As you all (hello mum) know, I stick to the word community with a (wild abandonement that upsets my wordy pedantic friends) passion in these times of ‘enlightened self-interest’ and ‘networked invidividualism’.
‘Community’ first, tools second (repeat ad infinitum). I think it is important to ascribe emotional and cultural meaning to what we do and why we do it, and find much comfort in groups of people when they have a purpose – hence the community tilt.
I love the lunatic fringes, the beating heart at the centre, the growing trust and soul of the group as it goes through its ups and downs, the things we make together and meaning we find collectively and all that jazz. Without this soul, we lurch ever closer to Chomsky’s visions, all those distopyan sci-fi realities, a world where ‘there is no such thing as society, only indviduals’ (Thatcher, Mrs), but I’m lurching into politics. Wherefore civil society? Whither collectives with purpose? Keep the spirit alive I say!
Anyway, apparently I have the #1 job of the future:
If you want to hire a union organizer, you probably know what to look for. Someone with resilience, passion, persistence and excellent interpersonal skills.
What if you want to hire someone to build an online community? Somebody to create and maintain a virtual world in which all the players in an industry feel like they need to be part of it? Like being the head of a big trade association, but without the bureaucracy and tedium…
Yes that is what I do. And I’m proud to do it, and happy to wait for the clients who share the vision. Don’t expect a suit, and if the occasional swear word upsets you, you have been warned; but don’t expect a suit to go out into the crazier fringes of your ‘community’ and resolve the issues that erupt there and help turn them into something beautiful and productive for all. Now I’m ranting.
And I’m proud to be part of a network/community of friends, colleagues and associates who do it as well.
I’ve been brewing on a little diagram to explain what it is that we do (moderation-facilitation-strategy), so I will produce that next week.
Well said Seth Godin.
Yep, communities and networks are different. Community has a soul, which networked individualism doesn’t. I’m in there with you on all this talk about networked individuals being the same line as Thatcher’s. And with all the same arguments against it, but mainly that it sucks the soul out of society and while maybe making us information rich and more productive individuals it leads to a fragile society.
There is something emergent in society/community that goes beyond social capital. It’s not just about everyone trusting each other but also everyone trusting the direction that society is going.
Well said Ed. I too am “proud to be part of a network/community of friends, colleagues and associates who do it as well.”
We may “do it” – as in connecting people and ideas – slightly differently in the day-to-day, but the bottom line of the librarians world is that they generally are people “with resilience, passion, persistence and excellent interpersonal skills”. We’ve been in the online space as it has developed over the last decades, but now we can (and often are) network our skill-magic in the socially networked world too.