An Asynchronous Book Club for Community Professionals
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Category: Community
The Five Principles: Shared Responsibility
The last of the five principles for creating community connections at scale is shared responsibility. This principle underpins all of the others and, while we’ve spoken a lot about growing community using these principles, without this final one tying them all together then we’ve essentially built a house of cards that will always be ready to collapse and isn’t going to create those long-lasting community connections at any scale.
The Five Principles: Social Learning
The fourth of the five principles for creating community connections at scale is social learning. This is a huge topic that folks far smarter than me have written about, so I’m going to pick out some of the core principles of social learning here and look at how they can be applied to community building.
The Five Principles: Shared Experiences
We all understand that meeting together is a great way to form connections and build rapport with each other. With that in mind, what I’m going to talk about in this post isn’t so much why we meet but rather how we think about and plan these shared experiences for our communities. It is only by being honest about how we bring people together that we can begin to see tangible results.
The Five Principles: Support
Support may seem like a fairly basic thing to focus on, but it’s far more nuanced than you might initially expect. You need to ask yourself – what do my community’s members need? How can I support them as they become more active in the community? How can I support them in their endeavours outside of the community?
The Five Principles: Safety
Safety may feel like a relatively basic thing to ensure, but it’s surprisingly easy to overlook, especially when you, as the community manager, don’t struggle with the same safety issues as members of your community. You need to ask yourself – what potential dangers can members of my community face, and what can I do to mitigate those factors? What can I do to make sure my community members feel safe?
The Five Principles of Creating Community Connections at Scale
I have previously written about how you can set the stage for people in your community to create connections between each other. While that post outlines a starting point – a way to initiate your community platform and get people talking – what happens down the line? As a community grows, new challenges are discovered and new solutions are needed. These five principles will set you in good stead for meeting those challenges.
Creating Equitable Hybrid Communities
We’re heading deeper into a hybrid future – usually envisioned as in-person events with an online component included. While this is certainly a great way to allow for events to accommodate people who cannot attend in person, what if we could do more? What if we could build an entire community that brings people together in multi-faceted and impactful ways, regardless of where they are in the world?
The Three S’s of Creating Community Connections
I believe there are three things you can provide that will pave the way to natural, organic, and authentic connections between members of any community. So let me introduce you to the three s’s of curating community connections.
Pilot Holes and Countersinks
Who are the pilot holes and countersinks in your community? Find them, nurture them, and empower them to do more.
A Membership Identity for the WordPress Community
I recently presented a workshop on defining a membership identity for your community. I found this to be a valuable exercise and thought I would apply the same principles to the WordPress community since that is the community with which I am most familiar.
When Good People Go Bad: Mediating Community Conflict
We all know how great in-person communities can be, but what happens when things don’t go so well? What happens when people in your community cause conflict and make things difficult for everyone else? Here is a practical path towards successfully mediating conflict within community.
Too Much, Too Young
When organising events for a community, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that bigger is better. This is an especially dangerous trap when your community is still in the early stages – shooting for a large event before your community is ready for it will inevitably do more harm than good.
The Growth of a Movement: do_action
do_action is a global WordPress charity hackathon event that started in Cape Town in 2014. It has come a long way since that first ambitious event!
Becoming a Good Open-Source Citizen
A look at a few ways that we can become better open-source citizens, no matter what project or community we are a part of.
Some Thoughts on Local WordCamps
WordCamps are, by definition, local events. There are many opinions about this within the community, some of which conflict with the guidelines set down for WordCamps. With that in mind, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on it all from the perspective of a long-time WordCamp organiser who used to be critical of many of those guidelines but now works on the WordCamp Central team.