Posted: June 23rd, 2003 | No Comments »
The 9 design strategies for community building mentionned in Community Building by Amy Jo Kim:
Define and articulate your purpose: communities come to life when they fulfill an ongoing need in people’s lives
Build flexible, extensible gathering places: once you’ve defined your purpose, you’ll want to build a flexible, small-scale infrstructure of gathering places, which you and your members will work together to evolve
Create meaningful and evolving member profiles: you can get to know your members, and help them get to know each other (developping member’s profiles to build trust and foster relationships)
Design a rage of roles: provide guidance to newcomers while offering leadership, ownership opportunities to more experienced members
Develop a strong leadership program: communitiy leaders greet visitors, encourage newbies, teach classes, answer questions, and deal with trouble makers
Encourage appropriate etiquette: it is crucial to develop some groundrules for participation
Promote cycle events: to develop a loyal following and foster deeper relationships among your members, you’ll want to establish regular online events,, and help members develop and run their own events
Integrate the rituals of community life: by celebrating holidays, marking seasonal changes, and acknoledging personal transitions and rites of passage, you’ll be laying the foundation for a true online culture
Faciliate member-run subgroups: if you grow a large-scale community you’ll want to provide technologies to help your members create and run sub-groups
Vivian pointed me to another book worth reading on the subject of online communities: “Design for Community” by Derek M. Powazek.
