Of all the topical issues in community management, there are a few I would be pay special attention to.
- The blurring lines between offline and online community development. What can each learn from each other? How are they merging with each other?
- Legal issues in communities. What are we responsible (liable) for and what can community managers, collectively, do to ensure sensible laws or regulation is in place to protect community professionals.
- Establishing the ROI and justifying our own value to community managers. Engagement isn't the outcome, a clear ROI is the outcome.
- Proven community/social theory into community management.What is proven to work? What is the social theory that underpins our work? What can we point to and say with confidence that this is applicable to all types of communities?
- The convergence or fragmentation of community management and other social fields. How do we establish community management as a unique discipline within the social fields. What is a community and what is a community manager? What is their role and activities?
There may be more, but these seem pretty important to me.
