Here is the second part of my conversation with Scott Heiferman, Founder and CEO of Meetup. In this part we talk about the roles of different social platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter etc), and the kinds of relationships that bind people to communities.

Douglas: So what do you thinks makes for a stronger kind of community: one based solely on pre-existing personal relationships. Like the majority of Facebook connections, or one based on passions and interests and causes, like Meetup or Ning? In Meetup Groups, people have bothered to get out of their homes and meet people around a shared need or cause, like being a military wife or just enjoying playing chess. It’s a more palpable reason for coming together, if you like.

So which is stronger, or is that a daft question?

Scott: I think life calls for different kind of relationships, different kind of communities and that, ultimately, you’re friends and the family networks are the strongest. It’s like saying is your circulatory system or your nervous system more important?  Well, it’s all part of a functioning ecosystem of life.

For example, I have a friend who’s part of a book club for some years. She has that monthly ritual, she devotes many hours to it, dozens of hours of reading every month and she looks forward to it.

But she doesn’t hang out with the people from book club outside of book club. I asked, “Don’t you consider them friends?” And she says, “Well yeah, but no, they’re my book club.” And this book club is focused on a topic. She’s got her friends, but then her    book club is something different and she considers the book club something very important, but it’s not friends exactly.

Douglas: So you can have segmented communities?

Scott: Yeah.

Douglas: There are communities which may or may not overlap within your life, some of which are based on a passion, interest, need, or cause, and some are just accidental, like you met these friends at college and you developed relationships with them, or you have this family you certainly didn’t elect to have.

Scott: Sure.  And I can’t say what’s more important.

Douglas: Maybe there’s another way of cutting it. There are communities that you elect to join and co-create within. Are they stronger communities than the ones you just happen to find yourself in?

Say you grow up in a small town or suburb. What’s your affinity to that town, really?  You didn’t elect to be there.  But you elected to be part of this co-creating local community around saving the environment or whatever. Which one do you really identify with and which one is strongest?

Scott: Well, I mean you gotta be a really cold person to not have warm, warm feelings for that town you grew up in.  I mean I’m sure when you head back to where you grew up, but there’s a part of your heart which is still there.

I see what you’re asking: do the things that you choose make you more committed to them?

Douglas: Yeah.

Scott: I don’t know. I do know that there’s a sense of relief when people find ‘the others’, as Douglas Rushkoff quotes Timothy Leary.

Douglas: In the research I did on cult-like organizations, I found that the root of it all was that everyone is trying to find the like-others. Somewhere where you can relax, create a safe space and become yourself.

Scott: Yeah.

Douglas: ‘Like-others’ can be defined in many ways. But I found that if you share the same values, that lent itself to the greatest stickiness. Because, generally, an individual defines themselves to themselves and others by describing their values: “I believe in this.  I think this is important.”  So if you find others who define themselves in the same way, that’s a profoundly strong tie.

Scott: Yes.  But you know, where it breaks down and where you see organizations like communes and collectives and intentional communities falling apart is when there’s a presumption, there’s an expectation, that all the values are going to be the same. But inevitably it’s going to translate to, “Well, you’re not exactly like me.” And I think that’s where, perhaps, more explicitness about the goal comes in.

Douglas: Yes, because you can unify around a goal but accept each other’s differences outside of the goal.

Scott: Right.  Right.  Like when the community says more explicitly that “here’s why we exist as a community and here’s where we’re not necessarily gonna agree.” It’s like saying, “Here’s why we exist and anything outside of this is – we have a tolerance for,” I think that’s really important.  Because when you have that degree of explicitness, all the things in a contract, it’s more likely to work.

History says it breaks down when there’s an intolerance for anything outside of it, as opposed to saying, well, this is the most important thing and other things are less important.

Douglas: So here’s a question I’m asking visionary founders like you of social platforms. Facebook, Ning, Twitter, Meetup. In five year’s time, what are the three or four left standing and why? Do they satisfy different needs or overlap? Is there a need that isn’t being satisfied?

Scott: Well, I think very strongly that some version of each of those is going to sustain – some version of each of those is going to be needed and become more and more and more important in the world. Like, I have my family and friends, I love what Facebook does for that.  And whether it’s Facebook or something else, that’s going to be a part of things.

Scott: That and that what Ning does is absolutely vital, and going to be part of the world forever. Which is that not-geographically specific common interest.

The idea of how do you spark real dynamism in that kind of geographically spread community is still to be figured out.

And then the role of Twitter, which I think is more about broadcasting, it’s about following, but is not about relationships. But that’s needed too.

I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t say that I think that Meetup or something like it is going to be the surprise strong player. For one reason. I’ll put it this way, that which elicits a community with roles and responsibilities, and interdependencies and relationships is just going to be a big winner.

Douglas: Right.

Scott: That’s what’s happening with Meetup period – because it pushes you. The Meetup is just a means to an end, which is to get the relationships and interdependences going. And the roles and responsibilities going within something that is not an audience, but rather is a true community.

Then from there, watch out.  You hear in the technology world the word platform a lot, and that the masters of the platform are the developers.  Developers are iPhone app makers, and Windows app makers.

Well, the platform that enables real people, not engineers, but real people to make applications, to be developers, is the formula for a big winner. When people are building a Meetup Group they’re being developers on a platform.  They are making something, like you make an iPhone app.  It needs to be a lot of people making it together.

And what we’re seeing is the more Assistant Organizers you have, the more successful the Meetup group is.  What is that saying?  It’s saying these people are taking roles and contributing.

Douglas: When I was at Meetup HQ we talked about how the investment it takes to participate in a Meetup Group is extremely high. It’s not just about a mouse click or posting a photo. It’s about showing up and more. That’s good and bad.

It means the barrier to entry is really high, but if they do show up, then there’s a strong possibility that the sense of reward could be equally high.

So, because Meetup is local and face-to-face, and if you’re co-creators and co-makers then the investment and reward is at a much higher level than if you’re simply in front of your computer.

Scott: Yeah.  I mean you could argue – and I’d be lying if I thought of this ahead of time, – but it’s like local isn’t even the point.  The point is co-creation and collaboration, and codependency, interdependencies and roles, and that that’s just more likely to happen locally, and face-to-face.

Over the past week I’ve been interviewing people about whether they are enabling real community. Most of them have been in the commercial arena. Many of them want to create communities around their brands to create more commitment.

There are really a few simple questions that they can ask themselves to clarify whether they are creating true community or not. Why should they bother to clarify this? Because there seems (to me) to be a bit of confusion about whether they’re creating fans, followers or community. Being a fan or follower is not the same as being a member. Membership of a community delivers a whole different degree of commitment (if done right).

It’s about the number of bonds

It’s all about the number bonds you have. With fandom, there’s essentially a simple bond between the fan and the thing or person they’re a fan of. Or between the follower and the followed. Like fans or followers, members also have a bond to the purpose or values of a community. But critically, they also have a bond with fellow members of the community who also buy-into the purpose or values of the group. They have a relationship, a commitment and sense of responsibility to the other members. They are their friends, colleagues, fellow fighters, or just Bill and Jane who you look forward to seeing again at the next meeting.

