I'm thrilled to be going to Net Squared this year to share some of what I've learned by using and exploring Flickr! I work as the Communities Director at Salon.com, home of Salon Table Talk and The WELL. I have spent several years playing in Flickr in my spare time. This has given me the opportunity to observe, test and admire the toolset and the creative culture that makes Flickr such a rich collaborative environment. So we'll gather to share examples of how Flickr is used to extend a group's interaction into visual space, or to gather people with a common interest together. This is on top of the fancy ways to use Flickr just to find images, though those can be powerful too! Eye-witness shots of the quake region from China are a recent example of the kinds of timely information you may be able to find on Flickr.

I'm thinking for the session we can list, swap and show examples of what we've done or seen people do.

What, exacmples? Here's something that's just for fun: members of The WELL (the classic subscription-only discussion forum) who want to have their images displayed on the "404" page for the well.com site can send pix into a special Flickr group pool. Then the very simple Flickr badge code shows them to anybody who types in a bad URL or uses an outdated link at The WELL. To see that super-simple "external" group use, type http://www.well.com/xyz1234 (where xyz1234 can be any random characters that are not a real page!) The visual images you will see are random examples from recent group shots, and you can click on the images into the photographer's Flickr stream, to see a larger version on Flickr) That's about the simplest mashup you can do, and of course that could be done on any kind of page. What Flickr uses have you done or seen on your site or on those you admire?

The flip side would be communities that mainly exist and interact in Flickr, eventually making a external blog or site of some sort as an adjunct to the tools they use together on Fiickr. These groups may be issue or cause oriented groups, activity or arts groups, or visual play groups. One big photography and fine photo group with strong community spirit is Utata, with their mutliple ongoing activities plus a gorgeous external blog added later. Got any favorite groups that originated on, or more mosty exist on Flickr itself?

This should be a lot of fun.