International Community Day 2022

It’s a wrap. International Community Day on October 8th is over. What a day. We started off with an impulse from Georg Holzknecht talking about that the current hierarchy structure of most companies leads to people and thoughts to bump against each other. He used a triangular to symbolize this. A much better intuitive way, where every one is included and everyone can develop themself and their abilities would be if we all work in circles instead of triangles. Multiple circles, supporting all the others, leaving people room to self-organize. Those circles are the communities. How do you relate to this??

?? We then travelled to the Netherlands. Kirsten Wagenaar showed us the state of community management. It is always fascinating to see what kind of similarities and differences are in the community space worldwide between the countries. For example there are much more owned platform communities in the Netherlands than there are in Germany in comparison to all communities in the country. There are a lot of people working in the community industry in the Netherlands but most of them don’t go by the name of a community manager. Two reasons for that: Companies make up their own names and a lot of people don’t even know, that they are doing the work of a community manager.?

???Christiane Beule showed us in her session with Sandra Ebertshaeuser how important the personal factor in a community is. Instead of flyers to greet the new people, they go there and welcome them personally. This has a much higher impact and leads to closer connections. She also talked about that every work that is done voluntarily needs someone who is doing it professionally for everything to work. There is only so much you can put in it voluntarily. I also really loved the German phrase ?Schubladen auf denken“.?

???In my session we discussed the intrinsic motivation that brings people to work in communities. And also that it needs one person that goes ahead and is a motivation for all the others: an idol sort of. We talked about anonymity versus identity in networks and communities and how big a community should be.?

????By holding the room in the unknown, something new can unfold“ was one of the lead sentences Juri Erche offered in his session. We all need space to unfold ourself and therefore the potential of a community. We also discussed ?the art of letting go“. We can’t and shouldn’t control everything. Especially not when building communities. Voluntarily is key. And working teams are not the same as a community. We talked about authenticity and that you need time to reflect, that is the only way you can learn.?

We finished the session with open questions. Do we ask the right questions: How many people are active in a community? What does engagement mean? How can everyone can get the most out of a community for themself? - It is not about that there are not enough people or that they don’t engage enough. The value of a community lies somewhere else, it lies in the value every single person get’s out for themself. No matter if there are 5 or 500 other engaged people in the community.?

To do so communities need trust, openness, authenticity and safety. We are all part of the social space and nee to reestablish a social contract.?

??? Adrian Speyer told us about his experiences in the community space and how a person deleted the whole content on a community platform while trying to change his username. We talked about, that you need to take care of yourself in order to be able to take care of a community. No healthy you, no healthy community. Deb just started a discussion about this yesterday. Our topic was also, that you need to show personality. We all are human beings, so show it and be authentic.

???There also have been postings from various people and companies like Serena Snoad , Ahmadou DIALLO ? , Stefan Jacobi , Roslyn Snyder , Storm Motohata and iFixit that celebrated the day. I’ll put all the links in the comment section.?Specials thanks also to Doro de Weerdt , Anne Schreiber , Sebastian Schock and Bernhard Sterchi

Let’s celebrate communities and recognize the work we do. Not just on that one day, but the whole year around.?