This triangulated relationship is much harder to break than a two-way commitment. To leave would not only mean saying goodbye to object of your commitment. It would also mean saying goodbye to your friends or even your brotherhood who share your commitment

FAN OR FOLLOWER BOND

COMMUNITY BONDS

So here’s a list of questions you should ask if you want a community vs. simply a fan base or followers. If you say yes to any of these things, you’re likely to enjoy the greater level of stickiness that that a true community endows.

Community checklist

• Does it satisfy a real need? Do its members learn more, have more fun, get more done or get support?

• Does is have a clearly articulated purpose?

• Is it clear about who belongs and who doesn’t?

• Is there interaction between members?

• Are there enduring relationships formed between members that go beyond the original reason for connecting?

• Do they contribute, do they participate, do they work together to achieve the common purpose? Being an audience is not a community.

• Do they feel responsibility for each other and the community at large?

• Are there roles, responsibilities and jobs performed by the membership?

• Is it self-policing? Do people censure or eject unruly or unreasonable members?

• Are there guidelines, rules, or norms of behavior?

To be really sure that you’ve enabled a real community ask the following questions of your members.

• Do they identify with the community? Does it reflect, in part ,who they are as an individual?

• Do they have a sense of belonging?

• Can they be who they really are without fearing rejection?

• Do they have a sense of confidence, safety, even protection?

• Do they feel part of something bigger than themselves?

• Do they have a sense of purpose and meaning?

This interrogation of whether you have, or want, a fanbase, a following or a membership should also be applied to the platform you choose to run it. Facebook, Ning, Meetup or a custom-made solution? I’ll cover that in the next few days.

…they aren’t lies, they’re core Truths!

Myths are stories, but with a critical difference. They have symbolic importance. They embody what the community is all about: its purpose, its beliefs and its actions.

Regular stories that relate things like events and achievements and that are captured in photos, videos and words are good for collective memory-making and co-creation…all great things for stickiness.

Myths are slightly different.They become elevated to a special status because they have more meaning.

For the Apple tribe…yes, there is one… the story of a very young Steve Jobs flouting convention and pitching Venture Capitalists in his shorts and sandals in the earliest days of the company perfectly symbolizes the values of the group: be different, don’t conform (Apple users all think they’re more creative and less conformist than the rest of the world. They can be insufferably smug. I confess that I’m one of them.) This story is told and retold by Apple users who weren’t even born when it happened.

The life story of Mary Kay Ash, the founder of her eponymous company, is also told and retold by thousands of Mary Kay consultants. She was passed over for promotion by her previous employer in favor of a man she had trained. Infuriated, she left and started her own business brewing cosmetics on her kitchen stove. Working from home was important at that time. She needed to support and care for her family as her husband was dying.

The empire she built was based on recognition and celebration of women’s entrepreneurial ability. The pink Cadillacs and the huge mutually supportive annual event at Dallas are all about enabling women to beat the odds and become their best (the bee is a key piece of iconography for the company…it flies despite its improbable aerodynamics).

The Mary Kay consultants I interviewed would tell this story with tears in their eyes. It perfectly embodied the values of the company. And, importantly, they felt it was a perfect expression of their own self-story.

How Myths can be Master Narratives.

Paula (not her real name) had been fired despite leading a graphics company’s sales department to impressive records. She ran the department according to her own personal values: support your staff, make them feel they can do anything, don’t use fear as a driver.

The company took a different direction that contradicted these values, and despite delivering superior results, she was let go. Faced with trying to figure out how to support herself and her two-year-old son, she accepted an invitation from her friend to go to a Mary Kay party. She recognized that the company’s values were her own, joined as a consultant and rose through the ranks.

Paula told the story of her joining as if it was ‘meant to be’. Mary Kay Ash’s story was both an inspiration to her and reinforcement of her own choices. It was almost the same story.

The founder’s story was the Master Narrative of the company. It embodied its values, and was reflected in the personal narratives of its members.

Can you make myths?

These special stories will emerge. The art is recognizing them for what they are and then celebrating and circulating them. If you think they express accurately (and inspirationally) what the community is all about, find ways for the membership to absorb and retell them. Often, if they’re really good, membership will find ways to do it on their own!

In this sequence of posts about how to gate and cull, we’ve looked at the first tool you can use: your purpose or ideology to accept/reject/eject people.

Now we’ll look at #2 through #5: Use Rules,  Approve membership, Cultural Sieve and Like-get-like.

2.  Have rules and enforce them consistently and fairly.

Codes of Conduct in most communities tend to establish the very basic norms of civility and expectations of engagement.

When I asked a selection of community organizers what 5 pieces of advice they would give to newbies almost all included having Codes of Conduct. Here are some of the responses:

-Set very clear guidelines to your network and then stick to them. If you compromise you will pay for it. Treat everybody the same

-Be just but firm: If you have a Code of Conduct or some posting guidelines, stick to ‘em like it’s your job!! It’s important to be consistent and for members to feel safe and treated fairly. No favorites allowed!

-Post clear rules about spamming, fighting, trolling, etc, and don’t feel even the slightest twinkle of guilt about banning people who cross the line.

Jeff, in a response to my question about whether all communities should be gated, wrote the following on the community part of this site. Clearly, he puts having an active membership as a key plank of his Network:

“Good question. We already impose such a feature on our network.  In our TOS we clearly state that if a member does not contribute and/or sign in to their profile within a 90 day period their profile will be taken offline.

There is always the option to re-instate their profile. However, it is stressed and followed up with a quick reminder that their profile has been inactive and basically on the chopping block if they don’t answer our message within a 48 hour period. This keeps dead profiles off the network and allow the NC [Ning Network Creator] to concentrate on those who are actively contributing to the network.

Many new community organizers feel queasy about establishing rules of any kind. But most discover that not everyone understands the need to be civil or engaged. They quickly realize that you have to establish basic minimums of behavior. And this is best done at the foundation of the community. It’s much harder to grandfather them in when the need to have a Code becomes acute.

3.  Approve membership

“At first I thought this would be “just the worst thing on the planet,

LOL”. Turns out, it’s really not bad at all. It only takes a few minutes to look over a

member’s submitted page, and approve or disapprove. This has cut down on nasty

spammers and spambots, around 95%.”

This is from a Ning Network Creator and she’s talking about keeping out spammers. She’s making the time-consuming effort to review every ‘application’. She considers it a sound investment in time versus handling the fallout that Toxics and Trolls cause.

There are, of course, much more comprehensive ways to winnow out potential mistakes and let through only those who are likely to be high-functioning members. The strongest of communities…those that generate cult-like attraction and loyalty…are extremely careful about who belongs and they invest heavily in the ‘recruitment’ process.

They’ll use the ideology, and the following two tools to ensure consistency with the organization’s goals.

4.  Have a Cultural Sieve

Scott Heiferman, Founder and CEO of Meetup would half-jokingly, half seriously, would pull a photo out of his wallet of a Chihuahua Meetup Group, pastel polyester-panted women and all, and show it to a potential company recruit. If they snickered, he wouldn’t hire them.

