As a community manager, it is so exciting to see people in the community engaging and interacting with each other! I love connecting with all of you and seeing your face on your avatar and profile pictures. Keep it up! Over the past three months, a few questions have come up and I’d like to address them here.   How do I manage my email preferences? In the community, you may have noticed that when you turn “On” email updates for a stream or your Inbox, you will receive an email every time that stream or Inbox is updated. Since this can get overwhelming quickly, I would recommend saying “Yes” to receiving emails, but turning “Off” notifications that will alert you with everything in your inbox. The only exception I would make is to turn "On" direct social actions. You do not want to miss those!  Learn more about managing your inbox by reading this FAQ question. How can I join a group? The best way to stay in the loop and involved in the community is to join a group. There are four types of groups: open, members only, private or secret. You can browse through and see what kind of group you would like to join by clicking your avatar, and then click on "Your Places". From there, you can select "All" in the left panel and use the filtering options to find groups that interest you. You can learn more about how to join a group here. How do I follow someone or something? There are a few ways to follow a piece of content, a person, or a place in the community. I will reveal the easiest way: on any stream you’re looking at, simply hover your mouse over a person’s name or avatar and click "Follow". There are a few other ways to do this if you are still wondering, How do I follow someone? If you have any questions of your own, feel free to ask them in Get Help. We hope you are having fun learning more about the community. Please send us your feedback! ... View more

My first taste in community was my neighborhood gang in 1970's Tampa, the Sunshine State, another time, another world. We roamed in a desultory pack through long humid afternoons knocking on doors and gathering in number until the fireflies came out and our moms called us in. Our shared interests included digging (here my sister and I work on the shallow beginning of what would become "The Pit"), making up games like School and Lion (better to teach than tame) and that age old activity, hanging out. When I was a kid, the success of my day would depend on who was home, the weather, and the energy of the collected group to have ideas and execute on projects. For the many years I was an editor, the community of teachers and publishers around an academic field came together at conferences, and they still do! Editors and marketing managers spend weeks contacting existing and potential authors, blocking out every possible time a given day offers to eat and drink and meet. We stand at booths in windowless conference halls--the same in every city, every state—waiting for people to wander by between sessions and browse our offerings. When they do, we hover inconspicuously, on call to answer a question or demo a website. This community is built around real-life, real-time, sometimes accidental, connections between people, pedagogy, books, and media. In today's hyper-connected world, it's theoretically possible to get information and inspiration when and where you need it, and to connect easily with people who share your interests (provided you're all hooked up at some point to wifi, which, for better or worse, most of us are). But it's also hard to filter out the noise and to cleave through the cognitive dissonance between the belief in Google's search algorithms and a belief in expertise and academic communities. And until today, it hasn't always been easy to digitally connect with the larger Macmillan community—outside of a conference or physical event—with our teachers, scholars, editors, and authors (past, present, and possible). The Macmillan Community offers all of us a space to connect, and we'll always be home when you feel like hanging out. Granted, it's a pretty quiet space today. We've set up 3 pilot groups, for Bedford Bits , TLC Webinars, and EconED Active, and if you're looking at this post in the halcyon days of summer 2015, you're one of the first people through the door. Welcome! We've set up the site to be open for you to browse and search—but you get many more benefits as a member, including email alerts about opportunities to review new projects and to meet our authors and editors. We're already working on the next round of ideas for building out groups and content, and we would love your feedback. So check it out, sign up to join, and tell us what you think! ... View more