Building Online Communities

Building an online community seems to have lots of similarities to building a physical
organisation:

1. shared purpose
2. shares stories - myths and celebrations
3. a champion or evangelist of the core
4. a culture developed through traditions, speech, actions, opinions, topics of discussion etc.

I read the book Organisaitonal Leadership. Many of the processes in leading, building, growing an
organisation in that book are in this articlecle.

The real bonus in any community as chromatic describes it, form my perspective, is the freedom for
individuals to let their passions take them in directions, to depths and to 'substantively different levels'
(e.g. quality or variety in presentation of the passion area).
The individual's sense of ownership can be maximised as there may possibly no limits of the freedom
to express their passion:

• number of pages of content created
• the structure, linking, heirachy of content
• the flavour of content - video, plan text, in-order or reader-decides-order, hardcopy or only web-based
• etc.
• summary, referenced or interpretive or grounded theory etc.

And the thing is, once someone is IN they are IN, unless rules of engagement at the start define what
is 'acceptable'.

Shared culture, a shared history, maybe only a shared start and the end point may not be related in any
way to where the community began