This blog is an extension of some of the ideas discussed in today's' skype conference...The webcast academy already has several metaphors currently in use. One is the 'academy' and the other is 'bridges'. A third general metaphor is 'community'. In a way having three 'identities' can be a little confusing. A new visual model would serve as the hanger for new ideas. By visual I am mean image based as opposed to text based. To me text is auditory, it's just an internal dialogue. A site needs to have a strong metaphor and graphical interface if it's going to build a community image in the users mind. Users need to construct a mental model of the community. They need to define their role as well as the roles of others. They must be able to find their way around the community easily, unless the goal is to create a maze and reward only those who can figure it out.It's like browsing a multidimensional universe.