“When I showed it to people, I was looking to see if they’d smile at the beauty, laugh at the absurdity, smile at the potential… and bonus points for a tear.” Scott Heiferman.

Meetup is about reviving local community and it has a profound belief in the transformational power of groups. The company is on a social mission. They want a real local group available everywhere for people when they need it, because “groups have the power to improve lives and change the world”.

The people who work at Meetup HQ are there primarily for that reason (we know, because we survey ourselves twice a year). The company has a Manifesto, and a culture document (that’s now used as a cultural sieve since Scott had his wallet…and photo…stolen) and expects whoever works there to be a high-functioning member of its own community. That means that there is total buy-in to the Manifesto and values. Here’s an excerpt from the Culture Statement that shows why sneering can’t be tolerated:

‘We love that our members want to have fun…or fundamentally change the world. Or both. We admire these people who tell their stories, expose their vulnerabilities, fear that people think they’re freaks (let’s remember that we’re all freaky one way or another).

We cheer this multitude of ordinary people who are crazy enough to meet complete strangers and fearless enough to start a Meetup Group. Never underestimate or under value what it takes to do what they do. Meetup Culture Statement.

Interestingly, when we wrote this Culture Statement, we also reiterated the importance of self-organization and decentralization…the key principals behind the Meetup’s Ideology and platform: that people should be enabled and inspired to self-organize into communities, groups and networks.

But what dawned on us once we’d written it, was that we weren’t applying that principal to our own internal community. Instead we had decision-making was hierarchical and centralized. We were shocked to see that we had a traditional corporate structure predicated on control. The Culture Statement was a mirror to ourselves, and we weren’t looking as good as we thought we were.

Once we realized this we went through what amounts to a revolution…of not just our working practices, but of those in business generally. I’ll write more about this in later posts because it’s instructive about the power of rigorously applying a community’s ideology to itself. In the meantime, check out the article that Business Week wrote about our adventure.

Some highly qualified job candidates were repelled by the new environment we had created. And we didn’t hire them. And some existing employees self-ejected. This was exactly the outcome we wanted. Good skills weren’t enough. There had to be a cultural fit. And that means total buy-in to the ideology, values and behavioral norms of a community, which in this case was within an Ideologically-driven company.

5.  Like-get-Like

For cult-like groups and societies like the Masons, fraternities, groovy urban clubs and some companies, you can use the ‘like-get-like’ strategy.

Peer recruitment can pre-empt problems by using existing members to target, win and ‘pre-approve’ recruits.

Existing members are the most likely means of identifying others who will align with the values and aims of the community. And of course there’s some accountability involved to make it real…a mistake can create blowback on the referrer.

When I worked at a branding company we produced a card for the first few employees of jetBlue (we were helping launch the airline) to hand out to people whom they thought would meet the tough criteria to be a member of the jetBlue ‘crew’ (all employees are crew members, including the people who clean the planes). JetBlue only hired ‘virgins’, those who hadn’t been soiled by previous experience in the poisonous airline industry. They handed the card to those they thought clearly enjoyed other people and who had strong social skills, whether they were serving behind the Starbucks counter someone they met at a party.

Of course this was well before the multitude of online tools now available to community leaders to inspire existing members to recruit people like themselves. That being said, good old-fashioned real-world like-get-like tools can still work.

Steve Ressler who runs Govloop, a twenty three thousand strong online community for innovators in government, uses a charmingly quaint offline device to recruit the right kind of members. It’s a lanyard: a ribbon from which people can string their government ID cards. They have several slogans printed on them, of which “Bureaucrats need not apply” is typical. These are worn proudly by existing members and often provoke conversations with prime prospects who are curious about the kind of organization that would be populated by such people. Steve has run Google ads and done PR in an attempt to recruit, but instead has found the lanyard and other like-get-like techniques have yielded better quality members.

Next I’ll post the last three tools you can use to gate and cull.

We’ve covered Why and Who you should reject and eject in the previous two posts. Now we’ll talk about the difficult job of how to do it.

In the case of culling, the general rule here is respectfully, kindly and keeping the rest of the community informed about why the person is removed.  In the case of rejecting a potential member, again, respectfully and explaining why.

Those are the general rules. Here are some specific tools you can use to ensure you get and keep the right members, and lose and reject the wrong ones.

1. Use your Mission/Worldview/Creed/Ideology/Purpose/Values
2. Have Rules and use them consistently and fairly
3. Approve Membership
4. Use a ‘Cultural Sieve’
5. Have a Like-get-Like Strategy
6. Accountability. Self-Policing. Transparency
7. Charge a Fee.
8. Have Courage and Be Kind…and don’t let it get you down.

In this post I’ll talk about the first. In the next two posts, I’ll cover the rest.

1.  Use your Mission/Worldview/Creed/Ideology/Purpose…whatever you call your founding idea and values.

During the very early days the founder of Ebay, Pierre Omidyar, wrote over a weekend what amounted to be the community’s ideology. Its origin was frustration. He found himself sucked into refereeing disputes between buyers and sellers that took valuable time away from building the site. He wrote what he believed the ebay community should value, implicitly who belonged and who didn’t, how to behave and what constituted infringement.

‘eBay is a community that encourages open and honest communication among all its members. Our community is guided by five fundamental values:

* We believe people are basically good.

* We believe everyone has something to contribute.

* We believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.

* We recognize and respect everyone as a unique individual.

* We encourage you to treat others the way you want to be treated.

eBay is firmly committed to these principles. And we believe that community members should also honor them—whether buying, selling, or chatting with eBay friends.’

Note he describes ebay as a community, not a marketplace , and he articulates several of the classic norms of community behavior, including reciprocity.

Ebay’s business model only works if there’s a republic of trust (at least before the advent of PayPal). The buyer has to trust that the seller’s item is as advertised, and that it will be shipped. The seller has to trust that they’ll get payed.

Interestingly, social trust is used by most sociologists as the key measure of social capital in any neighborhood or society (social capital is a concept that is used to measure the number and quality of social connections and interactions within any society or network).

It was therefore critical to elevate trust as the social currency of the community. The truly brilliant innovation (that removed Pierre’s need for direct involvement in disputes) is that he ‘operationalized’ the ideology by creating one of the first and most effective reputation engines. Members could rate each other according to how much they trusted each other after each transaction. You could attract more transactions as you improved your trust-based status.

In effect, he put a value on good citizenship.

Several of the eBay-ers I interviewed even viewed their rating within the eBay community as a badge of rectitude within the larger culture. There’s no reason not to. It mirrors Judeo-Christian doctrine…but with a metric attached!

The purpose of a purpose

One of the benefits of having a coherent vision, values, and code of behavior is that it is a template that allows fast decision making about who to reject and eject (among other things). Do they buy into the goals of the group? Do they share the same values? Did they infringe the contracted standards of behavior?

