I think this is all part of our industrial era psyche of homogenisation (one-size-fits-all/economies of scale)

Consumers are not all the same, and we are PEOPLE anyway. As you say each bunch of people, location, situation, pursuit is different, and requires unique processes, leadership and dynamics that suit that pool. This also helps them deal with uncertainty and adapt best to their unique context.

It’s like my local blockbuster video shop who don’t really order movies for the local audience, they seem to be ordered from head office with disregard for their customers tastes…it seems that way anyway.

The transitions community seems a great project, and would be interesting to observe the different approaches used by each community, as the premise of each is similar, only differing in location.

I’m sure you have good practice models, but I’m also sure by allowing bottom-up dynamics to flourish that you will have even more examples and anecdotes to update to your good practices.

Quality over Quantity every time - but this runs directly in the face of current organisational theory (participation as seen as quantitative engagement metric) and software sales (community/network software is either afforded by banner ads or product sales so either need volume of participants).

Also I would guess it depends on the personality types in a small group - and proximity of their shared passion (and other stuff like time and resources at their disposal).

I’m hanging around with http://www.transitionnetwork.org a lot at the moment (recommend having a look at what they are up to as they are a network which supports local communities!) - helping them identify how to best use the web to connect their wide range of stakeholders over specific things.

One of the many things I’m learning is that pre-forming community group models and assuming they will fit snugly into any centralised expectation of behaviour and technology use is a big risk (and possibly one of the big flaws in all the community modelling stuff I’ve seen over the years) as new self-starting bottom up Transition communities are springing up all over the world, and one pre-canned model for their behaviours, processes and protocols simply won’t work as they are all in different contexts personalities etc.

The ‘membership’ of the local communities (I use that word carefully as Transition is definitely an enabling network supporting all these micro-communities) need to define their own processes and protocols and interfaces to the rest of the Transition eco-system, as well as their own definitions of success; otherwise they won’t buy into them.

What we can do from a key node, however, is set terms and standards for sharing stuff (semweb style aggregation and re-syndication), and propose a central measurement model to indicate progress with indicators around carbon reduction, community resilience… So we’re aiming to focus on outcomes rather than ongoing quantiative assessments…

(end ramble!)

cheers

I know what you mean…on paper a community with 200 members sounds successful, as long as further questions are not asked about contributions.

I really like contextual membership labels, Miguel shared these labels with me via a LinkedIn conversation:

“- User with more than one message: “Phil Collins - Member”.
- User with more than seven messages: “Phileas Fogg - Active member”.
- User with over 50 messages: “Ebenezer Scrooge - Contributor”.
- User with over 150 messages: “Diane LeMoult - Pillar of community”.
- User with over 500 messages: “PG Wodehouse - Sould of the party”.
- User with over 1000 messages: “Isaac Asimov - Community brahmin”. ”

If you are talking about groups that are emergent or completely member-directed then you don’t care about size. You may even purge your membership of non-productive individuals. But you may not call yourself a community.

Another POV for institutionally-sponsored communities is that for most organisations they actually have a portfolio of community groups. Some are big n baggy. Some are small n feisty. And this diversity is good…