

Ask YC: How to build a community online at a college? - forsaken

I am currently attending a University that has no real online community, and I think this is a "bad thing." Universities are supposed to be about sharing of ideas, and collaborating and expanding your ideas with the help of others. I am curious how you all would go about trying to build a community online for my school. Presumably something close to a wiki/forum, but with a focus on education? Or should it be more of a free-form discussion, and try and get people to come out of pure chance. This is very similar to a startup, and building a community around one, but presumably the community is already there in some form, it just needs to be brought online. Anyone have any advice on how to go about achieving this?
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symbiotic
I'm working on a project to help schools do this, although its a bit more
specific. If you want me to set up a prototype board at your school or want
some more information shoot me an email (aero4x@gmail.com). I'd be happy to
set it up for you, especially because I'm looking to expand my idea.

But... if you want to do this as a project for your self then I would suggest
trying to set up a phpBB forum (<http://www.phpbb.com/>). It's open source,
but sometimes a bit tricky to set up if you don't have any prior experience.

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JoeD123
I would use CollegeWikis.com :-).

if you have ideas for it, i would also contact joe (at) collegewikis.

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utnick
facebook and twitter

one thing you could do is recreate the twitterati section at alltop but with
twitterers from your school and then put up flyers about it in the cs building

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JoeD123
actually - if you want to contact me to chat more about things we could build
in collegewikis that you'd find useful, please do. we're always looking for
suggestions. thanks!

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pius
I'd bootstrap it by focusing on one dorm or class at a time.

