Introduction to
Online Community Development
by Marcia L. Conner

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Towards Understanding Community

In the past few years you may have heard the term "Community" used in conversations where you never expected to hear it. Community has probably popped up in talks about learning, networking, intranet sites, and content management. Community?

Many of these conversations probably focused on what people want online communities to offer and may not meet your preexisting understanding of the term itself.

As a result, I'd like to introduce (or re-introduce) you to the term Community and address the critical elements that will make online communities successful in the context of what community really means. Here is background information and some interesting resources to learn more about physical communities and those you may find or want to build online.

Overview

So what's a community?

In the physical world, communities are typically groups of people (a town, for instance) held together by some common identity or interest. The same holds true for virtual or online communities in that they, too, are comprised of people with shared identity or interests coming together for a shared purpose.

This shared interest or intent offers a strong forum for members of the community to build relationships and affiliations out of which they can learn from one another and make an impact on the society or culture around them.

Coming from two Latin words meaning "with gifts," the term community suggests a general sense of altruism, reciprocity, and beneficence that comes from working together. Communities help generate a shared language, rituals and customers, and collective memory of those that join the group.

For me, Communities are about Camaraderie, Content, and Context.

Want More Definition?

The 1998 Encyclopedia Americana (Int'l Edition) defines a community as, "A relatively small, isolated center with a stable population, in which all economic and social services necessary to life can be maintained. The community is on the of the oldest forms on human social organizations... The ideal type of community emerges as an intellectual concept when social change threatens to destroy a locality's isolation, traditionalism, and solidarity.... [This] leads to a newer form — including occupational and professional groups, neighborhood groups, and ethnic and political groups — becomes the functional equivalents of the older, ecological, isolated community, and they make it possible for their members to avoid the problems of a multidimensional mass society. Their members can find a focus for their social relations, loyalties, and interests."

M. Scott Peck, MD in The Different Drummer: Community-making and Peace says, "Community is something more than the sum of the parts, its individual members. What is this 'something more?' Even to begin to answer that, we enter a realm that is not so much abstract as almost mystical.... The analogy of a gem comes to mind. The seeds of community reside in humanity—a social species—just as a gem originally resides in the earth. But it is not yet a gem, only a potential one.... Geologists refer to a gem in the rough simply as a stone. A group becomes a community in somewhat the same way that a stone becomes a gem—through a process of cutting and polishing. Once cut and polished, it is something beautiful. But to describe its beauty, the best we can do is to describe its facets. Community, like a gem, is multifaceted, each facet a mere aspect of a whole that defies description."

Sociologist Victor Azarya of Hebrew University says, "a preliminary confusion arises between a community as a type of collectively or social unit, and community as a type of social relationship or sentiment.... Community, in the sense of type of collectivity, usually refers to (1) a group sharing a defined physical space or geographical area such as neighborhood, city, village or hamlet; (2) a group sharing common traits, a sense of belonging and/or maintaining social ties and interactions which shape it into a distinctive social entity, such as an ethnic, religious, academic or professional community."

Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science, said in The Community of the Future, "Human communities are no different from the rest of life. We form our communities from these same two needs — the need for self-determination and the need for one another. But in modern society, we have difficulty embracing the inherent paradox of these needs. We reach to satisfy one at the expense of the other.... As we create communities from the cohering center of shared significance, from a mutual belief in why we belong together, we will discover what is already visible everywhere around us in living systems. People's great creativity and diversity, our desire for contribution and relationships, blossom when the heart of our community is clear and beckoning, and when we refrain from cluttering our paths with proscriptions and demands. The future of community is best taught to us by life."

"Who cares," you say, "I have software to build?" OR "These are all well and good but we've got money to make?" Organizations can do both by extending communities.

How we can help to extend Community?

Communities in society have always been supported by whatever tools are available to their members at the time. Before writing, communities were very small because the enabling communication vehicle was the member's voice. They had to be able to share their issues and concerns, triumphs and stories in person because that's all they had.

Once writing was developed monks and scholars continued to meet in person, but were able to extend their communities by writing down their stories and sharing them with people beyond the sound of their voices. Socrates supposedly said that writing would lead to the end of civilization because people didn't have to be amongst one another any more. With Gutenberg's printing press, more people were able to contribute to the community and share their messages. Paul Revere's postal service became another tool, extending some communities wider... and then there was the telephone, the car, the airplane, and the Internet.