Not only does it make for faster decision-making, it makes for buy-in by the rest of the community to your decision. You can point to the ideology and say “they weren’t living it”. And you can use it to have a less subjective conversation with the person you’re rejecting or ejecting: “this is the contract we all live by. You broke it here, here and here”.

Using the Purpose as a measure for membership

This is exactly what Cheryl, who runs the Queens County Parents Autism Coalition, Inc. Meetup Group used to cull passengers and flakes from her group.

This, plus a retelling of the moving story of why she started the group became standard against which compliance would be assessed.

For Cheryl, flakes and passengers were a big issue. Passivity wasn’t just an annoyance. It couldn’t be tolerated for the reasons mentioned in an earlier post in this series: it undermined the purpose of the group because value was only generated by the degree to which members shared knowledge and practical help. And in particular, it eroded the morale and energy of those valuable members who did share information and help.

Cheryl sent out an email that essentially blew the whistle:

”Major changes are coming to QCPAC where some members will stay, some will leave, and most will be removed. These changes are necessary in order to align members with the mission of QCPAC. Up until now we have only had a handful of contributors. QCPAC is a community not just a resource. We cannot display “autism awareness and support” proudly if we don’t walk the walk.”

She had two meetings (on a weeknight and weekend to ensure everyone could come) and solicited input to a proposed a ‘terms of use’ for membership. “It’s like a contract a guess. It says what we’re going to do and what we expect them to do in response and they have to sign it. And if they don’t’ we have to remove them.”

Cheryl and her team modified the mission of the group to be more explicit about the fact that it was a community, and that it was dependent on the contributions and passion of its members for it to work: ‘Members of this community are immensely dedicated, passionate, and involved as one community in the vision that their child deserves a place in this world. We welcome new members who will be just as dedicated and involved’

There were three basic expectations or rules. Even the most vociferous objectors in the meetings (who, interestingly, were the ones who contributed the least) had to admit they were fair:

• Attendance. Members had to show up. The basic minimum was six events a year (not unreasonable given that Cheryl organized an average of four per month)

• Participation. Members had to post on the boards at least once a week. The boards were a key source of facts and practical help. If you didn’t share your knowledge and support, then the group couldn’t fulfill its mission.

• Membership Fees. The people who administer the non-profit are volunteers. No-one receives a salary. But basic costs needed to be covered so the group charges an annual fee of $40.

Some said they couldn’t comply and would return when they could. One woman said that she was offended that she was being treated this way, to which Cheryl responded by saying that she was offended at the way she had been treated all these years:

“We’re just like you. If anyone should be offended it should be us. We’re mothers like you, we don’t get paid. We’ve been doing this for 3 years. We want this organization to move forward, and we can’t do that if everybody’s not on the same page.”

Cheryl’s speech with which she kicked of each meeting is worth reading in full. For an amateur organizer, I think she handled the situation in a very professional way. I’ve reprinted it with her permission at the end of this post.

All of this happened a few months ago, so Cheryl is still assessing whether it worked. But so far she is pleased. The membership numbers are more or less the same, but the population of the group is now more engaged.

The restatement of the Vision and values crystallized to members and non-members alike the benefits and costs of membership. It articulated the expectations of behavior and essentially asked you if you were up for them. It was clear about who should belong, and who shouldn’t. It suggested that if you’re not comfortable with the ‘price’ of membership, then start or find a group where you might be.

In the next post we’ll take a look at Rules and Approving Membership.

This is the second post about the controversial subject of gating and culling.

The first post discussed why you should gate and cull. This one covers who you should gate and cull,  and what they do to deserve it.

Here are some of the key characters who can both undermine the community’s core purpose, as well as its operation.

Who should you reject and eject?

I’ve seen five categories:

1. Spammers: abusers of access.
2. Social Toxics (including Trolls): abusers of social norms of behavior.
3. Flakes: abusers of expectation.
4. Non-believers: abusers of purpose and values.
5. Passengers: abusers of mutuality

What do they do that’s so bad?

1. Spammers.

These are the people that abuse access. They pitch to a membership that’s not signed up for being pitched at. Spammers may have joined for that reason. Or they’ve become members with the best of intentions, but can’t resist the juicy ‘captive audience’ they’ve happened upon.

Julia’s tough about these people. She ran two Meetup groups in Southern California: a social group for Fibromyalgia sufferers, and one for Dutch-speakers.

“I’ve four main rules. One of them is that you’re not allowed to sell anything, period. Some of the girls started selling stuff since they joined. They go “Oh how wonderful, I have this whole potential client base here for my magic juice that’s going to cure everybody.” And I’ve had to kick them out of the group because they’ve refused to stop selling to members.”

Intrusive behavior that’s inconsistent with the purpose or norms of the community constitutes abuse. If the group is about selling and buying magic juice, then fine. If not, stop, or find a group where that is the purpose.

For Andy The Chicken Whisperer the individual he was forced to deal with was not selling stuff, he was selling ideas.

Andy was dubbed the Chicken Whisperer after he launched a network of Backyard Poultry Meetup Groups. He now has two books, a radio show and 38 Meetup Groups internationally that cater to people who want to learn how to raise poultry in the suburbs.

Andy delegates, which allows him to adopt the role of ‘guru’ and guiding light of the mini-movement. But every now and then he has to step in for some hands-on management.

The person that demanded his involvement was quite senior: an ‘Assistant Organizer’ of a Meetup Group.

“And I always have to keep an eye on him, or assign one or two people if I can’t always have an eye on him. I have to remind him to stay on topic. If we’re talking about vaccines for chickens, he’ll turn it into the corrupt CDC giving vaccines to 11 year olds to prevent cervical cancer that they would’nt have got if they weren’t sluts to begin with.

He’ll turn it into a conspiracy theory, anti-government rant, and he’ll really go over the top and make people uncomfortable. And I have to go over to him and say, this is a chicken meeting and I appreciate your views, but we want to keep the subject related to chickens. He doesn’t really have social skills. I don’t’ have to ban him, I just have to keep him on a short leash.

2. Social Toxics (including trolls).

Social toxics are the people like the obnoxious guy in Caterina Fake’s book group. They have poor to zero social skills. They’ve not necessarily joined with the intention to disrupt (unlike Trolls). Sometimes these people can’t help themselves…it’s just the way they’re made. In any event, they have to be managed, neutralized or removed for the sake of the group’s survival.

Trolls are a different matter. Where social toxics may or may not be deliberate about destruction, Trolls are. They tend to derive malign pleasure from upsetting the fragile ecosystem of the group.  They seek to provoke anger and dissent in online by inflaming noxious debate and encouraging personal (online) assaults.

Social toxics and trolls don’t tend to constitute a large population within a community. But their influence is disproportionate to their numbers. Almost every organizer has told me in a voice loaded with bitter experience that when encountered, they have had to deal with them with speed and resolution.

3. Flakes.

Flakes take a while to emerge. They’re the ones that promise to host an event, or do a leaflet campaign, or sign a speaker, or post on a blog, or even just show up…but don’t.

