On the 21st of February, we will have our second webinar with international experts, from 15.30-17.00. Here’s the introduction to the webinar by Nancy White which she has also posted on her blog:
As we prepared for the webinar, some of the random potential bits for discussion included the practice of tech stewardship, the pros and cons of ”hopping across technologies,” the tension between thinking about the platform AS the community instead of the people — especially distributed communities, what it means to ‘be together” as a distributed group, more on online facilitation, and how to identify community activities and tools useful in supporting those activities. The webinar will focus mostly on the latter and we’ll use the Activities Spidergram from “Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities,” as a learning tool.But to set the stage, I wanted to write a bit about the other topics. Sort of a lead in to the activities conversation. At the bottom of this post, I’ll link to all the artifacts we’ll use next week. And if someone prompts me, I’ll return after the webinar to post an update in the comments! (That means — show me you are interested/care!)
What it means to be together using technology
Groups, communities, pairs, networks are all about people connecting, being together in some way. In the “olden days” this meant being together face to face augmented by these artifacts which carried documentation of our being together called books, and letters that we slowly exchanged with each other via land based transport. Today we spend time with each other online — not just face to face. That may look like reading, replying to or retweeting messages via Twitter, interactions on Facebook, email, blogs, Skype, YouTube, Pinterest or any of hundreds of web based platforms. These platforms convey and hold the artifacts of our interactions. They are the digital traces of being together. But the EXPERIENCE of being together is something we create in our own minds as we navigate these artifacts. Without conversation with others, we may find our individual experiences of “being together” are, in fact, not at all similar. So the first key here is that being together, even technologically mediated, implies that we have to reflect – at least a little bit – about shared or different experiences. Otherwise we may not be “being together.” Sense-making is critical. So if I’m designing or facilitating a social strategy using online tools, I had better darn well design in process to facilitate reflection, sense-making and other similar types of conversations. Yes, conversations, which implies active listening — something you can’t always see or have in pure social media actions.
One of the tough things about all this is how to understand what is working. Is there really connection? We tend to compartmentalize the tech into things like page views. But does that tell us about our quality of being together? Of learning? Of getting things done? Not really. So in thinking about being together in this age, we need new frameworks for assessment. A nice intro to thinking about communities and how to evaluate them comes from a short video from the USAID KM Impact Challenge
Hopping across technologies
If you accept my first proposition that being together requires some sort of sense-making/reflective aspect, lets add on a layer of complication: hopping across different tools and technologies. So not only are we not face to face, but we don’t necessarily interact as a full group, nor on a single communications tool and this may (and usually does) vary over time. Community’s technological configurations change over time. Let’s pick this apart a bit.
1. There is rarely just one tool. From Digital Habitats we framed the idea of configuration this way: “By configuration we mean the overall set of technologies that serve as a substrate for acommunity’s habitat at a given point in time—whether tools belong to a single platform,to multiple platforms, or are free-standing.” For example, we may have a NING site, but we talk to each other on the telephone and no one every identified the telephone as an official community tool. 
Look around. Our configurations are rarely as simple as they look. Observe and notice what people are using. Explore if there is a shift from the official platform to others and use that usefully, rather than as a distraction.
2. Togetherness does not imply only full group interactions. Side conversations and “back channel” are an intrinsic and important part of a community’s communication ecosystem. We talk about “capturing” knowledge and having everything in one place, but the reality is that communities have all types of conversations and interactions. Some should stay small and private. Some should be captured and shared. And some will just happen. The key is that people are connected enough so that they DO happen. The interaction has primacy over the container or the captured artifacts … even if this seems counter-intuitive at times.
3. People start where they are technologically comfortable, and move to what serves them over time. Now this may seem like a repetition of #1, but what I’m getting at here is change in technologies is actually part of the life-cycle of many communities rather than an aberration or fatal disruption. (Though, yeah, it can be fatal, but less often than we might expect!) The key lesson here is start where people are “now” and let the needs of the community, its appetite (or not) for experimentation and change drive the platform evolution.
4. A change in technology may intrinsically change the interaction. In our research for “Digital Habitats” we noticed that not only did technology change communities, but communities changed technologies. When members wanted or needed something, they invented new ways of using tools or scrounged for new ones. When the motivation to do something together becomes more urgent and compelling than the platform, it’s affordances or constraints, you know something good is going on. So attention to the community’s domain, community and practice (see that video above!) should be front and center. Technology supports.
