What is a Community?

April 22nd, 2009 • Uncategorized

On Monday, I had the pleasure of presenting an Ignite presentation as part of Refresh Events’ monthly StayFresh series. (Video of my presentation to come once released.) The keynote by Tom Purves was on the topic of mobility and augmented reality, so in attempting to stick within the theme, I presented on Hyperconnectivity and the Community. However, I wanted to take a different view than many in our community normally do, and identified a few problems that Hyperconnectivity present to a community, and how it may be splitting us apart rather than bringing us together. Interesting stuff, and I’ll write a post in the future as to the community lessons we can learn by looking at ourselves critically.

However, before that can be effective, we need to set some context, and define what a community is. Now, I could provide all kinds of dictionary definitions, but I think that there’s an easy comparison that can be made to help better understand what I mean when I talk about community. This was a point that seemed to resound somewhat on Monday.

Any group of people can get together to complain about something, or to suggest that something should be done about a common problem or missing component. This mobilization – where people are talking about issues – is likely best labeled as a crowd. When this crowd gets unruly, and participates in action that may be detremental or disruptive, the terminology then shifts to it being a mob.

Crowds or mobs are not communities. What differentiates a community is that its members actively participate in accomplishing goals to the benefit of the community. In other words, communities are full of people who DO things. A community doesn’t truly exist without outputs, and in many ways true communities have outputs that are greater than the sum of the inputs of its individual members. Only by working together to tackle the problems that are faced by the community will the members move forward – and problems by and large aren’t solved by mere talk.

Let me give you an example of ways that may differentiate these three groups. In this scenario, a community of people is not receiving their garbage pickup on time, due to people incorrectly preparing their garbage for pickup. (I’m using an offline example to illustrate the ubiquitousness of communities, both on and off. In this example:

1. A crowd would complain about either the city for not picking up the garbage, or complain about the individuals who are affecting everyone else.
2. A mob would harass city officials, the garbage collectors, or the individuals who are causing the problems, either verbally or physically. Note that while this may “solve” the problem, it almost certainly will come at the detriment of the community and the relationships that exist within it.
3. A community would work to educate the individuals causing the problems or aid them in properly preparing their garbage, or work with the city to determine an alternate solution. This doesn’t mean that everyone would be involved in the education/engagement process, but that individuals within the community would step up for the benefit of the entire community.

So what do you think? Does my explanation of what a community is make sense? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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