Flakes are not just annoying. They can become a major drag on the community because:

a) Stuff doesn’t’ get done. Not following through obviously handicaps the community in reaching its goals.

b) It erodes the morale of the group

The latter is a more significant that you might imagine. They create a disappointment that’s deflating and a sense of injustice that can undermine the high-functioning members of the group. There’s a ‘fair trade’ dynamic that operates in most groups. People will play their part  (taking on roles and responsibilities) because they feel others will play theirs. Mutualism is the signature of strong communities. And collectively, progress is made.

c) They’re a time-suck.

They take time to chase. If you find that you’re on the phone, emailing or showing up at the person’s house to check on whether they’ve done something, it’s not worth it. Demote them, because they’re taking too much of your energy and distract from you concentrating on those who can make a real difference in the network.

For groups that meet face-to-face, the no-show-flakes can be a big issue. You might have booked a venue for a hundred, paid a deposit, but only forty show up. A Meetup organizer in Northern California told me he would book limos or buses for wine-tasting tours to the Sonoma and Napa valleys based on the number of Yes RSVP’s only to see that half would show up. This made the cost for all the others higher, aggravating the active members.

4. Non-believers.

The cult-like organizations I examined…which included religious cults, companies, sororities, fan-clubs, religious groups, the Marines and hundreds more…had cultures that were palpably strong. Those cultures were informed by coherent beliefs, big visions of how the world should be and lines drawn in the sand about what was important and what wasn’t: values.

These were universally known and bought-into by all. And, critically, lived by all. The leadership of these organizations credited the clarity of the worldview and the homogeneity of its believing membership as key instruments of their organizations’ success.

Collins and Porras wrote one of the most influential and best selling business books of all time: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. They examined the core reasons behind the long-term success of (the few that qualified) American Corporations. Visionary was their term for those organizations that succeeded due largely  to their commitment to big goals and differentiating values that seldom, if ever, changed. In their chapter on cult-like cultures (a key ingredient) they write:

“Visionary does not mean soft and undisciplined. Quite the contrary. Because visionary companies have such clarity about who they are, what they’re about and what they’re trying to achieve, they tend to not have much room for people unwilling or unsuited to their demanding standards.”

For visionary companies read any organization, community, group or network that has a differentiating ideology at their core.

I found that without exception, communities that generated commitment had a clear Purpose and Values and a membership that was totally bought into them. Those that didn’t buy-in, and didn’t live the creed, were politely asked to leave and find organizations that were more aligned with their values. More often, these people would self-eject, because they didn’t feel ‘at home’. They didn’t belong in the most fundamental way: on the basis of values. They weren’t amongst ‘like-others.’

Porras and Collins quote one of their researchers who had been examining the likes of Walmart, Procter and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson and HP:

“Joining these companies reminds me of joining an extremely tight-knit group or society. And if you don’t fit, you’d better not join. If you’re willing to really buy in and dedicate yourself to what the company stands for, then you’ll be very satisfied and productive-probably couldn’t be happier. If not, however, you’ll probably flounder, feel miserable and out-of-place, and eventually leave-ejected like a virus. It’s binary: You’re either in or out, and there seems to be no middle ground. It’s almost cult-like”.

When I was a partner in a marketing agency that helped launch jetBlue, a senior exectutive told me a story to illustrate their commitment to the company values and how that commitment was manifested by the values’ rigorous application to who they hire and fire, and now they train.

A highly promising flight attendant trainee was a high-performer in every respect. However, when he muffed a procedure during a mid-course test he asked a more senior employee to cover for him. The individual was fired not because of the mistake (that could be trained) but because the company values of transparency and trust had been abused. They said goodbye to a promising employee because that individual compromised the organization’s creed.

So why is this important?

It goes to the core of a successful community. Having a ‘believing’ membership:

a)    Predisposes the organization to reach its goals because its members are not just aligned with them, but motivated by them to do more.

b)   Avoids stalling debates about “why are we here, what are we about”. These tedious debates interrupt progress.

c)    Potential recruits will see a coherent community and make a more accurate decision whether it is for them or not.

d)   Members will have a clearer picture of whom they should recruit (are they one of us?) thus minimizing future difficulties for both the leader and member if it’s not working out.

And most importantly, there will be all the key characteristics of the most sticky communities:

• There will be solidarity and fluid action around shared values and aims.

• There will be bonding founded on identification with both the organization and fellow members at the most profoundly important level of worldview and values.

• There will be a sense of safety (see glue ingredient # 4) that enables self-actualization, a critical ‘gift’ of successful groups.

In other words, there will be a sense of belonging and meaning that the most successful communities are able to generate.

The clarity of creed and homogeneity of a believing membership is arguably more important for some communities than others. For vision and values-driven communities (like visionary companies, some military organizations, non-profits, Unions, political parties, movements, cult brands like Harley and of course religious organizations) it is critical. For others, such as social groups, perhaps less so. But these tend to be in the minority. Every organization should be conscious of why they exist and the values they live by, and ensure its membership aligns with them.

5. Passengers

These people are not active detractors, they’re just not active.

Why should this be a problem?

For many communities it isn’t.

Beyond you having an inflated sense of your real community’s size, members who contribute little or not at all aren’t necessarily detrimental to the experience of the rest. Perhaps some of those members have joined, stuff has happened in their lives that prevents them from fully participating, but they expect to in the future. Or they’re getting value from the community by reading posts and downloading information and newsletters. Whilst a fully active membership is likely to increase the value to all, a partially inactive one does not necessarily undermine the experience for everyone.

Except where the community is predicated on mutuality.

In these cases the community only really functions optimally when all are playing an equally active role. This can be especially true of support, networking and social groups where the experience of all is dependant on the participation of all.

Cheryl has had to confront this issue. She’s an ‘accidental leader’. But one that has learnt quickly to take some of the tough decisions that more experienced organizers would find intimidating. She never intended to start and lead a Meetup Group of parents of autistic children, but when other sources of support failed her (online resources and government agencies) she decided that the only real source of help was going to come from parents in her situation. Peer support was likely to yield not only the most relevant sources of information, but also the emotional reinforcement that would get her through the week.

This a support group in the true sense of the word. Without each member contributing advice based on their experience, and without them sharing medical and practical help they’ve uncovered, the group’s purpose is compromised.

“We’re all families dealing with a tragedy. I started the group so that we could all come together as a community and learn from each other about how to adapt to this new life. People have learned that the best help they can get is from other parents.”

The trouble was, many people were joining, not contributing, and just taking. There was little sense of mutualism. Critically, beyond starving the collective knowledge of the group and limiting the resources for support and care, it demoralized the ones who were doing all the work. This was an especially dangerous problem. There were five key people who organized events, raised money, and communicated with the group.

Because of exhaustion and a growing sense of injustice, these ‘gems’ were feeling like they should scale back their own valuable contributions.

“We started feeling some kind of resentment. All these people claimed they’re going to do this and do that, and that they needed this kind of help, but when it comes time to ask them to put in what we give, basically an equal amount of participation, we give you so you give back, they don’t do it. We’ve experienced that people come on board, they get all the resources and then they leave….they take advantage. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

The group played an incredibly important role in her and other key members’ families’ survival. She would not jeopardize it for the sake of members who weren’t prepared to share.