Technology stewardship
So if technology changes what it means to be together, if technology choices change over time, it is logical that stewarding that technology becomes part of the life of the community and there is an association between the people who do this and a role — a role we call technology steward. Technology stewards are people who know enough about technology to help scan for, select and implement tools and enough about their community to know what they need and what they want/can tolerate. This is not the traditional IT person or pure geek, but someone who straddles these two domains of knowledge and practice. They are bridgers. (You might enjoy this 6 minute audio from Etienne Wenger, John Smith and I on tech stewardship. ) For example, consider the person who can observe how others use a tool (even if it is different than how they themselves do), notice how it can be valuable to the community and share that practice with others. (An ethnographer!) You have to know the tool, but to observe and understand the practice — that is the magical sweet spot. (For an example, see John Smith’s post on Skype.) Most of us who find ourselves in this role are in it accidentally. I think that is significant!
Community activities and their technological support
So this leads me to the bridge to our webinar next week. Flowing directly out of this idea of technology stewardship is the need for ways to identify important community activities as a precursor to selecting and deploying tools. In the work writing Digital Habitats we identified 9 community orientations which comprise sets of activities that we found happening pretty commonly across different kinds of communities. This slide deck gives a brief overview.
Digital Habitats Activity Orientation Spidergram Activity Cg
Digital Habitats Activity Orientation Spidergram Activity Cg
A couple of key things the spidergram exercise has taught me are: 1) observe your community with an open mind rather than through your own preferences. I, for example, love asynchronous conversations, yet in many of my communities, they would not thrive without telephone calls. 2) You can’t prioritize all 9 orientations all at once, but they may shift over time. This impacts community leadership, facilitation, and technology. So as always, this is not primarily about the tech, but about the community. That seems like a “no brainer” yet time and time again we fall into the technology seduction trap! That leads us to community facilitation, but we’ll have to save that for another day!
For participants of the webinar: to help us be prepared to USE the spidergram, I invite you to read this excerpted chapter from Digital Habitats: Digital Habitats Chapter 6.2 and then print out the last couple of pages of the spidergram activity found here: http://www.fullcirc.com/wp/wp-
We’ll use your preparation to help springboard our conversations during the webinar. Please share specific questions you would like to address via the comments to this blogpost.
I just thought I’d jump in and comment that there have been some interesting comments on my blog that you may (or may not) find interesting on the above post. It will be interesting to see what shows up similarly or differently here. All in all, I’m looking forward to our learning together.
Nancy
Nancy, one of our participants, Paul Klein Woud, asked me to forward his questions.
1. What are the ToP 5 suggestions on how to get a community started successfully?
2. How do you get people interested and attracted to your community? And how do you prevent that such a visit is only for one time, so that visitors come back again and come back again? How can you make visitors that this becomes a custom or a rythm in their life habits?
Regards, from Paul Klein Woud
Hi Nancy,interesting blog en very helping is the use of the spidergram! In my opinion the content must be leading to get an community succesful. My question is: in my community the accent lies on 4 meetings f2f en we have a digital forum for content publishing en getting access to expertise. I would like to get more converstations in the forum between the 4 meeetings. What are ways to stimulate that more?
Till next tuesday, Joke van Alten
Hallo Nancy,
I’m very happy with your description about digital habitats in communities. However I am not sure how to use your strategy and tools. i just started in a new job in the mental health sector and I work for 18 locations. New policy must be implemented bij quality-ambassadors who meet a couple of times a year in a face to face setting. What strikes me is that there is not a real sense of community and I wonder how you can develop this. I would like to see that the professionals use the experience of each other much more. i don’t have the feeling that there is a bad scenario-experience but they are not used to it.
What would you do in this situation?
Hi Nancy,
I am looking forward to the webinar on Tuesday! I am still digesting your post, slides, video and links – so I do not have a very concrete question now, only some rough thoughts.
I think I am interested in finding out a bit about the “domain” issue, because I suspect this will be the first driver of why a community becomes a community.
I am involved in 2 very different communities (in different roles also), where in both cases I have the feeling that the domain issue was maybe not clarified enough and where as a result (at least I think so) the value of the community and of being engaged (even as a lurker) is not clear except to a very limited number of people who so far have not been able to convey the same sense of value to others.
In both cases the group consists of people involved in a task for an organisation (there are some differences, too, but I will not bore you with the details). And it seems to me that this bond is not strong enough to forge a true community (online or offline).
