www.mycatalyze.org. From the FAQ:
What is the Catalyze community?
Catalyze is a new member-driven community for all professionals involved in the defining and designing software applications or websites. Catalyze is a place to share experiences, find resources, ask questions, offer opinions, get involved and network with other professionals engaged in defining and designing software applications and websites.What is the goal of the Catalyze community?
The goal of the Catalyze community is to be the number one destination for software application definition and design professionals. Peer-based content is the most powerful force for change and learning in the world today. For the first time, that power is now in the hands of the professionals that define and design the world’s software.Who are the target members of the Catalyze community?
If you are a Business Analyst, UI Designer, Information Architect, Interaction Designer, Usability or UX Professional, Product Manager, Project Manager or anyone else involved in the definition process of a software application, then you will find value in joining the Catalyze Community.
From looking at the site, it looks like some great opportunities for all of us
- Forums – good categories, including business analyst and usability job postings. Not a lot of traffic yet.
- Resources – including articles, whitepapers, etc. It also allows members to upload resources.
- Blogs – there are several blogs operating within the site, and a main page/feed that aggregates them. About 50 articles so far across 9 blogs. If you want to start a blog at Catalyze, there’s a contact link.
- Feeds – there’s a feed room that has a widget that aggregates content from many blogs in our niche (including Tyner Blain – thanks guys).
- Events – good focused calendar of upcoming events for BA and UX professionals.
Exciting
- The event calendar is exciting to me – great opportunity to aggregate “what’s going on.
- Resources – I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.
- Job Posting Forum – I haven’t really looked, so maybe there is a good place to post/find BA and UX jobs already on some other site. I like that it is here (and there are already over a dozen postings in each category).
- The site is done in partnership with the IIBA and UPA. Excellent.
Not Bad
- The other forum elements. When I think of a requirements forum, I think first of Seilevel’s message boards. I don’t know of a good UX forum.
- Blogs. Good start, good framework. I’m optimistic that the content will grow consistently and be high quality. Jury’s really out for now.
So check it out, sign up, contribute and make it great.
Interesting site, Scott. Thanks for the tip!
Are you tempted to pinch any ideas for Nexus?
Thanks guys.
I was really tempted to pinch the ‘events’ idea, because I think it is a really good one. But, I think we’re all better served by having a single “all of our events” location. With the IIBA and UPA associations, Catalyze is in a much better position to source those events for us. I had planned to do events for nexus (it was actually my wife’s idea about a month ago), but when Tom showed me Catalyze, I knew that we wouldn’t do them on nexus.
I definitely won’t set up a forum – with both Catalyze and Seilevel, we have two good places for forum-style interaction. And RQNG and Catalyze have good “member blog articles.”
As the two sites evolve, I think they will work better in cooperation than in competition. My plan is to see how that goes.