Despite being an ‘accidental leader’ with no experience of leadership prior to founding the group, what she did next struck me as a very wise and fair in the face of a difficult and potentially inflammatory issue (as we’ll see in the ‘how’ section below.) In short, she redefined the terms of membership to require basic minimums of participation. If existing members could not commit to these basic minimums, they had to leave (but would always be welcomed back when they could commit).

Julia, who had had a lot of experience running groups professionally, is quite clear how much she hates passive members, even in a social group:

“We have a lot of joiners in society today. I think it’s important for a community builder to realize that getting people to commit to participating is important. With the Fibro group I’m actually quite hard-assed about it. If you don’t participate, I will actually throw you out of the group. Our group is about getting together and participating and if you don’t want to do that this isn’t the group for you. By me pushing them they’ve pushed themselves.”

In the next post we’ll look at how you gate and cull these kinds of members.

Should all Communities be Gated?

Should some members be Culled?

This is the first of three posts that covers a controversial, but I believe absolutely necessary responsibility of any community leader: be clear about why and who you should accept-reject-eject. And act on it with resolution.

The last thing you think about when you start an online or offline community is turning people away and throwing people out. You’re in an expansive mode. You want to recruit, recruit, recruit! Everyone’s welcome. Please join…and stay!

But within a few months almost every organizer realizes that gating and culling is a necessary, albeit unpleasant part of the job.

It’s one of the first things that Caterina Fake (co-founder of Flickr and Hunch-see previous interviews on this blog) mentioned when I asked her what characterized high-functioning communities. They need rules of behavior, and they need oversight:

“They [a socially toxic member] can actually destroy a community. For example, I belonged to a flourishing book club, and everybody was very engaged and enjoyed the group.  It was a great book group.

And at one point, somebody had invited a friend of theirs to join, and this person became this sort of obnoxious know-it-all. He started jumping in when other people were talking and correcting them and basically just being very offensive.

And within two meetings, the book club, which had flourished for two years previously, within two meetings of the introduction of this guy, who nobody stepped forward to get rid of – completely disbanded.

It was tragic because nobody had the cojones to say, “Thank you.  Please don’t come again.”

You need to be the watchdog, the guardian, the den mother. For the sake of the rest of the community, you have to be cruel to be kind (actually, you don’t have to be cruel, but we’ll cover that later.)

So, should every community demand a sort of ‘contract’ for entry: ‘you can join if you commit to our purpose, our values and you promise to contribute’?
Should every community have an ‘airlock’, where new members have to prove their value? Sort of a probation period during which new recruits prove that they’re not disruptive?

I’ve found that this is (not surprisingly) a contentious subject. But it’s one that has inevitably arisen in my conversations with community organizers:

“And it’s difficult, but that’s the reality of being a community leader.  It’s not just the fun of bringing people together. You have to be the HR manager and be prepared to correct, scold or fire people.” Julia: Meetup Organizer.

So,

Why should you do this?

Who should you reject and eject?

What specific behavior demands correction?

How do you do it?

Why should you do this?

Because it goes to the very heart of what a community is and how it functions.

Beyond a collection of people who hold things in common (the Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘community’), people join communities to share beliefs, to further a cause, or to fight for rights. They join because they need support to face a crisis. Or to learn how to become an entrepreneur. They join to pursue a hobby, find a passion or find more friends. They join to belong and believe and find meaning.

All of this demands fellow members that have the same needs, the same hopes, passions, beliefs and interests and values. Members of strong communities share an identity. Without alignment with each other on these such of basic criteria, the community will lack integrity.

People won’t join and they won’t stay if its purpose and values are not clearly defined, and if its membership doesn’t live them. If a diffuse membership compromises the goals or values of the group, then why join or stay?

Community Boundaries

In other words, boundaries need to be drawn. Who belongs and who doesn’t’ needs to be clear. Behavior that is consistent with achieving the goals of the group needs to be declared and rewarded, as should behavior that’s contrary be outlawed.

The second key reason why there should be discrimination about membership and its behavior is that the wrong kind of member and the wrong kind of behavior can badly affect the day to day functioning of the community. They can suck time, upset people, betray trust and generally be a drag on the community’s progress.

At the end of the day there are right members and wrong members. These posts will focus on identifying the latter and proposes ideas about how to deal with them. I’d love to hear yours.

In the next two posts on this subjects we’ll cover:

Who should you reject and eject?

What do they do that’s so bad?

How do you do it?

“What are the top five pieces of advice you’d give to new community leaders?”

“What are the five things you wished you’d known when you started out?”

I’ve been asking these questions of community leaders. I also asked the same question that got some great responses on Discussion boards on the The Glue Project Community part of the site, and on Ning.

I’m still building the list. And I’d like you to add some. But here are the key themes that emerged. And I’ve also reprinted, near the end of this post, the complete answers of some of the responders that I thought were especially insightful.

1. Be really clear about your community’s purpose.

Wishy-washiness retards recruitment (“why am I joining?”) erodes commitment (“why am I here?”) and handicaps progress (“what are we trying to get done, exactly?”)

2. Be really clear why you, personally, are doing this.

I heard this a lot. Start a group or network about a passion. Are you doing it because you want to improve your own social life (entirely legitimate)? Fight for marriage equality? Because you love pugs? If you’re not passionate, you’ll give up (because it’s hard), or run the group reluctantly which is guaranteed to undermine its success.

3. Have patience

Most networks and groups start small, and often stay that way for while. Don’t give up. Don’t be discouraged. Providing you’re doing the rest of these things, it should take off.

4. Have stamina

…because you need to hang there until it takes off.

5. Make time

Be prepared for it to eat into your personal life, especially at the beginning. Then you can start delegating.

6. Don’t try and please everyone

Don’t focus on the haters. Don’t get upset

7. Have rules

Very, very important. Not everyone behaves as adults, and that becomes clear very quickly.

8. Reject and eject those who break them, without qualms.

They are the community-destroyers. And really, the rest of the community wants the rules and are happy when you enforce them.

9. Welcome new arrivals. Personally if you can.

It’s when they’re most vulnerable to leaving or becoming inactive.

10. Ask them to do something.

Doing stuff for the network makes people committed. Easy stuff at the beginning (commenting, posting a picture), harder stuff as they become more invested.

11. Listen to your members.

You’re serving their needs as well as yours.

12. Get help from advisors and delegate responsibilities

13. Meet in person. Offline is stickier than online.

14. Be clear about who belongs and who doesn’t

Do they buy into the purpose and the values? Do they contribute or are they flakes, passengers or social toxics?

15. Be clear about who you’re targeting and how to satisfy their needs.

16. Pace yourself

17. Acknowledge people who are making a difference

Calling out the heroes, and even those who are making a small difference is a great motivator. And it patterns desired behavior to the rest of the group.

18. Try stuff, and move on if it doesn’t work

19. Resist the attempt to be a control freak

Allow new ideas and new leadership to emerge that strengthens the network.

