{"id":482,"date":"2012-01-15T13:24:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T13:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/?p=482"},"modified":"2012-01-18T13:37:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-18T13:37:55","slug":"what-makes-a-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/people-and-behaviors\/what-makes-a-community\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes a community?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#39;s thousands, perhaps millions of posts about community development best practices, especially since this has become a career track for many. I&#39;m not a trained professional community manager but have accumulated enough experience in the domain to feel that I can start a community.<\/p>\n<p>A few months ago I founded the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/IoT-Barcelona\/\">Internet of Things Barcelona<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/IoT-Zurich\/\">Internet of Things Zurich<\/a> meetup groups in order to contribute to and participate in a global network of folks also interested in IoT projects: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/iotmadrid\/\">Madrid<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/iotnewyork\/\">New York<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/iotlondon\/\">London<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/iotamsterdam\/\">Amsterdam<\/a> (are there others I&#39;ve missed?). Both IoT-BCN and IoT-ZH had their first meetings in the first week of December 2011.<\/p>\n<p>I love Barcelona and it is definitely a hot bed of innovation but this group had not had time to ramp up before our meeting. We were only 5 dedicated and curious people who did not know one another and we just had a casual chat about what we think Internet of Things will become, although none of us had any hands on experience.<\/p>\n<p>In Switzerland, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/IoT-Zurich\/events\/37261552\/\">first IoTZH meeting<\/a> was in Bern. It was co-located with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobilemonday.ch\/?p=15\">Mobile Monday Switzerland 28th meeting<\/a>. The room was full to capacity and many of the attendees were people with whom I&#39;ve crossed paths in the past 7 years in Switzerland. Although it really wasn&#39;t the case, this felt like a room of my closest friends and we shared out pleasure while listening to the well-prepared content delivered by the five invited speakers. The venue is also easy to access and warm. Based on the success of the IoTZH meeting I contacted several folks and we organized <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/IoT-Zurich\/events\/43933732\/\">our second meeting in Zurich<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Based on these experience, and many others I&#39;ve had in the past 20 years doing evangelism through community development, I suggest that there are a few key requirements for a community to feel alive and to grow:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a variety of people who share an interest but from different levels or points of view. Although it&#39;s rare to have this, if everyone is at the same level, there&#39;s not a feeling of potential for personal or professional growth. The topic of interest can be broadly or narrowly defined. I really like communities in which there&#39;s a balance of academic people (students, faculty or researchers) and people with business backgrounds and interests.<\/li>\n<li>critical mass is another key ingredient that really distinguishes a community from just a &quot;group&quot;. There&#39;s not a magic number for all communities, but for communities sharing a technology interest, regardless of whether they are meeting face-to-face or virtually, the number is close to 100. More is better!<\/li>\n<li>novelty is another component that certainly helps a community. What I mean is that the members feel that they are part of something that&#39;s not easily repeatable. New topics to be discussed, new problems to tackle, new speakers, even new meeting places which involve a bit of risk. Novelty helps members feel the adventure with each phase and, for many, that&#39;s enough reason to return. <\/li>\n<li>finally, at least one person or a small group must feel personally responsible for the care and nurture of the larger group. Without a lot of love and devotion, beverages and food for those that meet in person, a community doesn&#39;t function well. But there&#39;s also logistics: a meeting venue, invitations, a hashtag and a twitter handle. The founder or leader doesn&#39;t have to live in close proximity to others but needs to feel passionate and, in this situation, members usually respond.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#39;s getting easier, with tools on the Web, to form, to nurture and to participate in communities. That said, they don&#39;t have to be permanent. If a community lacks one or more of the components above, it&#39;s time for it to close, quietly or with a splash! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#39;s thousands, perhaps millions of posts about community development best practices, especially since this has become a career track for many. I&#39;m not a trained professional community manager but have accumulated enough experience in the domain to feel that I can start a community. A few months ago I founded the Internet of Things Barcelona [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-of-things","category-people-and-behaviors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spimewrangler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}