This week in community building — Issue 62

👩🏽‍💻 I’ve been tinkering away, as always, on our Notion Knowledgebase.

Supernatural’s bonkers series finale marked the end of an era of fandom

From Vox

Co-creation sings to my heart 🥰

The show’s fandom was perhaps one of the first to help usher in the modern era of geek culture: an environment in which creative teams coexist with its series’ fans, evolving the show in harmony with them rather than in spite of or in direct opposition to them. This is a lesson plenty of newer franchises have failed to learn, to their ultimate detriment, but that many others have also taken in stride.

As internet forums die off, finding community can be harder than ever

From Engadget

ℹ There was a long discussion on this article on Hackernews.

Personally, I'm betting on the bright future for forums, though more with the angle of being a community digital garden. 🌱

Before social networks took over the internet, message boards were perhaps the most essential way for people to come together online and talk about whatever was on their minds. Our discussion spaces have evolved dramatically, though -- message boards aren't as important as they used to be, thanks to the decade-long onslaught of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and more. Many formerly prominent destinations are closing up shop, including the message board I called my online home for well over a decade.

Jason Reynolds: 'Snoop Dogg once told white folks: 'I know you hate me. But your kids don't.' That's how I feel'

The Guardian👀 Just me who wants to go and buy all his books? (If you do, try going through Bookshop instead of Amazon 👍🏼)

But the children are never the problem. It’s the parents. The kids are always fun, and they’re reading the same books as kids in Brooklyn and LA. It doesn’t matter if their daddy is a racist, because their babies are reading Ghost!” he laughs. “It’s like back in the 1990s when Snoop Dogg, this weed-smoking dude from Long Beach, became a superstar. He told white folks: ‘I know you hate me. But your kids don’t.’ That’s how I feel.”

Chief Notion Officer

From Julian Lehr

It makes total sense, to me at least! Companies are communities too...and ala 'community digital gardens' knowledge can be a huge part of bringing and keeping people together.

A friend at Stripe recently suggested – half-jokingly – that we should hire a librarian to organize all our internal data and documentation. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. Perhaps every company should hire a Chief Notion Officer once it hits 100 employees?!

More…

• Will the Coronavirus Wedding Model Outlive the Coronavirus? — Table Mag
• Which Self Do You Bring To The Community? — Julian Stodd
• For fans of BTS, the only thing better than the group is each other — The Washington Post
• Courtland Allen: The Strategic and Tactical Elements of Community — John Saddington
• Onboarding new community members: some thoughts — Andy McIlwain
• "Managing Up" to Achieve Developer Community Success — Tessa Kriesel
• Building niche and vibrant Voiceflow communities all over the world — Build With Users
• Developer Personas — Driven by Motivation — Tessa Kriesel
• How the Future of Community Can Be Found in the History of Open Source with Nadia Eghbal — Masters of Community
• Instigating grassroots culture change 🧩 Steve Garguilo, Cultivate — Get Together 🎧
• Continued Learning on Hosting Virtual Events — Jacob Cohen Donnelly
• The Community Fund: How We Source, Select, and Support Startups — The Community Fund 💰
• 21: Everyone wants the big title — IB4TL 🎧
• Episode 04: Creative organizing under Crisis — Dubai Design Week 📺
• EP73: 3 Step Model for Building Community Trust w/ Twitter — C2C Podcast 🎧
• Social media predictions for 2021 — Greg Isenberg
• See and understand your data — Geraldine Zanolli
• Fireside chat on product-led communities with Erin Staples — The Community Club
• 📻 — Building a Community, Step by Step: The Operating System — John Saddington
• What makes a community great? — Richard Millington
• Fireside chat on paid communities with Preet Singh — The Community Club

Trends

Stories

LinkedIn launched stories what feels like a century ago now. And now Twitter has Fleets. What use to be every platform focusing deeply on one thing is now seeing platforms spreading their wings and providing more options to engage with their people and community.

I think I'm enjoying this trend!

Memberships

Everyone is going after memberships. Squarespace and Gumtree are the most recent to join in on the offering.

This is great, but as community builders we need to be aware selling a recurring membership is 100x harder than selling a one off item. Build this into your thinking of what you decide to build.And on this note I'm in the process of updating the Notion Tools database to list all the membership tools I know of, check out the Paid Membership topic page for updates.

🐦 Tweets