I am also interested to learn more on ways of monitoring value of the community for the members, of course connected to how to increase value if it is perceived there is not enough value. My feeling is that at the start of a community you should focus on immediate value, in order to make members come back to the community – so that you would have a chance to create other levels of value after that (while probably the ones who initiate a community would have in mind potential values etc). Do you agree? And if you want to focus on immediate value, what might you focus on?
Well, these are some thoughts I have running through my mind for now. Looking forward to Tuesday!
Suzanne
My goodness, you are all asking huge questions! That’s wonderful. I’ll start with a bit on each one, then we might continue some of this online in the coming week.
Paul asked:
1. What are the ToP 5 suggestions on how to get a community started successfully?
Well, I think the first thing is to understand WHAT kind of community you are trying to start. That will influence the suggestions, but here are the most general ones:
1. Understand what the community is about from the perspectives of both the members and the sponsors (as we end up needing to be accountable to both.) This is often the trickiest part as we THINK we know what it is, but often we start with a good guess, and improve from there. (From a communities of practice perspective, this can be thought of as the domain. Watch out for “good but not relevant to me” domains – so broad that no one would disagree, but so broad no one will make time to engage!)
2. Have a core group of people who care a LOT about #1 to help begin the interactions. (The people make community)
3. Think about what starting activities might help a community “see” itself as vibrant and valuable. Build from there.
4. Understand the sponsorship dynamics if this is a sponsored community. How can sponsors be useful champions? (We can talk more about what that means).
5. Reflect and improve. Start simple; don’t overbuild and then use what you learn through doing to interatively improve!
Gerdi’s question:
” I just started in a new job in the mental health sector and I work for 18 locations. New policy must be implemented by quality-ambassadors who meet a couple of times a year in a face to face setting. What strikes me is that there is not a real sense of community and I wonder how you can develop this. I would like to see that the professionals use the experience of each other much more. i don’t have the feeling that there is a bad scenario-experience but they are not used to it.
What would you do in this situation?”
Not all online groups are communities in the sense of having a strong shared purpose. People can interact in lighter ways over time focused more on the content, for example, than the full mix of relationship, content and practice that typifies a fully-fledged community. In fact, these lighter “online events” — if they provide real value to the participants, might help them edge closer to being a community. So maybe let go of the bigger goal for a bit (ongoing learning with and from each other) and think about what sort of online events provide a time-delimited value. Quarterly focused learning events? Guests presenters/faciltiators. Stuff like that. So design and host a few fabulous online events AND — at the end of each event, leave a little time to reflect on the experience. What was the most useful thing about the last hour? What did you get that you expected? Did not expect? I find when I ask these questions, much of the time people say it was getting to know the other people. So the content was the attractor, but a socially engaged design which supported relationship building was the actual value. Does that make sense? Happy to talk about it more on Tuesday.
Suzanne, you had very good observations about the challenges of defining domain. There is this delicate dance of definition by those who want to sponsor or start a community and definition and ownership of that domain by members. So it is a bit of “let’s try this” and let it evolve. This can go against organizational practices which say “this IS THE GOAL.” In communities, we approximate the goal and evolve the learning agenda as we go. And interestingly, in negotiation of domain over time, we get to know each other and yes, BOND! I feel like is the classic “chicken or the egg” story.
To tie this in to your observation about creating immediate value, yes, you want people to be able to articulate their own personal value proposition and if part of their work, relate it to their organizations’ needs. (See my first reply to Paul above about “good but too general”) I strongly recommend the article by Etienne Wenger-Trayner, Beverly Wenger-Trayner and Maarten DeLaat on value creation in CoPs. Their framework offers a useful way to make value propositions more easily discussable and, in some ways, measurable.
Now to Paul’s second question:
2. How do you get people interested and attracted to your community? And how do you prevent that such a visit is only for one time, so that visitors come back again and come back again? How can you make visitors that this becomes a custom or a rythm in their life habits?
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I left this until I had answered the other questions because my feedback builds on them. The idea that the domain has relevance to the person — that there IS a value proposition — is essential. Etienne Wenger-Trayner said the other day, “you know you have the domain right when, in conversation between members, people have the urge to take notes about 80% of what is said. If they are bored 80% of the time, the domain is not yet right or relevant!”
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Now, there are also practice level things that bring people back. Being seen, heard and appreciated is one important one. Online we can often feel quite invisible. So responsiveness, attention and graciousness can go a long way!
