5 Ingredients for Building Community Over the past few years, people often ask how Designer Fund has built a community of over 100 top designers including founders, leads and angels. Building and sustaining our community from the ground up hasn’t been easy. I’ve learned that you need to intentionally design a community with at least five key ingredients: Purpose, People, Practice, Place, and Progress. People naturally gravitate to communities that represent their values and beliefs. The mission behind an organization is fundamental to our personal narrative of “why” we should spend our time and money toward it. Just look at any religion, cause, brand or company you care about. For example, Designer Fund believes the world needs better designed products and services especially in markets that traditionally lack design innovation like education, health, and energy. A purpose statement can only go so far. “There’s a universal human yearning to belong—the desire to feel welcomed, respected, and appreciated for who you are.”
Are You Leading a Tribe? Source: Flickr/James Cridland. Every Monday and Thursday I publish a new article on SamuelThomasDavies.com… …And every Monday and Thursday, somebody unsubscribes. This used to really bother me. But then I read Seth Godin’s Tribes and realised something important, something we can all use… You Need a Loyal Tribe “A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea”, writes Godin. [1] A community needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’re probably interested in improving habits, adding new skills and sustaining excellence. Like you, I also want to improve my performance, grow my career and gain a competitive edge in life. And by publishing a new article every Monday and Thursday, I have a way to communicate what works for me, and what will work for you, too. But our shared interest, this blog, it isn’t for everyone. And do you know what? Examples… Dating.
How Creative Mornings Runs Their 106 Monthly Chapters For six months in a row, I told myself I’d wake up at 6AM and get out the door to a monthly CreativeMornings event. Instead, I’d hit snooze every time, missing it and then perusing the event photos longingly a few days later. Last month, I was determined to break the cycle. So, at 8AM on February 13, I filled out my online profile, packed away some business cards, and headed out into the misty Seattle morning. As soon as I arrived, I knew why this series had captured the hearts and minds of creatives in 106 cities around the world. Later that day, I spoke with Sally Rumble, CreativeMornings’ Chief Happiness Officer, on how they’ve scaled their events and scaled the magic that comes with them. Whether you’re at a startup or established company, you may be asking yourself: how do they manage all of this? Today, Sally shares with us how the CreativeMornings team has built a global community of volunteers to spread CreativeMornings around the world. Step One: Listen To Your Members 3.
How to Acquire New Customers with Social Media Social media has become a preferred and convenient method of attracting new customers for businesses across a wide variety of verticals. From those in retail to others in IT, the five biggest social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest — are still growing, and research indicates that almost three-quarters of all Americans are using at least one of these networks. Not to mention social collectives like reddit and social discover platforms like StumbleUpon are hot on the tails on of these giants as well. Keeping these facts in mind, it’s important for social media marketers to be thorough, systematic and innovative in their methods of acquiring new customers through digital channels. Step One: Researching Demographics and Making Audience Profiles Every product or service has a target market, and the more pinpointed marketers are with descriptions of audience profiles, the better their social media results will be. Key Analytics for Five Social Media Sites
My CodeConf Talk: Your Community Is Your Best Feature Had a blast this weekend at GitHub's inaugural conference, CodeConf, where I got to give a new talk on building community around open source software based on my experience at Expert Labs running ThinkUp. CodeConf didn't record audio or video of any of the talks, so I'm posting a transcript of mine here. Enjoy. Photo by faunzy. I used to think that the process of making open source software went like this: you write software, you apply your open source license of choice to it, and you publish the source. Hi. Now, I've got to be upfront with you. Back in early 2009 I’d just finished a four year stint writing a web site about productivity software called Lifehacker. I only had this vague notion of what went on behind the scenes. So it’s February of 2009, and I’ve written this simple script, a to-do list manager, and posted it on Lifehacker, and people really like it, and it’s a command line tool, so it’s attracting open source hackers who have a lot more experience than I do. Greg wrote:
The 10 Traits of a Positive Community “Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.” – Paul Ryan Humans are made to live and work with others; we are social beings evolved to exist within communities. The quality of the communities productive to the degree of engagement and happiness individuals can draw from community interactions and sadly some communities promote feelings of self-doubt and isolation. Positive communities are groups that inspire their members in ways that promote sense self-discovery and group connection, encouraging members to express their beliefs and values, as well as build relationships with others. The Importance of Positive Communities Involvement in a positive and encouraging community has a tangible impact on individual self-awareness and fulfillment. Positive community experiences also provide members with a sense of belonging and the feeling of being able to express themselves without feeling judged. Promote Fairness
Scaling Facebook Groups — HS Hackers It’s been a little over 9 months since my baby was conceived, which is pretty impressive considering I don’t have a womb or any female reproductive anatomy. That’s because I’m talking about a virtual birth, one which I’ve had the luck, privilege, and sometimes duty, to have brought into this world. It’s been one hell of a ride—in the course of a school year, our group has grown to include high schoolers from all 50 states and more than a dozen countries, organizers from nearly every major U.S. college hackathon, newly-minted founders of high school hackathons and hacker meetups, and yes, even the president of Y Combinator. In sharing our story with the wider hacker community, I hope that others — especially other high-schoolers—will be inspired to learn from our mistakes, and maybe even start their own communities. Trimester 0: Conception But I didn’t know any of that at the time. Trimester I: Signs of Life Almost exactly two months after PennApps, I found myself at another hackathon.