None of these tools has replaced the community. They have simply extended its reach, it's depth, and it's potential impact.

What do we know about Community by the time we reach the world of work?

Most of learned about community in stages.

age 2-5 Fisher-price, Dr. Seuss, Sesame Street, Mr. Patches, Romper Room, Mr. Rogers introduce us to the neighborhood.

6-8 School introduces us to a class with a leader. We interact with other class/communities & community services (lunch, jungle-gyms

9-12 Brownies and cub-scouts, camp cabins and sports teams introduce us to communities of interest.

13-18 Clubs and hormones also introduce us to communities of interest but usually the interest is of a more-social(?) nature.

19-22 College is the first ecosystem that we are aware we are in because we interact with so many different community services, community leaders, communities of interest and social communities. Most likely there are many different community purposes and each community is employing every tool it available.

22+ At work, many employees only deal with their immediate department community. They are not aware of or encouraged to interact with other departments or form cross-department communities. If they are to find communities of interest, for social support and networking or to learn from community leaders (experts) in their or other fields, they usually seek out these communities on their own time

Why do people seek communities and what must they offer to succeed?

While Howard Rheingold has really only focused on consumer communities in his book The Virtual Community, he could be describing any community when he talks about the "social glue that binds the WELL into something resembling a community" as 1) social network capital, 2) knowledge capital, and 3) communion. Social network capital is knowing there is a network to support you. Knowledge capital is the "on-line brain trust representing a highly varied accumulation of expertise." Communion is making connections with people you may not have known without the community.

Together, these provide what Marc Smith calls 'collective goods.' "Every cooperative group of people exists in the face of a competitive world because that group of people recognizes there is something valuable that they can gain only by banding together. Looking for a group's collective goods is a way of looking for the elements that bind isolated individuals into a community." In that respect, the collective good makes the community compelling.

John Hagel and Arthur G. Armstrong, authors of Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities, say "Virtual communities are groups of people who share common interests and needs who come together on-line. Most are drawn by the opportunity to share a sense of community with like-minded strangers-regardless of where they live. But virtual communities are more than just a social phenomena: what starts off being a group drawn together by common interests ends up being a group with a critical mass of purchasing power-based in part on the fact that in communities, members can exchange information with each other on such things as a product's price and quality." We'll be providing that merchant piece from the onset, but to create something more than a storefront, we need to support the word-of-mouth suggestions communities offer.

"...just because you have a large audience doesn't necessarily mean that you have a community. Netscape, for instance, is one of the most heavily trafficked sites on the Internet, because many people automatically go to Netscape's home page when they start their Netscape browser. But there is no community [because there is no connection]." —Penelope Patsuris and Adam L. Penenberg. "Eyeballing community" Forbes. February 6, 1998.

The Motley Fools' mission is to "Educate, amuse, and enrich the individual investor. Get folks to work together in a community and friendship to take control of their finances."

"There's more to the Internet than connectedness, and e-mail, groupware and e-commerce. The Internet is a destination. And the content in these destinations is evolving to the point where people can interact, allowing workspaces to replace workplaces. It's not the content or the technology that counts; it's the 'high touch' over the 'high tech'". —Leon Navikas, Al Rogers, and Michael Turzanski's talk "Exploding Networks" at the 1998 Camden Conference.

"A business ecosystem is an economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals—the organism of the business world. This economic community produces goods and services of value to customers, who are themselves members of the ecosystem. The member organisms also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors, and other stakeholders. Over time, they co-evolved their capabilities and roles, and tend to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies. Those companies holding leadership roles may change over time, but the function of ecosystem leaders is valued by the community because it enables members to move toward shared visions to align their investments, and to find mutually supportive roles." —James F. Moore, The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the age of business ecosystems. Paperback, 1997.

What are the key qualities of a good on-line community?

I define the key qualities as:

1. Strong connection between participants
2. Critical mass of content from community members
3. Integrated rich content and transactions
4. Choices between competing merchants alongside unbiased consumer testimonials
5. Timely
6. A sense of fun and discovery

Learn more about Community

Members of the CCL-LLC discussion list, from Japan to Moscow, have written a book on line, "Creating Learning Communities." You can see it at http://users.cybercity.dk/~ida1561/ccl-llc/book.htm. If you're interested in learning more about this list, take a look at the discussion list page. There is also a companion list focuses on refining and expanding the concepts and philosophies within the book "Creating Learning Communities." Subscription information for that list, is also available on the discussion list page.

