I have been working on my own personal beliefs as to what community is and what community should be. For those who read this, please understand I am still very early in my journey and what is contained below is only my current thinking on this matter. I have by no means reached a full understanding or drawn concrete conclusions as to what I believe community to be. I am also not making any sort of geographic comparisons. I have enjoyed every group I have visited or spoken at, and ultimately a group will provide what its members need or it will fail.

Background

I have always enjoyed people. In fact, I really enjoy hanging out with people, learning from other people, and bringing people together into community. In my view, we are all just 6.6 billion people trying to live our lives. When you look around, almost everything you see is here because there are people; roads, signs, houses, soda, clothes, etc. Therefore, to me, people are the most important things in the world.

Defining Community

Through my passion for people, I have come to believe that community is about more than just user group meetings, code camps, and attendance levels. In my opinion, those characteristics define an association or a club. And while to some extent the level of participation of the attendees in organized events is a factor, I believe community is defined by what happens outside of the organized events. I would summarize this as relational dynamics, or the inter-personal relationships between members of the community.

The problem with trying to define community, however, is that "Community [is] defined similarly but experienced differently by people with diverse backgrounds."(1) Despite the difficulty in defining community, the study was able to identify 18 common characteristics among the respondents. These characteristics include locus, sharing, action, ties, responsibility, unity, services and survival:

Lessons Learned

I found myself taking away several important concepts from the time I have spent at various user groups and code camps in the east region.

Extracurricular Interaction

Extracurricular interaction and communication is extremely important for community. Imagine a new home development with a homeowners association. If the only interaction the neighbors of this development had was at the HOA meetings, would you really call the neighborhood a community? Of course not, it takes interaction outside of organized events to foster relationships and community. One thing I have found that supports this is to invite attendees to a geek dinner after every monthly meeting. I feel this is a fantastic way to help build relationships and promote interaction among a community's members.

Leadership

I have learned that leadership is more important than I had previously thought. Leadership in fact plays a fundamental role in the success of a true community. While I had heard this said previously, I did not understand the extent to which this is important. An effective community requires passionate and dedicated leaders who not only strive to develop community as a whole, but who also work to bring other members up into more active roles, who then become leaders in their own right.

Along with leadership comes the understanding that community is not for the leaders, it is "by the community, for the community." I believe all of the groups I have had the pleasure of participating in already do a pretty good job of this and strive to provide relevant and worthwhile events for their attendees.

Time

Community is also not something that happens overnight. Relationships take time to grow and develop and have to be fostered. During this time, one of the beneficial steps I have seen user groups take is to invite all of their attendees out for food and/or drinks after each event, at the attendees cost. This is a wonderful way to help promote the interpersonal relationships required for community.

There is also an evolution that happens within user groups as time progresses. This evolution can occur in virtually every aspect of a user group, and it is a very good thing. It helps the group stay fluid, involved, and meeting the needs of its attendees.

Communication

A community must be willing to openly communicate its thoughts, concerns and beliefs. One of the best examples I have seen of this communication were some discussions that took place at the CodeStock conference in Knoxville Tennessee on August 9^th, 2008. While some folks disagree about the "Open Spaces" designation that was given to these discussions, I feel that what matters most is not whether it conformed to any one person's ideal or followed some technical formula, but rather the benefit it had on the individuals who participated. I myself felt immensely privileged to have taken part in those discussions with so many of my peers that I know and respect. The free flow of ideas, mutual respect of differing opinions, the flow of ideas from one to the next, no topic being off limits, and the knowledge that was imparted were extraordinary.

If you would like to view one of these discussions, Wally McClure (More Wally!) has provided several videos on his blog about CodeStock:
http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2008/08/15/asp-net-podcast-show-122-codestock-openspaces-discussion-regarding-orm.aspx

http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2008/08/20/asp-net-podcast-show-123-community-discussion-at-codestock.aspx

References

1. "What Is Community? An Evidence-Based Definition for Participatory Public Health" by Kathleen M. MacQueen, PhD, MPH, Eleanor McLellan, MA, David S. Metzger, PhD, Susan Kegeles, PhD, Ronald P. Strauss, PhD, Roseanne Scotti, MA, Lynn Blanchard, PhD and Robert T. Trotter, II, PhD
   American Journal of Public Health 1929-1938,December 2001, Vol 91, No. 12