Building Community

I recently read a blog post where community is described in the following way:

It is a requirement that if you’re a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will come looking for you to see where you went.

I think there's a lot of truth to that. A community is more than simply a gathering of people in the same place. It is more than a lecture hall, more than a tutoring center. For you to belong to a community, your leaving must affect it.

So if you want a community in your user group, you need to think beyond putting people in a room and having them learn. You need to pull them in, and connect them to others.

To be a good community facilitator, then, you need to know enough about your members to know who would gain a lot from knowing each other - that's the networking component - but then also who would just get along really well. Of course at the same time you're introducing some members, the rest will hopefully be socializing on their own. All this is core to your group even if no one discusses a word about technology.

Finally, don't forget about your new members! A meeting of old friends is great but it can lead to newbies feeling left out or unwelcome. Best is to ask some of your longer-term members to help you make sure no one leaves without a personal welcome. That way your community will grow and you'll also build other leaders.

(P.S. The quote is from an old blog entry by Adam Fields complaining about the lack of connection between users on many websites. But of course real-world groups can suffer from the same problem, if we aren't careful - and I think it's even more deadly.)

Case Studies vs. Practice Talks

Case study talks are almost always boring. The premise behind them I guess is that we, the talk attendees, are looking for validation that the tools we use are great and that they can be effective in places where other tools might not be. But I don't look for validation from my talks - I look for information I can use, or if nothing else, a good story I can take home.

Case study talks are often light on both.

Compare this to a Practice talk. By that I mean a talk about a practice - a particular, detailed set of tools or methods that someone uses every day at their job and helps them be effective. In my experience, these presentations tend to be very well received with a good set of questions. It's likely that the talk is going to include some unfamiliar piece of technology but you can be sure that any questions about details will be answered with "In my experience..."

Of course many talks are practice talks in disguise. But "in my experience" the presenter will do well to let as much of the practical information they have about the topic at hand to bleed through as makes sense given time and the talk level. That will help their introductory talk or case study transition into something more powerful.

User Group Leadership Summit

I recently returned from the North East User Group Leadership Summit. This was a day-long even hosted by Microsoft and O'Reilly aimed at gathering the organizers of user groups in the northeast to discuss the common issues that affect user groups. The event was run in an "unconference" style that allows the attendees to propose the topics that are interesting to them and then discuss them with other interested people. Afterwards, there was a reception.

So much for the facts. Was it worth the time?

In short: absolutely. The range of user groups attending was large - from those with 8 regular monthly attendees to those with hundreds. Those who had successful groups and innovative ideas were happy to share with those who were starting out. Also, the unconference style is perfect for a group of natural self-organizers like user group leaders. I'll be posting some of the lessons I've taken out of the unconference in separate posts. (You can see the summaries that came out of the sessions on their wiki).

However, a large part of the benefit of the conference was the networking that was taking place - and it seemed to me this was especially true for those groups located in the Boston area. As the reception in the evening wore on, one could see clusters of related groups forming. I overheard these groups talking about how to share resources, speakers, and more. Connections in the Boston tech community that didn't exist before have sprung up due to this event - people who are passionate about the Boston tech community now have formed a community.

I'd like to see these same connections form around the country. This type of event benefits particularly from having many local meetings as opposed to one national one, due to the benefits of simply getting tech leaders in the area to meet and exchange information in ways they might not do if when siloed into their particular communities. I think it fills a need that other attempts to get community members to cross technologies boundaries don't.

So I suggest you go and make this happen in your area - I think you'll find that all you need is a space and a small amount of sponsorship. If you're in New York City or the surrounding area, let me know - we are already starting to plan for one here. If you'd like to talk about the details of planning one in your area I'd be happy to talk about that as well.