Joke wrote: “Hi Nancy,interesting blog en very helping is the use of the spidergram! In my opinion the content must be leading to get an community succesful. My question is: in my community the accent lies on 4 meetings f2f en we have a digital forum for content publishing en getting access to expertise. I would like to get more converstations in the forum between the 4 meeetings. What are ways to stimulate that more?”
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I need to start out getting a bit more information about what you mean by “content.” I’ve found people mean many things by that. So could you say a bit more? Then I can try and give a more useful answer!
Nancy, it was interesting to practise with the spidergram. I did it for a peer-to-peer coaching group of 15 – 20 Young Professionals I guided them for about 4 years. It was interesting for me to see that for example content, open-ended conversations and meetings have a good score (4). However, the group scores low on relationships and context (1 – 2). Is it necessary to strive for high score at each of the 9 levels? or depending on the Domain (in this case peer to peer coaching with a small group) just on 3 – 4 areas of the spidergram? So what is in this case the best choice for the group? And what is the added value of the spidergram in this? Another question. I missed a score sheet for the spidergram. So something like 10 yes/ no questions for each of the 9 levels. Is there a score sheet available? Regards, Simon
Hi Nancy,
I’m distance backstopping a small group of LCDF developers in Nepal. We are 5 now, a few senior government officials, a senior advisor from an international NGO and myself. My role is a funny combination of keeping everyone engaged and productive in the early stages of LCDF development, as well as bringing my LCDF start-up experiences from 5 countries into the picture when needed. In 6 months, there will be one more f2f meeting with me (or actually a two weeks mission to Nepal). The others can see each other regularly if they wish to do so. They have started a yammer, which they liked because it looks like facebook, with which they are familiar.
I’m interested in the combination of technologies to keep a community active, productive. In this case, it’s more an project team, but as things begin to move others will gradually join. I do not have very specific questions at this stage, but I’m interested to hear more about growing communities, and how technologies can help and hinder that process.
hello Nancy,
Thanks for your blog and answers to the already asked questions. I’m looking forward to your webinar, because I’ve been asked to set up a proposal for 5 different communities, which have the same objectives, but a different potential of coummunity members and are focused on different knowledge areas. One of my questions is: is it possible to use platforms of ‘others’ (such as a linkedin group) to be part of a new community? And if so, how do I ‘collect’ other potential community members. I ask this question, because I want to avoid having to create new places where people can ‘meet’ and prefer to use what is already available.
Hi Nancy, I’m a big fan of your digital habitats book and I’ve used it a lot in various situations. (recently I looked for a definition of digital habitats but couldn’t find that in the book! :).
I’ve used the spiderweb just once, because I don’t fully understand its wings. I’ll be happy learning more about it tomorrow so that I may be able to use it. Particular questions I have are about:
* Meetings versus open-ended conversations. They seem too much overlapping. If you have meetings you may have open-ended conversations during the meeting? And isn’t meeting a core activity of any community?
* Individual participation and community cultivation. They seems less like an orientation to me. Rather I see this as something that every community should engage in. Hence I wonder how it be an orientation to consider while thinking of tools to support an orientation?
Good questions, Simon. You wrote (I’m quoting the questions because this thread is getting long and it can be challenging for someone who reads it later… )
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” Is it necessary to strive for high score at each of the 9 levels? or depending on the Domain (in this case peer to peer coaching with a small group) just on 3 – 4 areas of the spidergram? So what is in this case the best choice for the group? And what is the added value of the spidergram in this? Another question. I missed a score sheet for the spidergram. So something like 10 yes/ no questions for each of the 9 levels. Is there a score sheet available? ”
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It is absolutely NOT necessary to strive for high scores on all areas. In fact it would be impossible for most communities to have enough attention to live up to that aspiration. The spidergram gives us a tool that is not about judgement. 9 is not necessarily better than 1. It helps us focus attention. And it changes over time, helping us understand shifts in our groups. Now, if you notice that there is no interest or energy in the relationship areas (and thus probably high in enabling individual participation) you might start asking yourself, is this really a community, or some other form of group where relationship is not one of the “three pillars”? (And again, which is ok). More network like groups tend to be high on individual participation and lower in community relationship development. Where there is relationship, it is usually happening because individuals choose to make it happen, regardless of group intentions or actions. In terms of added value — let’s talk about that on the call as that is a central question for all of us. And no, there is no scoring sheet. one person created an excel spread sheet that converts values into a lovely spidergram, but in fact the actual numerical value is of less importance than the discussion between community members about the general shape of the diagram. 😉 So the artifact becomes a kernel of a conversation.
