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Seven models of community
Everyone seems to be building community these days, or at least saying they are. Look at the buzz around Facebook and Twitter. Or consider museums - I've seen multiple recent exhibits of photos by visitors. How about politics? The leader of the free world is a community organizer. Or retail and travel - especially online, full of community features. Journalism - newspapers declining, locally-oriented sites rising. And so on.
How do we bring together different people, ideas, cultures, values, into a cohesive whole?
Off the top of my mind I have seven answers, surely an incomplete list - but here are some ways to conceive of joining disparate parts.
1. Solar System: A whirling ballet of major and minor parts, each with its own well-defined station and role. But everything is dependent on the one supreme central figure holding it all together. (See also, the atom - though electrons are less easily tracked :)
2. Crack the Whip: A common children's game in which players run or skate in a line, each player holding on to the one in front of them. The leader makes the decisions of when and where to turn, while everyone behind scrambles to keep up. Notably, the further back one is, the harder it is to keep up, eventually throwing the last in line out of the group entirely.
3. Birds on a wire: I couldn't resist this one - birds twittering on a phone line. They sit together "online" and each have their say, twittering their individual thoughts off into the ether. Sometimes there are interesting patterns as they fly off into a clump, a V, a flock - but mainly it's each bird to itself.
4. Melting pot: An American ideal - welcoming diversity, bringing in many different voices. But we often forget that the melting pot precedes the mold, which shapes everything into a uniform mass with a predetermined shape - much like an ice tray.
5. LEGOs: Different parts fit in different places, and they're interchangeable to some extent. Independence is the pro and con: each piece retains its shape but has no connection to any part it's not immediately adjoining.
6. Salad: Lots of pieces chopped up and tossed together, intended to create one delicious concoction. Not exactly a melting pot, as pieces retain their identities - but neither are the pieces exactly joined together in any way, except that they're in the same bowl together. (Some people have said that America is more of a tossed salad than a melting pot.)
7. Gel: My favorite. Can be hard to describe exactly what it is and what it does, but that's its strength. Parts are added together without losing their identities, but the whole can take on different forms (think of a jello mold). Can be used to hold a shape (hair gel), not hold a shape (dissolving toothpaste gel), adapt to pressure (gel pen handles) or protect from pressure (gel shoe inserts). Gel is both formed and formless, both strong and weak, depending on the situation.
Which model describes a group you're in? Which models did I miss?
P.S. Yes, I really did name the Gel conference for some of those reasons I write about above. You should be there with us (this month!) at Gel 2009...
See also:
• Classic book on the process of community-building: The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace by M. Scott Peck
• Together and Apart: A Memoir of the Religious Life and Vessel of Peace, two books with lots to say about community-building, written by past Gel speaker Sister ES (watch her video)
• All Gel videos tagged "community"
Nice, imaginative post.
It'd be interesting to map these models to what's already in the marketplace and, perhaps more even interesting, to brainstorm how these models might manifest in new offerings.
I'll have to think about this...
Speaking of good experience (and at the risk of heading off topic) I read the following quote by Trent Reznor and thought of you.
"I don't think music should be free," Reznor says. "But the climate is such that it's impossible for me to change that, because the record labels have established a sense of mistrust. So everything we've tried to do has been from the point of view of, 'What would I want if I were a fan? How would I want to be treated?' Now let's work back from that. Let's find a way for that to make sense and monetize it."
http://bit.ly/pYROr
My source was Tim O'Reilly on Twitter.
- R
How about Hot Sauce as a model? One in which one item seems to dominate (or believe its the only important ingredient) with ego-driven statements such as "The leader of the free world", without understanding that most of the other ingredients play just as important a part, and in fact, without which, no sauce exists.
Take out the chillies and you still have a palletable sauce (in fact, perhaps palletable by far more people). Remove the water and you don't have sauce at all.
Subway/Train car - everyone traveling in the same direction with different destinations, different stops. Some are having conversations, some are just listening in while reading, or daydreaming. Unlike a real subway passenger, in an online community you can truly multi-task (listen to music at the same time, watch TV while being connected, actively participate in more than one thread at the same time). Like a subway ride to work, some of the passengers are always along for the ride at the same time every day.
Nice post and nicely off-the-wall a bit. Don't have a model to add, but thumbs up for the "Different Drum" reference. Had a big impact on me when I read it during college. 20 (gasp) years ago.
I think #1 and #2 are the most successful. In our community work and research, the common passions of a group can be strong enough to power a community for a while, but the continued success of a community seems to be linked with a powerful leader.
Mark's example of Gel supports this. Gel is always a compelling event, but without Mark to drive the Good Experience community, it would need a new leader to survive.