Digital Engagement Framework Mobiliser les quartiers populaires Le community organizing suscite un réel engouement en France depuis quelques années chez tous ceux qui s’intéressent aux quartiers populaires. Des colloques ont été organisés, des rapports lui ont été consacrés, et il fait l’objet d’un intérêt croissant dans les milieux du travail social et de la politique de la ville en quête de renouveau. Les travaux en langue française sur la question sont pourtant rares, à l’exception de la référence à Saul Alinsky, père fondateur de cette mouvance, qui a fait l’objet de plusieurs ouvrages récents. Cet engouement français fait suite au retour en grâce de la pratique aux États-Unis, l’élection de Barack Obama en 2008 ayant contribué à redonner de l’attrait à une pratique jusqu’alors peu visible, voire jugée désuète. Le candidat démocrate a en effet largement valorisé son expérience de community organizer, tant dans la construction de son récit personnel que dans ses techniques de mobilisations électorales. Une importation française ? J. M. H. T. S. M.
Démocratie et citoyenneté: la France peut-elle s'inspirer du community organizing à l'américaine? Temps de lecture: 8 min Un remède à la crise que traversent nos démocraties existe déjà. Il a été inventé aux Etats-Unis il y a plus de 70 ans et permettrait de redonner aux citoyens le goût de la politique en même temps que la capacité d'agir sur ce qui les concerne. C'est en tout cas ce que pensent certains chercheurs et militants. En 1940, cet universitaire engagé a «organisé» un quartier de Chicago en regroupant différentes communautés et permettant à ses habitants d’infléchir le rapport de force habituel et de défier les pouvoirs publics locaux aussi bien que les entreprises. Ces collectifs d'associations, pour la plupart religieuses, s'attaquent alors à des questions telles que le logement, l'emploi, la sécurité ou les salaires, à travers des actions directes non violentes (grève d'impôts, arrivée en masse dans les bureaux d'un fonctionnaire pour exiger un rendez-vous, manifestation devant la maison d'un propriétaire d'un taudis de banlieue...). Créer du conflit De Clinton à Obama
Hierarchy of Social Participation As part of the article I’m working on for the and Social Issues on using web 2.0 to promote civic discourse in museums, I’m developing an argument about the “hierarchy of social participation.” I believe that, as with basic human needs, experience design in museums (and for other content platforms) can occur on many levels, and that it is hard to achieve the highest level without satisfying, or at least understanding, those that come before it. One of the impediments to discourse in museums is that fact that designers want to jump straight from individuals interacting with content to interacting with each other. It’s a tall order to get strangers to talk to each other, let alone have a meaningful discussion. And so, I offer the following hierarchy of social participation. As always, comments are encouraged—and in this case, strongly desired as I work on refining this content for the article. Level 1: Individual Receives Content (Museum to Me) This is the level where web 2.0 sits.
The Community Canvas Community participation, community development and non-formal education Contents: introduction • non-formal education and community education • competing definitions and perspectives in the contemporary context • the state and top-down v bottom-up approaches to community • programmes to promote non-formal education, community participation and development in the South – in practice • conclusions • references • acknowledgements • how to cite this piece Although community participation and community development are terms that have such current connotations, both have actually been around for some considerable time. In the post-Second World War period, community development was defined as a ‘movement designed to promote better living for the whole community with the active participation and on the initiative of the community’. This definition arose in the context of strategies to promote development in Britain’s colonies (Report of the Ashridge Conference, 1954, quoted in du Sautoy 1958: 2). Non-formal education and community education Conclusions Bibliography