Lucie, there is a really important “nugget” in your question…
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“I’m interested in the combination of technologies to keep a community active, productive. In this case, it’s more an project team, but as things begin to move others will gradually join. I do not have very specific questions at this stage, but I’m interested to hear more about growing communities, and how technologies can help and hinder that process.”
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Teams have some different aspects which are important to distinguish from communities in my experience (and definition set.) Teams have a set, measurable goal and usually fairly structured roles. Communities have something in common, some (learning) aspiration and roles are usually more voluntary and emergent. From an activities standpoint, this may mean they use similar or different activities. Similar or different tools. But the very nature of the group can be quite different. That said, teams often grown into communities that stay longer than the life of the team’s initial goal. People can play one formal role in the team, and something different from a community perspective. It is a lovely bit of complexity, but sometimes useful to tease apart. (And a bit hard to talk about in a blog comment so this again may be worth bringing up on Tuesday.)
Now in terms of the influence of technology on the growth of a team or a community — that is another cool question. And Yammer is an interesting example. Some emerging stories of experience are showing that groups that are good at giving short, little status updates help make work more transparent. A key skill in that, however, is sensing what to pay attention to, what to ignore, and when the info stream becomes too think, having alternate strategies. And this sort of strategy can look very different depending on the heterogenaity of the group. We can talk more about that too.
But the elemental principle is like the old metaphor of “peeling the onion.” Community formation is aided by our ability to develop our own and understand others’ identities over time. “GEtting to know each other.” Online interaction is a bit thin for this, so it takes more time. How we do this with process and technology is worth paying attention to!!
Oops, I meant Lucia. Sorry. My friend Lucie must have been on my mind!
Brechtje, you may not like my answer. 😈 My “radar” always goes up when I hear someone has an assignment to set up a number of different communities and I realize the critical importance of understanding what is meant by “communities” before I react. Because by my definition, communities are HARD to set up. Space can be made and held for them. They can be encourages. But they have to emerge from the members as much as anything else. So my answer really needs a bit more context to be useful beyond some generalities, ok?
YOu asked:
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One of my questions is: is it possible to use platforms of ‘others’ (such as a linkedin group) to be part of a new community? And if so, how do I ‘collect’ other potential community members. I ask this question, because I want to avoid having to create new places where people can ‘meet’ and prefer to use what is already available.
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First of all, your instinct to use what is already available is VERY smart. We call it “use what you have” strategy. Because you are right, it is expecting a LOT of people to go to YET another place online. We have now too many options, making it harder than ever to “start a community.” Seriously, it was easier 8 years ago, even with cruder, primative software. 😉
Now you ask, however, the hard question. How to “collect” members. The old “build it and they will come” rings false, as they say. So some strategies to consider echo early responses about the five starting steps. So clarity on the domain/purpose is absolutely critical. It MUST be relevant in a “today” level of importance for members.
The second is starting with a core and beginning to leverage their networks. One of the activities that I sometimes do early on with core group members is informal social network analysis. Who do you know? Who do they know? Where are you insufficiently connected and who might help reach those people. Because when it comes down to it, we are more inclined to act on a personal invitation from someone we know than a random email invite or link. So leveraging initial interested people and their networks is a starting place. But I could write for another hour … enough to say there are more strategies. (with a little evil glint in my eye, I’d say ask Joitske for some stories!!!)
Ah Joitske. Now I have to go look for a definition of digital habitats. 😉
First of all, your questions are actually the core of the first part of our meeting tomorrow – to walk through each of the orientations and make sense of them. Second, your observation that these are not clear cut definitions is RIGHT ON! Because human beings often are DOING more than one thing as part of a single activity. Your example of back channel conversations is a perfect example and one that is usually critical to a community’s health. Rarely are all conversations of the full group, formal and in full site of all. The whisper between two people at a meeting (transformed into a private chat in an online tool) can forever change the experiences of those two people at a larger meeting. So absolute segmentation is not only impossible, it is probably not USEFUL. Structurally, however, supporting a full group meeting (online or offline) from a process and technological perspective can be different than creating enabling environments for informal, small group conversations. Thus the teasing apart. We can also — and should — explore how any bit of technology can support multiple activities. The teasing apart can also help prioritize and support our decision making process. Again, this is central to tomorrow’s conversation.
