Community WebVisions Quoted from Chris Pirillo: WordCamp San Francisco 2009.
“Community, is all about getting to know people, the internet is not a series of cables and wires but a connection between people. Community is already there, inside everyone. The idea of a Venn diagram, communal characteristics; two groups: a) I love coffee, and b) live in Seatle, overlapping creates a third group who loves coffee and lives in Seatle, this communal overlap is the point where everything kind of crosses over. I have all these interests, I have all these things about me, this is who I am.
I don’t let someone else define me, that’s controlling that bad behavior. I am this person, I am a walking Venn diagram, we all are. We are not uni dimensional, we are multifaceted. And you carry these things about you where ever you go. That is community, it is inside you.
You can go from one website to another, to another, to another, and that’s the experience that helps you feel (tapping into you community potential), inside you, the web is only a tool for this, because if it doesn’t exist inside you no website, no web service, nothing is ever going to change that.
Community is increasingly becoming distributed, community is not in one little pocket anymore, it is everywhere. People who are exploratory see the internet the way face book is presenting it to them. Obviously that is not the case. Political debate who owns your identity, identification, your content.
As the internet expands and you’re that walking Venn diagram, hopefully at some point things these two will come together. Now we are still trapped in what someone else’s idea is what should be an experience for you (My such and such, that’s not my anything, it is you’re my something).
Being distributed is certainly reaching its frustrations (many channels), basically it is letting the internet come on to you, on your terms, rather than on someone else’s terms. We are getting there. And with community we very much fall into that same hole.
Community requires tools that can’t be build. A blog is just a tool. And if you think that a blog is a community than you too are a tool. Community exists in one place, and that’s here in your hearth. That’s your Venn diagram, your hearth. Because without heart what is community? Without passion, without connections, without a feeling of belonging, what is it? Well it is not community, or at least not how we would care to define it.
Maybe I am idealistic, it’s is idealistic of me, but I am ok with me being idealistic. To me you can’t build this (hearth), it’s either there, or it’s not. And you know you have a vibrant community when it’s taking care of its own, instead of eating its own. To take care of, to empathy, to connect, to build, to collaborate, to share, to listen, to talk, it all comes from here (hearth). And without this is just a set of tools.
Community is a commodity, but people aren’t. Anybody right now can set up a website with different features, online chat, forums, blogs, upload photo’s video’s, you name it. A lot of tools out there, anybody.
Say for instance someone wants to do a blog on coffee, a very strong chance that someone else has done this already. But it is not the idea that makes it valuable, it never is. Because there are a lot of photography forums online.
Why, where do you go, you go where there is something you care about. They are everywhere, community is everywhere. And sometimes the same people exist in a variety of the same types of communities, sometimes people exist in one type of community, or they go to that certain community because all their friends are there so they need to be there.
So the tools are a commodity but you are not. You’re still unique, you still have your own set of morals, ideals, believes, you have your own hearth. And you take that with you wherever you go. You are the asset to the community, not the community to you.
Community cannot be controlled, only guided. You can’t control the message, but you can guide it. How about hiring leaders and managers, people who come in and take care of your stuff. The best community leaders come out the community, rather than drop in, like a food shipment.
If you cultivate, if you feed and water it, it is like a plant, it will grow, and it will sprout branches. The stronger branches are going to come out of that community, as pillars of that community, the louder voices. You may not always agree with them. But if you empower your community, if you guide your community, if you take it upon yourself to become one inside a community, you lead it before you ever been given the title. That’s organic.
Community grows its own leaders, the voices, the strong voices it’s in them; it’s in you to have a strong voice, if you have something to say. If you are saying what someone else is saying that’s not really leadership, but followership, warship. If you have a voice use it, exercise it, make those connections, and before you know it you will be a leader. Maybe it’s a mutual admiration society, that the person who connects to you, realizes that you liked each other stuff.
Community is the antithesis of ego, community is inside you but it is not about you. If you connect to other people it wasn’t always about you, it was about their experiences with you.
The strongest voices of the community are the ones devoid of ego. It doesn’t mean that you don’t know who they are or what they like; it is that the first thing on their mind isn’t themselves. Community is not egocentric; it is everywhere and everywhere you go you’re bringing it with you, because it is in you.”