I first started writing about CKM back in 2023. I've always had a pull towards the idea of carefully curating, research and managing community related data. It feels even more important in today's AI world.
I say this to the point where I don't think I could ever build community again without a CKM mindset. Nah, nope, going deep on research and CKM is the only way for the kind of communities I'm interested in.
Maybe this seems over the top to some. Or it may sound boring. But honestly, research, with community in mind, is so much fun. We can be creative. We can explore. We can design. We can converse. And make friends all along the way. We can have a vision of where we are heading, but have flexibility with the paths we create.
And now I have many better ideas and strategies on how to approach it. Much of this has been formed over the past 3 years of going deep into implementing practices within the MoTaverse.
My latest definition of Community Knowledge Management, goes something like this:
The goal is for it to become a living, queryable foundation to support or be the products we build.
When I first started on my CKM journey, it used to be about curating and saving the right things. Now it's about recognising that everything is a community data point. And those data points build products.
I used to think of it as a community brain, taken from the concept of the second brain. And to some extent it is still a community brain, but really we have to figure out how to observe and use it. Otherwise it's just like being brain dead, that's not good to anyone. Really, CKM is so much more than a community brain.
A forum post, a podcast, a talk, a comment, a member profile, a meme, an unanswered question. All of it is community knowledge. All of it is product fuel. The difference between communities that thrive and those that don't will be whether they built the foundation to make that knowledge structured, queryable and usable. Not just by humans, but by the AI systems that increasingly power what we build.
Community Knowledge Management as a Product Mindset
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