It seems like everyone these days is hosting some exclusive event or creating a community. How to gather is an art form. It feels like we’re in the post-covid hangover phase where these experiences are undergoing a renaissance.
I grew up on the early internet - neopets, link cable trading pokemon on game boy, habbo hotel, world of warcraft guilds. I’m largely indebted to the company of others, whom I’ve learned a lot from and vastly increased my enjoyment of activities. When done well, these types of events and communities can be a force for good. We’re all better together.
I was going to write an angry screed about why the events suck but I’d rather expound the virtues of the best communities: I’ve heard good things about this book
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The best communities design around a core. This will likely be around yourself and the earliest members. This is because communities are largely single-player early days. Just like writing into the ether without early readership, it helps if you write about things you intrinsically care about. Eventually, you will find people who are into that thing in the same way as you. I have a theory about stickiness here. The more unique and exclusionary your initial vision is for your community. The harder it will be to find people and the longer your stretch of single player mode. However, you will have better loyalty and the more valuable it will be for each individual member.
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It helps if you, as the founder have a large rolodex and some favors you can call. As mentioned above, the more you can rely on yourself to pull in people, the more selective you can be. Sustain early lulls by seeding the community yourself by providing genuine value upfront before the network can be self-sustaining.
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As the creator, you must work tirelessly to uphold and enforce standards. Once you let things slide, you risk alienating the members for which you created the community for at the expense of those who don’t belong. There is a community for everyone. There’s no reason to fake exclusivity and status either. However, if you make an event around networking and learning, but then allow people to start selling. You will slowly dilute the community from people that are there in the spirit of the learning and connecting in the first place.
Same goes for communities. I remember in World of Warcraft in a group of 10 we would gather twice a week to kill powerful raid bosses which required careful coordination and listening. If one person was late or mis-played this would affect 9 other people. People who would eventually switch to a more high-performing group. There were casual raids where the culture had to be protected from become too “sweaty”. Most people worked demanding jobs, and didn’t want their hobby to start to feel like a job. All this to say is communities can dilute themselves and lose their identity catering to everyone and you as the curator must work tirelessly to prune, trim and re-graft to cultivate the community you want.
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Try to find 1% of contributors. There’s the 99/1 rule, roughly on social media platforms where 99% consume most of the content that 1% of the people create. There will always be some sort of power law due to human nature. Finding people that are always surfacing interesting things, meeting people, or reading books and want to share this with others are great first nodes.
I’ll close with a warning. If you want to fail at community building, you could start by convincing yourself you are starting it for x and then making all decisions around y. Start trying to be too selective or not enough. End up burning yourself and early members for carrying the community out. Don’t articulate your values well enough and be afraid of people being left out. End up alienating members due to incongruence and inconsistency. To be successful, just do the opposite.