedback, teams can use the “Notes” feature. Collaborators can add notes beneath any section in a project profile. Once peers, mentors, and others give feedback through notes, teams can take that feedback and use it to iterate and improve their work.
Notes can be used very effectively in a program setting. While a team presents its work to a group, the group members can add live notes to the presenting team’s project profile. Often, it is useful to give the group members a few minutes after a team has presented to articulate their thoughts and post a note. This has three benefits:
- If the group is large, and if there is too little time to hear everyone’s ideas, everyone still gets to contribute by writing on a project profile.
- If there are members who are less comfortable speaking up in a group setting, they still have the opportunity to share their ideas.
- The presenting team can better memorialize the feedback it gets in the session, because it will be captured in their project profile.
The Activity Feed
A second useful collaboration tool is the “Activity Feed,” where hub members can share resources, post offers to help, pose and answer questions, and propose ideas for discussion.
Using this feed, hub members can engage in a community-wide discussion around emerging ideas and focus their creative efforts on seeding and nurturing innovative projects.
Hub administrators can spur discussion by structuring the experience and engaging with the hub member’s posts.
Types of Posts
There are many types of posts you can make in the Activity Feed. Each is structured to help spur discussion in a way that matches its purpose. In other words, messages posted as “Ideas” force the community to respond differently than do messages posted as “Questions.” More on this in a second.
Another reason it’s important to be purposeful about the type of post you make is that the Activity Feed allows you to filter by post type. This makes it much easier for you to search for and find posts that match your needs.
To select the type of post you want to make, find the text box in the top left of the Activity Feed. Then click on the dropdown arrow next to the “Create a Post” text to find your options. Click on the one that corresponds to the post you’d like to make.
Post
Make a post to share resources or make a general contribution to the community discussion.
Idea
Share an idea when they have a thought about your projects and want feedback on it from your community. Conversely, you can also respond to “Ideas” through “Brainstorms,” which invite you to add to the idea, “Questions,” which invite you to clarify or push back against an idea, or “Offers,” which invite you to offer resources to the idea.
Question
You can share a question when you want to learn more about a topic or if you need help on specific tasks related to your project. You can also answer questions and give them kudos. Furthermore, you can upvote and downvote answers to questions, helping push the best answers to the top.
Offer
Make an offer if you have a resource you’re willing to share with the community. This could be your time or it could be a link to an outside resource that might be useful to others.
Announcements
Finally, hub administrators make announcements when they have information that is important to the whole community, as when a deadline is approaching or there is an opportunity that is worth taking note of. Additionally, they can choose to “make it sticky,” which means that their announcement will be automatically boosted to the top of the activity feed and remain there until it’s made “unsticky.”
Generating Discussion in the Activity Feed
When paired with a measure of facilitated structure, the activity feed can become a place for rich discussion around developing projects. As a facilitator, prompting and monitoring are your best tools for generating discussion and collaboration among your community in the hub.
Prompt your members to share ideas or questions around a coordinated time-frame. In other words, give them a due date by which to post their thoughts around a particular topic.
For example, if you’re leading a program and just finished a lesson on prototyping, ask your cohort to post an idea of a prototype they plan on testing before the start of the next lesson.
Additionally, prompt your members to respond to others’ ideas and questions around a coordinated time-frame. For example, if you’ve asked teams to post ideas about prototypes, ask your members to respond to others’ ideas after they’ve been posted and before the start of the next lesson.
You should also monitor the feed and provide feedback of your own. This can be very valuable to participants and adds fuel to the ongoing discussions.
The Members Page
A third collaboration tool is the “Members Page,” where hub members can see who else is in their hub along with details about the projects they’re working on and the skills they bring to the table.
Members can use this page to find potential collaborators and supporters. And if they have their email listed, members can reach out to them to ask for help.
Hub administrators can use this page to track their efforts to build an ecosystem around their innovation program.
The Members Page
When you click on the “Members” page in your hub, you’ll be able to scroll through and search for the members of your Hub.
Each member has their own card that displays key info at a glance. You’ll be able to see what role the member plays within the Hub.
Rebels
Rebels are working on projects in the platform, designated in orange and listing the projects they’re developing.
Supporters
Supporters are members of the hub interested in offering their skills to Rebels in the hub, designated in blue-gray and listing the “Powers” (a.k.a. skills) they hold.
If you click on a Supporter’s member card, you’ll also be able to find their email address (if they’ve listed it) and you’ll have the opportunity to reach out to them for help.
Admin
Admins manage the hub, designated in light blue and listing their roles in the hub.
General
General members are guests in the hub with no defined role, designated in black and with no additional info.
As your ecosystem grows, this page becomes crucial, acting as a rich directory of all members, their abilities, and their work.
Why Build an Ecosystem
RebelBase makes it easier for you to connect experts, employers, investors, and others directly to your innovation program. After you identify individuals that are interested in learning about the work being done in your program, you can bring them onto the platform and make it easier for them to connect with your innovators (and vice versa).
The benefit of building this ecosystem is that when one weaves an innovation program into the real-world marketplace, it strengthens the program’s experiential learning impact as well as increases the likelihood that projects built in the program continue to develop after the program concludes.
How to Build an Ecosystem
Draw on your network and on the networks of your participants. Collectively, brainstorm people who may take an interest in the work you’re doing. Then, reach out to these individuals to describe how their involvement could mutually reinforce the program’s, the participants’, and their own goals.
For those that do take an interest, invite them to your hub and to relevant events. We recommend that you also send some notes on how to navigate and use the platform (perhaps drawing from this material).
How to Engage an Ecosystem
The best way to engage your ecosystem is to ask its members to participate in your program. Whether it’s by inviting them to deliver a guest lecture, judge a competition, or serve as an advisor, giving them the opportunity to contribute in some way will help them develop a productive sense of ownership over the program.
Another strategy is to invite them to give feedback to posts in the activity feed, particularly during periods when the posts are directly relevant to their areas of expertise.