Rosieland Roundup 147 — Don't forget your community roots

🌈 Good day and week to everyone, I hope it brings you sunshine and rainbows!

🤓 Before we dive in, here's a rosie reminder that we have a forum, Twitter Community and LinkedIn group (✨ this is a new one).

This week's headline comes inspired by a recent post made by Humans of New York, which I've copied below.

Hard to believe it’s been nearly three years since having conversations with strangers became a public health risk. Humans of New York changed a lot during those years. The element of randomness was removed. The stories became more in-depth, and carefully structured. Often I’d work on a single story for weeks, and unspool it over the course of an entire day. The process was very rewarding in a 'writerly' sort of way, but these past few weeks I’ve been getting back to my roots: walking all over the city, stopping strangers. I’ve realized how much I missed it: the physicality of the work, the spontaneity, the city itself. But mainly the endless, small moments of connection. There’s something about sharing the same space with people: hearing the same sounds, breathing the same air. There’s a magic that can’t be transmitted through a computer screen. It’s bringing me a lot of joy, so I’m going to keep doing it. For the foreseeable future, Humans of New York is going back to what it used to be: random conversations on the streets of New York City. Hopefully you'll enjoy meeting these people as much as I have.

In an age where we feel the need to present ourselves perfectly, create conversations that convert, and just constantly improve and increase "community engagement"...I hope we can all tap into moments of connection. Go to where the magic is. Trust our inner guides and values. Embrace what is and could be so magical.

And perhaps most importantly, let us not forget what brought the community together in the first place.

Community can get lost when we try to suck every single thing we can out of it and try to over-optimize. You may not be able to do things in real life, but we sure can let our hair down and look for ways of being more human with each other.

How can we design this into the communities we build?

🌈 Rosieland

• Freemium as a community strategy — I took a dive into the idea of building a community that is free and paid. [Paid]
• What do communities have to have?
• What are your thoughts about the Figma acquisition?
• Are community and capitalism at odds?

📰 Rosieland Roundup

• 10 lessons from 1 year as a community manager: Learnings from Max Pete: Please add Max to your list of awesome community people that bring sunshine to your world ☀️
• How to Convert Followers into a Community (Practical Tips): I love seeing Carmen's videos getting better and better 📺
• Connecting a multi-unit home to facilitate community living: I find community living fascinating, not sure I could ever do it, but I enjoy learning how others make decisions about all the little things. 🏘
• We have a new Verge comment system! — Verge have a new website and comment system, learn from their implementationand  thought process. 💬
• Your smallest community events are as important as your largest: big events are important, but we shouldn't forget the value of small events. By Angela Jin 🗓
• 10 Inspiring Resources to Help You Build Strong Friendships: a useful friendship resource from We Should Get Together. 🤗

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