Tools to help facilitate online community.

Here is a small sampling of tools that can help you develop an online community.

Mongoose Technology's RealCommunities has built scalable, standardized, configurable, and integrated community infrastructure software. Prior to being purchased by Mongoose, RealCommunities was run by Community thought-leader, Cynthia Typoldos.

Communispace enables professional learning communities for collaborative learning and knowledge creating work. (I've participated in two of their communities and am excited by the interest they are drawing to this topic. Communities are a fundamental tool for learning.)

Participate Systems offers integrated online community management software.

GoLightly Online develops custom online communities.

coachingplatform, Inc. offers a personal community tool called mylearningplace.com. This is a great concept and a remarkable tool.

Webcrossing creates online collaboration tools.

Tomoye creates communities of practice software.

Anexa.com can loosely be considered an online community tool. So can Yahoo Groups and the Living Directory.

ProjectSpaces

Articles about Online Communities

Real Community is Possible Business 2.0. First, community is not an end in itself: Attach it to a working business model and give people a reason to participate. Only if they see a clear benefit will they do it. If it all works as planned, expect your customer acquisition costs to plunge and retention rates to surge.

Communities of practice at the core Maish Nichani. elearningpost. 4-Oct-2001

Working in Online Community: An interview with Amy Jo Kim Beth Garlington Scofield. LiNE Zine, Spring 2001.

Are You on Craig's List? Katharine Mieszkowski. Fast Company, December 2000.

Web Communities Don't Bring in the $$$ The Register. One of the most depressing stories to come out of the Internet crash is the failure of community on the web. Like so much else online, sites that bring users in to discuss matters have been a commercial disappointment.

Community Standards, Katharine Mieszkowski. Fast Company, Sept 2000.

Learning in Communities. Etienne Wenger & Bill Snyder. LiNE Zine, Summer 2000.

Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier. Etienne Wenger & Bill Snyder. Harvard Business Review Jan-Feb 2000.

There Goes the Neighborhood Salon Magazine, January 19, 1999

Here's Where to Go When You Want to Feel Right at Home Wall Street Journal, January 6, 1999 Subscription Required

Tools for Teamwork CIO WebBusiness, November 1, 1998

Community Theater CIO WebBusiness, December 1, 1997

Community: It Takes an Electronic Village New York Times, May 2, 1997. Requires Free NYT Account.

The Epic Saga of the Well update 4/98 Wired, Issue 5.05, May 1997

Can Virtual Wilburs and Orvilles Get Online Communities to Fly? New York Times, April 11, 1997

Extranets and Intergroupware: A Convergence for the Next Generation in Electronic Media-Based Activity Working Paper, Telshuttle, Inc., March 21, 1997

Real Value of On-Line Communities Harvard Business Review, May 1, 1996

Interview with Howard Rheingold The Well, October 1995

Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning in Organizations by Peter Senge and Fred Kofman.  Organizational Dynamics, Autumn 1993; 5-23

Building an Online Community: Just Add Water. By Matt Haughey. August 14, 2001. Digital Web Magazine.

Are You on Craig's List? by Katharine Mieszkowski. Fast Company NC Winter 2000. "Craig Newmark has organized a community whose members include some of the Web's most influential people. Here is his manual for (virtual) community organizers."

Is It Still Craig's List? by Lucas Conley. Fast Company. September 2004. "When you're a small, spirited startup built on community, personal attention, and customer service, attracting the investment of one of the world's largest dotcoms can be daunting. Craig's List's leaders had the courage to collaborate with eBay, and early reports indicate that the company will remain grounded -- while still having more room to grow."

What about training or learning communities?

You can find some interesting learning communities online.

The Bridge provides career information services, training, and self-directed career and educational planning tools to students and adults seeking educational and career planning assistance.

© 1993-2007, Marcia Conner.

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If you are interested in referencing this page in a report or article, the citation should read:

Conner, M. L. "Online Community Development." Ageless Learner, 1997-2007. http://agelesslearner.com/intros/community.html