Recruiting Initial Communities

I've come to think about the spread of social media (more properly thought of as community-building) as a viral phenomenon.  Create a couple of stong, virulent strains, and let nature do the rest.

But that brings up two interesting challenges -- one, how will you get the party started, and two, how will you manage the growth without bad mutations?

So, here's what we're going to do ...

The Core Seed Stock

Everyone I talk to is pretty passionate about this stuff.  Most everyone wants to live in a world of multiple, vibrant communities.  That's good, but they talk about being participants, not builders.

A smaller audience of people I talk to want communities to serve their business needs.  But fewer are willing to invest the time and effort to build them.

So I've been focusing on finding a small handful (maybe 10-12) prototypical communities that can get the party started.

My thinking is that if we have a handful of small, vibrant, passionate communities -- they'll serve as the model for new ones, and we'll get some organic expansion.

A Passionate Topic

I'm looking for a core set of ingredients as a I do this.

First, I'm looking for a topic or subject that a small number of people are very passionate about.  This passion has to span multiple organizations and functions, e.g. it can't be confined to just one group.

The narrower, the better.  I don't want broad topics, and I don't want hundreds (or thousands) of participants at the outset.

Good topic: specific EMC technology we all think is cool. 

Bad topic: bitching about our compensation.

Someone Who Gets The Community Thing

When I find these prototypical communites, I look for the ringleader.  They're the one who's setting up the concalls, building email distribution lists, trying to schedule get-togethers, and so on.

If there's no one obvious who's doing these things on an ongoing basis, it's a poor candidate.  Communities don't build themselves, someone builds them.

And There Are Authoritative Voices

I've mentioned before that a community without authoritative voices runs the risk of being irrelevant.  Not only do we need one or more authoritative voices, they've got to be committed to playing the role: showing up frequently, getting involved, being responsive, and so on.

Just being on the "review cycle" for published content doesn't cut it.  They've got to be visible, engaged participants who bring something to the party.

A Fast Moving Topic

There are important topics, and there are passionate topics.  I'm also looking for topics that are fast moving -- where the picture is changing day-by-day or week-by-week.

If the topic isn't changing very rapidly, it can be served by simply posting content using the traditional means.  Yes, there's a need for community around it, but it's not as attractive for initial targeting as one where there's change moving quickly.

So, Here Are My Initial Communities:

• Social Media @ EMC -- this is our virtual steering community.  We build an ugly, throwaway site using DNN (DotNetNuke), but we're going to move it to our new platform in late Sept.  I need a community manager for this, but I've got some suspects.
   
• Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence -- this is an attractive market for EMC, but we don't have anyone who "owns" it.  Turns out there's 50-60 people across EMC who are willing to show up for meetings on this topic.  And we've got someone who wants to own the community.
   
• Avamar -- kind of an interesting story, Avamar is an acquired technology/company that basically redefines backup/recovery as it's been practiced for the last few decades.  Organizationally, they're buried way under a product group somewhere in the empire, but it's cool technology that people are passionate about.  They get the whole community thing as well, and there's a person there who's done this sort of thing at other companies.  No brainer.
   
• EMC Blogging Corps -- we now have about a dozen or so external bloggers, and several dozen more that want to get started behind the firewall.  I think I know who my community manager will be for this.
   
• EMC Community Developers -- of course, we need a community of people who are building or running communities, right?  Don't have a community manager for this, but I have a suspect.
   
• EMC Kickoff Team -- every year, there's a sequence of management meetings and field activities to kick off the new year.  Hundreds of people are involved, lots of feedback, the picture changes about three times a week, and so on.  This will be a disposable community, e.g. once we're done, it's done -- until next year!
   
• EMC Product X Launch -- I don't want to share the name of the product offering, but -- being a product company, EMC launches a boatload of products on a regular basis.  And, not surprisingly, it's a team sport.  We're going to try one or two using a community, and see how it goes.
   

Between now and a few months from now, I'm probably going to be adding another 3-6 to this list.  I think this is a good starting point, both in terms of diversity and manageability.