Online Community

Analysis of an

Online Community

of Professional DJs

Osvaldo Jimenez

Brian Tobin

Education 298

3/20/2003

The ProDJ.com Online Community

INTRODUCTION

Eighteen months ago you were really fascinated with the DJ business and wanted to try it out as a side job- a fun way to make some spending money. So you bought equipment and became a DJ! Now, somehow you are the hot new DJ in town. You have played mostly in schools, done couple of weddings, and are fairly familiar with what your clients want and how to provide them with a good music and sound experience. Today, a man named Xuaming contacted you and wants you to do his wedding. You agreed to do it, but feel a little bit uneasy because you haven't DJ’d a Chinese wedding before. You know that they have a number of different customs and are worried that, because of a cultural misunderstanding, you may ruin the couple’s special night. Your reputation and business as a DJ relies upon your ability to give this wedding reception what it needs. Where do you go for information? You should look to the professional DJ community at ProDJ, www.prodj.com.

An Introduction to ProDJ

ProDJ.com is a free website that caters to everything related to professional disc jockeys (DJs). ProDJ.com refers to itself as, “The Internet’s Source for DJs” and has established itself as one of the premier collections of web resources for DJs. According to the president of ProDJ.com Ryan Burger, “in early 1996 [ProDJ] started offering educational areas, shopping and chat. Then went through several generations until in 1998 we got to the current organization.” Until the year 2000, ProDJ had 12,000 registered members. However, a recent transition in forums deleted a number of old accounts and the number of registered users is much smaller now but daily traffic to the site has nearly tripled in recently years. The site employs five full-time staff members who maintain and operate the site. As ProDJ is a free community, their salaries and the hosting costs are paid for by displaying advertisements targeted at DJs on their pages.

ProDJ’s members are mostly professional disc jockeys, though some corporate salesman of DJ equipment and products also participate. In addition, there is also a room on the site for people that are associated with DJs, such as light jockeys (professional people that control the expensive lighting in night clubs) and karaoke hosts, among others.

ProDJ Walk-Through

Upon Entering the site, through the main portal, http://www.prodj.com, one finds the ProDJ slogan and a choice point where the visitor selects to see the site for bridal planners or disc jockeys. Since that the bridal planners section is basically only used in order to find a DJ, this assessment only investigates the DJ side of the site.

The DJ side is comprised of various components, most notably are http://start.prodj.com, which has its own slogan entitled “Where the internet starts for DJs”, and http://dju.prodj.com, which is DJ University. There is also a mall where disc jockeys can shop for clothing and gear, and a DJ search engine and web hosting services so that DJs can market themselves on the World Wide Web. ProDJ.com establishes that their sites are, “…designed to allow disc jockeys from around the world to share information and ideas to enhance the way we perform and do business.” Since, this mission is most clearly accomplished through the domains of start.prodj.com and DJ University, these are the focus of this investigation and will be explained in more detail below.

Start.prodj.com, “where the internet starts for DJs”, is a large discussion forum where most DJs spend the majority of their time when visiting the prodj.com domain. This part of the site houses about 20 forums, which range from marketing strategies, to gear, to focus on cruise DJing. The site’s forums are most vibrant portion in the community. The majority of the forums typically have posts by people at most within 3 hours of when you log on. With over 1800 subscribers, 3700 threads, and more the 37,000 postings since 2000, the start portion of this site hosts a thriving community of people that are affiliated with the disc jockey business. This forum also offers other features to facilitate member communication, including a chat room and the private messaging.

ProDJ Chat
ProDJ DJ University

The other element of the ProDJ.com that is vital to learning and business is the DJ University. Though this site does not allow much room for interaction, it is definitely where many beginning DJs would want to start out. DJ University offers free “courses” that are taught by the “professors” (contributing members) of DJ University. DJ University states “Our mission is to provide a FREE, online resource for disc jockeys to learn new information and ideas.” Courses seem to be for the most part what seem to be articles written by “professors” which are ProDJ’s old timers. It also offers a video portion of clips from commercially made DJ videos which the site hopes “will reinforce what they have learned in classes.” In the Dean’s statement about the purpose of DJU, they are providing this education service because, “an educated disc jockey will enhance the image of the profession, as a whole.” With a range of courses from marketing to lighting, DJU provides a good beginning resource for the up and coming disc jockey.

ProDJ Community - Described

Many researchers would define ProDJ as a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991, Wenger 2001). In Wenger’s (2001) article on supporting communities of practice and looking at the community oriented technologies, he states that there are three characteristics that define a community of practice: members of the community have a knowledge of a specific domain, these members interact and learn from one another, and they develop a shared repertoire of their experience. This system and definition of a community of practice can easily be applied to ProDJ, as the members of the ProDJ community have a specific knowledge in the domain of professional disc jockeying and equipment. They also share knowledge about equipment and DJ practices such as what games are appropriate at certain events, and the community knowledge is stored on the bulletin boards and in DJ University so that others can have access to these resources. This site contains the articles and artifacts necessary to keep this a shared resource that others can look into after the interactions and knowledge sharing has taken place.