Dear Nancy
I would like to link my questions to the actual community I’ve set up for a learning-group (12 participants, 2 trainers), in YAMMER. To understand more about the spidergram with 9 orientations. And to define an effective continuation of my role in this learning-community.
To start with the spidergram: if the purpose in my community is mostly to meet each other, and to share experience and answers to questions of the 2 trainers, in between f2f sessions, would you then choose: content or expertise? Content does sound a bit too ‘static’. And ‘expertise’ is meant as: meeting external experts? Whereas I mean that they share experience and ‘field expertise’ in discussions and pages with each other.
The other question is about my role in this community: I started up quite enthusiastically with setting up the YAMMER, inviting participants (including the 2 trainers), asking some questions so that people started to get to know each other etc. Also, I asked about their ‘social media habits’ (which would have been better on beforehand but this was a time-issue, so I just started off using YAMMER…). Also, I responded shortly to people who posted something, thanking them, sometimes asking another question as reply.
One of the trainers asked me *not* to ask questions of reply to participants, other than about technical issues. So that their is no confusement about who is training/facilitating them. I understand that, but, makes it difficult for me to influence the learning and participation in the community. I notice that I hold myself back, whereas this is also my experiment with new ways of facilitating learning-groups. Or should I be happy that the trainers do the online facilitating well, and use my influence by sending suggestions to the 2 trainers (and not to the learning-group)? In general: is the role of the tech-steward very different from the online facilitator, is this sometimes mixed (e.g. have I confuded these 2 roles starting the above community)?
Thanks. Mariette
Hi Mariette – lots of good questions. I want to BRIEFLY answer the first one, as we’ll talk more about it tomorrow, then dive into your question about your role. I may do this in two responses so it doesn’t get too long. (People say I talk/type a lot. I think they are right! 🙂 )
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To start with the spidergram: if the purpose in my community is mostly to meet each other, and to share experience and answers to questions of the 2 trainers, in between f2f sessions, would you then choose: content or expertise? Content does sound a bit too ‘static’. And ‘expertise’ is meant as: meeting external experts? Whereas I mean that they share experience and ‘field expertise’ in discussions and pages with each other.
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Content generally refers to stuff that has been created and is a bit fixed. Projects, however, may be a place where people create things – like content- together. So one is more about the artifact and the other more about the practice of making the object.
Expertise is primarily about the knowledge anyone in the community has. In some contexts, there are the “leading” or “senior” experts who may not have the time or inclination to be engaged all the time with repetitive questions, so they may sit more on the periphery and are called in at key moments. (Like the “big guns” of the birdwatching community I referenced in the spidergram slides). In other communities there may be designated experts. I’m always a bit careful with this because when things start getting separated into the “experts” and “the rest of us” people start thinking of the community as a service the experts are providing. Then they may not have a sense of ownership or agency. So for me, helping people see, own and share the knowledge they have — as valuable — is an important facilitation practice. And as you have noted, people get habituated quickly to things, so variety is also a tool.
Now, this also relates to your question of roles. In successful communities, we find multiple roles and often multiple people playing those roles. Again — ownership — and a more networked vs hub and spoke structure around formally recognized experts. In your example, I’d spend some time w/ your co facilitators and, best of all, with members to talk about roles and expectations. One trap I’ve fallen into is assuming my perspective as one or the facilitator represents those of the members. Often it wasn’t. And sometimes when we are in the “training” mindset, we fall into that trap. Training contexts also aren’t always community contexts. Does that make any sense?
Finally, the tech steward TASKS are somewhat different from community facilitator, but I find in small and voluntary communities, sometimes one person plays both roles. 😉
Hi Nancy, thanks for already spending time with me here! I totally get your point about team versus community. In my head I see an organic process of this team that I’m currently running a project with creating more and more interest. Then slowly matters will move from getting things set-up to exploring change paths (maybe in a num,ber of different grouping, with or without social media), and then people will want to start doing stuff, and learning more aropund it, so a community can grow.
What I like about using the yammer now: it’s so transparent! Anyone who joins later, can see how everything started. Now that I think about it, that may be totally uninteresting. Hihihi I just imagine it can really be a vote of confidence too, to become part of “the group that started it all”! And that surely is a community builder. And yes, I have started to wake up to the idea that there is not one technology that does all. So I will be all ear to anything about clever tech combinations.