20. Resist the attempt to let go entirely

Ensure the community stays true to its purpose and values.

21. Have high quality content/events to keep them coming back.

22. Networking is work.

23. Make it fun, even if the purpose is serious.

If for no other reason than you need this to maintain your own energy as well as the energy of others.

Here are a few of the responses in their entirety:

This is from MariaL on the discussion thread I started on the Ning Creators Network (a network of community leaders on the Ning platform) that asked the same ‘Top 5’ question. All the responses in that discussion thread are worth reading…some are more oriented than others towards the Ning platform functionality, but many have universally applicable insights.

MariaL:

1. Don’t micro-manage: You’ll only limit your network to what you can handle or come up with. Delegate tasks/duties and don’t spend every moment online… give your network a chance to grow into something much, much bigger than you ever dreamed!

2. Get other members involved: Make sure moderators are involved in some decision making to keep them motivated and interested – it helps to give them a sense of ownership to a certain extent and alleviates the responsibility.

3. Be involved: Keep posting actively and create conversation in “dry areas” of your network. If the groups are sort of slowing down in popularity, encourage members to join or create their own groups!

4. Be just but firm: If you have a Code of Conduct or some posting guidelines, stick to ‘em like it’s your job!! It’s important to be consistent and for members to feel safe and treated fairly. No favorites allowed!

5. Keep the new stuff comin’: Keep a couple features up your sleeves or come up with new events/concepts to keep things fresh and interesting. Be open to ideas from all members and encourage collaboration!!

From Steve Ressler (Govloop) on The Glue Project community site

1.   Don’t build a community – enable a community that already exists to connect.

2.   Have fun and experiment.

3.   Don’t listen to the haters…plenty of haters and complainers. Give water to the good ones to grow even more.

4.   Continuous improvement and nurturing – if you are not busy being born, you are busy dying.

5.   Ask for help…ask the community to volunteer and take roles.

From Andrea, also from The Glue Project. She agreed with Steve’s suggestions and wanted to add these:

1. The community needs leadership from many & be compelling to its members

2. Be as clear as possible about purpose and vision

3. As a community facilitator, be as inclusive as possible

4. Identify and build on the values and qualities you would like the community to reflect

5. Keep track of what is going on, answer questions, encourage leadership, creativity and opportunity to share with others

6. Communities grow and change, people come in and out over time, don’t get discouraged and try not to stay stuck on the critics…

…then Andrea added even more suggestions to her original comments:

Sharing Credit as much as possible (costs nothing, easy to do, makes people feel good, encourages participation)

Leverage Group Resources whether that be time, talent, skill or money. Creates more buy-in and opportunities for ownership, uses what already exists, important to any serious community effort.

Link Planning to Results, Big and Small. Work with the community to identify these outcomes and count them. Little wins are just as important as the big ones, sometimes more so.

Action Matters. People will leave if they don’t see something concrete happen. Moving people to that point thoughtfully, but quickly is essential

Honor Group Members and their expertise. The more they are engaged in something that matters to them, and their experience and know-how is utilized the more the community benefits. Even if not everyone agrees, which they won’t.

Everything will not happen all at once, so help the community identify what is most important first to them and start with that focus. Keep asking, “Who else needs to be part of this endeavor?”

I’m sure you have 5 pieces of advice. Share them in the Discussion on the community part of The Glue Project, or comment on this post. I’ll keep updating this subject, and may include yours.

With thanks to the many others I’ve gleaned these from, including Julia Ferguson Andriessen (Dutch in Orange County Meetup), Joseph Porcelli (Neighbors For Neighbors), Andy The Chicken Whisperer (The Atlanta Backyard Poultry Meetup), Francis Sealey (21st Century Network), Natasha Chapman (Sustainable Jacksonville Meetup), Tony Bacigalupo (Coworking Community NYC Meetup), Edith (The San Francisco Entrepreneur Meetup Group)

I keep being asked this question.

Not surprising really, since I go on about community a lot. And perhaps not surprising because it’s one of those culturally familiar, but rarely examined ideas like fairness, or even democracy. It’s a comforting, but somewhat vague concept, one that’s used frequently by all of us, and relentlessly by politicians (who tend to use it as an easily grabbed motherhood, guaranteed to legitimize any worldview). Unless you’re a sociologist, you’re unlikely to have spent much time thinking about what community really means. And what it takes to make one.

But perhaps it’s time to do it now.

Community is making a comeback. We have a self-confessed Community Leader in the White House. Data shows a climbing desire for more contact with neighbors and more time with the family.

Rugged individualism as a culturally defining idea (whether your preferred symbol is the Marlboro man or the survival-of-the-fittest Gordon Geckos of Wall St.) may indeed be central part of the national character. But it has eclipsed, to our cost, the equally defining, and interestingly juxtaposed idea of every American as a member of a vigorous community…something seen as uniquely American by a French man, no less: De Tocqueville.

Whatever the reason, I keep being asked to define community. So, based largely on the hundreds of interviews I conducted very self-conscious communities (like cults and religions) as well as those that are less so (like chess playing clubs and some neighborhoods) here’s my take.

Communities hold things in common.

They could be needs, like a cancer survivors’ groups or new-in-town social clubs. They could be ideologies if the community is a religion or political party. It could be proximity if it’s a neighborhood. Or a cause if it’s a movement, fighting, say, for the environment or against human slavery. Or it could be interests like opera, Nascar or technology. Whatever they are, their members align themselves with those who share these things in common.

But I think this begs a bigger and more interesting question: does the nature of the thing that’s shared predispose a community to be stronger or weaker?

Is a shared ideology inherently stickier than a shared hobby?

I would argue yes, it is. Beliefs not only tend to trump facts, and values trump policy arguments, but they also tend to beat other kinds of commonality in the ability to generate glue.

An alignment around more government or less government, around a personal God or atheism, or even around being an American or a Frenchman (because they’re particular national ideas that are packed with ideology), is a stronger alignment than being a chess player or even a neighborhood resident.

Of course there are qualifiers to this, which I’ll talk about in a moment. But I’ve seen ideology forming the strongest glue for this key reason: its ingredients…values and beliefs, a shared vision of how the world should be…are also the ingredients of self-definition at the most profound level. Being a born-again Christian or Sufi is normally central to a person’s idea of themselves. So is being a conservative or a liberal. Imagining a world where women and men are equal or race is irrelevant is more self-defining than if you’re an opera lover or you happen to live Manchester.

If people share self-definition at the level of beliefs, values and hopes, that makes for an extremely strong community. If I identify with the group because, in the final analysis, we say the same things about what makes us who we are as individuals, that’s a bond that’s pretty tough to break a part.

There is another factor that cannot be ignored in an analysis of what makes a strong community. Mix in this, and you can take a lower order commonality to a higher degree of stickiness.

The other thing that’s critical to community is contact.

Those communities that have more interaction between their members tend to be stronger than those that have less. Community is a contact sport at the end of the day. There is a ton of data that is in agreement with my own research that rubbing people together makes people sticky.

