Dashed off in the SFO United lounge while NOT on my way to CMX.
I organized the online community summit, my first community meetup, on July 13, 2005. I remember the night vividly. We gathered over 30 online community leaders and researchers from around the bay area on the 5th floor of One Market in San Francisco to share ideas, discuss common challenges, explore possible research and a slew of related topics. After years of recovering from .com bubble bursting, there was a sense of optimism and a renewed interest and investment in “community”. This was great fun.
That session led to a regular meetup that was renamed the Online Community Roundtable, a job change that led to 5 intense years of organizing, hosting many conferences and open space events, and a good deal of research focused on the practice of community.
I’ve watched “community” – the concept, practice and platforms – go through a number of ups and down over the last 25 years. And at this point, I have to stop and wonder: why aren’t we further along? From an “industry” perspective- and I really struggle to call the activity that is happening at a macro level an industry – why does it seem so static and joyless? The most distressing issue to me is the volume and velocity of attrition – the number of creative and talented people that have walked away from the practice and have suffered real harm from essentially just doing their job. Why is this happening?
Billions of Opportunities
Let’s look at “community” through a different lens… and maybe zoom out. Objectively, we have a global population of 8+ Billion people, the majority (~70%) are connected to broadband. Add multiple devices and the types of communities people increasingly relay on for life, work and mental / spiritual health and you have a mindbogglingly large system of potential connections, arguably in the trillions. That’s a lot of community to manage my friends.
And yet.
We (at an “industry” level) often operate with a mindset of scarcity. There is a need to be THE community of community leaders, THE go to consultant for community (even in areas of 0 experience), THE dominant community platform, THE method, THE right way to practice. See a pattern here? (hint: seeking dominance with a dash of sanctimony and a side of dogma.)
Generally speaking, and in my experience, people drawn to this practice are creative, compassionate and wired to connect. People seeking to organize the space, build tools for the space? Sometimes (but not always) not so much.
Where do we start?
So the big and obvious question (at least to me): How might we create a healthier space for practice?
I think it starts by asking a lot of questions:
- What types of institutions do we need to serve us?
- How might we embrace a full range of practice and roles?
- What might we learn from other industries, sectors or areas of practice to inform a better future?
- What types of communities and networks to we need to serve and support us?
- What types of conferences, unconferences and meetups do we want? How might we self-organize more of these?
- How might we look back at practices from the last 25+ years and bring forward foundational knowledge instead of reinventing every time a new institution or group launches. What if we actually gave attribution to the people who developed concepts?
- What if our institutions, networks, communities and conference actually – I know this is VERY Radical for community leaders – what if they actually COLLABORATED at even the most basic of levels?
This is a notional list and obviously, just scratching the surface.
My hope is that we can start a broad conversation and organize from the small group level up this time around. I don’t have the answers, but I have a lot of experience, motivation and love for this practice. I’m actively organizing conversations and I know others are doing the same.
I’ll leave you with an idea from Howard Rheingold that might inspire:
“What it is is up to us.”
What do we want to build?
–Bill
bill@structure3c.com
(415) 209-5791
Bill Johnston 