I Build Online Communities
What's an online community, anyway? An online community is where people gather online to learn, exchange ideas and form meaningful relationships. The community can be based around any commercial product or non-commercial topic of common interest. To support engagement we need to provide public meeting places on our community site with applications of participation like blogs, forums, media galleries and wikis.
To build these online communities I created Sueetie for membership management, reporting, seo support, eCommerce capabilities, CMS and other services. Sueetie is a Microsoft Windows .NET-based solution working with the best Open Source .NET social applications. The applications in Sueetie and which I specialize in are BlogEngine.NET, ScrewTurn Wiki, YetAnotherForum.NET and Gallery Server Pro.
How I became an expert in online communities
I've been on the road which culminated in Sueetie for a number of years now. The first version of this dbvt.com site in 2004, for instance, consisted of an integrated architecture of DotNetNuke, nGallery for photos, and .Text for blogs. As nGallery and .Text went on to form Telligent's commercial Community Server product, I naturally did a lot of Community Server development and in 2006 was hired as Telligent's first Community Evangelist until I left the company to return to full-time freelance development in 2007.
In 2008 I returned to my Open Source roots and began building Sueetie. Open Source is superior to any proprietary commercial application because of 1) cost, 2) full source code availability enabling extensive customization and immediate bug fixes, and 3) the motivation of sharing in the passion of developer communities around Open Source products results in a better product.
When I create a new online community or add social networking capabilities to an existing site, because I'm working with Sueetie the applications are already written. My job is to integrate, customize and add client-specific enhancements. This model enables me to deliver the best technology to my clients for a return on their investment, and in the shortest amount of time possible.