Technology doesn’t drive communities, people do
This is yet another brainstorm, and I must admit I’m not sure I completely agree with myself in certain areas. I wanted to get my thoughts down on paper and then reflect once I had something to read. If you have thoughts I’m all ears.
Following on the topic of Planning Online Communities that I explored the other day I’d like to brainstorm on another thought, and that is the crucial premise that “technology doesn’t drive communities, people do.”
It might seem paradoxical, but it does seem to be true; in order to best nurture and inspire online communities, you must first start by focusing on the offline elements.
To provide a bit of perspective here, I come from the stand point of a central academic unit seeking to draw together disparate communities of practice from across the institution to increase interaction with one another and facilitate discussion. The end goal being the enhancement of learning and teaching through a mutually beneficial, community-driven approach.
In this example it’s important to bear in mind that nowhere in the above paragraph did I specifically mention technology. Of course a technical component is likely to be involved; but the key objectives surround the activities of community, and the ultimate aim of enhancing learning and teaching. For many people - with the exception of early technological adopters - one does not naturally turn to technology first, nor is it something that is considered of inherent value in and of itself. Therefore to adequately realise the value systems of a prospective community you have to look towards the unique circumstances and motivators that characterise each group or individual.
Ultimately the online presence is a facilitating mechanism; it a means to an end rather than the end itself.
This aspect is really important in the scheme of things I think, because if an application takes centre stage over the activities and community that surround it - both online and offline - the wider mission is undermined and a project/network starts to lose sight of its primary purpose. So we must always focus on the human element, not the technology.
In deciding this there are immediately several questions that need to be explored. The first set concern the target audience:
- What communities exist?
- What is their nature? Formal, informal; organic, structured; heirarchical, equalising; fragile, robust; seeking anonymity or publicity; self-aware or otherwise?
- What are their needs?
- And above, what are their value systems; what do they consider relevant and important?
Here I would recommend referring to Etienne Wenger’s “Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System“, because it provides some invaluable insight into the nature of communities of practice, how they’re formed, how they grow and evolve, and how best to interact with them.
On thing is clear in Wenger’s article, each community of practice carries with it its own unique circumstances - including value system, heirarchy (or lackthereof), opinions, and other considerations. When dealing with large groups of people it’s critical to understand the subtle relationships and subcommunities that exist.
Bearing the fragile nature of these communities in mind, once you’ve tackled the fundamental questions you can start to narrow the focus to something more project-oriented:
- Which of the communities need to be consulted during the initial the planning processes?
- Which would benefit from being brought in later once the project was farther along?
- What activities can be organised to draw the communities together?
- How do you gain internal legitimacy within the communities?
- Where is there a need, but no community (e.g. a gap)?
All of these point to the importance of knowing the user community before even starting on the tech framework. As important as the questions covered previously are in resolving (a) The role of the individual, and b) Centralised versus Decentralised), the nature of the potential user community is as significant - if not more so. It can also be a major influence on the most appropriate course of action to take when planning the technical elements.
It would seem that, so far as the wider community is concerned, preservation and access to the community itself is of the utmost importance. In fact as some applications have shown, the technical framework can have no affect on the longevity or vibrancy of the surrounding community.
The first example that comes to mind here is Twitter. It’s of course not relevant for educational discussions, but the fact is the platform itself is crap - it’s unreliable, it has outages constantly, tools break and are left broken for ages - and yet there is still an exceptionally loyal user community that refuses to leave the application. This is despite the fact there are several other alternatives that offer far better functionality and features, and are basically technically superior.
When I’ve asked people why don’t they leave Twitter, the answer is almost always the same. “This is where my network is. If I leave Twitter I’ll loose my community contacts.” I’ve done some research into this and have found this to be the case too. The alternatives just lack the community presence that Twitter has, which makes them more unusable that Twitter is. Effectively they’re just social software applications without the social part.
The implications seem to be, users are tolerant of a sub-standard technical environment so long as there is a community surrounding it. They’re not nearly as tolerant of a superior technical environment with no community. You can always improve the technical aspects; the community part is much more difficult.
Sunday, July 27th, 2008