Keeping Track of Discussions at Hewlett Packard

Stan Garfield, Worldwide Consulting & Integration Knowledge Management Leader, Hewlett-Packard, recently shared the metrics his firm uses to keep track of all threaded discussion forums:

New Threads
Replies
Total Posts
Total Subscriptions
Number of Forums
Consulting & Integration Participants
% of Participation

Stan also publishes a monthly compilation of Forum Success Stories, taken from actual forum posts. Here is an example he provided of one story:

From: in the Supply Chain Management Forum
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 8:28 PM
Subject: RE: Getting into Supply Chain Management field in HP
When I recently posted on the forum, I did not realize what a powerful medium it is and how responsive and encouraging HP'ers are there. I am a huge advocate of the HP forums now and will shout at roof tops to declare that. Thanks for running the Supply Chain one :-)

Stan finds that both stats and stories are very useful in promoting forum usage and demonstrating the value of communities at HP. The stats are also useful in managing the forums to ensure that they remain active and that inactive ones are removed. I think there is a best practice here that others should look to replicate.

Comments

[Jim]

As a former HP'er (I left voluntarily), my guess is Stan has been WFR'd, though maybe he left voluntarily, too. On his blog (http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/garfield/archive/2008/08/12/new-directions-km-thought-leaders-open-source-social-software-beyond-google-what-would-churchill-do.aspx) he writes:

After spending the past 25 years at Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq Computer Corporation, and the Hewlett-Packard Company, I have taken a new position as the Retail & Consumer Knowledge Domain Manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers in the U.S.
Q: What will become of your blog?
A: All previous content will be preserved on hp.com, but there will be no new posts there after this one.

[Bill Ives]

Jim

Thanks for your comment. Stan would have the best answer for this. I imagine he will start a new blog. I hope so.

Bill