Avego’s James Shields shares some of his insightful and sometimes bizarre opinions and analysis of technology, life and everything in between.
We have an amazingly successful RTR community in Bergen in Norway. The guy that created that community, Kristian (pictured below), is not an Avego employee. He’s a regular commuter who is passionate about saving the environment and sees Avego as a way to help do that. We’ve learned so much from his experiences in building a community but last week I heard one of his phrases that really resonated with me. “Social Gardening”.
What a great concept. What does it mean?
To me it’s about deciding what kind of community you want and then tending and nurturing it in the appropriate way, as you would a garden.
- Do you want you garden to grow organically, be teeming with life and nature a la a wild marsh? OR
- Do you want manicured lawns, flowerbeds, herb gardens and cosy hide-aways?
It’s the same for communities. Do you want your community to be self-managing and grow in its own direction or do you want to lead and nurture it. They are both valid methods for growing a community. Either which way, like a garden, you need a vision for what it will finally look like and then a plan to nurture and grow with intent and care. My view is that for a large scale, in-place community (think e-bay, WoW, facebook etc) you can afford to be a little organic and stand-offish with your communities because in the end the people in those communities know why they are there.
In other situations the second approach is more valid. For a new product or market offering, in which new ground is continually being broken, a more hands-on approach is necessary. Communities need to be encouraged and fostered. That’s why there are so many ‘community manager’ jobs being advertised these days. So, in this brave new world what makes a good community? I think there are four fundamentals:
- People
- Place
- Purpose
- Activity
Communities are about people. Not users, not players, not customers, not consumers, not market segments but PEOPLE. It sounds simple but as engineers (and I am one) it’s easy to forget that, when we get excited about the next killer app or feature. People want to belong. That’s a basic human need. Communities foster that sense of belonging. Communities need all types of people (leaders, do-ers, thinkers, old wise heads and young bloods). And when people talk about what they belong to they talk about things like teams, captains and clubs. They talk about COMMUNITY. They don’t talk about affiliations and memberships.
Statement of the obvious #1: People make Communities.
The second part of any community is a place to hang out. This serves two purposes. Firstly, it gives existing members a common place to gather and BE the community. Secondly, it gives new-comers somewhere to go to find out about a community, to check it out and figure out if they want to join. Whether that place is physical or virtual, it doesn’t really matter.
Statement of the obvious #2: Communities Grow around Places.
The third fundamental is that communities need a raison d’être, a purpose, a higher calling. Again, it comes back to that sense of belonging. If people can see that their efforts are contributing to a greater purpose they are more likely to buy into the community’s goals and accept them as their own. It’s important that in accepting the community’s goals as their own that they get feedback from the community on their work towards that purpose.
Statement of the obvious #3: Communities Provide Purpose and People Identify with that Purpose
The fourth pillar of a community is Activity. Communities can have great membership and a great place to hangout and meet and even a great goal but if there is no activity then they soon die. The activities of a community are important because they are a key feedback mechanism. On the one hand they show the outside world how the community is progressing towards its goals and purpose. Activity in this way is a key recruitment tool for the community. On the other hand, internally, activity is important. Activity, from this viewpoint is all about the progression of people within the community. They start off as newbies, then maybe become mentors/greeters and eventually leaders. There is an obvious progression that the members of the community can see and commit to.
Statement of the obvious #4: Communities survive and then thrive on activity
So, thinking about these aspects of community and where I started this (our Norwegian friends, social gardening etc) the questions still remain: What makes a great community? How do we replicate that when we attempt to grow other communities? What does that garden look like and how do we plan it?
When I look at what’s been achieved in our Bergen community a few strong threads start to emerge. I’ve depicted them in the figure below.
Great communities are not any one thing rather they are a mix of lots of things with a little luck and timing thrown in.
Starting with the PEOPLE:
Great communities have great leaders. They need boundless enthusiasm and vision for their own community. They are great communicators, diplomatic when they need to be and can say NO if they have to. They are super-active in the community both generally using the technology and recruiting and welcoming new members. They see potential in other member and offer them roles or delegate to them, for example getting veterans to help newbies and then recognizing the contribution of both. In terms of the ‘social gardening’ metaphor they are light touch. No chain saws or big lawn mowers here. It’s all about pruning and nurturing.
We are fortunate in Bergen to have just one of these leaders. Kristian is all of the above – and more. However, while it’s true to say that Kristian started it he grew that community by fostering a real team ethic. He found other people who became leaders and mentors and advocates in their own right. Soon, we had a dozen or so leading lights, all of them working in different ways towards that common vision and purpose. Together, they grew that user base from nothing to a thriving RTR hotbed.
As an organization we have to consider what we can do to support Kristian and the wider Bergen user base as they look to grow the community. Often in the online world we bias our efforts towards getting lots of eyes on our site and lots of signups. This is great, but as community builders we also need to recognize that there are people in the mix beyond the new entrants and we owe it to our product to nurture those people too. It might not be possible to find the zealot leader in every community but we can certainly encourage those behaviors and acknowledge the achievements when we see them. It’s vital that community leaders and people within the organization who support those communities work together to foster that motivated and enthused membership.
(Shameless plug: If you’re a growth hacker, community builder, engagement nerd then we would love to talk to you about joining our team…. Check our careers page! ).
In terms of the PLACE:
People need somewhere to call home, a hangout, a club-house. Whether that’s online or bricks and mortar they need a place to gather. In Avego’s case this is ready made…..it’s the car. This is where the social connection is made real. Once you take that ride or give the lift you’re in the gathering place. Sure we can make web pages and stuff to make the community-building easier and the guys in Bergen did this with workplace meet-ups and twitter feeds and facebook pages and web pages and it was great. But the rubber hits the road when people share rides. It’s the ultimate mobile club-house.
Moving on to PURPOSE:
We learned from our Bergen adventure that Avego needs to be very clear on what our purpose and vision is. This may or may not match with the purpose of an individual community. That’s ok. They can co-exist. Not everyone wants to save the planet, some people just want to get to work a little quicker and save a little money. Whatever the purpose is, so long as it can co-exist with our vision we need to support that and help the community leaders to clearly express it in their own way.
And finally ACTIVITY:
This is something that we can actually measure and test. We can see this and share this with our communities. We learnt lots from our Bergen community in terms of what they do with that feedback. The more data we give them the more innovative things they find to do with that data. And, and this is important, the more it drives their activity. It’s a true viral loop. If you give people good feedback, and they have strong leadership and you support them in how to use it they will engage and be active. They will also find other ways (incentives, competitions, social media etc) to use that feedback to up their activity.
So, all of this is great. Lovely theory. What are the next steps? Well, in one of my previous posts (Solving the Critical Mass Problem) I threw out the idea of starting something small with just ten people. This is no different. What’s the first thing I’d do with those 10? Make a mentor and then celebrate. Why? It’s the first step. The mentor will increase the trust factor for the newbie and help to take away some of the fear of bucking the status quo and take the first ride. For the mentor, and everyone else in the community this is the first step to a vibrant community, leadership and recognition. They’re planting their own seeds to see what will grow.
One last thing. If you are passionate about communities, then you might want to check out this book by Amy Jo Kim, “Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities”.