my encounters on a soaring community

After two months of browsing, gathering info and participating on zweefportaal, i’ll try and summarize my findings in this last blogpost. For me it wasn’t that hard to participate in the community, since it is about a topic what really interests me. I found myself talking to other users very fast. There was not really any welcoming, but i don’t mind. I guess, for the main target audience (of kinda all ages) this is something they could think of adding to their community. After a few weeks i found my way on the webpage and i noticed i was checking some forumthreads regularly.

Actually, the whole community of zweefportaal is based on this forum. I found myself interested in the ways discussions were held, especially when it involved some ‘law’- matters. Everyone tended to have his opinion, and the discussion got really steamy. Those discussions are interesting to follow, ’cause they concern every gliderpilot in the Netherlands, and thus, me. Of course, the ‘kletspraat’ was also an interesting forumthread, to see everyone who was discussing in other parts of the webpage, to be united on threads around pictures like this:

My role on the community changed from lurker to user, member you would say. Not only online, but even IRL we discussed the matters we were talking about online. I didn’t only join a online community, but also the real community. I found myself e-mailing with long lost fellow gliders from Leeuwarden, texting with Delta Alpha from the eindhovense and IM with Echo Hotel. (still not using real names, ofcourse). The people only on zweefportaal are all known, since the amount of glider pilots is really small and it’s a quite tense group. Since i flew before, and visited National events long before zweefportaal existed, found it a great way to reconnect to people i hadn’t seen in a while.

The community was organised around the forum. Even the front page, where the newsitems are shown, is information which comes from the forum. All other content is provided by the KNVvL (Dutch: Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging voor Luchtvaart) and thus thrustworthy. This is really clear on the webpage. What i liked most is the integration of the community with the OnLine Contest (OLC). This is actual an offline contest, and is about who is able to fly the longest distance on a given day, and therefor gaining the most amount of points for that day. What happened here, is that every ‘good-weather-day’ every member checked in, what great distances other people had flown that day. This competition element really ‘lived’ the online community.

The other contests, videographic and photographic contests, also were an enormous trigger for the members to return to the website. Newest pictures appeared everyday on the webpage, and I found myself browsing through them a lot. I admit, even during CB class. The videographic contest was much quieter, since it was not allowed to post video’s before the NZD. However, it created a buzz on the forum, everyone was trying to make other members curious about their submission.

Since the webpage is fully supported by the KNVvL, there are also links to the webshop of KNVvL. I guess this is, besides a few sponsored banners, their main revenue model. I guess, since the KNVvL is collecting yearly fees from every gliding pilot, they don’t really want to make a lot of profit out of this community web page, but offer us a tool to communicate.

What i think was striking was the presence of the KNVvL board. They are active gliderpilots and thus you would expect them to have an account on the webpage. I don’t know for sure, since the use of real names is not obligatory, but i don’t think they have a presence on the zweefportaal. For my, i would suggest them to join the community and participate in the conversation which is going on. I think it has to be of great importance to know what is going on, even online.

Even now i keep discovering new things on the webpage. For example, last week i looked into the regulations on gliding (since it’s one of the topics i have to study for my theoretical exam, next year). I noticed there is quite some information stored on the webpage too: air traffic laws which go back 50 years and even more. Quite funny too, cause who would really use that kinda stuff nowadays.

However, if i would run a community like this i would change bits. (yeah. and pieces=)). The shoutbox, which is not actively used (which i think is one of the Preconditions of a shoutbox), would better disappear . It takes up a large space on the frontpage, and this area could prove better use. And, besides that, it has no use to have out-dated shouts on your homepage.

Concluding, i think this community is quite fun. I still enjoy browsing the webpage and see the discussions going on. Especially with the winter-season coming up: i (and a lot of fellow gliding pilots) are waiting to fly again, but have to entertain ourselves for a couple of months with the digital equivalent. I am looking forward to the spring of 2010, when i can join the OLC and contribute even more to zweefportaal.nl