We found at Meetup that if people attended four or more events, whatever the purpose of the group, they tended to be more committed than those who attended less. And the primary cause of that stickiness was that four attendances was the minimum number of times it took for relationships to form, and for people to say to themselves things like “I like these people. Some of them could be good friends. I’m coming back not just because I want to be a better knitter, but because I want to hang out with Sean and Jessica”.

If you have a community that’s ideologically based and it has frequent contact between its members, then of course that’s the strongest formula of all.

I’m fascinated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) because they’ve cracked this code. They get both right. Their ideology is highly distinctive (so much so that it is seen as heretical by the established Christian denominations). And they have mandated contact between members to a much higher degree than other Christian churches and several other religions.

There are very few paid clergy in the Church. The work of running this global organization, from HQ to a local ‘ward’ is done primarily by its members, massively increasing opportunities for interaction. They don’t just meet at church on Sunday either. There is a rigorously applied program of contact that accounts for most days of the week. For example, whether in Bangkok or Birmingham, Mormon families meet on a Monday night for Family Home Evening. The Relief Society (a Mormon woman’s organization) drops in to give spiritual and temporal assistance. Home visits are undertaken to families to teach the gospel at least once a month.

Can you make communities stickier if they’re founded on lower-order commonalities?

Yes, if you amp-up ideological alignment. And, for bonus points, increase interaction too.

Where proximity was not enough, competing visions for a town’s future created the missing glue between individuals in a town in upstate New York.

My friend Sam Pratt helped lead its fight against the building of the world’s largest cement plant in its historical location. This external threat…or opportunity, depending on your point of view…surfaced ideologies and radicalized populations that had been dormant for decades in this sleepy Hudson River town.

This external stimulus clarified beliefs and crystallized needs within two distinct populations in the city. The more recent arrivals from New York City who had led the revival of the main street with shops, cafes and galleries were not surprisingly, galvanized around the idea of preserving what had been done to reinvent ‘local’ community. In contrast, the population that had been there for generations and lived through the booms and busts saw the plant as an opportunity for jobs and tax income to help pull the town, once again, out of the economic doldrums.

These populations clustered around differing worldviews of what constitutes community, the virtues or threats of globalization, the role of corporations, the localization movement and classic blue and red political ideologies.

The fight was fierce. But the ‘Stop the Plant’ side won, and they won famously. There will be more on how it pulled it off on The Glue Project. It’s an instructive story about how community can work when it has to…and I’ll write it with the help of Sam Pratt. But in summary, the winning side prevailed through a combination of very skillful ideological management, relentless energy and lots of interaction between its members.

So, a community is a population that shares things in common, whether they’re online, offline, local or global and whether the thing that’s shared is an interest, cause, need, passion, proximity or ideology.

I would argue the thing that’s shared is a determinant of the strength of the community, with the proviso that the degree of member interaction plays a huge part in the degree of stickiness.

This is a big and emotive subject.

What do you think community is?

This should be interesting. Thessy (pronounced Tessie) is creating a start-from-scratch community based not just on proximity, but shared values. Somewhere between a commune and a New York City co-op, Thessy is planning a ‘co-housing’ community where membership is predicated on alignment with a set of value enshrined in a Manifesto. A key element of this is engagement with your neighbors beyond a nod on the way to the trash chute (this is radical for New York City).

Utopian Communities

This is not without precedent. There were several start-from-scratch communities in nineteenth century America built around progressive ideals. Known as the Utopian Movement, they were social experiments, many with the mission to counter the social disintegration that their members believed accompanied industrialization

Arguably neighborhoods like Brooklyn’s infamous Park Slope, packed with champagne socialists and Militant Mothers (a friend of mine was hissed at in a playground for bottle-feeding her baby) are also places where people share proximity and pretty explicit progressive values.

But this is going to be much more. It’s going to be an “intentional community”: a term used to describe the Utopian Movement and their modern equivalents, with a bit of commune thrown in. Each apartment will be self-contained but their will be shared spaces such as kitchens.

The degree of interaction will be much higher than the dreadful Park Slope where arguing over a sausage’s degree of organic-ness in the Park Slope Food Coop constitutes community!

Purpose/Vision

Interaction is mandated in Thessy’s Manifesto. Residents will share their skills by giving lectures about their passions and interests in shared spaces. There will be voting, bartering with an alternative community currency, and “engaging with the community in the common spaces for cooking & meals, music, painting, play, gardening and yoga”.

And residents will be selected not just on the basis of their robust tax return, but their robust values:

“Eco, sustainable, green, multi-cultural, ‘ yes we can’ attitude, living with kids & elderly, learning/teaching/sharing as a core value, participatory, efficient use of resources, mind & body fitness, gay/bi/trans/hetero, political activism, secular, individual freedom, consensus process to arrive at decisions, techno-hippy, intelligent, fun, warm, loving, edgy, unique.

Not: scared, timid, rigid, righteous, pretentious”

(By the way, I don’t know why New Yorkers tolerate the humiliating ordeal of sharing their personal financial details with their neighbors to be granted permission to buy an expensive apartment and then see those same neighbors every day knowing that they know how much you do or don’t earn. Bizarre).

Thessy is starting off with the two most important glue ingredients:

Number One. She’s laying the bedrock of a tight and stable community by writing a Manifesto that is explicit about the values to be shared. Values are the foundation of a robust community because they’re things we use to define ourselves as individuals, and by extension, the community. It’s a profound identification that’s hard to dismantle.

Number Two: She’s predisposing the community to have elevated levels of interaction by making it a condition of membership. The increased frequency of people rubbing together, around shared interests, needs and support, and especially values leads to the formation of sticky things like partnerships and friendships.

In other words, she’s starting with the two key ingredients of Social Glue: Purpose/Vision and Rubbing People Together.

So we have an interesting opportunity to see the birthing and growth of something approaching a Utopian community in a city not known for its love of intimacy and ideals. All Thessy has now is the Manifesto. It’s a pretty good one, and being explicit about the mission, shared values and expectations of members’ behavior, is a recipe for a pretty tight community.

Actually she has more. She is pulling together fifteen people to help refine the Manifesto, and recruit like-minded members “based on values, interests and fit”. And she has the confidence borne of seeing it work before. She part of her life in a squat-like community in Dusseldorf characterized not by dingy mattresses and meth, but fiscal responsibility, liberal values, an artistic environment and skill-sharing.

A social experiment

Stand by for more on how Thessy takes this from Manifesto to bricks and mortar; from idealism to reality with all the attendant obstacles and triumphs that this ambitious attempt at glue-creation will encounter.

I’m especially interested in a key principle she is employing. She hopes that the values she articulates in the Manifesto will attract those who align with them, and repel those who don’t. She does not plan to enforce these values. She’s prepared to see how the community evolves from this solid, values-based start. From what I have observed of community, lack of enforcement of values can lead to abuse and/or dilution of those values, which can alienate members for whom they are important.

This is clearly an interesting social experiment and I can’t wait to see what transpires.