Communities: We All Want to Belong, Or Do We?

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Jun 2, 2011

This month at CMSWire we are doing a special focus on the role of Communities in Enterprise 2.0. While I don't argue that the need and demand for developing and encouraging communities is there, I'm not completely sure it's something everyone really wants to be a part of.

Community: What's in a Name?

I think the term "community" throws me for a loop sometimes. It means different things to different people. Some say having an account on Facebook or Twitter makes you part of a community because you are connected — presumably — to people you have things in common with. But I don't see that as community really.

Others refer to groups at work as a community — like a team working on a project. But I've never really considered my teams, project or otherwise, as communities. Aren't communities supposed to be tight-knit groups of people with common interests and goals? While I have respected many of the people I have worked on teams with, I would rarely ever call us "close-knit".

But maybe I'm really over thinking the term. The best description of communities I've been given came from David Coleman, Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies. David defined the difference between networks and communities to me the other day:

Networks are large groups of people with loose social ties (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn).
Communities rely on the strength of social ties, where your being there is important (i.e being a part of a LinkedIn group where you always participate and would be missed if you left).

These definitions make sense to me, but I'm still unsure and here's why: I am a part of a number of "communities" — the ProBlogger Community, the Writer's Market Community, the SharePoint HUGS LinkedIn Group and that list goes on. These are all called/considered Communities, some are really networks by David's definitions. But you know what? I rarely participate. It's not that I don't want to, it's that I either don't have time, or I have nothing I feel is valuable to add.

Active Participation Makes a Community Strong

I don't think I am alone feeling this way. I think in some ways we all want to be a part of something bigger than we are — like many communities are. We want to have our ideas and opinions heard (because we definitely have them) and for the most part we do want to help others (as long as it doesn't hurt us). But it takes time and effort to get involved and stay involved. And not all of us are up to that task.

Internal communities are probably the easiest to put things in perspective here. Internal communities are about a groups of people working and collaborating for a common goal. That goal can be to create new ideas for a company or to work on a particular project or it could be something else altogether. To help us collaborate more easily management drops in some shiny new tools, maybe provides a little training on how to use them (just in case we've never blogged or tweeted, or Facebooked before) and let's us have at it.

But they often forget the most important thing, the human factor: we don't always like to share. It could be I'm the most knowledgeable person in my "Developer community" on the subject of SharePoint — and everyone wants to know about SharePoint right? But why would I want to convey all my hard earned knowledge to another developer? Then I am not so important, someone else is now smarter too. I put all my hard earned knowledge in the tool — I blog, I micro-post answers, I give away all my best URLs, etc.. Do you need me anymore? Do I deserve that extra bonus at the end of the year, or the 5% pay raise I'm getting ready to ask for? I bet not!