This website is in it's third effort as a community. The first was a move of 15 or so members split off of the old builder.com "Buzz" forum. Forming their own community when builder.com merged with another website after being purchased by another company. The website became commercial, charging a subscription for participation. This did not sit well with many long time members. The second generation came when a member could no longer support the webserver and as a result both the webserver and the software used were changed. They went with Apache and phpBB forum from IIS and Snitz ASP forum. The third generation is this website. I split off from the Hiveminds.org site because I felt that the community was stagnate and needed to change it's direction so that members could contribute more than just a post or two to a forum. With each change the work became harder and members were lost. At present none of the orginal Builder Buzzes size and popularity remains. The builder.com.com website no longer shows any signs of community involvement. It is basically a large advertising space (this domain has been taken over by builder.au since the original writing). The Hiveminds.org website though busy at times remains set with a group of 10 or so members that post to the forum once a month on average. This website Hiveminds.co.uk though very active most of this activity comes form myself and a handful of ex-students that visit and share a Virtual Private Network built for an e-learning project.

Community green thumb

A community has to be grown wild and organically or it will fail. Control comes with time and growth.

If you plant the right seeds things will happen on their own. But one of the things that many communities fail to do is to allow for growth. People grow and change. As they change a community has to have the ability to allow them space and nuture them. If this is not done then they outgrow the community and look for better more interesting things. It okay to be passionate about a reason for starting a community but it is also important not to let that passion stand in the way of the comminity members growth.

A good example of this is the Sitepoint forums. 5 years ago Site point looked nothing like it does today. The website and community have grown while the management and volunteers have made changes to show that they care about their membership. Sitepoint has made changes for profit when those changes did not go against the flexibilty needed to adapt to the community. If you compare this to the Builder.com Buzz forum you will see a big difference. Builder Buzz had too much difficulty adjusting to its membership growth. Builder.com after being purchased also tried to force a monetary solution on it membership and lost its seed group. So now after a few more tries at rebuilding Builder Buzz is dead. These two website have been around since the late 90's. But they have gone it two very different directions as far community is concerned.

Bearing fruit

The success of a community and its size may vary. The effort may not give expected results but the work still pays off in knowledge and experience.

Sometimes no matter how big the need or how hard you work things just don't happen as fast as you think they should. A good case for this is Typo3board.com. This community is very unique in that Typo3 has a very large email list. But the Typo3board has had a hard time forming groups from this. Although email lists are convenient they are not in any way a community. Email list require other software to get groups to gel. This is what Yahoo and Google Groups are all about. But even these big guns have a hardtime making email work to cement together groups. It is the nature of email that is the culprit here. It was not designed for building communities. Sticking with a forum will bear better fruit and a more solid community structure. My advice is if you believe in the community then stick with it and work even harder.

Letting go

Community members will change and accept different roles and participate in different manners. Being user friendly and being willing to allow change to happen is most important.

Community software is a key ingredient that never really gets talked about much. Without the right software then a community will not happen. Without the right software you only have a large communications network, not a community. An example being that Facebook is not a community but Digg seem to have a thriving underlying community.

Many ask why phpBB is so popular if it is not the best code. Well it because phpBB contains the ingredients that make forming a community easy as it can be. phpBB also has user friendliness on it's side. So it does not matter if it is "spagetti code" underneath on top it is all about the community.

Leaders and Lurkers

Leadership can come from the most unlikely place. Always be ready to give responsibilty, respect and credit to all. Even a lurker can rise to a leadership role if the environment is right.

If your community does not have a visible heirarchy then it will flop after a time. You may be able to get visitors in the thousands because of your content and the needs of the visitors but a community will never form. Volunteers like recongnition as much as anyone else. A title or role is nice to have but it does nothing if the volunteer cannot show what they have done or get immediate recongnition for their participation in a group. Volunteers do it because they want to be in on the process of decision making and have some say so in the final outcome of that process. they want to show others what they can do. This is why people volunteer in the real world and why they do it online. But they also want others to know about it. Yes, it may sound egotistical but it is human nature and it is a good thing. It's a good thing bcause without this the volunteer process would never work. The need to show and tell others about your accomplishments is what makes us social. In short badges are needed and wanted. Offering them will get you volunteers and make leaders of those.

Involvement is investment

Being constanlty vigil and involved is a key investment in building a group or groups. Groups and clusters formed during regular visits to get new information are the key to a community.

If you are a party goer then you must know the ingredients for a great party. The host has to have food, entertainment, mingle and have invited others that like to socialize in general. If you take these ingredients and translate them to online comparisons then you will build a great community.

Reality is the best reason

Groups and networks based on real life meets and events are the best and easiest to work with.

Groups that already have something in common translate very well to an online community. But real life networking is not a prerequisite. You can actually form a real life group based on the virtual community. Doing this fortifies the community and gives it more appeal.

Much has been written about the theory that a successful community is based on five needs. I feel that there are actually six. The sixth being a "catalyst". A catalyst can be many things a real world event, trend, new discovery, person or persons. A catalyst differs from a purpose in that a purpose is defined while a catalyst has to exist on it's own. Many a community have been built an failed because there was no catalyst. Many communities burn out because the catalyst becomes inert or just goes missing. Something in the community has to initiate movement, be the heart beat otherwise it dies. Many communities built around Microsoft Active Server Pages lost their catalyst when Microsoft stopped developement of ASP in favor of ASP.NET. The trend had run it's course. Some catalysts are have longer lives than others but none of them are permanent. Persons and trends are longer lasting than events. An event can be forgotten unless it is a re-occurring one like the Olympics. But something like the lunar landing is forgotten to most and becomes history rather than a memorable event.

Doing it right

1. Make sure you have a good reason for wanting a community
2. Most people have more than one interest. Decide on how many interests you have and if a community can be built around them. You may find that just one community does no fill the pupose and plan on building several.
3. Critical to starting up is deciding if the membership is going to be Public or Private.
4. Who are they? The ones that will participate. Why should they participate? Is it ten that care or ten thousand?
5. Start planning for expansion and control from the start. They may not be needed but always go for the worst case scenario and have a solution for it.
6. Sometimes things will go in a direction that you had not planned on. Make sure the plan is fast and flexible so you can adapt.
7. Wild and organic is how you want to grow the community but you need to set rulesand bounderies from the start so that members know what they are gettin involved with.
8. Where will the members come from? It is important to decide on the source of members and how you will reach them.
9. A plan of action for getting administrators, moderators and other volunteers should be made. You should know how you will set their roles and them credit and feedback to keep them satisfied. You should also know how you will make their standing in the community visible to the other members.
10. Documentation and information that a volunteer will need along with how to train them should be planned and created.
11. Find some seedlings. People who can help you seed the community and test your ability to train and inform volunteers.
12. PPP. Plant your seeds, Publicize the community and Participate regulary.
13. Keep it light and good natured. You are out to make friends and social connections do things based on this. It never hurts to laugh a little.

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