Community Building

Over the years, I’ve been involved in a number of clubs, organisations, CoP’s, user groups etc. and I’m currently in the early stages of planning a community of practice for web entrepreneurs. I’ll share the details on this a little later (drop me a note if I’ve piqued you’re interest!).

Whilst doing some research, I came across an elightening piece on the challenge of building communities by Dave Pollard.

I’ve read everything I can get my hands on on intentional communities, and what strikes me most is that their failure, just like the failure of so many new-age business models, is a failure of imagination. The intentions are good. They invest a lot of time and energy in research, and in trying to make it work. But when they run into difficulties, they keep falling back on ‘conventional wisdom’: we need a council, and committees, and voting and non-voting shares, and strategic plans, and legal agreements, and to borrow lots of money; we need to work harder, and to wait until conditions are exactly right. I appreciate that creating a new community is scary, but the social, political and economic failings of the old system are exactly what got us into this mess, and incorporating them into the new models is just asking for the same terrible results.

Whilst the focus of his post seems to be a broader context of intentional communities, I think the same reasoning applies to building communities of practice and social networks. It is very easy to fall into the trap of making things too strucured or formal, and this can stifle creatvity and openness.

To be successful, you have to nuture and create the right conditions for evolution and transformation rather than trying to control and force resolutions. This is the philosophy I hope to take with me into the new venture.  Do you subscribe to this philosophy, or do you think I should take a different tact?

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