Auburn University's Robert French is to be congratulated for what he's accomplished with PROpenMic. In just six months, the site stacks up quite favorably in every measure to the likes of myragan.com (the closest thing I can compare it to) and even some other well-known PR-focused sites.

I'll let Robert's analysis speak for itself. For my part, there are a number of lessons for all PR practitioners here, both new and experienced.

First, no Web 2.0 app has a "sweat equity" plugin. If you're not willing to put some serious hours and effort into building a useful digital watering hole, then it's probably a wasteful exercise.

Second, PROpenMic was a site that truly filled a need — a place where students, faculty, and practitioners can interact on a level playing field. If you don't have that — something either new, highly focused, or dramatically better — then there's not much you can do.

Third, if you want a community like this to be successful, you have to enforce some rules. Robert has been great in terms of making sure that hucksters, fakesters, and poachers are kept in line.

Fourth, you have to roll out the red carpet. It's the rare newcomer that doesn't get a personal welcome from Robert on their profile page. That means Robert has probably written more than 2,300 such welcomes in six months. My Ask Phil group is just north of 120 members and I'll occasionally miss some. (Nothing personal.)

In short, building a successful online community (however you define "success") is not merely a technical issue of plugging one widget into another widget and tagging the blood-vessel-bursting bejeezus out of it. Those that think so richly deserve failure.

So there's a lot that we can all learn from Robert's example. I strongly encourage readers (especially students and faculty) to join PROpenMic and learn from (and through) this resource.