In addition, Schlager et. al (2002) describe many different parts of what constitutes a community of practice and ProDJ satisfies these conditions. Some specific examples come from the differentiation between journeyman and professionals, which is evident based on the fact that the journeyman can have access to the shared resource, but they are not allowed to contribute to the resource. Only professionals (registered members of ProDJ) can contribute to this community of practice. Everyone can view the number of posts/contributions that members have made on the start.prodj.com site so there is some degree of showing off professionals’ experience. Also experienced people can create some of the courses taught at DJ University and recognition is given to these people by giving them the title of “professor” on the DJ University site.

Another example of a ProDJ.com feature that Schlager (2002) highlights as being essential to a community of practice is that online communities of practice can accommodate both large and small groups and that these groups can thrive successfully. This is also very evident on Start.ProDJ.com as many of the forums are specific to smaller sub groups of DJs, such as Christian DJs or wedding DJs. Though these subgroups are loosely defined, the site also allows the diverse groups of DJs to come together and talk about many of the different aspects involved with DJ’ing. Based on Wellman and Gulia’s article on “Net surfer’s don’t ride alone”, Wellman and Gulia (1999) discuss how a specialized group of peoplewho share a common interest, like these niche DJs, are brought together by the net. This would not have been possible without ProDJ’s online community.

Professional disc jockeys need a community for a variety of reasons and J.com is filling a definite need by providing them with a resource. Because Disc Jockeys fill a small demand, Disc Jockeys cannot be heavily concentrated in one geographic area. This means that their need to collaborate and form a vibrant community via physical space is very difficult. Having an online community helps reduce the professional isolation that most disc jockeys have by allowing DJs across a broad geographic region to interact and learn from one another in order to expand their collective knowledge. One interesting fact is that, although Cothrel and Williams (1999) state that most communities centered around discussion boards usually end up with the members having the most valuable discussions in private spaces, there is a lot of very valuable information posted on these discussion boards. In addition, the proliferation at which some of the knowledge heavy users and moderators post to the site contributes to the feeling that this community is vibrant and interested in helping its members. These features all indicate that ProDJ.com is a successful community of practice.

As mentioned earlier, one of the important goals of this site is to educate DJs on how to run a successful business in which they keep their customers satisfied. One interesting aspect about this community is that because they are sharing knowledge about their professional practices, DJs on the site may be in direct competition for that particular person’s business, similar to some collaboratories. This could lead to the stealing of knowledge or the housing of what some DJs feel is the “secret formula” to their success. However, this does not seem to be a concern of many people on the site at all, as most people are very willing to try and help one another out in order to become better Disc Jockeys. Rheingold’s freeloading principle (2002) does not seem to apply to this community. Members seem to be sharing information freely and the site’s founder states that he would like all members to register and contribute but he does not believe it is essential that all DJs register because those who want to join the community will eventually register.

ASSESSMENT OF PRODJ – STRENGTHS

ProDJ is a successful community for a number of reasons. It fills a niche where a community is needed, offers legitimate peripheral participation to attract new members, built itself on the strength of the contributions of its members, sets clear boundaries for its interactions, and extends its interactions outside of the online world.

DJs need a place to share tips and tricks about equipment, music, and business as well as a place to socialize with others like themselves and ProDJ fills this need well by offering DJs from around the world a place where they can come and share in a wealth of community knowledge. The greatest strength of ProDJ is maintaining a tight scope and concentrating hard on meeting the very specific needs of its desired community members. In 1996, ProDJ was a valuable place for DJs to get their name out and find jobs. The founder delved deeper into the needs of DJs and found that they also needed a place to learn tips on how to improve their work as well as a place to chat and get to know other DJs. This kind of relentless focusing and needfinding, Cothrel and Williams suggest (1999), helps ProDJ continue to adapt to the needs of DJs and be a strong resource for its members.

If visitors to a community cannot see the value of joining the community, they are not likely to become members. Thus, in order to attract new members, an online community should allow visitors and prospective members to explore the community’s resources without much investment. Wenger (2001) calls this exploration period legitimate peripheral participation and explain that visitors should be allowed to participate in a community from the fringe and work their way into becoming full members if they wish. ProDJ allows legitimate peripheral participation by giving visitors rights to see which members are currently online, to view all members’ profiles, and to read all of the discussion boards, DJ University lessons, community photos, links, and news. Visitors who simply wish to find a piece of information and do not want to explicitly sign up for a community are thus able to benefit from the community but are not required to sign up if they do not want to join the interactive community. Founder Ryan Burger explained:

A lot of people just browse the site and don’t register because they aren’t interested in posting. Of course, everyone should share their ideas. Even if they are new in the business, they can bring a fresh perspective to things. Everyone’s opinion means something… In the end they will register for an account.

Legitimate peripheral participation is also a powerful way to attract would-be DJs to the DJ field by giving them a resource to learn what the DJ life is like and some tips before they decide whether or not to become a DJ. Once one has read enough information on ProDJ and decides to become a DJ he could join the community. There are also incentives for becoming a full member of the community such as allowing members to participate in contests and promotions and the pride of contributing useful information to a community of practice. Ryan said that “Every time we do one of the contests, we get a ton of people registering.” In addition, members are continuously reminded of what they cannot do when they lack full membership because they see on the bottom of the webpage a listing of what they could do if they were full members.

Non-Members See: / Members See:

Thus, it appears that ProDJ’s legitimate peripheral participation is holding visitors’ interest enough to get them to hang around and then reel them in with compelling content.